Josie Totah as Olethra
Henry Cavill as Maxwell
Koji Yakucho as Daisuke
Delroy Lindo as Monty
Rachel McAdams as Marya
Hannah Waddingham as Van
Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Wealwell
Karen Allen as Comfrey
What could he do? Where could he turn, twice robbed of his wife?
With what tears could he move the spirits, with what voice
move their powers? Cold now, she floated in the Stygian boat.
They say he wept for seven whole months
📷: @callmelasagna
The official Star Wars account on Spotify replaced the Cassian Andor Rogue One playlist with an “Andor Official Playlist” that’s just the soundtrack…AS IF IT COULD COMPARE TO THAT EXPERTLY CRAFTED CHARACTER FANMIX…I WANTED THE OFFICIAL ANDOR SOUNDTRACK BUT NOT LIKE THIS!!!!!! PUT IT BACK!!!!
Anyway, here’s the tracklist in order I recovered from Wayback Machine for anyone else that adored that playlist and wants to remake it themselves in the event that they leave it officially replaced going forward:
Ain’t No Man by The Avett Brothers
Gimme Something Good by Ryan Adams
Ophelia by The Lumineers
Lake Michigan by Rogue Wave
Man on the Moon by Zella Day
When My Time Comes by Dawes
Honey I Been Thinking About You by Jackie Greene
24 Frames by James Isbell
Human by Rag’n’Bone Man
The Girl by City and Colour
Down In The Valley by The Head And The Heart
Alone by Trampled by Turtles
Ends of the Earth by Lord Huron
Hold Back The River by James Bay
Man On Fire by Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeroes
The Way We Move by Longhorn Slim, The Law
Babel by Mumford & Sons
S.O.B. by Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats
Sedona by Houndmouth
Spirits by The Strumbellas
Even The Darkness Has Arms by The Barr Brothers
California (Cast Iron Soul) by Jamestown Revival
Only Son by Shakey Graves
All My Days by Alexi Murdoch
Don’t Carry It All by The Decemberists
In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel
Rogue One by Michael Giacchino
And the cover image too!
@ whoever made this playlist, I’m so sorry they tried to erase your great fanmix and I won’t stand for it❤️❤️❤️❤️
ARDENT BLOSSOM: A BOTANICAL COMPENDIUM is now available for preorders from September 21 to October 21!
This book features 30 illustrations and 18 original codex entries exploring the language of flowers, in the format of a traditional floriography book. Each illustration is paired with notes written by our writers, intrepid members of the Botanical Society of Thedas!
ARDENT BLOSSOM is available in the following bundles:
Elfroot Bundle: High-quality PDF of the zine
Embrium Bundle: Physical copy of the zine
Black Lotus Bundle: Zine & all DAO-themed merch
Blood Lotus Bundle: Zine & all DA2-themed merch
Dawn Lotus Bundle: Zine & all DAI-themed merch
Crystal Grace Bundle: Zine & all merch from all 3 games!
Dragonthorn Bundle: Merch-only bundle
Prophet's Laurel add-on: Make your zine hardcover!
We are also announcing six stretch goals!
All stretch goals are automatically added to all merch bundles. The travel postcards will have 1 postcard added to their respective game bundles, and all 3 added to full bundles!
50 orders: Travel Postcards
100 orders: Veilguard Sticker Sheet
150 orders: Gold Foil Cover
200 orders: Enamel Pin
250 orders: Tote Bag
300 orders: Pocket Field Journal
Reblog this post for the chance to win a free full bundle or a refund on the bundle you purchased!
i had so many grievances that i couldn’t fit them onto other social media platforms with character limits, so i’m writing an essay here instead. it’s very tl;dr, i’m mostly writing this to get it off my chest, don’t mind me
broader narrative & structure
going in i was already worried about them only having 6 episodes to establish 1) a six-year timejump, 2) a new source of conflict, 3) wrap that conflict, and then 4) satisfyingly wrap up the series as a whole.
did it accomplish that? no.
like, i think they could have done it if they’d used their time effectively — drilled in on the characters, their family relationships, why we care about them and why they care about each other — but instead they barely spend any time together.
the thibedeaus could have been interesting quirky antagonists to meet in any other season, but here, i was just so aware of how their every scene took away from the rest of the cast. every minute we spent on gene thibedeau being jealous about sy grossman talking to his wife, i was just like— why?? why are we wasting precious screentime on this??? take us back to the hargreeves, you have so little time left with them, anything else is a waste.
also their random line dancing in the middle of a gruesome firefight felt like re-tread of hazel/cha-cha’s dancing violence spree— except that hazel/cha-cha, for all their bombast, were also realistically grounded in grumbling about their healthcare benefits and room stipends. they felt real to me. the thibedeaus felt like thin caricatures. there was just a general trend across the whole season of things being forced wacky and strange for the sake of being wacky and strange.
(like, don’t even get me started on unfunny shit like everyone in the van vomiting on each other. low, crass, gross-out “humour” which never used to be in this show at all.)
after the initial roadtrip, the entire family splits up for the rest of the season into pairs (luther/diego, allison/klaus, five/lila, viktor/reg, ben/jennifer) and we don’t really get to see the hargreeves together. no fond group bonding, no teamwork, no fun needle drop fight scenes apart from diego/luther, no obligatory dance scene. they’re only really together for the first 2 out of 6 episodes. they had so little time, and the show still didn’t bother digging into the heart of the show: the established friendships and important dynamics within the family.
reginald
this show did not know what to do with reginald and whether to redeem him or not, so instead it’s just this… messy confused middle-ground. s3 klaus started on “he’s not our father, he can be better, let’s give him a chance”, but then he murdered luther and klaus, immediately proving klaus wrong
in this season, someone else – i think viktor – says “if you want to prove that you’re not that man, then help us”, and there’s this whole emphasis on sparrow reg not having been the one who killed ben etc… except reginald is still that man??? he’s not different at all? he MURDERED LUTHER AND KLAUS
and there’s the tiniest lip service to it— Allison: “Just a friendly reminder to the group that the last time you spoke your piece with Dad, he murdered you.” Luther: “I’m sure that won’t happen again :) Right?”
except luther would not be so cavalier!! after s2-s3, luther had finally accepted that his father treated him awfully, he did not want to reconcile with him, he didn’t even want that man at his wedding; and when luther extended the tiniest bit of grace, he was instantly murdered for it. he was constantly warning the others about reginald. he would NOT be so chill about it now.
i don’t like the retcon about the moon having secretly been ~the most important mission~ all along. if it was a real mission, then reginald would have told luther the parameters if only for the sake of luther knowing what he was doing and being able to guard abigail better. the prop auction photos of reginald’s s1 journals revealed he had an established history of sending the kids on pointless patrols to test their loyalty and see how long it takes before they break, and teen luther never deviated from instructions. that’s exactly what the moon was. i will die on this hill. retconning this is a too-convenient way to backpedal on reginald’s cruelty.
abigail
marital strife and abigail secretly working against her husband is an interesting idea, but we had no buildup or context for this. we had only seen them together in like two scenes before we eventually find out about the betrayal; that’s not enough time to know abigail, their relationship, or care about this choice.
i’m not a person who fixates on ~*~plot holes~*~; i am fine with some lore being handwaved. but if you do try to explain the lore and motivations, i need it to make sense:
ABIGAIL: “I ended the world. And that’s a good thing, my love.”
REGINALD: “Abigail. You did this?”
ABIGAIL: “You left me no choice.”
REGINALD: “But why?”
ABIGAIL: “Dying was my penance for creating something so deadly. This… Cleanse. Wasn’t it enough to see our world destroyed? Why would you loose it on this one?”
REGINALD: “Because I was so lonely without you.”
ABIGAIL: “I didn’t ask to be brought back to life.”
REGINALD: “That was an act of love.”
ABIGAIL: “No, Reginald. It was hubris. Your actions had consequences far greater than anything you could imagine. And it was my duty to set it right.”
REGINALD: “So, it was you who thwarted all my plans to keep Ben and Jennifer apart… I was wrong. And you made it right. Well done, my love.”
just baffling, man. she thought dying was her penance for ending the world? so she wanted to end the world again and drag an entire second world to its doom along with her? why??? i guess the implication is she somehow had the same revelation five did and is aware that the marigolds caused the splintering of the timelines and that this apocalypse will set it all right— but then why wouldn’t she just say that instead of secretly working behind reginald’s back!! it’s all so deeply contrived. there needed to be more time to develop this (and ben, and jennifer) better.
luther
look what they’ve done to my boy. s1 luther was serious and shy but tactical and strategic and brutal; s2 was a little more light-hearted (the perfect balance imo); but then s3 continued his himbofication to unacceptable degrees, and now s4’s gone even further until he’s a completely lobotomised dumbass and the butt of every joke. he’s undercut at every turn and there’s no vestige of the smart, serious team leader he should be.
he can be socially inept and a little naive but he’s not this maniacally beaming idiot
what’s baffling too is that in the teen flashback, he is still smart and tactical and strategic, so why the fuck.
him reverting to ape form makes no goddamn sense. the ape transformation wasn’t part of his marigold powers.
stripping is an asinine career choice. he’s so prim and proper that i just don’t believe he’d do this. home renovations, sure. and i think he’d have done great in a moving company. something normal which utilises his normal physical strength, but not..... that.
i’m annoyed about him living alone in the hargreeves mansion, where it’s crumbling and condemned and falling apart. it’s a bizarre choice and weird regression to s1? and in even more lonely abysmal circumstances than s1??? he had finally accepted that he should have left, that he wasted his life alone in that haunted house, that he should have been out in the world. so why did he GO BACK when he didn’t have to!! he would never have gone back into that cage!
(blah blah turning it into an orphanage or whatever. that could have been a heartfelt detail, except his failed renovation projects were the butt of every joke instead.)
i hated the s3 wedding and the sloane ship, but her just being immediately written out and only mentioned in 2 throwaway lines is like. darkly funny. what was even the point.
luther gets one single ‘badass’ moment where he takes out an elevator of guys, captain america-style… and we don’t even get to see it, and instead it instantly cuts to him losing his pants and being all bare ass and thong and hairy legs, pooh bear-ing the rest of the scene and a subsequent scene. i get that fight choreography & camerawork in a tight space is difficult so i get them not showing it, but then why did you need to mock him right after. why couldn’t he have had one single moment where he got to do a cool thing and his appearance — which he’s deeply sensitive about — wasn’t being ridiculed. i hate this.
diego
i actually quite liked the starting setup: diego and lila fraying under the stresses of everyday ordinary life and parenthood, their relationship undergoing normal strain as they struggle to adjust.
i expected them to go through a rough patch before rediscovering their spark and re-committing to each other by the end, but then like… that didn’t happen.
previous seasons had so many fatphobic jokes at luther’s expense, and now diego’s the target of the fatphobia. hate it. very tired of it. especially since we see diego shirtless and he’s still ripped and has a six-pack. so like, why.
allison
after claire having been allison’s driving force this whole time, there was not enough time to establish what claire’s like as a person (does she have hobbies? interests??) or what their life is like together
the blowup between allison and klaus didn’t feel earned because they seemed pretty fine living together actually? it wasn’t building off pre-existing established conflict so it didn’t feel like a pressure-cooker inevitably exploding, it just came out of nowhere
she doesn’t get to have a single one-on-one exchange with luther. which, regardless how you feel about the potential romance, they had always been best friends and that should have been important
ray walked out. which is a disservice to his character tbh. but honestly they should never have included him at the end of s3; it never made any sense that he was here, he didn’t belong in this timeline and he already explicitly turned down the opportunity to be here, so yanking him here totally fucked over his personal agency. just pointless!
we already knew allison would sacrifice herself for claire in a heartbeat, so we haven’t really learned anything new by the end of the season
she doesn’t get to reconcile with viktor besides, literally, a 2-sentence exchange in the last 10 min of the show. again: this dynamic should have been important. this relationship, and allison constantly being in v’s corner, was one of the beating hearts of s1 and now it’s just tossed by the wayside
klaus
literally uninvolved with the entire main plot???? after the actual plot kicks off, he leaves to go get drug money, gets trapped in sexual slavery, spends the entire season by himself mucking around with a pointless sidequest, and then only rejoins for the final fight. why.
no digging into his dynamic with ben, either, which should have been important: rebuilding a new best friendship with this other version of his bff
klaus falling off the wagon is a disservice to his character, too. s3 had him finally training his powers, embracing them, and finding ways to do good with them (channeling luther’s ghost) without needing to drown them out with drugs. instead, it’s just another regression back to s1
five (& lila)
oh boy! the discourse!
five had some good moments; i liked him and lila sleuthing together bc i loved their platonic friendship, i liked the diner of fives. i thought he was initially pretty good and in-character. but then. lmao.
here we have a man who would do anything for his family and to get back to his family, choosing to fuck over his brother and then ALSO fuck over lila by lying to her for months and hiding the fact that they could go home. to her children.
the 7 year timejump and being trapped together does make sense for them to have a fling, but it’s just absurd to throw this wrench in the gears in the second-to-last episode of the ENTIRE SERIES, thus also torpedoing the only canonical ship which had lasted across 2 seasons. it’s far too rushed and leads to this pointless love triangle at the 11th hour; the climactic battle wastes time with five/diego fighting each other and squabbling over a woman rather than, yk, uniting as a family to stop the apocalypse
they did not do enough to make five look visually older. it’s appallingly obvious that aidan gallagher is barely 20 and ritu arya is 35. it’s not great
when lila has to say goodbye to her kids, the fact that she’s sobbing in five’s arms instead of diego, the actual father of those children who also had to let them go, is. so. stupid.
lila “hating bracelets” except that diego giving lila a bracelet was already an important motif in their relationship? what the fuck man. the absolute lack of care for these characters and their established histories.
ben
what’s up with the end of s3 and the happy put-together ben on a train
i actually liked the reveal about his death and the memory fuckery, and i kinda liked him and jennifer — they had better bonding and insta-love than luther and sloane imo — but there just needed to be more there
ultimately dissatisfying. bc they could have done a feelsy arc about sparrow ben having been welcomed into the family, him accepting the brellas are more of a family than the sparrows even in all their dysfunction, especially following up on his desperate yearning at the end of s3 to be invited in by them, him and klaus deciding to give him a blank slate and let him be loved etc… but none of that was even present here? he’s always pushing them away, even klaus. one of the last things he says about the umbrellas is “they’re not my real family, mine died a long time ago”.
so WHAT was EVEN the POINT
i was so excited about this being “ben’s season”, that he would finally have a chance to be in the limelight — but he effectively vanishes partway through because he’s been taken over by a virus and turned into a goddamn blob monster. so we don’t even get to spend that much time with him either. this is a disservice to his character, too.
viktor
it’s great that he’s come out of his shell, but. idk he’s just kind of here, brooding and constantly shouting. i can’t put my finger on it but he doesn’t feel like a real extension of the wallflower vee we knew in previous seasons?
i couldn’t even really get pumped about him finally shouting at reginald. plus reginald ‘validating’ viktor by saying he’s the strongest of them all and should’ve been a member of the team etc is cheap and unearned because this isn’t our reginald.
why are viktor’s powers orange fire now rather than white soundwaves? pointless change esp since it scraps his ‘white violin’ connection
i wish i had more to say but he felt like such a nothingburger this whole season.
the ending
i don’t actually mind the gist of this ending — i saw it coming, it’s fittingly bittersweet for them, but the execution was garbage. i should have been devastated about my faves being erased from the universe, but i felt nothing? it was so dissatisfying. behind-the-scenes montages like that usually make me burst into tears, too, but i felt nothing!!
a friend pointed out that they were so miserable in this timeline that them sacrificing themselves didn’t have the real weight it should. it’s not like they were giving up happy successful or semi-successful lives; it felt more like the characters just being put out of their misery.
and my main fix-it idea for the ending, if the writers had wanted to hit that note of “bittersweet sacrifice but also their connections having mattered and evoking a Feeling”:
if it was somehow like… they do rewind it so the marigolds never land, they never get their powers, the umbrella academy is never formed; but the kids still wind up born under more normal circumstances later, and they never grew up together but the universe brings them together again
klaus and ben sit down on the same park bench and klaus bums a cigarette from him; luther and allison bump into each other at a supermarket and have a meet cute and he helps carry her groceries for her, stuff like that
so their original broken timeline is erased, but there’s still the sense of “these people are meant to be together and the stars will align so they’ll cross paths without superpowers and wind up liking each other anyway”.
i’m so annoyed. this post also has a couple different ending ideas that i like. basically, anything but the way it played out: not with a bang but a whimper.
i hate that the characters shot down luther’s suggestion to list their favourite moments, because it was an opportunity to actually show us that they care about each other. flesh out more character development and worldbuilding details: “that time we did xyz as kids”. show them fond and nostalgic and holding onto the bits of happiness they had with each other.
Heaven was a preacher's spot
In that first church parkin' lot
Her hangin' onto me like a cross on a rearview does
Her eyes were blue, the words were red
On that half pack of cigarettes
At seventeen, that's what hallelujah was
(insp.)
Links to Pacific Rim creator Travis Beacham's own posts on drift compatibility and drifting
Drift compatibility is psychological, not genetic
The better you know someone, the more likely you are to be drift compatible
Drift compatibility is potential, not fate
Drift compatibility can be a choice
Friendship is the foundation of drift compatibility
The drift requires trust
Trust is fundamental; also drift compatibility can be determined with anything that tests how well you can anticipate each others' moves
That even includes multiplayer video games
Many cadets wash out during Pons training when secrets come out in the drift and shatter their relationships
A lot of pilots get messed up by flinching over sexual thoughts
Trying to avoid thoughts just makes them worse
Not everything you see in the drift is always real; also the way to deal with thoughts is just let them flow by
Pilots communicate through "headspace"
Illustration of a conversation in headspace
First drifts can be very confusing, because partners don't understand each others' minds very well yet
The drift exposes pilots to each others' raw, unfiltered thoughts
Raleigh knew what Yancy was going to say
The drift doesn't let you read your partner's mind like a database, and you may not necessarily understand what you see. Also when Pentecost says he carries nothing into the drift he means he's calm and stable.
Pentecost gained this calmness through meditation
Trying to block your partner from your mind will make you lose control of the Jaeger
Pilots who fall below 90% sync will be in trouble
General information plus info on RABITs
You can chase your partner's RABIT
Another post confirming you can chase your partner's RABIT
More RABIT info
More general information
Travis Beacham defines ghost drifting
Partners' personalities can rub off on each other
Neural overload doesn't hit you all at once; it accumulates
The time a pilot can go solo varies, and it's a steep curve from fine to dead
More info on solo piloting
Being high in the drift probably makes it harder to avoid chasing the RABIT
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