a great part of speedrunning documentaries/docuseries on youtube on super niche/old games is the fact that, in most cases, the only people with enough in-depth knowledge to make the video in the first place are the top runners themselves. which results in really funny moments where the narrator is like "but in 2016, a new runner would blow the category wide open with a 3-minute time save... meeee :3 teehee"
sometimes people ask why I block out names when roasting an opinion and I think fewer people would ask that if they clicked through a few popular posts and saw that the people who got clowned on are still receiving anon hate years down the line
for every opinion I hold lightly enough to joke about, there is someone whose entire life revolves around holding a much more intense and aggressive version of it. every time a post gets reblogged, the odds of that person not seeing it get closer to zero
Had Padmé been 20-30 years older than anakin instead of 2-3 it wouldve fixed a significant portion of the franchise, including padmé's own chracterization
he whole "'woah we're doing something we shouldn't this is going to ruin both of our lives" doesn't ring true in the original movies cause they're just two beautiful young people doing what they're supposed to do in a story. the cliché kills the dramatic tension. give me a 45 year old woman ruining her career life and reputation because a dumbass 19year old monk is pathetically throwing himself at her feet THAT'll give the audience something to be anxious about. It's not something people expect to happen.
Would also explain why all the authority figures are like "Sure, lets put this notoriously disobedient and hotheaded beautiful youth as the sole escort of an equally beautiful young woman who's had the entire world on her shoulders from childhood. no prophecy twins will result from this". i could see obiwan allowing it because he can't deny anakin anything, but what about the rest of the jedi council??? What about padmé's own people? The choice of anakin as bodyguard looks like bad optics even if nothing actually happens. What about her reputation??? It would've been satisfying if they'd actually leaned into it instead of vague hints. Like padmé says its improper but nothing in the surrounding world actually makes it seem that way. The prequels at least didn't do a good job establishing the jedi as sexless and chaste. They just seem like cool hot guys with swords of COURSE they fuck.
but if she's 45, even if she's beautiful, a lifetime of dutiful service to the republic would make most people go "ah she would never sleep with a teenage monk, doesn't matter if he asks". Plus the general social standards of star wars being actually identical to those of our own society they'll probably be like "well what would a 19year old even want with a middle aged woman?" the thought wouldn't even occur. She'd be desexualized by virtue of her age so of course give her a hot young bodyguard no one (including the audience) is gonna see potential for impropriety
AND NOW WE COME TO ROTS. Its not impossible for a 45 year old woman ti get pregnant (average menopause is 50 i assume also in space until proven otherwise) but it is rarer, and it would make sense of anidala not to have been expecting it. It would also underline, again, that this pregnancy is a genuine threat to their lives and careers, because two young people in love secretly married having a baby is literally fine. its normal. the audience will forgive and even applaud even if the wider society in the movie doesn't. but a 45 year old senator with a secret baby?? that she's KEEPING?? like already in the original she shouldn't have kept the baby but the movie is christian and the audience too the vibe is "noo pregnancy is beautiful its luke and leia awww". We should be SCARED about the pregnancy.
And then, anakin having nightmares about padmé dying in childbirth are no longer obvious prophecies. like young padmé is healthy and rich, she'll have the best medical care theres no reason to think her pregnancy will have complications. It's actually kind of stupid and dismissive for people to say anakin's nightmares are nothing to worry about, especially considering he's had them before! but if padmé is pregnant at 45 the risk of complications is very high even with good medical care, and it would make sense for anakin to just have regular nightmares about it. The pregnancy is not a good thing! its a big risk they're taking in a lot of ways!
It also complicates the "unavoidable fate" thing they did in rots. Like in the original had anakin not tried to do everything to prevent padmé dying in childbirth she actually wouldve been fine. She died of grief while fully healthy which i think everyone can agree was fucking stupid. But if anakin's descent into the dark side, 100% ensured padmé dying (strangling a 45 year old woman who's already endured a huge amount of stress and throwing her to the ground? narratively speaking, either she's not making it or the baby isn't), i think it would be good if we weren't told with absolute certainty "had anakin stayed a jedi she wouldn't have died". It would be more compelling if we didn't know for sure!!
Plus it would make anakin's freakout so much easier to empathize with. Like sure its scary to think of your loved ones dying but the whole movie she's presented as obviously not at risk. Anakin worries but we don't. We should worry! Are we so much better than him? Wouldn't we also be desperate in his position? Or alternatively we refuse to sympathize with his decision to fall in love with a middle aged woman which is uncomfortable and leads us into much more complicated moral questioning than "become evil or stay good?". It would add drama either way!
And it would make both padmé and anakin so much more 3 dimensional as characters. Now they're making strange, emotionally driven and unexpected decisions instead of following the script for romantic lead 1 and 2. Padmé has actual depth and complications! She makes decisions we can't necessarily appove of, keeping the baby becomes a genuine decision with genuine cost instead of "duh, what else is she gonna do?" Her falling in love with anakin actually adds depth to her character and tells us something about who she is instead of turning her into a cliché. Replaying the trilogy in my head with older padmé instead of young padmé she immediately feels like a character with agency instead of a cardboard cutout of the ideal dead wife.
Even in the delicious wonderful scenario where obiwan and padmé have an affair after anakin joins the dark side, if padmé is young it doesn't feel like a decision she's making so much as the circumstances acting upon her, it feels like obiwan is betraying anakin but it doesn't feel like she's actually betraying anything? she just doesn't have enough agency for that to be the case. Giving in to emotion is what a romantic heroine is supposed to do. But older padmé sleeping with obiwan after losing her extremely young husband to the dark side while at most 5 days away from giving birth is like...an actual decision. A complicated woman making unsympathetic choices, giving in to emotion when what's expected of her is dignity. For the THIRD time, she acts out of feeling instead of reason and seals her fate. Its kind of a misogynistic character arc but i don't care id watch the shit out of it. And she HAS a character arc now, instead of nothing.
we could go back to telegraphs instead of social media. send your mutuals unspeakable strings of morse code at 4:30am
.- …. …. …. …. …. / ..-. . .-.. .-.. / -.. --- .-- -. / .- -. -.. / -… .-. --- -.- . / -- -.-- / .--. . -. .. - … / - --- -.. .- -.-- / -.-- . --- .-- -.-. …. / --- ..- -.-. …. / -.-- --- ..- -.-. …. -.-.-- -.-.-- -.-.-- -.-.-- / … . -. - / ..-. .-. --- -- / -- -.-- / - . .-.. . --. .-. .- .--. ….
personally i prefer semaphore
so prefacing this with the fact that I know that the fun is sorta taken out of this by me translating, but not everyone will have the energy to look it up themselves, so I figured I'd help out.
Morse code: AEEEEE FELL DOWN AND TROKE MY PENIT TODAY YEOWCE OUCH YOUCH!!!! SENT FROM MY TELEGRAPH
Semaphore: NO NOT YOUR PENITS
steven is a really funny character actually. he never went to school. one of his powers is astral projection for no real reason. hes a musical prodigy. he was so traumatized by the end of the show they had to make an entire epilogue series about it. he spent seven years looking like a 3rd grader. he was even bisexual
he went to the center of the earth. he saved the world in flip flops. he broke his bones every day and didnt even notice. he killed someone
he didn’t have a bellybutton. he actively chose to eat super crispy bits of potato that got left in the deep fryer. he lived in a house but his dad lived in a car within walking distance of his house. he could revive people from the dead. all of his clothes were concert merchandise. he had an outdoor washing machine. he was put on trial for murder. he broke both federal and state child labor laws
The murder he was on trial for was different than the murder he committed
The murder he went on trial for was a murder his mom committed. The victim of the murder was also his mom.
he plead guilty
Man, they don't let you have any fun.
What I have learned from this is to disguise my rocket launcher as a comically large sandwich in order to avoid suspicion.
the ballistic sandwich launcher will NEVER get off the ground at this rate
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Instead of "live laugh love" or "home is where the heart is" my (wonderful, progressive, very accepting) dad put up the racism sign in the foyer
whats the racism sign?
The racism sign, as I like to call it, is from an art piece I made halfway through my first semester of art school:
It reads "any attempted theft will be reported to the police" in the 15 most commonly spoken languages by immigrants here other than English or other western european languages (in descending order).
This sign was only half of the art piece, the other half was the most stereotypically Icelandic painting I could think of:
When the piece was shown the painting and the sign were hung on opposite sides of the room, making the sign more of an afterthought for those who don't speak any of the languages written on the sign. Standing out just enough for them to notice it and maybe wonder what it said, but ultimately not giving it a second thought for the most part.
I wanted to highlight one of the most common ways racism and xenophobia present themselves here as well as the comfort of ignorance. The sign doesn't cater to you, you ignore it it, and you don't care what it might say. You don't have to think about it because it doesn't affect you.
For those who can read the sign though, or bother to translate it, this is just yet another reminder of people's ignorance and double standards. My inspiration for this piece came from my old workplace, where they had this sign hanging on one of the doors:
The main things that stood out about this to me were that
- It was the only sign on the premises written in anything other than Icelandic and/or English
- All of the additional languages (Vietnamese, Polish, Lithuanian, Latvian) specifically targeted minority groups that already face discrimination here
- The location of the sign. We only had 1 of these, and they chose to put it up somewhere where only staff would see it rather than the customers. In fact, it was right next to the break room so you had to walk past it every time you went on break. And it was a sign reminding people not to steal. Big win for inclusivity here
People love saying that we're not racist/xenophobic here even though we very much are. The problem is just that so many people don't take the time to look when it doesn't directly affect them. I was very happy with my piece because people actually came up to me and asked what the sign said because they wanted to know, it started a conversation and made those previously unaware of this issue more aware. I wonder if these sorts of signs would be anywhere near as commonplace as they are if more people looked at them critically and asked "why is this the thing we bother translating?"
Anyway, all that aside I love my dad and I like the way this art piece turned out but also I am slightly worried about giving people the wrong idea when this is the first thing they see when they enter our home 💀
Well if you want my permission to show it then you have it :))
with great regret i must inform you that there is a typo in the Latvian translation, so it actually says “any attempted theft will be reported to poland”
I found out while working on this that it is extremely difficult to get 15 fully accurate translations into languages you don't speak in the span of a week but this is killing me 💀
Can we talk about the found family trope and queer-coded/canonically queer characters? Because there is a ton of overlap between these two.
In their stories, the queer/queer-coded characters no longer have a supportive family for a number of reasons (Hiccup refuses to kill dragons, Johnny wants to be a singer, Nimona is a shapeshifter, etc). A lot of times these reasons are things that ‘other’ them from people around them, thereby furthering the queer allegory.
And this lack of support is what drives these characters to form/find a found family made of more people who are like them. People who will treat them with the love and support that their family should have. It pushes them into the found family trope.
The prevalence of found family in queer and queer-coded story lines serves to make them more relatable and realistic but it’s also heart breaking that familial rejection is so common that this trope does make it more realistic.
The fact that in the comic his name was GoldenLION, but he was bullied as a kid so it got warped into GoldenLOIN... then they changed it so he was always popular but KEPT GOLDENLOIN... That's the icing on the cake for me. Baffled and delighted. Why'd they do him like that
I’m just. so thoroughly obsessed with Ambrosius Goldenloin.
homegirl has THE STUPIDEST NAME EVER. he’s the director’s model minority stereotype pawn. he’s a sweetheart he’s a goofball he’s socially anxious he just wants to do the right thing he’s trying to be what everyone else wants him to be while simultaneously questioning his entire life. his hair is clearly bleached and his voice actor said that if you ever find a gay man with bleached hair you know he’s going through a crisis. he represents mixed race issues with “the blood of gloreth” being whiteness which the director used to put him on a pedestal and then discarded him when he began to fight against/question her system. he is rightfully angry when he goes to question the director whereas before he’d been keeping it all hidden. he smiles at the best possible moments in his dialogue. his armor is gold. he’s physically and verbally affectionate. he’s a dork and his hair smells like lavender. he’s allergic to olives. he’s dating public enemy number one. he chopped his boyfriend’s arm off. he changes his worldview when he realizes the system he’d perpetuated was hurting people. he throws himself into hugs. his boyfriend hates freestyle jazz. he just wants to solve the conflict without people getting hurt.
also just. he’s the main character’s gay lover and his name is Nectarofthegods Greatinbed. what do you WANT from him
cannot stop thinking about the nimona film. the subtle details like the ways they show how nimona is different from the get-go with her eyes and fangs but also how they slowly introduce more and more abnormalities like her strength when she pulls a pipe off the wall to block the closet door, how far she threw the axe and hit a knight, etc. the knife she pulls after breaking bal out was the one she stole from bal’s lair. the animals she turns into when being electrocuted are the same ones from the gloreth incident. the way footage used to frame nimona was altered to look like someone recorded it on a phone rather than the institute’s security cameras to reinforce the citizen’s ignorance of the police state. the way nimona never takes the first swing. she tried to get away from her attackers using smaller animals before being forced into violence. the way nimona’s creature never roared unless she was attacked nor did she ever look to harm anyone despite her tremendous pain. the way the director’s hair was platinum blonde like ambrosius’ implying she is also a descendent of gloreth. the way todd is a fucking moron with a small dick. the way ballister doesn’t confront nimona about what ambrosius said but about how she hid her past from him. the way his voice rings loudest in her ears during her breakdown. the way nimona’s personality changes with gloreth once she realizes she can be herself. the way nimona changes around bal once she realizes she’s safe with him. the way nimona’s mere existence “threatens our very way of life.” nimona’s phoenix at the end is her dragon from the comic. the way the true villain was always just bigotry and fear. just. this goddamn movie
So
Apparently, I can't be normal about Ambrosius, so here I am again. I feel that we should talk more about the injury he suffered at the climax, and I think it tends to get glazed over because they didn't show much evidences that Ambrosius had to heal from it because he didn't have a cast, unlike Sureblade who gets a final screen time wearing an arm cast.
First, I want to point out that Ballister landed on his bad side.
It clearly hurts, because we can see him favor it when he tried stopping the Director from getting into the laser machine.
His reaction here gets to me, the pursing of his lips. Maybe it's an emotional lip pursing, and his sympathizing with Ballister's grief. Slowly though, I think Ballister does lose consciousness, making him more of a dead weight.
Again, to the spot Ambrosius was injured. Speaking as someone who just got hit by a motorcycle (and still managed to literally walk away from it), the man's clearly doing his best to toughen it out.
So, the pursing of his lips may also be a silent wince he's hoping wouldn't get out. Ambrosius did cut off Ballister's arm, for him, taking the pain of Ballister leaning heavily on his injured side should be nothing. Maybe part of him thought it was a lesser pain than what he gave Ballister. (PS. Not that it should, mind you.)
Regardless, I want to focus on how much Ambrosius definitely loved and missed this man. They're both in pain, they're both hurting, but they're together again.
Remembering the words of Augustus Waters from the Fault of our Stars and Hazel Lancaster.
"That's the thing about pain, it demands to be felt." -A.W.
"You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world. But you do have SOME say in who hurts you." -H.L.
Ambrosius knows he would rather suffer with Ballister than live a life free of pain without him. He didn't know what's going to happen between him and Ballister after this, if they would be "together-together" again, if Ballister would actually forgive him. But I'd like to think he knew one thing:
This time, he was going to be there for Ballister in this painful time, in whatever way Ballister would accept him.
Love this new Netflix genre of "Accidental Dad and his Adopted Problem Child join hands to overthrow the government which has been lying to everyone with centuries of propaganda"
i’ve seen a lot of posts talking about nimona’s queer messages which is great! but ive not seen as many posts talking analyzing how both ballister and ambrosius were changed to be asian, which is a shame because i genuinely think its one of the most important parts of the film! a huge part of it is a deconstruction of the model minority myth and respectability politics, both of which are big issues in the asian american community. both of them represent each side of the spectrum, with ambrosius expected to be superhuman with very little support and ballister being seen as less than human, no matter how hard he tries- a monster.
ambrosius (who is now east asian, like his voice actor eugene lee yang, who is korean with chinese and japanese ancestry), despite being in a seemingly powerful position as head of the knights and a descendant of gloreth, he isn’t really given the kind of support that this position needs- he’s constantly undermined and belittled by todd, the face of the other knights, and when asked about his emotional state by the director, represses his emotions rather than talk to her about his true feelings. this is very similar to how asian american students in schools aren’t given the support they need academically by teachers and administration, as the model minority myth leads to them being perceived as more intelligent and competent than their fellow students and therefore not needing support. he’s also held to a higher standard than any of the other knights, being immediately placed into a position of power despite just being knighted, again a reflection of the model minority myth, since asian americans are held to higher standards unfairly. despite being technically better off than ballister, he has no support, no friends, no way to seek help for his problems, and, just like ballister, is immediately thrown away the moment the director thinks he’s served his use.
ballister is now pakistani, like his voice actor riz ahmed (no, not like pedro pascal. where did this come from lol), and i’d go as far as to say that he is also, if not explicitly muslim, heavily muslim coded as well. he’s framed as a terrorist by the white, christian institution, and from then on, it doesn’t matter how good he tries to be- everyone else sees him as a monster. he’s also from a lower socioeconomic class than ambrosius and the rest of the knights- while this is initially used to frame him as a success story, after he’s framed, it’s used to cast suspicion on him. almost immediately he’s othered, with posters casting him as a foreign invader sent to destabilize the city, much in the same way that muslim immigrants are seen in real life. even when he tries to be peaceful and good, it’s always twisted so that he’s the monster of the story. while ambrosius is held to too high of a standard, ballister will never be enough for the institution to accept.
which is why both of their arcs culminate in them breaking out of the system, learning to accept what they’d been taught was monstrous, and leaving behind respectability. it’s a genuinely great commentary, and i can definitely see why riz ahmed and eugene lee yang were chosen for this, as they’ve both done activist work for their communities.
A line I don’t think gets talked about enough:
“He didn’t cut off my arm. He was disarming a weapon. It’s how we were trained.”
The Institute took young kids and turned them into weapons. The Knights were trained to view themselves and their bodies as weapons.
Ambrosius cutting off Ballister’s arm was ingrained instinct. You can see in his face that he doesn’t realize what he’s doing until it’s too late, until the blade is already too far along in it’s swing. And after, he drops his sword like he didn’t realize how it got into his hand in the first place. He looks at Ballister with a dawning horror of what he’s just done, on instinct.
And then, the big fight. There’s a reason Ballister was top of the class. When fighting the guards he isn’t touched. In the middle of fighting Ambrosius, he cloths-lines a guard behind him WITHOUT EVEN LOOKING. Ambrosius doesn’t even look surprised that Ballister won, as if it’s normal, as if Ballister had always won their duels before.
I just. I have a lot of thoughts about this and I don’t have the words to express them. I just want other people to see what I see and talk about it too. To think about the implications of that line and how it’s delivered in a matter-of-fact way.
