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Whoever put LOTR on netflix is trying to bring about my ruination

Is It Really THAT Bad?

How many f*cking times must I talk about this movie?

I feel like this movie doesn’t need an introduction. Everyone knows this film. Its reputation precedes it. It didn’t bomb and it’s not generally considered one of the worst films ever made (at least on the level of films like Robot Monster or The Cat in the Hat), but this movie is easily one of the most divisive films ever made. This film has generated enough arguments that, if we harnessed the energy of all the flame wars it has caused, we could probably power the entire world until the heat death of the universe.

With the impending release of Zach Snyder’s bloated redo of Justice League, I’ve decided to go back and ask myself of this film here… is it really that bad?

THE GOOD

Here comes the most uncontroversial opinion: the action scenes in this movie rock (or at least two of them do). The standouts are the titular showdown, which almost makes sitting through the rest of the movie worth it, and the epic warehouse fight Batman gets into, which is like something straight out of the Arkham games. It’s so good. And aside from that, a lot of the cinematography in the film is good. The film knows how to look good, though unfortunately it does end up being a lot of style with little substance.

On the subject of Batman, I think Ben Affleck is a great and inspired choice. I certainly think he’s worthy of standing alongside Batmans like Clooney and Keaton, easily embodying both the Dark Knight and Billionaire Playboy aspects fairly well, though the writing does not always handle him quite as well as it should (we’ll get to that soon enough). Henry Cavill, while still a rather dour Superman, is as good as ever as Superman, and Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman was a great choice here, especially since she didn’t have control so that she could insert anti-Arab racism, like some DCEU movies.

Perhaps one of the movies most impressive feats is how, in an uncharacteristic moment of brevity, it manages to condense the backstory of Batman into the prologue, getting it out of the way and not making us sit through yet another Batman origin film. This is literally the only thing the movie has over the MCU; where that franchise just has the character Spider-Man inexplicably in existence without even a hint of his origins, they just get Batman’s tragic backstory out of the way so we can see him beating the crap out of people. If more superhero movies want to take this route and just condense the backstory into an opening montage like this, I’d be down for it.

THE BAD

I really could just say “most of the movie” but that’s such a cop out. Let’s actually look at the problems. Let’s work our way up through the things from least problematic to most, shall we?

The best place to start is what Zach Snyder did to Jimmy Olsen.

Jimmy Olsen is made into a CIA spook who is brutally killed early on, and yes, that was Jimmy Olsen. Snyder put him in to shock audiences with his senseless murder, and also because he felt the character had no place in his series. Does making Watchmen just turn people into joyless husks who like to horribly bastardize iconic characters? Jimmy Olsen is ultimately a small microcosm of the film, but he is the sum total of everything wring with the early DCEU. He is bleak, soulless, and shows a critical lack of understanding about the comics and why people enjoy them.

Now let’s move on to the more exciting problem to discuss: the villains. I don’t even think it’s worth wasting much time discussing what’s wrong with KGBeast. While it is kind of interesting they’d think to use the guy at all, the fact he never dons the costume and dies by the end of the film is unfathomably lame for a character named KGBeast.

Now, onto the main antagonist, and the most infamous part of the movie: Lex Luthor.

Lex Luthor is horribly, horribly miscast. Jesse Eisenberg is a great actor for sure, and he’s effective in movies like Now You See Me, The Social Network, and the Zombieland films. But here he is being asked to play one of the most diabolical cunning geniuses in comic book history, and rather than play him as such, he plays him like a cartoonish twit. This Lex is utterly unrecognizable as Superman’s greatest foe. Does anyone think Lex Luthor would send a jar of piss to someone as a joke before he blows them up? That’s more something the Joker would do on an off day. Lex is not cunning, not intimidating, and not diabolical in the slightest, and yet there are moments where Eisenberg’s acting chops shine through and Lex, for a moment, is almost engaging. Luthor really suffers the way Doctor Doom tends to in film adaptations: the filmmaker clearly doesn’t get why people like the villain, and decide to do some weird, unique take that will only cause to alienate fans.

But perhaps the worst of them all is Doomsday. Doomsday has exactly one claim to fame, and that’s killing Superman, so as soon as he shows up if you have even a passing awareness of the character you know how the movie is going to end, which robs the film of tension for its last battle. The fact he also appears with little buildup and doesn’t have any characterization doesn’t help; Doomsday is just the Big Gray CGI Blob that superhero movies try and pass off as a final boss for the heroes to fight. This has worked precisely once, in Iron Man. The Incredible Hulk and Venom did not make it work, and this film is nowhere close to being in the same ballpark as Venom.

By and far the biggest problem, though, is the movie’s incredible length and its very existence in the franchise at this point in time. This is an epic superhero crossover in which two of the biggest comic book characters of all time fight and then team up… And it is the second movie in a franchise. While they do a good job of establishing Batman rather quickly, Wonder Woman comes out of nowhere. And then at the end, Superman ‘dies.’ We have had one single movie prior to this to make a connection to the guy, and yet here he is getting a temporary comic book death with no buildup whatsoever that we know is going to be reversed sooner than later because the movie telegraphs this to us.

Imagine if, instead of building up the character over the course of a decade and putting him in all sorts of different stories, the MCU went right from Iron Man to Endgame. You go from a simpler, character-driven piece to a massive crossover where a hero dies right away, and it doesn’t give anyone time to care. Tony Stark had multiple films worth of characterization under his belt before they threw him in a crossover, let alone killed him, but Snyder expects you to give a damn about a Superman who just started his career in the previous movie of a franchise.

And the ass-numbing length of the movie is no justification. Even before the director’s cut came out this film was a slog, and the director’s cut really does nothing to earn its existence. All it does is add more runtime to an already tedious and bloated film, leading to the same exact ending and fixing none of the overarching narrative problems of the thing. The problem with any director’s cut is that ultimately the movie is still going to be Dawn of Justice, it’s still going to lead to extremely rushed character decisions, and it’s still going to be a mess. You’d have to redo half of the film to make this into a worthwhile and coherent narrative that’s actually worthy of being an entry in a superhero franchise.

And to top it all off, the movie spends far too much time foreshadowing for its own good. People criticized The Mummy for shoehorning in way too many shared universe elements right off the bat, and if that movie was bad for it, so is this one. The cameos from all the members of the Justice League, while striking, could be excised from the plot with little to no impact, and the Knightmare sequence is just excessive and weird.

Is It Really THAT Bad?

The answer to this question has never been harder.

On the one hand, this film does have some merit. There is some good casting choices, good cinematography, good action… But then, on the other hand, the film is overly long, pretentious, has poor writing and dialogue, mishandles everyone aside from Superman, and is just incredibly unpleasant.

This film is in many ways the exact problem Christopher Nolan created with his Dark Knight trilogy. Nolan, by grounding the fanciful characters of comic books into a realistic setting, created a climate in which someone could suck any sort of joy or meaning out of comics. The success of his films meant that people would see dark, gritty realism as preferable to joyous, colorful escapism, and the negative effects of his films, however good you find them, are still felt today even as filmmakers are finally shaking off the grit. Dawn of Justice is the zenith of Nolan’s style of superhero film. There is nothing fun, joyful, or engaging to be found here; it is simply the characters you know and love forced into dark, miserable scenarios that ends in death and misery. Where’s the fun? Where’s the color? Where’s the wonder, the excitement, where is any of it? This film paints a bleak and miserable and hopeless picture of a world of superheroes. It really makes me think of this rather famous comic panel:

I absolutely hate this movie, but not because I think it’s bad. I hate it because it has enough good ideas where it should be the best thing ever, but it really isn’t. It’s a miserable slog of a film that does nothing to justify or earn its massive runtime whatsoever. It really does belong somewhere between 5 and 6 on IMDB, because I can almost see why people like it, but it just isn’t even remotely close to being how good its fan say it is. This is not a good superhero movie, and this is not how we should want superhero movies to be. There is a market for serious superhero fare of course, and there’s no reason that these films can’t engage with mature themes or anything, don’t get me wrong. But this is absolutely not the way to do it.

The Color of Friendship Review (Commissionedby WeirdKev27): A World of People

Happy Black History Month! Another day, another comission from longtime supporter of the blog Weird Kev and like a good chunk of his-non duck asks, he asked me for something outside my usual wheelhouse. In the past this has meant an episode of the short lived fox show whoops in which we found out how Santa dealt with the end of the world, didn’t know how doors worked, and interacted with some characters so thin you could remake the episode with just Mick Foley in a santa suit and carboard cutouts playing the characters lines and it’d be about the same, and earlier this month Sorry Wrong Meeting, an episode of a sitcom i’d never seen an episode of the Jeffersons about the KKK. So unsuprisingly his big comission for Black History Month was the 2000 Disney Channel Original Movie, The Color of Friendship.

I couldn’t find much on the making of the film, which dosen’t entirely suprise me as at the time this came out, Disney was releasing around 10 a year and whlie that stopped shortly, it still was a whopping 6 a year for some time, ocasionally more ocasionaly less, slowly dwindling down to the two of year we have now. Though it’s still an ongoing concern and has been since the channel started in 83, closing in on 40 years ago, so it’s still impressive Disney hasn’t just outright phased them out. Then again the popular ones make them a lot of money and some like High School Musical and the Descendants Trilogies have broken out so big they’ve lead to spinoff books, tv series in the latter’s case, and all that stuff making them money hand over fist. So making some cheap movies that MIGHT end up making them rich and usually star people that are already on shows they have or were at one point is a no loose proposition, especially now they add an extra release to the Disney Plus callender twice a year. And while the library has it’s gaps and i’ve griped about them enough.. I will say it’s stil la damn good library and it’s nice to be able to watch a film like this, as the dvd was LONG out of print and likely horribly expensive, and while renting it was an option, it would’ve chipped into what I got commissioned for the film. Still would’ve done it it just would’ve sucked to loose money on the deal, if only two bucks, for something I had no control over. Still would do that over adding it onto the comission fee. Point is stuff that’s not been easy to get for some time is now just a few clicks or taps of the remote away, and having the VAST majority of disney’s long and storied history from theatrical to dcom to weird tv oddities like.. this thing

I don’t know what Fuzzbucket is, and frankly I don’t want to know.. I mean I will for a comission or something but i’m not going to go out of my way to find out what that thing is and if it can give me scabies through a telvision screen despite being fictional and proabably long dead. At least I tell myself it’s long dead so ic an sleep at night without worrying about that thing breaking into my house and watchnig me while I sleep changing“SOON JACOB, SOON”. So yeah while you’ll hear me complain about the gaps in DIsney Plus’ library a lot on this blog.

I will give credit where it’s due, and what is on there is pretty expansive and now includes the Muppet Show, which I give them full credit for as that probably took a LOT of work and money to make happen. Plus WandaVision is f*cking fantastic, especially now i’m finally all caught up.

But while as I said I couldn’t find much on the making of the film I did find a bit on it’s inspiration: It was inspried by a short story wrtten by Piper Dellums, a writer, poet and activist, and daughter of Ron Dellums. Dellums is a notable congressman who fought against apartheid and constantly fought for a bill to divest from South Africa, something that SHOCKINGLY, Ronald Regan tried to veto because he was a racist disney anamatronic what did you expect, and all in all seemed pretty awesome. He sued Bush SR to try and prevent Desert Storm, in his earliest days in office had an exibit near his phsyical office of vietnam war crimes to try and hold them acountable and in general seems to be a fascenating, hardworking man who constantly and religiously fought for the people and against war.

The story was a real life account of the Piper’s experince housing a South African Student, Marie, who the Delums Family expected to be black.. but turned out ot be white. During Apartheid, south africas racist as hell and horrifying goverment system of segregation that wasn’t abolished till the 90′s. As expected she was racist, but as a proudct of the horribly racist country she came from and much like with her fictional counterpart in this film, slowly grew to realize how f*cked up her homeland was and by the time she went back, became an activist She and Piper were very close but her story ends tragically as eventually Piper stopped hearing from her after she was arrested and despite attempts to talk to her.. it was clear by the silence, and by the fact Piper visited South Africa post-aparthied to help and likely would’ve seen her.. that she was likely quitely killed by the state. But her story thankfully lives on, so join me under the cut to see how a 20 year old disney movie aired during black history month handles this difficult real life story, racisim and the 70′s.

The Cast:Quick bit about the cast since I usually do this for first episodes of an animated show and wish i’d done so for my other film reviews so far. Though to keep things simple, i’m only doing the main four cast members, especailly since frankly outside of Mahree’s parents the rest are more supporting roles that don’t have a lot of screen time and in hte case of the south african embassy workers, are just there to be racist card board cutout villians.Piper, who keeps her name from real life is played by Shadia Simmons, who eventually retired from acting to become a High School and Acting Teacher. During her career she was in a bunch of Disney Channel Original Movies, including the first two Zenon Movies, and was in a major role in a bunch of live action childrens shows: I Was A Sizth Grade Alien, Strange Days at Blake Holsely High, and Life with Derek, the only one of which i’ve seen and even then barely so I can’t comment on the rest of her work. Simmons does a decent job in the film, and does shine in the more dramtic scenes, not the best part of it but certainly not bad at all.

Lindsay Haun plays Mahree, and had more of an acting career after this one, having a small recurring role on True Blood as Hadley, while also directing some smaller films. Haun is easily one of the two highlights of the movie and the best of the two main tween actresses by a mile. More on that in a bit.

Next we have Carl f*cking Lumbly as Congressman Ron Dellums. Carl has had a long and storied career and the f*cking is because of what I best know him from: Playing the Martian Manhunter Jon Jonzz on Justice League. And let me not undersell it: his version of Jon is waht made me LOVE the character, still do to this day, being the first time I encountered any version of Jon and the one I still love the most, a stoic man who tries to adapt to a world he feels he can never be a part of, adding shades to his stitled demeanour to show off his emtitons and in general being the heart and soul of what made this verison work and made me love the character with his performance. He’s done other stuff too including Cagney and Lacey, Doctor Sleepand what have you.. but he’ll always be Jonn to me and that’s not a bad thing in the slightest. Unsuprisingly he’s the other standout here.

Finally we have Penny Johnson as Ron’s wife and Piper’s Mother Roscoe, who played Captain Sisko’s love intrest on Deep Space 9 and was one of the leads on castle. Haven’t seen either of those but she does seem awesome and does a terrific job here.

Moving on to the film itself.. it’s really fantastic. It has some awkwardness and goofy bollocks as you’d expect from a disney channel original movie in 2000, but it handles a really heavy subject, race relations, gracefully and clearly with the goal of educating an audience with a lot of white kids in it about race. So I can praise what it does right i’m going to be handling the parts that are a bit wobbly first so I can get to the good stuff

Awkwardnessand Goofy Bollocks:

First the out and out criticism: The films TV Movie roots show in places, as this film lacks the polish these films would have later this decade, with the film barely having an opening title sequence and just sorta throwing you in, though to their credit it does open with the utterly awesome Back in Love Again, because 70′s.

That slaps and that’s an undeniable fact. What’s also an undenaible fact is the film dosen’t try the hardest to be very 70′s in it’s sets and what not, though it does do it a little with the clothes and that not being the case with Mahree is intentional, as her family while wealthy is from another culture and one literally and metaphorically behind the times.

I will also say Shadia Simmons is a decent actress, but is mildly weak in comparison to the other 3 in the leads, but its more the result of putting a pretty standard child sitcom actress up against two experinced actors who know what their doing and one whose about as experinced as her, but simply has a LOT to work with and goes above and beyond. It’s less that she’s bad and more that she’s simply not as good as what’s around her, and in general I tend to go easier on child actors since it’s not an easy job for a grown adult much less a teenager, it’s very pressurey and there’s a reason a LOT of them bottom out as they get older or retire all together.

I will say though that Piper’s brothers are awful and I feel are only there because she actually had brothers. The actors try, i’m not pinning this on them but writing wise their just two little sh*ts who contirbute ntohing of value to any scene their in, being generally way to young to get into the heavy topic at hand, and mostly being there for unfunny shneanigans. They aren’t in the film too much otherwise they might’ve ruined it for me, but if Shadia struggles a bit agianst sttronge perofrmances imagine who younger actors with the stage direction“Be the bane of my existence” and you’ll MAYBE see the problem.

The film also loves cheesy time passing montages, including an actual factual shopping montage, easily the goofiest, but it’s something you’d expect from a dcom and helps lighten the mood. That’s a running theme outside the brothers there really isn’t anything too silly.. until the last act.See in the last act, the film tackles the real life death of Steve Biko, a South African activist against apartheid who was captured by the state and very transparently murdered in jail. with the government claming he killed himself which no one bought because why would they, and it sparked riots worldwide and finally got the US to take Apartheid seriously according to the film. Though as I mentioned earlier Regan did not in case you thought the republican party being terrible and deeply racist was a brand new thing. It was not. Guys like Tucker Carlson and Former President Trump are a symptom, not the disease.. though they certainly look and feel like some form of plauge. Point is Mahree is breifly taken by the embassy.. whose staff who take her feel like the Disney Channel Original Movie form of Nazi’s. The heavy accents, the way they compose themselves... I half expect an elderly indiana jones to show up to whip the piss out of them. And dont’ get me wrong, the only diffrence between these pricks and a nazi is the fact they don’t call themselves nazis, this isn’t a nuanced horrifying racist to be scared of but a saturday morning cartoon version.

While white supremacists in real life can be cartoonishly evil, again see trump and carlson, it does kind of undercut the seriousness and nuance of things to have your villians be cold, cackling cutouts who are 5 seconds away from saying“You are part of the rebel alliance and a traitor take her away” to our heroine, especailly since Mahree’s reaction to being taken away and confusion at everything and at being treated like a prisoner by her own people are very painful and very well acted. I do get showing them as monsters, because they were, but given Mahree’s father who as a south african police man was DEFINTELY ONE and even outside his racisim doubts and downtalks his own daughter, still feels like an actual person, if not a GOOD person, they could’ve done better and did in the same film.

But that stuff aside.. I really can’t find much that’s honestly that silly or bad and as you can tell what little I did was more a product of being a tv movie. So now i’ve got the negatives out of the way

This Film Is Pretty Good:It truly is, for a lot of reasons. But the biggest is the nuance. It could’ve been easy to just have Maree as some racist kid needing to learn a lesson who was openly cruel and easy to jeer at.. but the film went iwth the reality: that she was instead an extremley privlaged and insulated girl who simply NEVER knew better. To her her very racist and segregated world is just the way the world worked for her and she dosen’t even consider when the Dellums come to pick her up minus Ron these aren’t servants and her own servant’s words fall on deaf ears, as the poor woman tries to make it clear how miserable her life is and how much she deseprately wants this child to do better. Marhee is never actively malicious even when, due to the shock of her all black host family, she baricades herself in Piper’s room. It’s obnoxious sure and CERTAINLY hurtful and the film makes no bones about it and Piper rightfully calls her out on it. The film dosen’t let her get away with any intetnional racisim like that and after Piper calls her out, she realizes she’s been selifsh and makes a genuine effort. And even then the film makes a good choice in not making it an easy road to realization. Mahree makes a genuine effort in the first place not because of any big revelation or anything, but because she simply hears her dad in her head telling her she’d give up after a week and that, coupled with Piper’s words, makes her see herself as a selfish brat. Even after she’s floored by a mall where black and white people stand side by side aand casually talks about horrors like ID Cards like i’ts a GOOD thing, because that’s what she’s been taught by her dad. That black people are happy being told where they can and can’t go when no they weren’t they simply had no chocie in the matter. And while we do see early on when an asshole at a restraunt assaults a waiter for an accident that Mahree clearly isn’t okay with the more horrifying side of things, she still dosen’t quite grasp WHY that happened, simply that it’s something that does reguarly she dosen’t like. It’s excellently, and unsuprisingly called back when they visit an ice cream place in the states and something similar happens.. but the guy takes it in stride, even ordering a sundae, to Maree’s confusion.

It’s what makes the film work and all the more striking: As Roscoe makes clear to Ron, whose admant about nto having a racist in the house, this is not her fault. While the film makes it clear Mahree’s behavior at first was not okay and her prejudiece is not okay, it also makes it VERY clear she’s a product of a terrible system and terrible parenting from people who choose to benneift from the system instead of challenge it. She’s only like this because she hasn’t had a reason to ever think diffrent and just took her parents at face value and no mater the country, this is something that sadly happens far too often: Someone hating a group or thinking discrimination is okay because that’s how they were taught and that’s all they’ve known and the only way to change that is to challenge that opinon and try to get them to have some empathy and see the other way and as this film shows it’s a struggle.. and at the end of the day while the Dellums make a concentrated effort, Maree is the one who has to realize what her parents taught her is bad and her country is inherently flawed and NEEDS to change, just like ours did, and STILL badly needs to.

And that’s where the nuance kicks in as the good congressman is understandable in not wanting a racist in his house... but his wife is equally right that Maree is not some easy symbol of his hatred towards south africa, but a girl who grew up knowing nothing more than the f*cked up system, and eventually he comes around, realizing , especially after she apologizes for him even thinking she’d use a racial slur on piper after a very powerful conversation with the two and piper accidently saying she used the South African N Word, almost accidently getting her friend thrown out, that she simply hasn’t been outside her shell and gently guides her to keep reading roots, even letting her take it with her if she wants back home. The film shows the full pain of the situation but also shows change is posisble. Again it’s not easy, Mahree has a panic attack waiting in an almost all black line in school and it’s shown to be as horrible a thought as it is., but she DOES change and it comes off as real, as someone realizing the system they grew up with is broken and needs to be fixed and she can’t just sit back and let it.

What makes this happen, besides the aformentioned kidnapping by saturday morning cartoon racists, is Piper confronting her after a friend from south africa forces Piper to acccept that while her and Mahree are friends, Mahree might not seee her as equal and Piper in turn in a heated argument and easily Simmons best performance of the film, that things are broken and wrong and that her“firend”, her nanny/servant back home, is not happy. It leaves Mahree crying and Ron telling her the honest truth: Change was, and again still is but this was 2000 and while we should’ve had this talk disney channel wasn’t ready for it, needed to make things better here.. and tha’ts what south african’s doing> Fighting for equal rights at last. It’s some powerful, heavy as hell stuff you woudln’t expect from a line of movie that also include a robot house, before that was an actual thing, a merMAN dad MerMan, a boy slowly turning into a leprechaun, and at least two diffrent movies centering around wacky kidnappings. It’s a nuanced and hard look at race, as hard as late 90′s jsut turned into the 2000′s disney could get mind, aimed at kids and the film, whiel stilted really has my utter praise. It’s genuinely moving, well acted and teaches a valuable message that while not eveyrone can change.. it dosen’t hurt to try and help them, as well as the equal message that change start with YOU. someone has to WANT to be better and learn and actually let other people in to help them. And I wont’ lie and say this is the most naunced or subtle film.. at time’s it’s about as subtle as a ralph wiggum throught he window

But sometimes you don’t need to be. It also taught kids about apartheid, not me as I barely saw the film, but many learned of something ghoulsih that had barely ended at the time of the film’s release, something I only learned about as a teen via bloom county and a diffrent world, which has an utterly awesome apartheid episode“A World Alike”. Seriously check it out if you have prime, as it shows that america isn’t the only country with a deep history of ingraned racisim. And was it an easy way to have an anti racisim narriative without fully confronting america’s own racist history? Yup. Just.. yup. Can I blame Disney Channel for it when they clearly, while equipped to tackle racisim, weren’t ready to tackle something that dense or heavy, and while Proud Family later would there’s a diffrence between a 20 minute one off episode of a cartoon and 90 minutes of film? Yeah. For what it is and for what the time period is, I applaud this film taking on such a heavy topic with grace. Some goofyiness here and there yes and some lack of subtly.. but still grace. For what it is is, it’s pretty good and i hope to show it to my nieces one day soon. It has i’ts heart in the right place and thus has a place in my heart. See you next rainbow.

Anyone else feeling like this?

So it’s been almost a week since the rise of skywalker and I’ve been a mess.Also, anti’s do not come at me. All of this is just my opinion. I’m allowed to have one.

Like don’t get me wrong, I thought the movie was okay but it didn’t really satisfy me. During half of the movie, I was literally asking myself if I was satisfied that this was going to be the last of the sequel trilogy and the ending for the skywalker saga. I really wasn’t and tbh. I actually felt more satisfied when I watched the last Jedi then when I was watching this movie. I even tried to avoid leaks about this movie, I even bought my tickets in advance to see it in theaters because I thought the theater would be packed, paid more to watch it in a bigger theater with surround sound. I avoided the reviews in case it would be negative. I basically wanted to judge the movie for myself before I hear anyone's opinion on it.

Which I why I saw it the Monday after the came out, so I can be able to fully avoid all social media in case if spoilers and because I was too excited to see it.

Boy I had my hopes up too high XD

Well for one there was barely anyone in the theater there was at least 20-25 people in a big theater, My friend I and were the only ones in our row. I was surprised cause usually for Star Wars, the movies are packed or have more than what I saw.

I came out of the theater kinda dazed. Both my friend and I were talking about the movie and how we were sad about Ben’s death but we were kinda happy that he at least got to save Rey in the end, but we were both confused and sad that we didn’t see him as a Force ghost in the end. We both understood the meaning of why Rey called herself a Skywalker was in honor of the people that cared for her regardless if she was a Palpatine and was in a way honoring Ben a little bit. At the time my only problem with the movie was the fact that Leia’s Cgi weirded me out XD. The rest was either meh, okay or YESSSSSS.

I was not expecting a Reylo kiss at all.

I heard about it before the movie came out but, it was confirmed that there wasn’t going to be a kiss. So I accepted it and kinda was okay with it cause I kinda like how subtle their interactions were but in a way it meant more. Also, they’ve been cannon through the novelizations, so I felt like I didn’t need a kissing scene. ( btw anti’s don’t come at me, this is just my opinion from what I know) I was happy for the kiss though, so much to where I didn't notice Ben smiling (i was happy dancing XD). I had a weird feeling though that he did so I asked my friend and she said yeah he did.

Then as the days went I realized I had some problems with this movieThe more I looked into this movie, read some opinions on Twitter, Instagram and on here, the more I realized that I agree with most of the negatives and that wasn’t really as good as I expected

Well for one the scene when Ben dies always felt like something was off about that scene but I couldn’t figure out what it was. After doing some digging I was happy I wasn’t the only one and was surprised by the explanation that people had about the scene was most likely done the last minute. It actually really made sense to me cause the editing to me looked a little off. It’s like one minute you see her with her hand around his face and her other hand somewhere on his upper body and then as he starts to drop to the floor, placement of one of her hands is already holding one of his. There’s even a theory that they reversed the scene to make it look like he died after reviving Rey and wasn’t revived by Leia.

Leia disappearing right after he dies looked off. And Rey’s reaction to his death didn’t make any sense to me either, it felt as if she didn’t just watch her other half die before her eyes. I kinda understand that she might've been in shock or was trying to hold back tears, but it just felt off.

I didn't even know about them being dyads until I found out on twitter. When I did I ended up with more questions with answers.

Why build Rey and Ben’s bond as if they are stronger together and that their bond can go “through space and time”, basically make it seem like their bond as “powerful like life itself” and then kill off one half of the bond, in the end?

Where is Ben?cause he wasn’t a force ghost in the end and he became one with the force so that just somehow makes me wanna believe we're not done seeing him just yet story wise

What was the other ending for the movie? cause I am curious what the other endings were and what made them pick the one that’s in the movie

If Palpatine created Snoke, was he also controlling him? and if it was him this whole time does that mean he basically lied about creating the bond because he didn’t know about Ben and Rey being a dyad?

Anyone got Endgame vibes watching the battle with Palpatine?

I am all of the Jedi XD idk maybe since I grew up with Marvel and started watching star wars when I was 15, made me feel kinda off when I heard that and I didn't feel that the line was epic.

Also the more I think of it, the more I realize that I didn’t really like the fact that they killed Ben off

The dude’s redemption arc was a little too quick. I really think he should’ve lived to make amends, right the wrongs or better yet lived in exile or something.At first, I was okay with him dying like this cause it seemed okay to me. But after finding out that there was more to his backstory and read it, I realized that the whole entire Skywalker bloodline has been through pain and death. In a way, I kinda wished Ben was the one to put an end to that. I understand the counter-argument for Anakin’s death but the difference there from my understanding:

1) He knew was gonna die anyway. I rewatched the original scene and from my understanding, he said that nothing was going to stop him from dying regardless if Luke took his mask off.

2) At least Anakin got to say something. Ben had no lines

Not every redemption arc has to end up with the person dying.

The one agreement, I can kinda get behind on is that at least he died saving the woman he loves, unlike his grandfather who tried but failed.

From a marketing standpoint though I don't understand why they would kill him off when they would’ve made a lot of money off of him with this movie. The fact alone that people are upset that he died and made a GoFundMe and petitions just for him to come back says something. Even on the Star Wars website for the poll, he’s #1 at 88%. I understand not everything is about money, but it’s like they sacrificed a chance to get a lot of money.

More importantly, I feel like they did Rey dirty

We first see her start her journey in a desert planet alone with a droid and it ends with her in a desert with a droid. Her other half is dead. Her parents are dead, Her grandfather is Palpatine. I honestly feel like she deserved better. The fact that they didn’t even give her a moment to mourn and how she's been through so much and for her to not really get a happy ending kinda sucked. Like I felt like I was mourning for her. That alone made me depressed.

This whole movie just ended up making me feel like I didn’t really found any closer. Like I can’tSo I’m just gonna wait till the novelization so I can understand it better and get answers about Ben’s death.

Is he really dead?

Is it true that if one dies the bond will still be there and the person that is living will feel empty like something is missing?

Is it true that one person can’t fully die without the other in a dyad and they stay in the world between worlds until the other half dies?

Are we going to have a comic or novel where Rey comes to get him back if that's the case?

but for the time being, I’m going to just have hope and rely on fanfictionI know this the end for movie Ben and Rey unless Adam and Daisy say otherwise. But I will say this their scenes together and Ben Solo’s were the highlight of this movie for me.

THIS LOOKS SO SICKKKKKKK AHHH

Overall I still think the movie was okay. I just think some things could've been explained moreBut that's how I feel.

hey leo can u talk about the stormy ascent video it’s like god tier

“hERE WE GO

-wow okay starting off with a swear warning, love that it says‘we’ when we all know dan is the issue

-before even starting the game we must first quench daniel’s thirst for knowledge in knowing what a bandicoot actually looks like

-(it looks like this)

-it had been awhile since their last upload bc phil had laryngitis,,, he claims he sounded like a‘husky rat’

-they ended completing the entire crash bandicoot n’sane trilogy in their private time while phil was ill awe

-dan hands phil the controller first to attempt the hardest level of the game and phil is like: ;o

-thank you to phil for shouting out the mask sound at us (uMDAKA)

-dan:“you have a floating mask face that will protect you ,,, , hold my hand dad” . phil ignores him saying this

-dan tells phil to time his jump and then phil immediately does the opposite and falls lmao

-phil:“SHH you’re stressing me out”

-phil died.“come on howell, impress us”

-dan falls 2 seconds into his phil attempt and phil is overjoyed by this

-“f*cking f*ck on a duck”- daniel howell 2k17

-FIRST DAN SCREAM OF THE GAME

-aaannnddd danny died

-phil is back on the prowl

-dan:“that was a complete floppy-ding-dong” phil:“heh‘floppy ding-dong’” dan:“ooh‘floppy ding-dong’ sounds like an appendage, doesn’t sound like an exclamation” ,,, i love my mature dads

-phil has no sense of timing and its making dan strESSED and SHRIEKY

-”kill the perv!”

-they named the mad scientist‘herbert’

-dan saying the word‘japed’ ,,, ah thank you undertale

-”master of gravity danny, don’t mind me”

-dan’s confidence has peaked and he claims he feels as though he can finish the entire level

-they have to solve a rhythm puzzle for phil gives us a tip from primary school:“stop, look, and listen”

-dan fell but then saved himself at the last second and phil went“that was RIDIC!”

-dan would really like a checkpoint now:

-phil:“jump in.... slide... jump in... taste it” dan:“you’re not helping”

-victory faces or a still from a p*rno, the guess is yours:

-dan:“do you want a go now phil? because i feel bad that you’re being left out by me because im so amazing” , ,,,, and then he immediately fell ,,,,, , ,, into a secret shortcut

-phil:“i think you should stop” dan:“nah i know whats happening” ,, *dies*

-phil:“im gonna picture my mum giving birth to me as a bandicoot as i emerge and take my first jump”

-phil, after completing some complicated jumps:“multitrack drifting!” dan: *has a fond morosexual moment*:

“stop saying thing-phil! phil just like picks up things i say and just repeats them when they make no sense”

-phil dies but then complains that dan had such a long turn that he deserves another. dan says this happens all the time

-dan discloses that they almost stopped talking to each other while trying to get 100% on every level of this game

-dan:“this kinda hearkens back to the days-” phil, mockingly:“heakens” dan:“yeaH i busted out the word‘hearkens’,,, im a relatable youtuber” ,,, man i love my dictionary daddy uwu

-dan:“f*ck YOU THAT WAS f*ckING ON THE f*ck f*ck” phil:

“language daniel”

-phil: *die*“oh *BEEP*”

-phil:“i just swore we need to edit that out” dan:“you swore- my goD”

-dan: *incoherent screaming* phil:“okay, okay... stop. breathe, breathe, nostrils, tonsils”

-dan:“f*ckin. ballsack fUUUCKKK”

-caught phil randomly doing the‘tongue thing’:

-dan:“i just made myself feel lightheaded from screaming to much but that was a genuine reaction,,,, rip headphone users, we just necrophiled all over them” phil, quietly:“...necrophiled?” dan:“thats the amount of respect we have for headphone users, they’re not just dead we’ve-” phil:“STOP STOP”

-dan, talking about a game mechanic:“you’ve got awhile once it pops open” phil:“thats what she said 😏”

-phil stood on a bomb until it blew up and then dan laughed like a goose. just so you know

-they made a hard jump and dan got so excited he punched phils hand

-dan:“don’t eff this up” phil: *immediately dies*

-dan: *dies*

“aW for FOCKS SAAKES”

-why:

-and here was have dan elegantly f*cking up:

-phil:“oh no”

phil, in the voice of a disappointed dog owner:“come on, come on don’t bite it”

-the difficulty of the level is starting to take a toll on them:

-phil: *breathes heavily*

dan: 😏“you getting angry phil?”

-dan is going off on a tangent about how games are easier these days and phils just staring at him all uwu

-dan:“im gonna f*ck up” phil:“no you aren’t- loreal. you’re worth this” ,,,, and yes ,, dan laughs very fondly at that

-phils words of encouragement did n o t h i n g dan did indeed f*ck up

-hello

-dan:“patreon for our euthanasia”

-happy pats from phil bc they completed a hard section! :D

-dan: “always wait and look at the pattern” phil: *doesn’t and dies* dan:

-dan:“FUUCK,,, i mean,,, flip” phil:“i feel like we need a‘strong language’ warning”

-dan: *instructing phil what to do* phil, in a dismissive tone:“i know how to play, allan”

-phil: *completes a complicated jump correctly* dan:“hOW?? you didn’t deserve that!”

-phil: *gets ahead of himself and goes too quickly then dies* dan:“UGH you’re takin years off my life!”

-dan: *dies*

“i get another go!”

-dan:“im calm. im a calm, intelligent youtuber that makes relaxing, sophisticated content.”

-dan:“that was an example of you going too fast” phil: *moves again and falls* dan:“you need to wait” phil:“i was just trying it out! you distracted me so. i need you to close your lips”

-dan: *dies* phil:“see? listen to your own advice” dan:

-dan:“now” phil: *jumps and dies*“you said now!” dan:“i meant the- you know what i meant! you know how you did that wrong, tryna blame me” phil:“blame your mum” dan:“my mum has nothing with the filming of this video, sir.... plot twist- our mum films- ?? our mum?... PLOT TWIST”

-phil:“do you want me to do this bit? i feel like im better” dan:“f*ck you” ;(

-phil: *dies* dan:

-dan:“just call me‘danny: master of life, space, time and erotic massages’”

-dan dies and here you can see phil preparing himself for dan’s onslaught of swearing:

-sTAKES ARE HIGH THEY ONLY HAVE 10 LIVES LEFT

-dan:“those sLIppY platforms!”

“iM GONNA PULL MY OWN EYES OUT”

-”WEEEHHH”

-phil:“you just broke the sound barrier again” dan:“we’ve been over this-” phil:“shush”

-thEy completed and dan is literally making sex sounds at this point

-they’re at the FINAL jump! dan:“imagine if i slipped?” phil:“don’t even joke. im scared”

-theY DiD iT, vICToRY hiGH fIVE

I’ve finished my September playlist, only almost a month later. It’s got everything, The Weeknd, desert psychedelica from Niger, and Australian yodelling from 1941. What more could you want!

listen here

and if you’re interested, sign up for my tinyletter to get these playlists delivered to your inbox here

XO / The Host / Initiation - The Weeknd: First of all Trilogy is a masterpiece. The Weeknd is a legend forever for this alone. Back when he was an anonymous character and before he tried to pivot to being a proper pop star and started beliving his own bullsh*t. This trio of songs for me is one of the highlights of the whole thing because this is where things really take a turn and it serves as a nice flipside to earlier songs like Glass Table Girls (even quoting some of the lyrics from it in a very cool reprise). Where most of the songs from House Of Balloons are about his own descent into this hedonistic life, by the time you get to Echoes Of Silence he lives there comfortably, and he's turned from cool, dark and tormented to coldly evil and calculating. He's the master of the dark palace and he's drawing this woman in. The chorus of XO is straight up cult language 'all we ever do is love, open up your mind you can find the love'. She's broke and addicted trying to escape her life and he offers her this community. Which is where Initation comes in and things get really dark. This song feels like the real truth of those stories you hear of Drake flying instagram models around and it's a masterpiece of the dark underside of the drugs money and models bragging you're used to.

Sociopath (feat. Kash Doll) - Pusha T: Get a load of this new Pusha song where he's got Rodney Dangerfield ghostwriting for him. I got a bitch that'll master your card.. my wife ova hea!! Also the funny gritted teeth way he says it cracks me up. He also says boop bop be boop bop. There's so many good moments in this very silly song from a man that is normally terrifyingly serious.

Ice Cream - Muscles: I suddenly remembered this song the other day and I'm so glad I did. A good example of how you can get so much feeling out of music that has no relation at all to the lyrics. In the right mood this song makes me so emotional and I can't even pin down why. The way he sings 'ice cream is going to save the day' somehow just makes the urban alienation of the verse even more pointed. It's such a silly little dance song and that's what's so strong about it. It's dancing at night and unsuccessfully trying to forget what happened today.

Running - Gil Scott Heron & Jamie xx: It’s extremely strange that this remix album ever happened, thinking back on it. Stranger still that a Gil Scott Heron song got remixed by Jamie xx and then remixed again by 40 and turned into a Drake song in I’ll Take Care Of U and all three versions rock. Anyway, this song and this whole album remain fantastic - it still sounds futuristic in a way where nobody else really followed Jamie’s sound, everything else went a different direction so this an In Colour feel more and more unique to me as time goes on.

Boyfriend (Repeat) - Confidence Man: I’m in love with this album. It’s the closest I’ve found so far to the level of absolute fun in dance music since Duck Sauce’s album. I love the the attitude of her lyrics, which carries through the whole album. I love when her Australian accent peeks out for a second on a few words. I love his rebuttals that almost but not quite put it over the edge into a comedy song. I love the big fading out leadup to the drop near the end where a huge throat singing drone just swallows the whole song for a second.

Ever Again (Soulwax Remix) - Robyn: Extremely hot remix alert!! Thankyou to Zan Rowe's Monthly Mixtape playlist for putting my onto this.Sometimes all you need is one ferociously hot bassline to make a life complete.

$50 Million - !!!: !!!’s new album has one of the best covers I’ve seen recently, I advise you to check it out. It’s interesting to be so far into your career (this is their 8th album since 2001) and still be writing songs about selling out, a concept which has largely disappeared from music discourse since musicians started making no money post napster. I vaguely remember the turning point being when Kimya Dawson, after blowing up via the Juno soundtrack, turned down a co*ke ad for a ludicrous amount and the blogosphere at the time turned on her and said she should have taken the money because she was living in a van at the time. Nobody gives a f*ck about selling out anymore because bands make more from tshirts than streams so you’ve got to act like a brand just to make a living. Anyway I’ve gotten off track. This song rocks, especially for the breakdown near the end.

Tipped Hat - The Paper Scissors: A song I haven’t heard in over ten years that suddenly popped into my head the other day. I love the way this guy’s voice sounds, just completely committing to sounding like a hand puppet. I’ve been playing bass a lot more recently and so have developed the worst man habit of becoming more sensitive to and pointing out extremely hot basslines to people, so I’d be derelict in my duty to not share this one.

Heimsdalgate Like A Promethian Curse - of Montreal: I love this song about literally pleading with your brain to come good. Here’s a good quote about this album “I went through this chemical depression, and that's when I was writing a lot of the songs for Hissing Fauna. They're all songs about that experience. And I was experiencing it in the moment that I was writing the songs, and sort of asking myself: What the hell is going on? Why are you all of a sudden totally paranoid and plagued by these anxieties? And why is everything so distorted and confusing and f*cked up? My lifestyle hadn't changed that much. And then I realized, well, there's something going on inside of me that I don't have control over, and then you realize how vulnerable you are to these things, these elements that you can't understand, or unless you go on medication and get it under control. It's like you're being betrayed by your body.” Something I really admire about this album is that the lyrics reflect black metal levels of mental anguish, he was absolutely going through it the worst anyone can go through it “I'd gotten to that point where nothing was working. I was borderline suicidal, and my relationship with my girlfriend had totally eroded and she'd gone back to Norway with our daughter and everything was totally f*cked, and I was just like, What can I do? "The Past Is a Grotesque Animal" is about that.” But the music is one hundred percent committedly twee and I really admire the effect that that split mood gives. “The lyrics tell the story of what was really going on and the music sort of represents this other emotion that I wish existed. The music was really happy because I wanted to make something that would lift my spirits.”

Jesus Rabbit - Guerilla Toss: I love the wobbly weird bass sound in this weirdo UFO cult song. I love the bleepy bloop melody that runs through it and I love how fundamentally unstable the whole song sounds, like it’s made out of paperclips and foil and papier mache.

Suburbia - Press Club: I can’t believe I didn’t know about Press Club for so long. I only found out about them this performance https://youtu.be/bCmtc-T5Unk which I’m shocked to learn has less than 5k views considering it’s one of the very best TV performances I’ve ever seen.

Come For Me - Sunflower Bean: I’m pretty sure I’ve talked about this song before and I’m probably going to say the exact same thing but who cares! This song f*ckin rocks. I love how assured it is, like “if you’re gonna f*ck me then stop f*cking around and f*ck me already.” It also feels so musically similar to I Can Hardly Make You Mine by Cults to me, which is a great excuse for me to listen to that song every single time I listen to this song.

Thousands - Club Night: This Club Night album is really really good. It's like a really nice middleground between midwest emo and Cymbals Eat Guitars. The way this song blows up halfway through with 'what if we want it!!' is so good. This whole band feels like they're from 2009 but in a good way, the tail end of indie and twee with these prog or postrock structures where the songs just go and go, and you can just get completely lost in it.

Cemetary - Brutus: The first thing you've got to know about Brutus is the drummer is also the singer. Normally who plays what is not really important but in this case I think it's very important because it makes the drums a lead instrument more than they normally would be. When she's not singing my focus is still on the drums because they're linked and I absolutely love it. This song is great and every song I've heard of theirs is just as good, I love Brutus and they're one of the best new bands I've found recently. Someone in the youtube comments said 'there's something really special about hearing a song for the first time and just knowing you're going to listen to it hundreds of times in your life.'

Enter By The Narrow Gates / Spirit Narrative - Circle Takes The Square: I think that I think of Circle Takes The Square as a household name just because they have such an outsized importance in my own life when they're definitely not at all. They're legendary for making The screamo (good kind) album in As The Roots Undo and then taking 8 years to make a followup, which is this album Decompositions, but I don't really know if they're well known outside of like, people who have opinions about what were the hottest music blogspots in 2010. I chose both of these because you can't really have one without the other, the whole album basically runs as one long piece of music and so this just kind of jarringly ends at the end of Spirit Narrative, sorry about that please listen to the entire album. Because of the status As The Roots Undo enjoys I feel like this album was kind of ignored, or overshadowed by the reputation it was trying to live up to, almost exactly like The Avalanches with Since I Left You and Wildflower, when just like Wildflower it's a more expansive, developed take on the original sound that trades some of the rawness for a more polished and considered approach and comes out arguably better than the orginal. I feel like I have so much to say about this album but I don't really know where to begin, just listen to it.

Vitrification Of Blood (Pt. 1) - Blood Incantation: I am by no means a metal scholar, but I know that when the word 'blood' is in both the song title AND the band name that means it's good metal. I love this song, and this whole album is great. It's very 'classic' death metal but there's touches (beyond the extreme length) of psychedelica as well that puts it on another level you can just get lost in. The way the guitar goes to space at 3:40, and again properly into orbit at 6:50 is just magical. The more I listen to this band the more I understand those guys who only listen to metal, there's a whole ecosystem in here and it's really got everything you need.

Out Of Line - Gesaffelstein: This whole song is basically intended as an intro for Pursuit on the album but it’s so powerful just on its own. I love imbuing weirdo lyrics like ‘a bitter sunken love in a bleach blonde submarine’ with such ominous power through the commanding delivery. I love the way the big grunting vocals on the offbeat build to sound like a summoning ritual. I love making a big processed bell the centrepiece of your extremely evil sounding song. It’s sort of a shame that Gessaffelstein has never really gone back to the vision of his first album and has spent his time since diluting it down for guest production on Weeknd songs and the like because it feels like there’s still so much more to get out of this sound. That he hasn’t gone back and dug deeper makes Aleph stand out more and more as a singular masterpiece as time goes on.

Kamane Tarhanin - Mdou Moctar: Turning to Mdou Moctar after the new Tinariwen album kind of disappointed me, with all it’s big name guests nothing really hit me. I love this song though and I think a big part of it is the sort of loping, 6/4 rhythm that combined with the drone gives it this feeling of endlessly tumbling over itself in place, especially as the guitar heats up.

Achabiba - Fatou Seidi Ghali: I know very little about Fatou Seidi Ghali except that I saw she was supporting Sarah Louise at a show. From some googling it turns out that she’s the leader of a Nigerois band called Les Filles de Illeghadad who you can probably look forward to seeing on next month’s playlist. I also learned that the demonym for someone from Niger is Nigerien or to minimise confusion with Nigeria, Nigerois (said in a french way). They play a sort of desert psych in the realm of Mdou Mocter or Tinariwen, but this song (also the only solo song she has on spotify) shows her acoustic side. I love the swirling melody over the drone as the hand percussion keeps it in place and I love the very delicate vocals, but a probably unintentional thing I love a lot about this recording is the unmistakable iphone locking sound near the very start that instantly removes so much of the mystic exoticism that these sorts of artists are often written about with and places it firmly in the same sprawling modern world we all live in.

Floating Rhododendron - Sarah Louise: I love Sarah Louise. She’s a phenomenal guitarist and has such a big love for traditional folk music with her side project House And Land, but unlike everyone else in the genre is also very interested in pushing guitar forward to new and strange places. Her latest album was super experimental layered electric guitars and voice that still managed to maintain the deep connection to nature that runs through all her work. I would also highly recommend following her on instagram because her passion runs over. She’s regularly just out in the woods somewhere explaining how wonderful a particular mushroom is. This song one of the first ones I ever heard from her, and it’s back when she was just doing very beautiful 12 string acoustic work, but she recently added it to spotify and it’s a very nice reminder of where she came from and how far she’s gone in such a short time.

Lark - Angel Olsen: The new Angel Olsen is absolutely great. I love how much she is just completely going for it on this album, absolutely unleashing. Taken against earlier songs of hers I’ve loved like White Fire, where the majesty was in her quiet power and the ability to absolutely command silence with a whisper quiet song, this song feels like the direct inverse, an about-turn into all the gigantic majesty of swirling strings and top of your lungs vocals - going all out and leaving nothing on the table. The way this song blows up about three different times until by the end you’re caught in this gigantic swirling maelstrom of screaming sound is just out of this world.

Door - Caroline Polachek: Caroline Polachek’s brain is huge. When I first heard the chorus of this song I couldn't believe it. Are you allowed to have a chant that runs in a spiral like this be the chorus of your pop song? Is that allowed?

North, South, East And West - The Church: The Church feel like they don't get enough respect. They don't seem to be in the same league as Cold Chisel and The Angels and all the other dad rock Australian bands from that era for some reason. They're very good though and I've been really getting into this whole album and this song specifically lately. Maybe what's working against them is just how much his voice sounds like Bono's in this song but surely that was a boon at the time!

Western Questions - Timber Timbre: This has become one of my new favourite songs to sing. The way the words fit together is my favourite kind of poetics where they just sound incredible, phonetically, and can mean anything you like for large chunks. Like “the gelatinous walls of the seeds that seldom remain / while the bulls are browsing needles through computer casinos / honour the name”. Especially “bulls are browsing needles through computer casinos” is just extremely nice to say. I love the character of this song and am yet to completely understand what it’s saying other than personifying some worldwide blackpilled spirit of nihilist evil. What I love is the experience of all encompassing evil in this song, like a worldwide conspiracy connecting everything together that makes it all make sense. It doesn’t make you happier but it makes it make sense. I also love the finality of the big fill near the end that ushers in the outro riff that ties everything up.

Cold Cold World - Blaze Foley: I got heavily into a country music thing this month and spent a bit of time trying to find ‘real’ country, which of course turns out not to exist at all. The entirety of country music is built on a false nostalgia for an imagined time long past when things were real, some unspecified time in the collective consciousness between cowboy times and coal mine times. I don’t say this to say ‘country music is a fraud’ but that it’s built on a foundation of myth and that’s what’s so good about it. It’s constantly reframing the past as it relates to the present and is energised by the friction between them. Blaze Foley is a good example of this in the modern era because he seems to exist more as a myth than a man. He had three studio albums, the master tapes of which all disappeared through various means (lost, stolen, seized by the DEA) and so the majority of his surviving material is live recordings or long-lost studio recordings that resurfaced decades after his death when his fame and mythology already preceded him. He also thankfully lives up to the myth, he was truly a great artist and it’s a shame more of him hasn’t survived.

Where The Golden Wattle Blooms / Why Did The Blue Skies Turn Grey - Shirley Thoms: Further to what I was saying about country music before, Australian country is a whole other thing. Transferring the myth and the mythmaking to a new location adds another layer of abstraction. Shirley Thoms was the first female solo act to record country music in Australia in 1941 and was most notable for her yodelling of which she is damn fine. This is a great song and a good a starting point as any in trying to trace the origin of country music in Australia. That it's so english in its identity, so evidently imitating an american style (which is in turn imitating a german yodel) is just more good evidence that nothing is 'real' and traditions of the past and future are malleable at all times.

Talkin’ Karate Blues - Townes Van Zandt: Townes Van Zandt is widely regarded as a songwriter’s songwriter and one of the best country songwriters to ever live, but like a lot of great country songwriters also has one or two songs like this - strange comedy songs about learning karate and getting your arm ripped off.

Strange Tourist - Gareth Liddiard: This album is a masterpiece on the level of Ys and it feels criminally underlistened in my opinion. Luckily in the last week or so some renegade has done up the wiki article on it to a couple of thousand words so that's a start. Because this is a song I've listened to one million times and love a lot, it's hard for me to write about it in a general way so instead I'm going to talk about something very specific and new that I've only begun to appreciate recently. The way he uses the vowels of the japanese words to create these assonant runs in lines like "Koda Kumisang a coda pink as sarin gas / I took a trip to Nagasaki in a rented Mitsubishi / Then went camping in the Jukai under Mount Fuji" and "They found him frozen in a hollow in Aokigahara forest where them harakiri weirdos go" is really something, and a nice illustration of the two sides of Liddiard's songwriting: densely technical poetics in a song about living with a housemate who was a real freak.

I Dream A Highway - GIllian Welch: I’m not even going to go into the lyrics of this because it’s such an out of this world perfect song but I’m going to say this: it’s really something that this song goes for nearly 15 minutes, sits on the same three chords the whole time and never ever feels long. This song is longer than Emily by Joanna Newsom but doesn’t feel like an epic of the same scale at all. It’s just a mournful slow ode to change and decay that goes on forever and could keeping going on for twice as long if it wanted to.

Deep Water - The Middle East: The way the vocals in the verses are delivered, trailing off and mumbling bits and pieces is somehow magical, like it’s more interested in communicating the gist and the feeling than the actual words. You can just pick whatever part of it you like. Petrol stations and a copper mine, the kind of place I think I could die. This song also has two minutes of silence at the end for album reasons so enjoy that.

listen here

okay so someone on twitter dug up this absolutely outstanding uhhh “”article”” on his dark materials in general and the golden compass movie specificallyby one david j stewart and i just. i HAVE to break down at least some of it because it’s an absolute gem

(this is a bit long - there is a LOT of stupidity to cover here)

first of all, the url

i could honestly just end the post here because that line right there is a masterpiece by itself. screw eurovision, hellivision is the next hot thing

There is no movie any more evil than THE GOLDEN COMPASS.

that’s the first line of the article. what a first line. the most amazing thing is that in an entirely different context i can kind of agree with this claim

Philip Pullman is a sinfully proud, God-hating, militant atheist.

militant! oh wow. is the hdm fandom actually pullman’s secret army? like dumbledore’s army in hp? do we have secret meetings? i want in

The movie has been dumbed down

yet again i find myself agreeing with mr stewart

in the end the children kill God and everyone can do as they please.

people having free will? good lord, the horror.

The movie is indescribably evil.

damn dude yet again you’re right but you’re kinda preaching to the choir here at this point

The word "demon" is repeated several dozen times throughout the movie, as each child has it's own lovable demon.

this is the first time in the article that mr david j stewart stubbornly refuses to understand that there’s this thing called“concept” and“artistic license” and that in the context of the hdm world, pullman used his artistic license to change the common meaning of the word d(a)emon.NOT TO MENTION that pullman hardly made up the concept of a daemon as a positive creature -“originally referred to a lesser deity or guiding spirit”, literally the first line in the wikipedia article about the classical concept of daemons. but yeah i’m unfairly expecting mr dave to do his research so i guess that’s kinda mean of me.

Witches by the hundreds are featured in the movie, and are portrayed as being good, helpful and rescuers.

for a moment i wondered what mr dave’s opinion on harry potter is like, but i can imagine it quite vividly.

The star character, a little girl named Lyra Belacqua, loves her demon (who takes various animal forms), and she has named him "Pan" (short for Pantalaimon)

somewhere inside of me, my inner hdm myth fanatic is screaming in rage at all the gross misunderstanding of the basic plot of hdm, but well we’ve got more serious problems here

Pan is the pagan god of sexual rape, lust and fertility. Statues of Pan are often displayed showing him with an erection.

you know what’s EXTREMELY ironic here? pantalaimon isn’t named after that pan. he’s actually named after the greek saint pantaleon.(mr dave now provides a link to his rage fest over narnia. good to know he’s against even blatantly pro-christian fiction.)

NOTE: Pullman uses the word "daemon." A "daemon" is just another term for "demon."

...no, honey, they really don’t, but we already know you didn’t do your research.

In the movie THE GOLDEN COMPASS, there are at least 50 references to a child's "DEMON."

imagine this grown up dude sitting in a movie theater watching a kids’ movie and counting the number of times the word“daemon” is said dkgsdaoighs

In one part of the movie, a missing boy (Roger Parslow) is found, but he is out of his mind and looks distraught because his DEMON has been taken away from him. Talk about twisting the truth around. The little girl who stars in the movie, Lyra, vows to find and return the boy's demon.

aslkdghsaodigho yeah this guy was definitely too busy to count“daemons” to actually pay attention to the plot

Pullman is hoping that unsuspecting parents will take their children to see the movie

no i actually think that at this point pullman didn’t want anything to do with the movie

The title for the trilogy comes from a line in John Milton’s Paradise Lost and Pullman views his trilogy as a re-telling of Milton’s poem (which means that His Dark Materials is in reality Pullman’s re-telling of the Genesis story in fantasy form)

no, not really, not as literal as that, but artistic subtleties seem to escape you quite frequently, my dear dave

In the trilogy, a young girl becomes enmeshed in an epic struggle against a nefarious [extremely wicked] Church known as the "Magisterium."

iooisadhgosdiahgosa i LOVE how dave made the EFFORT to explain the meaning of“nefarious” to the reader

Pullman's books are a work of darkness that every Christian needs to diligently expose (Ephesians 5:11)

damn dude can you believe hdm got so popular it’s referenced in the bible

America was founded upon faith in God, and the Communists are trying to rob it from our children

kefhsaoidgsdoh COMMUNISM CONFIRMED

at this point in the article mr dave finally decides it’s time to talk about the story of the golden compass in mere two paragraphs. spoiler: the first paragraph is yet again dedicated to anti-pullman ranting. so much for that plot summary.

In the books, Pullman represents God as a decrepit and perverse angel who captures the dead in a “prison camp” afterlife.

damn the dude says he’s gonna talk about the plot of the golden compass and then goes ahead and spoils the amber spyglass just like that. where are your internet manners, dave

The story centers on Lyra, a young girl living at Jordan College in the Oxford of an alternate world where everyone is accompanied by a daemon, a physical representation of their soul in animal form.

this is the ONE time dave refers to daemons as what they ACTUALLY are. but i suspect he just copy-pasted this bit without actually reading what is said in it.

One morning, Lyra's school Master

yet again someone was too busy counting words then remembering the plot/characters

Lyra then finds herself in a world where she must fight against evil, and here lies the controversy. Lyra is the "chosen child" who must do battle with evil. But in this story, the things that are good are evil (the church is the Magisterium, the bad group trying to gain control of all) and evil is good (daemons and witches are allies.)

it’s almost...... as if......... it’s somewhat........... symbolic.......... you know, that artistic device? symbolism? yeah? no...?

our darling dave then links to this piece as the source of his info on the plot of tgc and god that’s a whole nest of wasps i can’t even begin to deal with here. but it’s p entertaining how in only briefly reading the thing i can already recognize whole sentences who got copy-pasted by dave for his own magnificent piece of critique

Satan's Bid for Your Child

oh, WHAT a title for the next segment of the article. i’m hooked

Even though the books are strongly anti-God and anti-church, they’re getting a strong push in the godless public school system as curriculum resources. First the God-hating Communists introduced the lies of Evolution into the public school system. Then they kicked God's Word and prayer out of the public schools in 1962 and 1963. Now they want to teach our children hom*osexuality and witchcraft.

communism! evolution! hom*osexuality! witchcraft! god, i’m trembling

dave goes on for a while without mentioning the movie again, just ranting against the world in general. parts of it are still amusing, though:

Evolution is in fact a religion, as is humanism, witchcraft and Satanism.

yeah man i miss it when in school we used to pray to darwin every morning before class started :(

It requires faith to believe Evolution because there is NO proof, or even evidences to permit study. It is tragic that young people today are being taught a theory that has NO proof whatsoever. In sharp contrast, the Word of God is supported by an overwhelming abundance of scientific, historical, archeological and astronomical evidence.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA OH MY GOD. WOW!!!!!!!!!!

Public school children are being taught religion; but it's the religions of Humanism (i.e., man is his own god), Evolution, New Age and now Demonism.

are daemians aware that daemonism is being taught in public schools as a whole ass religion??? damn

With the rise of the New World Order since the 911 attacks

holy sh*t dude dave is diving deep into the waters of conspiracy at this point

Surely Satan is already panicking, knowing that he must accomplish much in a very short time frame. This explains why we see a flood of demonism, witchcraft and apostasy sweeping the world in an effort to destroy Christianity. Have you heard about the new FLY Pentop COMPUTER for kids, which features witchcraft? Did you know that Toys-R-Us sells a VooDooz doll for children? It comes complete with a spell book, and pins to stab your VooDooz doll with. I was at Barnes and Noble bookstore and saw a Teenage Witchcraft Kit.

THIS DUDE IS f*ckING WILDi imagine he started yelling at some poor employee for having witchcraft in that store

Doesn't anyone love God anymore?

this is sad.

The Bible condemns all forms of witchcraft—Voodoo, charms, spells, divination, incantations, palm readings, Ouija boards, psychics, witchery, sorcery, wizards, magic, potions, good luck charms, astrology, necromancy, spiritism, magic candles, mesmerism, hypnosis, astral projection, levitation, and anything else that invokes the power of Satan.

he actually............went through the trouble of listing all of that. from memory, no doubt

WE’RE BACK TO THE GOLDEN COMPASS AT LAST LADS

Instead of presenting the trailer on the homepage, The Golden Compass website uses audio to introduce the characters of the film and their respective demons, and then provides a prompt to "Meet Your Demon." Twenty questions are presented which promise to reveal "your true character and the form of your demon." Once you complete the questionnaire, you can send your resulting demon to your friends, presumably to build a community of young demons who will all later commune at the theater. This is pure Satanism and it's being directed at our children. Satan wants your child. The Golden Compass series glorifies demonism, witchcraft and divination; while blaspheming God Almighty.

Satan Wants Your Child

In the movie THE GOLDEN COMPASS, children are being kidnapped by a mysterious group called the Gobblers and taken "to the North" where they are tortured by having their daemons separated from them. This is the Satanic garbage that film producers and book publishers are vomiting upon our children. Towards the end of the film, the starring little girl deliberately destroys the machine that was robbing children of their daemons. Literally, the movie portrays the little girl as a hero for ensuring that all the other children can continue to be daemon possessed. This is one sick movie, straight out of the pits of Hell.

it’s f*cking ASTOUNDING how this paragraph could straight up pass as magisterium propaganda

How about you? Our time on earth is short my friend. This life will be over before we know it. Is your heart right with God? Are you saved? Have your sins been washed away by the precious blood of Jesus Christ?

this dude got so f*cking emotional over one bad movie he grossly misunderstood i am INSPIRED

our dearly beloved dave now goes on to quote yet another highly reputable source on the evil of the golden compass

"His Dark Materials" by atheist Philip Pullman

is“atheist” a title at this point? now that pullman is a sir, do they call him“atheist sir pullman” or“sir atheist pullman”?

Unsaved Heathens and Apostates Praise Pullman's Works of Darkness

do i get to officially call myself“unsaved heathen and apostate” because that’s one rad f*cking title

Satan truly is the god of this world (2nd Corinthians 4:4), and he has many servants.

this is such a confusing f*cking statement. how can satan be the god of this world if there is only one god? or two, because there is god and there’s also jesus? god i don’t know christianity never made any sense so this statement isn’t actually that surprising

Why would any professed "Christian" support Pullman's works of darkness, which he admittedly calls HIS DARK MATERIALS?

esteemed article writer dave is unaware of the existence of the concept of“references”

Sadly, ChristianityToday magazine promotes this vile filth, giving it a rating of 2 1/2 out of a potential 4 stars. I give the movie a ZERO rating, and so should you if you love the Lord Jesus Christ!

yeah guys! we must purify this dirty world by giving bad ratings to hollywood movies! this is the only way to show jesus our love and devotion!

Movie writer-director Chris Weitz has said he wants to make the next films more "iconoclastic," so consider this bit of sacrilege a taste of what is yet to come. The word "iconoclastic" means "Characterized by attack on established beliefs or institutions." In other words, the sequels to The Golden Compass are going to blaspheme God and attack Christianity much worse than the first movie.

man.... chris had good intentions. too bad new line f*cked him over with how bad they butchered the movie in post-prod.

If we don't complain, then who will... the atheists?

this line is so confusing and meaningless and yet so timeless and iconic. wow

The Golden Compass is a Sicko Movie

i can’t breathe this sounds like an early 2000s compliment coming from a middle school bad boy who does tubular tricks on his skateboard

For Pullman, sexual experience is an essential part of becoming a full-grown human, despite the confusion and pain it can cause.

HOW IN THE f*ck IS THIS CONTROVERSIAL OR WRONG FOR NON-ACE PEOPLE KADSH;GOIDAGSDKJG

Children Using Divination to Confirm Guidance from Demons?"Lyra tries to consult the alethiometer to see if the daemons are right.”

Things Taking Wildly Out Of Context Making No Sense?

Kill God?

after reading this torturous rant? yes absolutely. next

Of course the idea in a trilogy is to read the second and third books, and not just the first. Naturally Scholastic is selling nicely packaged boxes of the trilogy.

i love how dave felt the need to explain to us how trilogies and bookselling work. what a sweetheart

Blasphemy! Children are being taught that killing God is quite a desirable thing to do.

will anyone ever understand that WILL AND LYRA NEVER INTENDED TO KILL GOD, AND WHEN GOD DIED IT WAS BY MISTAKE AND MADE THEM UPSET AND SAD? i mean this guy won’t, but people who actually read the books???

God and the Church Are Awful and Pathetic?

dave at this point in reading your rant i hate the whole of christianity. yes. next

Summoning Witches?“Serafina and her witches decide that they need to summon other witch clans....”

Mr Dave Is Unaware That The Word “Summon” Has Got Several Meanings

“He is so weak and old that he blows to bits with the first breeze, but his dissolution comes as a relief. It is as though God does not want the burden of leadership. In the end, Will and Lyra don’t kill God. Instead, they free him, and he becomes one with the universe again. The fact that God dissolves just like the newly freed ghosts suggests that perhaps God is simply the spirit of the living.”

i love how dave quotes this whole bit - ACTUAL GOOD ANALYSIS OF GOD’S DEATH IN HDM - without absolving any of its meaning

ConclusionThe Golden Compass is evil.

i love this

children today are being challenged to hate Christianity, and are being invited to join ranks with the Devil's army.

damn i totally missed that bit about joining satan’s army in hdm

All we hear about nowadays is how religion throughout the ages has caused wars and suppressed people's rights.

it’s almost as if it’s true!

Increasingly, children today are being brainwashed to view Christianity as a power-hungry "MAGISTERIUM" (i.e., the evil organization in The Golden Compass), which seeks to suppress the rights of hom*osexuals, Wiccan witches, Evolutionists, abortionists, feminists and other degenerates of society.

WHAT a sentence!!!!!

The grave danger of Harry Potter and The Golden Compass

that sounds like one hell of an au

Christians are commanded not to associate with any professed Christian who is a drunkard, chases women, lives for money or lives in unrepentant sin.

and yet donald trump is president of the united states! go figure, davey

Public school children are being taught that the sin of hom*osexuality should be accepted; BUT, God says "No." Now you know why hom*osexuals hate God's Word so much.

we’re almost at the end of the rant and dave didn’t reference balthamos and baruch even once and i feel ROBBED

Women in the 1960's embraced feminism, because they were told (just as Eve) that the higher powers were trying to suppress their rights. Satan lied to Eve, thus creating a sinful power-struggle between her and God.

damn why won’t women just understand that men are like god :\\\

Satan is recruiting. Satan has a bid for your child mom and dad, and he will stop at nothing to recruit your child's soul.

gotta admire the determination there

Again, The Golden Compass is evil. It is not just a fantasy for children. The author of the series (Philip Pullman) is a militant, God-hating atheist who has openly stated that his goal is to "undermine the basis of Christian belief" in the mind's of children.

dave decided that the best way to end his rant is to quote a line that already appeared in the text at least 2 times before. man, if you ever think you’re a bad writer, remember that at least you’re not as bad as this dude.

moral of the story is: dave probably needs some sleep. and professional help

May 18: Whitby and the Mouse

I’ve been thinking about this and

[Spoilers for the Southern Reach trilogy below] [by which I mean, don’t read this post, read the books]

*

I don’t think Whitby is a clone. And I don’t think OG Whitby is the mouse.

I have to say I dislike the idea that just because clones exist, all characters who are a little bit weird, and/or all characters who have returned from Area X are clones. (Someone literally said on r/SouthernReach “everyone who leaves Area X is a clone, thus Whitby and the director must be clones” like ??? That statement is tautological. I feel like a lot people wouldn’t say it so starkly but nevertheless believe the same thing, though.) Like, I get it, the clones are cool. But isn’t it cool/er/ to think that Area X can do something other than return clones to the world? That the number of outcomes for people who enter Area X is bigger than two? What I’m trying to say is that I don’t really want Whitby to be a clone. I think it’s more interesting to say he’s not. And I also think that if you assume he is, and especially if you think other people are too, you’re going to run into nonsense later on, drawing these theories to their conclusions.

But I also don’t think Clone!Whitby is the best, most textually supported interpretation either.

Here are the known, definite, canon clones: Ghost Bird; the blanks from the last eleventh and the twelfth expeditions; the director who expanded the border at the end of Authority. We don’t know anything about this last clone, if she has memories or personality or anything. I mostly assumed she was a blank, too. The one bit of evidence in favor of this: Grace is positive enough that she is not really the director that she feels comfortable shooting her and killing her. If the director had been more Ghost Bird than Mr. Biologist, I don’t think this would have been as easy of a call.

So among the canonical clones we have Ghost Bird, and the blanks.

And we have some potential clones (aka characters who I’ve seen presumed or supposed to be clones while reading theories on the internet): the director at some earlier point; Lowry; Whitby.

Ghost Bird is a clear anomaly among the canonical clones, but not so much if you include the potential clones. If you include the potential clones, then Area X has the ability to create a variety of lifelike human duplicates, including, from the time of the very first expedition, one that can function for decades on the outside without anyone thinking he’s inhuman.

And if Area X has, and has always had, that ability, why is Ghost Bird’s creation consistently held up as such an odd and special thing? Why is Ghost Bird herself presented as unique? And why are so many factors, specific to her and the biologist, delineated to explain her creation?

Unlike any other character, the biologist:

Was known to Area X through a prior expedition member (we know that her husband was thinking about her a lot, since he addressed his journal to her, so Area X could have ‘read’ her in him before she even arrived);

Has a personality that seems like it would be easier for AX to read: more of a loner, someone who finds it easier to, in her own words, fit into any environment in which she finds herself;

Was conditioned before arriving in AX to be even more isolated and paranoid than usual;

Had an intimate relationship with a clone (I don’t actually think this is important but I’m adding it anyway since I’ve seen it mentioned in some theories);

Is so unusual even before any conditioning or any time spent in AX that the director feels in her presence like she is in the presence of AX itself;

And, most importantly, was exposed to the spores several days before Ghost Bird’s creation, allowing her to be ‘someone AX knows’ before meeting the Crawler and being fully scanned--this factor is mentioned specifically in Acceptance as the main reason why Ghost Bird is able to exist as such a perfect, nearly-human clone.

Why go through all the trouble of creating such a unique Original for cloning purposes, if Area X can make clones like Whitby, post-first-AX-trip director, and Lowry?

This is largely definitive for me, but my full reasoning actually goes farther, and is harder to describe. Especially not without sounding like I’m actually arguing against myself. It has to do with the ways that Whitby changes after being in Area X. His reaction is unique among everyone who’s been in and come back out. He also comes in under fairly unique circ*mstances.

Unlike the expedition members, Whitby doesn’t have any sort of conditioning or training before he crosses the border. There are other characters who fall into that category, too: the director before her first trip, Control, Grace, and potentially Lowry, who had some training probably, but not like the later expeditions, whose training was based on his experience. I guess this could be evidence as to why his clone is a little different, but to me, it’s a good explanation as to why he, the original, returns so changed, so broken. A particularly good comparison, I think, is Control, who I could easily see returning to the outside world and going down a Whitby-esque spiral, in slightly different circ*mstances. He’s sort of, I say tentatively, an ‘improvement’ on Whitby, an experiment repeated with only slightly different variables, which leads to a different outcome.

So what I think happened to Whitby is, roughly, this: he went into AX with arguably the least preparation of anyone; he was scanned by something while the director was in the tower, allowing a clone to be made; he encountered his clone, who was carrying a backpack with a plant--for expansion purposes--and a phone--for communicating with Lowry purposes--and was so upset that he fought the double; he killed the double, just as he said he had (what happened to the body is a bit of a mystery--I guess the clone could have been a hallucination the entire time, and he just found the backpack among the journals--but this comes out to mostly the same imo since his experience was still that of having ‘killed himself’); and he took the materials out of AX. He’s still “himself,” in the sense that he can follow a train of existence back to his pre-trip self, but is nevertheless altered by his time across the border.

I think this alteration is, at the very least, akin to that of a person in real life who’s gone through some sort of trauma. Just like we might say someone who’s survived a warzone or a horrific accident is ‘a different person’ so Whitby is ‘a different person.’ The experience of fighting and killing his own double is unique and weird and terrifying and uncanny and of course he’d react to that.

It’s also possible he was ‘altered’ in some more traditional sci-fi-y way, because he and the director were in Area X for quite some time, and we really don’t see that much of the journey, compared to its total length. (I think...the time dilation makes this a hard thing to pinpoint... But I think they were there for a couple weeks in Earth time? And if so, possibly even longer in AX time. But I could also be getting this wrong, too lazy to look.) This is, of course, vague, but other characters have started to feel ‘the brightness’ fairly early, so perhaps he was ‘infected’ in this way, too.

He may also have been pricked by the flower, but this happens late in the timeline, and while I think this might explain how the SR became another tower, and perhaps even the expansion of the border, it doesn’t explain the changes to his personality.

So what’s the mouse? I get the neatness of saying ‘well it’s Whitby!’ and I have to say I don’t have any other real explanation for it. Honestly, it really could be just a mouse. Just an ordinary, unchanged, Earth mouse, that for whatever reason Whitby has chosen for a pet. A comfort object. I mean, Control--who, again I think is most akin to Whitby in terms of experience and interaction with AX--has a comfort animal too, Chorry, who he carries with him in the form of a carving even after he enters AX, and which is dearly important to him. Chorry isn’t magical or alien and neither is the carving; Control’s attachment to the carving is part of his attempt to hold on to his humanity. I think the mouse could be similar.

I guess it’s also possible that, since Whitby found the mouse “in the attic,” by which he clearly means the SR attic, and the SR has already been compromised by this point (probably very compromised; probably compromised by Lowry), that the mouse is another sort of ‘plant’ (pun unintended) by AX, another little feeler sent out into the world, like the clones, like the (literal) plant. But I don’t know what thinking of the mouse in this way does for the narrative. I don’t know what it tells you that is new or necessary or interesting.

Yeah, the more I write, the more I think Whitby and Control are thematically linked in some way [like, re: my comparison above to repeating an experiment with different variables, they also have that conversation about many different universes existing, all slightly different from each other] and that the mouse is his Chorry, and that Whitby is definitely a human who, shocked and confused by his encounter with the alien force, is just trying his best, even as his mind is semi-broken and unable to think clearly anymore. I think that’s the story here, different than the clone stories, different than Ghost Bird’s story, more unique than viewing him as a clone.