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cusideabelincoln

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Everything posted by cusideabelincoln

  1. The right has their scapegoat now. They will proceed to talk about solving mental health, not actually do anything about it, and let freedom riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing.
  2. I just found a Sonic-inspired level in the Magma world, awesome I like big trunks and I cannot lie Those Mario Bros can't deny When the Princess walks in as an itty bitty Peach And jumps on that powerup with her feet You get sprung The mushroom makes you tough 'Cause you notice that trunk was stuffed With water from the pipes emerging Those Daisies aren't the only thing that's growing
  3. Nihilism born out of ignorance; ignorance perpetuated by the very corrupt, powerful entities that are actually rigging the system.
  4. I just watched the first episode and for the first time I actually got queasy from the... realistic amount of blood being shown on screen. I didn't feel like this during the orgy massacre, despite being volumes more gore, because it was just so absurd. I'm not sure I can even continue to watch the series if it stays like this. I'm also unnerved by the fact our protagonist has to cut herself to make use of her powers... that doesn't seem so good for my mental health. Can I stop now? Does it get worse, or does it lean in to other types of weird shit?
  5. Ok, I see that point. No doubt people other than myself wetn full on misogynistic with hate against Holdo while I personally thought Poe was acting like a dumbass the entire time... which you are arguing is on purpose to specifically point out toxic masculinity. Fair enough, there's probably more reason to believe this take over any other. Better yet, Palpatine represents how some crazy old cook could just make up any old lie, without providing any proof, and the masses eat it up. Here I thought the movies were just taking shorcuts with storytelling, while I'm sure Palpy had his own... intergalactic "Fox" News Network. Man, if George had just leaned in on the messaging about propaganda those movies would have hit harder.
  6. Ok I've read them and they make the case pretty strongly. I knew there was an uptick for female equality and representation in the mid 2010's, but I didn't realize it came with a strong anti-patriarchy movement too. Probably not coincidentally, that must be the female perspective because all of those articles are written by women. While those themes do exist in the movie, I'm still not convinced they exist to the extreme level of detail that those authors see them as. Even the one article who summarized the OT being about "fighting the man" while the PT was about "turning a blind eye to Corpo-Govt takeover", you can make an arbitrary argument for any of the movies. I'm reminded of an assignment I had to do for a literature class my freshman year of college. The professor wanted us to write an essay about what the author meant by some assigned story. As usual I procrastinated to the night before, but I just went through the story and picked the examples that fit the narrative I was using. The professor gave me an A and wrote he hadn't heard that one before, and it wasn't because I was necessarily right. I just made some shit up, and really the only person who knows what the author meant was the author themselves. Also what I meant by "surface-level" was closer to... happenstance, coincidence. Maybe it is my male perspective, but for example if we take the Poe vs Holdo dynamic I think people would have hated it the same even if Holdo was a man. One popular circumstance that comes to mind happens in one of the Harry Potter movies. I was equally annoyed with Dumbledore when he chose to keep Harry in the dark and ignore him the entire time - I think that was in Goblet of Fire - and it was all for literally no good reason and done only to complicate the plot. Unspecified hostility and forced dramatic irony is annoying to an audience., so it's not necessary gender has anything to do with it. While those articles do a make a strong argument it was a deliberate choice to present a message, I don't agree with every one of their points of comparison. It would be much for me to go through all of them, but I could argue that gender for the newly-introduced characters in TLJ was just... balance, heuristics. They wanted to include (represent) more females in TLJ since they already established more male leads in TFA, Rose exists as a mechanism to detach Finn from Rey (because that 'ship was never going to happen *coughChina*), and RJ never bothered to make a commentary about Phasma since she is there to be a "cool-looking bad-person, but we already have too many bad-guys in SW so we need a bad-girl". I'll have to rewatch the movie to see if the anti-patriarchy runs as deep as the articles are saying, because I have surely forgotten or missed some nuances of the movie.
  7. Yet again TFA is the poison of the well (ST). A lot of these issues people have started with the decisions made in TFA. I really didn't care for the no time gap between TFA and TLJ, and I think it added unnecessary constraints to the story, but considering TFA decided to "go bigger and badder" with its story maybe RJ felt that was the best way to tell his story.
  8. Lately I look at these blockbuster movies, especially Disney ones, from the lens of a megacorporation trying to squeeze money from as many target audiences as it possibly can. The reason we have 10-30 year old remakes now is because us past kids have grown and have money to spend. So even though TLJ has a necessary message it wants to tell, I personally think they're just doing it for greedy reasons. I mean you can see the checkboxes of things the corporation wanted the ST to have to make sure it makes money. So the story and plot take a sacrifice in order to cram those checkboxes in. I'm definitely getting more jaded as I get older.
  9. I'll read those later, but I will say it's a weird turn for TLJ to make to have everything revolve around toxic masculinity. And it doesn't just detriment the plot if Johnson's goal was to inject as many male-critique themes as possible. I'd argue Finn's character goes underdeveloped throughout the entire trilogy; the "brainwashed, kidnapped child soldier" is a more critical part of his core development than masculinity and it goes completely ignored in TLJ and TROS. edit: I mean, why does the movie need to go deep into toxic masculinity? Certainly didn't need to do either as it was certainly not a focus of past SW films. I always took any character flaws in previous films to be those of that particular character, not a whole subset of people.
  10. Are there any quotes/articles that this was Johnson's intention? I think most of these subversions are simply in sake of a twist - a surprise for the audience - with some surface-level criticism of masculinity thrown in. Because it's quite odd for Rian to make this a central theme with all the male characters being a negative example of masculine tropes without any positive examples of masculinity. Positive re-enforcement is more rewarding to the audience. Also in making this point, the article is definitely ignoring some details, like even though Luke fakes the "testosterone-driven" fight he still heroically sacrifices himself because.... he dies. And corresponding the whole Jedi Order to unhealthy masculinity is some projection - also kind of odd that Rey really wants to save it. Perhaps the movie is trying to make those arguments, but it makes other ones too and isn't exactly clear-cut. My initial thoughts on opening night was the movie was trying to have its cake and eat it too with its messaging about the Jedi Order, and it's a bit messy. I walked out of TLJ loving it because it shat on all the dumb re-hashes JJ introduced in TFA, with the prime example being Snoke. However upon re-watching it much later, with the emotions dialed down, I think the movie does too much to try to be clever and "meta" in sacrifice of the logistics of the plot. Namely... the entire premise of the chase makes no sense. And the movie still falls into the SW trope of "rhyming" with the OT. Much like TFA took an outline of ANH and put a twist on it, so the TLJ does the same with ESB as a blueprint. Extended chase sequence? Check. Bunker assault on a white planet? Check. Protagonist seeking wisdom of a Jedi Master? Check. Antagonist making a "huge" reveal to the protagonist? Check. Somber ending, good guys take a huge hit, barely escaping? Check. But it's still the best movie out of the sequels because at least it forces you think and has some great shots, while you literally need to shut your brain off for the JJ flicks.
  11. If Disney is going to continue to fill in the gaps between the OT and ST, they should absolutely recast a young Luke and Leia instead of continuing on the CGI-AI path. Luke's performances were too limited in Mando and there's no way the technology is going recreate lifelike actors anytime soon.
  12. I meant to say Rennslayer and Loki both have the same shorter term goal of just getting Kang to the TVA; the way each party fought it was weird because both parties can travel there at will. So what happens after he gets there is the only thing that matters, not how he gets there. I'll still give the show a chance as there is potential to do interesting things with Ms. Minutes being the lynchpin of knowledge. I'm just not impressed by the execution so far, despite how charismatic individual scenes are.
  13. The kindest perspective I can have on storytelling is the fact that just about any time travel narrative falls apart when you think about it too much, so they're not bothering to have believable world building for the sake of doing fun and interesting bits. But as is, the plot holes are too distracting for me. They didn't bother to explain why Loki was time slipping; they just wanted to do a bit. They haven't demonstrated why Loki now believes a million bad Kangs are coming; he hasn't seen any proof of malevolence yet. Loki and B-15 have no plan for what the TVA should be doing about these bad Kangs and branched timelines, while Sylvie has a half-baked one. There was no actual reason for X-5 to hold back information, they just wanted to do an interrogation bit. Rennslayer, Ms. Minutes, Loki, Mobius all had the same end goal for 1800's Kang, but the show just faked a reason to fight. The "love triangle" was cringe. In season 1 any oddity that was happening built towards a cohesive story or at least consistency - for example Loki time slipping should mean something to the upcoming story, and why did Loki time slip but Sylvie isn't . It was just an excuse to introduce Ouroboros "The Plot Explainer".
  14. I almost want to believe there's something wrong with me because I find S2 irritating like most other recent D+ shows. However I rewatched S1, which I originally was neutral about and had a blast. My only big critique in S1 was the shortcut they took to evolve Avenger's bad guy Loki into redeemed Endgame Loki by looking at some tik tok footage, but otherwise the writing was quite good and cohesive. This season they are taking a lot of shortcuts, especially with characters, and the plot is all over the place. Sylvie is making absolutely no sense in any regard, but I find her contempt of Loki to be most head scratching. Also feels like a lot has been edited out. The tonal shift is also very jarring. This season feels like an imitation of Legends of Tomorrow.
  15. Into the second world now, and the game continues to be fresh. It's like SMW and Odyssey had a baby - tight controls of classic 2D Mario games along with the variety in gameplay of modern 3D Mario games. If you thought there were only so few ways to jump around a 2D level, think again because the game finds new ways for you to do it.
  16. The SMW sequel comparisons also probably come from the fact the running/jumping physics and animations are much closer to SMW style than NSMB style.
  17. After about 5 levels, I'd say it combines aspects of every Mario game since SMW. You can play it fast. You can play it slow. You can play it risky. You can play it safe. Levels have layers and secrets to them. The variety and imagination remind me of playing Galaxy for the first time.
  18. 14th gen is a complete waste of time. These are just re-badged chips. Should have just named the 14700k the 13800k and called it a day.
  19. So far the only upgrade I aim for is tires, because some of the stock cars have terrible grip. I dislike the locking upgrades behind both points and a level threshold. Just let us spend car points on whatever we want for that car, maybe they can lock some of the bigger changes (drivetrain swap, engine swap, etc) behind a level, but tires? Come on now.
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