honestly seeing godzilla minus one just made me even more jaded to the monsterverse fans who act like it doesn't matter if the movies are badly written because "it's just a godzilla movie" as if there isn't physical proof in both minus one and also shin godzilla that godzilla films can be more than that.
but EVEN THEN i'm not even fucking asking that the monsterverse fundamentally change to become poignant pieces about ptsd and survivor's guilt and government inaction, i'm fine with them remaining fun little action movies primarily about big monsters punching each other, literally all i'm asking is that the human plots do something other than (a) put me to sleep or (b) barely hold themselves together long enough to get to the next scene.
pacific rim is a film first and foremost about big robots punching big monsters, but it also has a genuinely well written human storyline with fleshed out characters. it doesn't have a half-baked plot built only to loosely connect the monster battles, it has an actual story.
like you guys "fun action movie about big monster battles" and "decent script" are not mutually exclusive and it's an insult to the kaiju genre to act like they are. and you should also take it as an insult to the fans that studios think they can ship out rushed scripts because audiences will give them money for it anyway. like, besties, i like the monsterverse. i just also acknowledge that the movies are lowkey shit and want them to be better and hope they will be in the future.
One of the main reasons why Sir Pentious getting to Heaven felt so underwhelming and unwarranted to me is that HH paints it as Charlie's redemption theory being valid and true and her methods actually working
When she barely did anything to help Sir Pentious as the show barely showed us what Charlie's methods are beyond that trust fall bit you can see in summer camps
It doesn't help that redemption is about correcting the wrongs of the past after fully admitting you were at fault when you did them and feeling legitimately regretful that you committed those wrong acts
... We still don't know what Sir Pentious did in his past to end up in Hell. We as an audience know JACK about his backstory and I don't think the cast knows anything about it either
By all means, SP might have gotten to Heaven for doing things that had nothing to do with his mistakes back when he was alive. If that's the case, then not only is Charlie's redemption theory false as what happened with SP has nothing to do with redemption, her methods to reach Heaven are pretty basic and already standardized which brings the potential for the show down to zero. The premise got shot with this finale twist as it's pretty clear Charlie's methods at her Hotel are formulaic and don't depend on the sinners' past wrongs
You know what could have been a good concept ? Have Charlie show SP's progress to the Council of Angels through the globe instead of Angel Dust's only for them to ponder about it and see rather positive on the matter, Sera included, before saying: "As final trial, we will bring them here and have them be his judges."
The doors open and a dozen angels walk in having seemingly been summoned
The Council motions to the globe: "You have been called today to make an important decision. We would like you to first observe this fully then answer a simple question."
The angels do that, they watch the entire reel of everything SP did while under Charlie's care, with Charlie nervously anticipating their answer
The Council: "Now for the question: From all that you've seen,
Would you consider this man worthy of redemption and as such ready to join this side of the Afterlife?"
Many of the angels are just dumbfounded at hearing this, a bunch just storm off and others look scared at the thought.
What remained decide between each other before whispering the answer to Sera
Sera then declares simply: "The Jury have made their decision :
Sir Pentious hasn't done what it takes for his soul to be redeemed and accepted into Heaven."
Charlie: "What? Why not? Not that I have anything against your Jury but what power do they have to decide that you lack for this decision?"
Sera: "The Jury overseeing your Sir Pentious is made up of every soul he has wronged in his past. You have to understand: They have fairly earned their Afterlife regardless of what awful and unjust things he has done to them. To have us decide ourselves if he can join them up here after all the wrongs he has done to them in the living would be unfair; as such the final decision is theirs. If they see his new ways as a true change on his part and choose to forgive him, he would have indeed earned his place in Heaven.
This wasn't the case today."
I want this so much. I want Hazbin to be in the hands of someone mature enough to actually write this.
I’mma get into Bendy and the Dark Revival.
So a few in-general things.
- The Ink Machine cannot create someone from nothing. It’s said this as far back as the first game. Audrey is said to be the “exception”, but how certain are we of that? Who’s telling us that she’s the exception exactly?
- People, alive and dead, were thrown into the Ink Machine. Both games show this, both in audio logs, environmental story telling, and even shows us an example of how it happens. As of the rule above, all people in the machine, were the real original people at one point. Joey Drew attempts to tell us otherwise, but bear in mind who’s fault this all is, and who’s he’s telling that he did this.
He’s a charmer, remember? He’s duped a lot of people with that charm of his. Take nothing he says at face-value.
- The Ink Machine and its Ink are corruptive. From the Camera Man of the First game, to the main “characters” we meet, to the people in the machine–if your ink form wasn’t made, or if you didn’t fit the form made for you–you lose your fecking gourd.
- Do not Trust Joey Drew (The Creator Lied to Us). Joey is, ultimately and foremost, a selfish lying man. The Entirety of BATIM shows us this first and foremost.
And as many of us with hard family lives know, the introduction of children do not change the minds of selfish, lying parents.
So,,, let’s begin Bendy and the Dark Revival.
Continua a leggere
hiii you know what really irks me? like a lot? the way people talk about wheatley, a very very neurodivergent coded character.
something i see way too often is people using this to justify certain things he does that cant be justified or using it to make him into an “uwu soft boi” and then patting themselves on the back for. good neurodivergent representation or something when theyre literally doing the opposite? just because hes neurodivergent coded doesnt mean he gets a pass for everything he does wrong. and its also super fuckin ableist to infantilize him and call him a soft boy or whatever. this goes double if you do that shit and STILL call him stupid.
on the flip side, something else i see a lot is people demonizing him for neurodivergent traits. and personally this one makes me angrier. im not saying he has to be your favorite character or even that you have to like him just because hes neurodivergent coded (i can understand a ton of reasons why people dont like him) but when people call him. annoying or self centered or, again, stupid its. very obvious a lot of the time that youre talking about neurodivergent traits. of course in the game he is literally the intelligence dampening sphere and theres definitely something Big to be said about valve writing an antagonist thats meant to be Stupid as Very Neurodivergent Coded but thats a rant for later because i feel like if people actually cared about neurodivergent people theyd be able to tell when the writers were being ableist and when a character is not how the game tries to portray them. and im speaking as an autistic person here but when you call wheatley annoying for talking a lot or you call him self centered for talking about himself a lot (again im autistic and its hard for me to talk about topics my brain isnt wanting to focus on and most of the topics i do want to talk about are related to me so?) it just really. comes off as ableist.
and even moreso, what wheatley does and tries to do when hes in control of aperture is very bad and thats obvious but… its ALSO obvious that a lot of what he does happens because hes an abuse victim lashing out. which doesnt make what he does right but still. again im talking as an autistic abuse victim here but what really goes through is something i relate to a LOT. hes constantly deemed as stupid for neurodivergent traits so much so that he was LITERALLY MADE TO BE “STUPID” but hes not.. even stupid hes just neurodivergent and acts impulsively. hes constantly reminded hes “stupid” or “incompetent” and you know what it reminds me of? it reminds me of my experience in school as an autistic person. the american public school system is VERY good at abusing and traumatizing neurodivergent kids and its exactly what wheatley’s situation reminds me of. again, how he acts is not right but from where i stand, hes an abuse victim whos never felt like hes had control in his life and when he finally gets control its way too much way too fast and because of his impulsivity it just goes to his head and he makes a LOT of bad decisions.
what im trying to say is that the way the fandom treats wheatley personally gets me very upset at times because of how much i relate to him as an austic abuse victim and how much he gets treated like ive been treated. you dont have to like wheatley but i feel like people in this fandom could do a lot better job of not constantly being ableist about him. thats all
I'm on the record as saying that I never care when white characters get recast as POC (like with Namor and MJ in the MCU); however, there is one distinct exception to that. I believe Charles Xavier has to be white. Hear me out.
I'm approaching this with the characterization of Charles Xavier in the comics (not the Fox films, as it has been so long since I've seen them) and my own interpretation of the politics surrounding his character. I would love to hear some alternate perspectives, provided that it is all polite discussion ofc.
As I alluded to in an older post I see Charles Xavier as a very liberal character. He is always for assimilation and has a tendency to prescribe the "model minority" mindset. He uses his most attractive and human passing mutants as the face of his team. Never in the comics did he publicly identify himself as a mutant- Cassandra Nova was the one controlling his body when he publicly came out as a mutant. Charles' wealth and his whiteness prevents him from seeing the reality of the mutant situation, it is the reason why him and Erik are always at odds. Erik, as a Holocaust survivor, understands the patterns of discrimination and bigotry. He understands that no matter how much the submit to the mold of "well behaved mutants" they will never be treated the same.
Charles, in my mind, encapsulates the liberal fixation on both the aesthetics of bigotry and the individual. Bigotry is bad when people yell slurs and commit hate crimes. Slurs are yelled by individuals, and hate crimes are solitary events perpetuated by individual bigots. Erik was always a character who attacked the system. He wanted to dismantle the systems responsible for the oppression of mutants. Charles is someone who has benefitted from that system, even as a mutant, and on some innate level is afraid of changing that fact. I think being white and wealthy contributes greatly to the philosophy of Charles Xavier. The politics of mutants and the X-Men universe has always been something of great interest to me and this is just the way I see it. But, what do you guys think?
Someone on Reddit made the mistake of saying, "Teach me how this conflict came about" where I could see it.
Let me teach you too.
The common perception is that Jews came out of nowhere, stole Palestinian homes and kicked Palestinians out of them, and then bombed them for 75 years, until they finally rebelled in the form of Hamas invading Israel and massacring 22 towns in one day.
The historical reality is that Jews have lived there continuously for at least 3500 years.
There are areas, like Meggido iirc, with archeological evidence of continuous habitation for 7,000 years, but Jewish culture as we recognize it today didn't develop until probably halfway through that.
Ethnic Jews are the indigenous people of this area.
Indigeneity means a group was originally there, before any colonization happened, and that it has retained a cultural connection to the land. History plus culture.
That's what Jews have: even when the diaspora became larger than the number of Jews in Israel, the yearning to return to that homeland was a daily part of Jewish prayer and ritual.
The Jewish community in Israel was crushed pretty violently by the Roman Empire in 135 CE, but it was still substantial, sometimes even the majority population there, for almost a thousand years.
The 600s CE brought the advent of Islam and the Arab Empire, expanding out from Saudi Arabia into Israel and beyond. It was largely a region where Jews were second-class citizens. But it was still WAY better than the way Christian Europe treated Jews.
From the 700s-900s, the area saw repeated civil wars, plagues, and earthquakes.
Then the Crusades came, with waves of Christians making "pilgrimages to the Holy Land" and trying to conquer it from Muslims and Jews, who they slaughtered and enslaved.
Israel became pretty well depopulated after all that. It was a very rough time to live there. (And for the curious, I'm calling it Israel because that's what it had been for centuries, until the Romans erased the name and the country.)
By the 1800s, the TOTAL population of what's now Israel and Palestine had varied from 150,000 - 275,000 for centuries. It was very rural, very sparsely populated, on top of being mostly desert.
In the 1880s, Jews started buying land and moving back to their indigenous homeland. As tends to happen, immigration brought new projects and opportunities, which led to more immigration - not only from Jews, but from the Arab world as well.
Unfortunately, there was an antisemitic minority spearheaded by Amin al-Husseini. Who was very well-connected, rich, and from a politically powerful family.
Al-Husseini had enthusiastically participated in the Armenian Genocide under the Ottoman Empire. Then the Empire fell in World War One, and the League of Nations had to figure out what to do with its land.
Mostly, if an area was essentially operating as a country (e.g. Turkey), the League of Nations let it be one. In areas that weren't ready for self-rule, it appointed France or Britain to help them get there.
In recognition of the increased Jewish population in their traditional, indigenous homeland, it declared that that homeland would again become Israel.
As in, the region was casually called Palestine because that was the lay term for "the Holy Land." It had not been a country since Israel was stamped out; only a region of a series of different empires. And the Mandate For Palestine said it was establishing "a national home of the Jewish people" there, in recognition of "the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country."
Britain was appointed to help the Arab and Jewish communities there develop systems of self-government, and then to work together to govern the region overall.
At least, that was the plan.
Al-Husseini, who was deeply antisemitic, did not like this plan.
And, extra-unfortunately, the British response to al-Husseini inciting violent anti-Jewish riots was to put him in a leadership role over Arab Palestine.
They thought it would calm him down and perhaps satisfy him.
They were very wrong.
He went on to become a huge Hitler fanboy, and then a Nazi war criminal. He co-created the Muslim Brotherhood - which Hamas is part of - with fellow fascist fanboy Hassan al-Banna.
He got Nazi Party funding for armed Muslim Brotherhood militias to attack Jews and the Brits in the late 30s, convincing Britain to agree to limit Jewish immigration at the time when it was most desperately needed.
He started using the militias again in 1947, when the United Nations voted to divide the mandated land into a Jewish homeland and a Palestinian one.
Al-Husseini wouldn't stand for a two-state solution. He was determined to tolerate no more than the subdued, small Jewish minority of second-class citizens that he remembered from his childhood.
As armed militias increasingly ran riot, the Arab middle and upper classes increasingly left. About 100,000 left the country before May 1948, when Britain was to pull out, leaving Israel and Palestine to declare their independence.
The surrounding nations didn't want war. They largely accepted the two-state solution.
But al-Husseini lobbied HARD. And by mobilizing the Muslim Brotherhood to provide "destabilizing mass demonstrations and a murderous campaign of intimidation," he got the Arab League nations to agree to invade, en masse, as soon as Britain left.
About 600,000 Arabs fled to those countries during the ensuing war.
Jews couldn't seek refuge there; in fact, most of those countries either exiled their Jews directly, confiscating their property first, or else made Jewish life unlivable and exploited them for underpaid or slave labor for years first.
By the time the smoke cleared and a peace treaty was signed, most of the Arab Palestinian community had fled; there was no Arab Palestinian leadership; many of the refugees' homes and businesses had left had been destroyed in the war; and Israel had been flooded with nearly a million refugees from the Arab League countries and the Holocaust - even more people than had fled the war.
That was the Nakba. The one that gets portrayed as "750,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled!" in the hope that you'll assume they were expelled en masse, their beautiful intact homes all stolen.
Egypt had taken what's now the Gaza Strip in that war, and Jordan took what's now the West Bank - expelling or killing all the Jews in it first.
(Ironically, Jordan was originally supposed to be part of Israel. Britain, inexplicably, cut off what would have been 75% of its land to create Jordan.
Even more inexplicably, nobody ever talks about it. I've never seen anyone complain that Jordan was stolen from Palestinians. Possibly because Jordan is also the only country that gave Palestinian refugees full citizenship, and it's about half Palestinian now.
Israel is nearly 25% Arab Palestinians with full citizenship and equal rights, so it's not all that different -- but the fundamental difference of living in a country where the majority is Jewish, not Muslim, probably runs pretty deep.)
Anyway: that's why Palestine is Gaza and the West Bank, rather than being some contiguous chunk of land. Or being the land set aside by the U.N. in 1947.
Because Arab countries took that land in 1948, and treated them as essentially separate for 20 years.
Israel got them back, along with the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula, in the next war: 1967, when Egypt committed an act of war by taking control of the waterways and barring Israel from them. It gave the Sinai back to Egypt as part of the 1979 peace accords between Egypt and Israel.
Israel tried to give back the Gaza Strip at the same time. Egypt refused.
Palestine finally declared independence in 1988.
But Hamas formed at about the same time. Probably in response, in fact. Hamas is fundamentally opposed to peace negotiations with Israel.
Again: Hamas is part of a group founded by Nazis.
Hamas has its own charter. It explains that Jews are "the enemy," because they control the drug trade, have been behind every major war, control the media, control the United Nations, etc. Basic Nazi rhetoric.
It has gotten adept at masking that rhetoric for the West. But to friendlier audiences, its leaders have consistently said things like, "People of Jerusalem, we want you to cut off the heads of the Jews with knives. With your hand, cut their artery from here. A knife costs five shekels. Buy a knife, sharpen it, put it there, and just cut off [their heads]. It costs just five shekels."
(Palestinians were outraged by this speech. Palestinians, by and large, absolutely loathe Hamas.
It's just that it's not the same to say that to locals, as it is to say it where major global powers who oppose this crap can hear you.)
Hamas has stated from the beginning that its mission is to violently destroy Israel and take over the land.
It has received $100M in military funding annually, from Iran, for several years. Because Iran has been building a network of fascist, antisemitic groups across the Middle East, in a blatant attempt to control more and more of it: Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Houthis in Yemen.
Iran has been run by a very far-right, deeply antisemitic dictatorship for decades now, which pretty openly wants to take down both Israel and the U.S.
Last year, Iran increased Hamas's funding to $350M.
The "proof of concept" invasion of Israel that Hamas pulled off on October 7th more than justifies a much bigger investment.
Hamas has publicly stated its intention to attack "again and again and again," until Israel has been violently destroyed.
That is how this conflict came about.
A Nazi group seized power in Gaza in 2007 by violently kicking the Palestinian government out, and began running it as a dictatorship, using it to build money and power in preparations for exactly this.
And people find it shockingly easy to believe its own hype about being "the Palestinian resistance."
As well as its propaganda that Israel is not actually targeting Hamas: it's just using a literal Nazi invasion and massacre as an excuse to randomly commit genocide of the fraction of Palestine it physically left 20 years ago.
Despite the fact that Palestinians in Gaza have been protesting HAMAS throughout the war.
Any thoughts on the Russian-Ukraine stuff or would you like to keep your opinions to yourself?
I am watching and listening, and helping where I can. My opinion is irrelevant in the face of much more difficult things real people are facing.
I've seen many Russians make statements online apologizing on behalf of the country - cursing it, cursing Putin, cursing the government, and tearfully explaining how disgusted they are by it all, and how ashamed they are of being Russian.
I understand the urge, I really do, but the problem is that it ultimately does nothing. No matter how hard you punch yourself, your friend's wounds will not heal. That's not how it works.
At the moment, all anyone can do is:
Listen and read instead of posting - and think critically about which sources you get your news from (US media tends to be sensationalist, and Russia media is largely propaganda). There's also tons of misinformation online, and I've been trying to avoid posting/reblogging anything that I cannot 100% confirm as true.
Help out those directly affected by events - but be mindful of scams! Paypal and venmo is not available in the Ukraine, this is true. BUT - many Ukranians, especially those who have lived or live abroad are able to use it through connecting overseas banks or cards, and they CAN channel that money to family. It's ultimately YOUR responsibility to fact-check this before you reblog anything asking for donations. Be mindful of what you spread.
Keep informed and don't just spread fearmongering images/fatalist threads. Ukranians are currently trying to stay safe. Poland has opened borders to everyone with a Ukranian passport and suspended VISAs, and there is talk of other neighboring countries doing the same. They don't need more tweets about bombings. They don't need your jokes about WWIII and being drafted.
Ultimately I'm taking a seat and doing as much as I can, but the last thing you all need to hear is my casually uninformed opinion - or ANYONE'S uninformed opinion. Tweeting about current events does not make anyone an expert in foreign policy. If you're wondering what you should do - sometimes, the answer is 'nothing'.
not to be pretentious, but a lot of stuff you guys complain is being ruined by capitalism/the algorithm/whatever can be solved by consuming something else than the most basic mainstream stuff that's thrown in your lap. "songs nowadays are getting shorter to fit entire tiktoks and it's ruining music" have you tried listening to something else than Spotify's Top 100 my dude? "fanfiction-to-publishing pipeline is churning out mediocre books and it's ruining literature" have you tried reading something outside the NYT bestseller list my dude? This is not a post about how algorithm based industries give visibility to the lowest common denominator art at the expense of actually creative and meaningful art that struggles to make itself known, which is a valid discussion for another time, this is about people actively not giving this kind of art their visibility because they won't get out of their way to discover stuff outside the mainstream radar and prefer to be passively fed what to consume while bitching that is not up to their tastes.
So the Jews went from being victims of genocide to commiters of it? Weird how the circle of power goes.
okay no, this is not the way it is. jewish people =/= israel. not all jewish people condone israel’s actions, and a significant number actively oppose it.
and jewish people continue to face antisemitism today, so saying something like “Jewish people went from victims to committers” as a general statement is really gross.
(also a lot of jewish people have expressed discomfort with the word “Jews” and prefer “Jewish” btw)
Hello, this blog is for posting things I find interesting like critical opinions about media and fanarts. PS: NO spicy fanart on this blog
126 posts