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I finished Steven Universe Future. I know its a kids show but the latter half of the season felt much more like a Fionna and Cake "seeing the previous series through older eyes" show for a teen/adult audience. I think I like the way it ended. I've read some opinions that were perplexed by Steven's trauma because he's always had strong relationships and been very open with his feelings. But he's still a 14 year old who fought an interstellar war and its sensible that it left lasting scars. Especially because his father didn't really set boundaries and the gems didn't know what proper human boundaries even were, so seemed happy to have both Connie and him in fights because in gem society when you can walk and talk you're ready to fight (plus some of their warriors like the Rubies seem like children anyway...) Also I was more open to watching an entire season that didn't have a strong arc up until the last 6 or so episodes because I knew the characters so well after all of SU and the movie. Whereas I really struggled in season 1 to care about a lot of one off shennanigans.
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Oct 10, 2023 03:15
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Warbird posted:The final episode will be a normal episode that is slightly shorter than normal. After a fade to black the screen fades up to a confused looking Tracey Ullman who looks at the camera and asks, “the hell was all that?” Smash cut to black. Honestly, if this isn't how it ends that would be a crime
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Oct 10, 2023 03:20
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Pogonodon posted:Didn't she have her first word at the end of an episode forever ago? I think it was "daddy". She's had a lot of first words. Only some of them are non-canon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boBwa3AJnqQ
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Oct 10, 2023 03:30
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Ccs posted:I finished Steven Universe Future. I know its a kids show but the latter half of the season felt much more like a Fionna and Cake "seeing the previous series through older eyes" show for a teen/adult audience. yeah!! i really liked SUF and how it sorta turns the base premise of SU on its head, plus a lot of stevens struggles with dealing with his own issues and what to do after the base conflict is done hit real hard
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Oct 10, 2023 04:03
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Ccs posted:I finished Steven Universe Future. I know its a kids show but the latter half of the season felt much more like a Fionna and Cake "seeing the previous series through older eyes" show for a teen/adult audience. Booky posted:yeah!! i really liked SUF and how it sorta turns the base premise of SU on its head, plus a lot of stevens struggles with dealing with his own issues and what to do after the base conflict is done hit real hard 
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Oct 10, 2023 05:15
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The thing I liked about Steven Universe was learning the mysteries of the gems so I wasn't as invested in Future I enjoyed myself, it just didn't hit the same I guess
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Oct 10, 2023 13:39
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kliras posted:people are allowed to dislike castlevania nocturne, but let's not go back and rewrite how excited we were for the first season of the original show. it kept getting better over the seasons, but obviously good luck beating s2's massive rear end-kicking to bloody tears I was also a little underwhelmed by the writing in Nocturne, but you're right; on reflection, the writing in the first Castlevania S1 was also the weakest of the four by far. Everything *besides* the writing in Nocturne is just as good as the first show's peaks, and it did enough of its own clever things* that I'm optimistic about its future season(s). * The show seems to imply that the machine forge process is flawed in some way, either from the machine itself and/or the forgemaster's guilt and internal conflicts, which is why the night creatures retain some memories of their past lives instead of being 100% possessed by a random soul pulled from Hell. Obviously this is building up to a night creature uprising to mirror the frame story of slaves and peasants overthrowing their masters, and that's cool, but it also let them have Sydney James Harcourt provide a diegetic soundtrack. Those scenes felt a lot like Bastion/Hades, and that's never a bad thing. Olrox saving Mizrak against his will right before everything went to poo poo was a nice callback to Dracula doing the same for Isaac. The show continues to have the best melee+magic fight scenes ever with everyone having distinctive movesets and strategies that fit their character. Humans are still glass cannons that get seriously injured if they make a single mistake while fighting a mid-tier vampire (see: Maria getting the same bicep slash that Sypha did) or straight-up die against a powerful one (see: Richter's mom and Olrox).
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Oct 10, 2023 20:49
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one thing that also stuck out to me after finally rewatching trevorvania s1+s2 (because s1 is so much premise-building that it doesn't hold a lot of replay value for me) is that the plotting in them is actually pretty silly, but the difference is that it's dracula acting stupid and reckless while handwaving it with "he's gone mad", rather than having the main characters acting the same. even so, the whole writing for the war council and palace intrigue doesn't make all that much sense, but at the end of the day, we're rooting for the vampires' downfall anyway. on top of how the dialogue is very well written another thing is that the protagonists of s1+s2 don't actually make a lot of actual decisions themselves, so there's less to scrutinize about the plot (the how and why of the progression of the story). sypha and trevor literally only find alucard because they happen to fall through a hundred floors and survive 100k fall damage after a fight. and the sleeping soldier setup for it isn't exactly amazing, and some aspects of alucard are a bit weird on a rewatch like how lisa only has a picture of dracula in her locket but an empty one for alucard i could be big mad on the internet about it, but i think a lot of online discussions are ultimately also about figuring out why people are mad about stuff and choose to focus on it, and people just so happen to less forgiving of richtervania that centres non-white character, is more openly diverse wrt sexualities etc, when we could be big mad about the above things, even though, who cares, it's all good, and you can always find retroactive excuses for it. i prefer the motivations of the villains and grey characters in richtervania way more than trevorvania's i do hope they sort out the writing and come up with some better explanations of the protagonists' decision-making, because it's always fun to hold something you like to a high standard, as long you do it evenhandedly. trevor takes on a lot of ridiculous fights, and the outcome isn't exactly logical, but he chooses to do it for cool reasons, and part of the new thing with richtervania is that sometimes that's actually a bad idea and you get your rear end massively handed to you rather than just facetanking it. but some writing and dialogue to support it, if only diegetically, would be nice kliras fucked around with this message at 21:17 on Oct 10, 2023 |
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Oct 10, 2023 21:15
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I remember constantly thinking throughout the original Castlevania (though less so in season 4) that save for some big action scene that capped every season, the whole thing didn't move very well. Like they over-designed the characters in an attempt to do a Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust kind of style but couldn't actually get those designs to move smoothly. Nocture never moves as well as Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust but it also has a lot move movement throughout, and even more of the impressive action scenes compared to its predecessor. Whether this is from improved budget or Powerhouse coming into their own as an american studio that can pull off anime style visuals (with the considerable help of their korean outsource studio DR Movie), it resulted in a lot less "hah, i see what they're going for there" and a lot more verisimilitude.
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Oct 10, 2023 23:51
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Simpsons could just copy the ending of Dinosaurs.
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Oct 12, 2023 00:38
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I Am Fowl posted:Simpsons could just copy the ending of Dinosaurs. Kill every character off in a sudden ice age? I’m still impressed they got away with that back in the day
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Oct 12, 2023 00:40
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Dinosaurs was always pretty grotesque. I remember having a very strong negative reaction to the scene where the evil boss eats the last two members of a species that the dinosaurs consider a delicacy. They were charming, funny muppets who convince Earl not to eat them, and then the boss does. The whole conceit of the show finding it funny that the dinosaurs eat conscious, aware beings no different than them disgusted me in a way that it wouldn’t if the episode had just been about Earl learning about vegetarianism or the horrors of factory farming or something. Instead, the episode just normalizes the cruelty it’s ostensibly critiquing. It’s like the opposite of the Simpsons where Lisa becomes a vegetarian.
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Oct 12, 2023 03:29
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I AM GRANDO posted:Dinosaurs was always pretty grotesque. I remember having a very strong negative reaction to the scene where the evil boss eats the last two members of a species that the dinosaurs consider a delicacy. They were charming, funny muppets who convince Earl not to eat them, and then the boss does. The whole conceit of the show finding it funny that the dinosaurs eat conscious, aware beings no different than them disgusted me in a way that it wouldn’t if the episode had just been about Earl learning about vegetarianism or the horrors of factory farming or something. Instead, the episode just normalizes the cruelty it’s ostensibly critiquing. It’s like the opposite of the Simpsons where Lisa becomes a vegetarian. Yeah, in retrospect the whole show kind of had a cynical (sometimes straight up dark like what you mentioned) sense of humor overall. I remember an episode pretty clearly about marijuana that ended with a segment mocking PSA specials
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Oct 12, 2023 03:36
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I AM GRANDO posted:Dinosaurs was always pretty grotesque. I remember having a very strong negative reaction to the scene where the evil boss eats the last two members of a species that the dinosaurs consider a delicacy. They were charming, funny muppets who convince Earl not to eat them, and then the boss does. The whole conceit of the show finding it funny that the dinosaurs eat conscious, aware beings no different than them disgusted me in a way that it wouldn’t if the episode had just been about Earl learning about vegetarianism or the horrors of factory farming or something. Instead, the episode just normalizes the cruelty it’s ostensibly critiquing. It’s like the opposite of the Simpsons where Lisa becomes a vegetarian. gently caress, that unlocked a memory/trauma. That show was weird.
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Oct 12, 2023 03:47
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IIRC the show ended because all the trees finally got pushed over to make room for wax fruit factories, which is what brought about the ice age. Or maybe that's how I remember it as a kid?
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Oct 12, 2023 05:34
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Neeksy posted:IIRC the show ended because all the trees finally got pushed over to make room for wax fruit factories, which is what brought about the ice age. That's pretty close if I recall correctly. It was something like they built a wax fruit factory on a beetle's breeding ground rending them nearly extinct. Without them these vines grew everywhere, the evil company sprayed chemicals which killed all the plants, not just the vines. Then to restore the plants they decided they needed more rain and therefore clouds, so they made a volcano erupt which blocked out the sun. The ending was super bleak and not at all played for laughs.
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Oct 12, 2023 05:38
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It all follows from that, but basically a wax fruit factory kills all the bugs that fertilize the trees, then the trees die and the climate shifts, so Earl proposes dropping bombs into volcanoes to make them erupt, because all the smoke that comes out looks similar to rainclouds and might cause rain that would prompt new trees to grow. Instead, the volcanic eruptions cause nuclear winter, freezing all the dinosaurs to death. EDIT: beaten by someone with a better memory.
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Oct 12, 2023 05:38
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Dinosaurs was clever and daring, and it's bizarre that it managed four seasons aimed at a supposedly young audience. It was cynical and bleak, and constantly shoving the audience's face in at-the-time contemporary and past issues that are still distressingly relevant. The in-show show, Triceracops, abruptly stopping to try and educate watchers on anarchist political theory stuck with me as a kid.Neeksy posted:IIRC the show ended because all the trees finally got pushed over to make room for wax fruit factories, which is what brought about the ice age. Worse than that. It ended because every attempt at fixing that problem was shortcuts and PR stunts by the company responsible, trying to eke out a better view of themselves and more money in the process, rather than taking the more difficult and long roads of reform. The second-to-last scene is the evil CEO puppet throwing money in the air gleefully declaring that the approaching end of the world is a next-quarter problem. It was not subtle.
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Oct 12, 2023 05:42
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It’s characteristic of that era’s idea of subversion being to rub the audience’s nose in a problem while suggesting that the problem is intractable. I doubt the Dinosaurs take on labor unions would have been better, for example.
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Oct 12, 2023 05:47
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I AM GRANDO posted:It’s characteristic of that era’s idea of subversion being to rub the audience’s nose in a problem while suggesting that the problem is intractable. I doubt the Dinosaurs take on labor unions would have been better, for example. I'm not sure I understand your point. Man made climate change is an intractable problem, and I think it's fine for a TV show to make an audience uncomfortable with their own complicity in bringing it about -- particularly, given that it's not wrong. Audiences should be angry because climate change should make people angry. The last thing we need as a society is soothing bromides about easy it is to overcome systemic collapse. Beyond which, I think the early to mid 90's was still a period when a lot of media tackled plots about young people engaging with strikes, working class politics, activism and environmentalism, which mostly faded once you got to the noughties and beyond. Captain Planet, Hey Arnold, Daria, etc.
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Oct 12, 2023 06:48
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Pulsarcat posted:That's pretty close if I recall correctly. BLAM all that came flooding back, thank you. Honestly I thought it was incredibly trenchant satire to go out that way. Plus it was better than their steroid-abuse Very Special Episode. My favorite had to be the one about academic heresy re: the world being flat, so they asked to be executed by being thrown off the edge of the world if they could find it. I thought it was clever. Also the crass cruelty of the Bush years definitely set a lot of our culture backwards for a while.
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Oct 12, 2023 08:21
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Didn't Dinosaurs also have an in-show TV show that was Socialist Cops or something, where the characters framed crime within the concept of Marxist theory?
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Oct 12, 2023 10:19
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Whenever people talk about Dinosaurs it sounds absolutely awesome. But then I try to watch it and it isn't.
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Oct 12, 2023 10:53
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SCheeseman posted:Whenever people talk about Dinosaurs it sounds absolutely awesome. But then I try to watch it and it isn't. It was on when I was a grade schooler, on the TGIF block of programming for families with young kids. I don't go back to it for a reason. This poo poo ain't Cheers.
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Oct 12, 2023 10:56
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Neeksy posted:This poo poo ain't Cheers. Yeah, because Dinosaurs is good. 
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Oct 12, 2023 12:28
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"oh look at me i'm in a bar and will i or won't i end up romantically involved" gtfo here with that poo poo show me the puppets
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Oct 12, 2023 12:28
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The steroids episode always stood out to me. So did running around at school screaming IM THE BABY GOTTA LOVE ME. First of many TV/movie show quotes like that
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Oct 12, 2023 12:44
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All I remember naturally from Dinosaurs is "Not the momma" and the boy dinosaur wore Chucks. Other than that, you could tell me the show took place in the year 47,000 and was the basis for Voltron and I'd believe you. Edit: THAT was the ending to Archer? Neito fucked around with this message at 13:33 on Oct 12, 2023 |
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Oct 12, 2023 13:00
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Yeah, not a big surprise seeing how late they announced it but it is pretty clear that they didn't produce that episode of Archer with the idea that it would be the series finale. If you watched the episode live they did say that there would be an announcement Friday about something (probably a movie) related to Archer.
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Oct 12, 2023 13:36
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muscles like this! posted:Yeah, not a big surprise seeing how late they announced it but it is pretty clear that they didn't produce that episode of Archer with the idea that it would be the series finale. If you watched the episode live they did say that there would be an announcement Friday about something (probably a movie) related to Archer. Yeah, I suspected going through this season that they were either surprised it was their last or surprised the order was so short. 8 episodes is not a lot, and they weren't doing any of the usual windy-downy things.
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Oct 12, 2023 13:48
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I didnt think I'd say this at any point in the past few years but I'm hoping for one more season of Archer with how delightful this one was.
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Oct 12, 2023 14:28
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Megillah Gorilla posted:Didn't Dinosaurs also have an in-show TV show that was Socialist Cops or something, where the characters framed crime within the concept of Marxist theory? That was Triceracops. Earl became a TV exec and at his family's urging tried to make programming more educational and highbrow, which led to this bog-standard cop show pausing in the middle of apprehending a criminal to educate them on anarchist and marxist political theory. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jO0Fp_BHLs
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Oct 12, 2023 15:37
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I've never seen this show but it actually seems good. "Hands over your head!" *pause* "I can't, I'm a tyrannosaurus!"
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Oct 12, 2023 15:59
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Open Source Idiom posted:I'm not sure I understand your point. Man made climate change is an intractable problem, and I think it's fine for a TV show to make an audience uncomfortable with their own complicity in bringing it about -- particularly, given that it's not wrong. Audiences should be angry because climate change should make people angry. The last thing we need as a society is soothing bromides about easy it is to overcome systemic collapse. A number of shows for kids found some kind of obligation to responsibility, but if you pull back from that, there's a general kind of aimlessness to things, that led to a lot of satire that touched on issues without actually saying anything useful or of substance. Especially with MTV really targeting the angsty teen demographic who were really receptive to the idea that everyone is stupid and nothing really matters, but even outside of that, you get things like The Simpsons doing scattershot satire of everything and anything without any kind of constructive substance behind it. Everything is dumb. In larger cultural context, the 90s had a general kind of aimlessness and trying and failing to find some new cultural focus after the 80s, and everything that people did figure out getting totally wiped away by 9/11 changing everything. Then I think there was some kind of wave of earnestness in the 2010s because irony reached some kind of crux where most of it wasn't even irony anymore.
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Oct 12, 2023 18:56
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Honestly, I think the big turning point in our cultural attitude (At least online) came about as a response to the rise of extremism masquerading under the guise of irony. I think it's also reflective of a cycle of people being less receptive to actual, structural criticism in economic boom periods. While you got works that try to tackle societal issues back in the 90s, those works were often too timid to push for actual, systemic change to address the issues these issues because this sort of media is ultimately being created by people benefiting from that very societal structure. They are instead forced to simply wallow in the tragedy of these issues and go "Ho hum, things sure are bad but what can we do about it?" It's funny, I was actually just reading random Reddit threads of people complaining that "all movies these days are too irony-poisoned and quippy"* when, in all honesty, I feel like our media and social interactions have actually gotten been trending towards being more sincere overall. People are more aware of and more actively discussing broad social issues that media irreverently mocked 15 years ago and projecting a persona of being flippantly detached from everyone and everything is no longer the expected mode of engagement. * - Which is sort of true of mainstream blockbusters, but not really for the reasons Redditors keep saying
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Oct 12, 2023 22:25
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KingKalamari posted:Honestly, I think the big turning point in our cultural attitude (At least online) came about as a response to the rise of extremism masquerading under the guise of irony. I think it's also reflective of a cycle of people being less receptive to actual, structural criticism in economic boom periods. While you got works that try to tackle societal issues back in the 90s, those works were often too timid to push for actual, systemic change to address the issues these issues because this sort of media is ultimately being created by people benefiting from that very societal structure. They are instead forced to simply wallow in the tragedy of these issues and go "Ho hum, things sure are bad but what can we do about it?" The people who say "all movies are too irony-poisoned and quippy these days" are the people who only consume godawful franchise movies and nothing else so they literally have no idea what actual cinema is like in comparison. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZ28knLt5Rs Cody Johnston actually just did a really great breakdown on why people think like this too.
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Oct 12, 2023 22:54
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nine-gear crow posted:The people who say "all movies are too irony-poisoned and quippy these days" are the people who only consume godawful franchise movies and nothing else so they literally have no idea what actual cinema is like in comparison. Franchise movies is sentence I haven't heard before but it's absolutely perfect. They're just movies shunted out to make money like toy cartoons in the 80's.
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Oct 12, 2023 23:03
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Flopsy posted:Franchise movies is sentence I haven't heard before but it's absolutely perfect. They're just movies shunted out to make money like toy cartoons in the 80's. More to the point, the better descriptor for them would be Brand Movies, because they are, like you said, just toy brands at this point.
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Oct 12, 2023 23:42
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Ironslave posted:That was Triceracops. Earl became a TV exec and at his family's urging tried to make programming more educational and highbrow, which led to this bog-standard cop show pausing in the middle of apprehending a criminal to educate them on anarchist and marxist political theory. Love how that ends up. As a very nerdy lefty in the 90s, it drat near blew my mind watching that scene in a lovely puppet show about dinosaurs.
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Oct 13, 2023 16:12
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Yeah, not sure how well it holds up today but for a 90’s Disney/Henson joint supposedly aimed at kids Dinosaurs pulled no punches
Larryb fucked around with this message at 16:18 on Oct 13, 2023 |
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Oct 13, 2023 16:14
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