Hello, darkness, my old friend ...

(Ed. Note: God, what a pretentious title ...)

So you know how it feels when your entire life basically goes tits up? That's pretty much where I am. Quite frankly, things are still a bit too raw to discuss in depth, especially on the internet, so you'll have to excuse my vagueness for the time being. But I will say that, at the end of this month, I'm moving back up to Louisville.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice Review

Via Comic Book Movie

SPOILER WARNING: I'm going to be referencing quite a bit of the plot from this movie, so if you haven't seen it and care to be spoiler free before going in, I don't recommend you reading much past the break.

Full disclosure: I went and saw this movie after reading bad review after bad review, so I was set to dislike it from the get-go. Yay, another Batman origin story retelling! Henry Cavill looks like a douche-bro! Wonder Woman is barely seen! The story is nonsensical! Zack Snyder is getting "paid millions of dollars to pretend not to be Michael Bay!" Jesse Eisenberg was woefully miscast! I'm sure you've read all of these, too. The internet was inundated with negative criticism, so much that you could barely find anything positive to say about the movie.

Now, usually, I try to be open-minded whenever I've read reviews of movies I'm going to see because, hey, I'm an individual and I like to make my own decision as to whether or not a movie is a piece of crap, but when it comes to DC, there's always this little skeptical devil on my shoulder, reminding me of how many times the publisher and WB have royally fucked up some of my favorite characters (*cough* the Finches' Wonder Woman run *cough*).

So imagine my surprise when I realized, "Hey, I don't hate this movie."

29 Day Cowboy Bebop Challenge, Day 22: Storyline I Wish Went Longer

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Cowboy Bebop is damned near perfection when it comes to plot. Not only are episodes dedicated solely to character development, but everything is tied together in the end, even if it is bittersweet. So I can't really say that there is any storyline I wish was extended, which kind of seems like a cop out, but I'm okay with that.

< Day 21: Something That Didn't Happen I Wish Did

Day 23: Character That Deserved More Screen Time >

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29 Day Cowboy Bebop Challenge, Day 21: Something That Didn't Happen I Wish Did

To be honest, there's not a lot about Cowboy Bebop that I would change, as evidenced by yesterday's post, so today is going to be short and sweet: I wish we could have seen how Jet handled the finale. His entire life was wrapped up in the crew - especially Spike - and now, all he has left is Faye. I understand that Bebop is ultimately Spike's story, but they spent so much time building up the rest of the main cast that I feel a bit cheated without knowing what Jet's reaction to the events was. Oh, well. I can write fanfic, I guess.

< Day 20: Something That Happened I Wish Didn't

Day 22: Storyline I Wish Went Longer >

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29 Day Cowboy Bebop Challenge, Day 20: Something That Happened I Wish Didn't

Cowboy Bebop is one of those shows that I feel is nearly flawless in its execution. Sure, it has its problems - "Gateway Shuffle," for example - but every detail was so exhaustively planned that to change anything would make that puzzle just sort of fall apart.

29 Cowboy Bebop Challenge, Day 19: Dubbed or Subbed?

When it comes to foreign cinema, in most cases, I would rather read the subtitles than hear completely retooled dialogue that is devoid of the cultural context of the original language. Watching martial arts movies from the 70s and 80s, it's painful to see English voice actors try their damnedest to fit English words to the lips of the on-screen actors, and it's actually a little worse with anime. The first Akira dub was awful, mispronouncing names and acting like they were in a kids' movie*, and Bubblegum Crisis' voice actors sounded both over-the-top and monotone (sometimes simultaneously, which I didn't think was possible) that I nearly refused to watch the rest of the series after the first few minutes of the first episode. Then there's the whole Sailor Moon thing, which I will be discussing in a future challenge.

29 Day Cowboy Bebop Challenge, Day 16: Favorite Location

Yay, a short answer one! The universe we see in Cowboy Bebop has some amazing scenery, from the Martian landscape to the endlessness of open space, but my favorite location we see in the series is Venus, especially because of the last scene in "Waltz for Venus." It's just so pretty, and you know what, I'd brave the possibility of getting Venus Sickness just to see this:

Via Gary's "Cowboy Bebop" Page

Floating cities! It's like Bespin but cooler! Now, I can't find a picture to show you - I'm side-eyeing the internet really hard right now - but one of my favorite images from the episode is when the spores are floating in the sky, and OMG, it's so beautiful. It just gives you an excuse to watch the episode, I guess!

< Day 15: Favorite Fight Scene

Day 17: Favorite Song Off the Soundtracks >

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Well, the last quarter of the year has been a complete bitch.

Okay, it's time to play catch up. What with NaNoWriMo - which I didn't finish because, well, I'll get to that in a second - the Reboot challenge, hosting my first ever Thanksgiving dinner, working now two jobs, and traveling to Nashville for Christmas, I haven't really had much energy or time to dedicate to my blog. I feel really bad about it, not so much because people pay attention to what I have to say, but because this is kind of like my diary, my way of processing through whatever it is that happens to be whirling around in my head at the moment. It's helpful for me to process things that way.

30 Day Reboot Challenge, Day 30: What I Would Like to See Next

When I found out Reboot was getting ... rebooted, I had mixed feelings. One, obviously, was OMGOMGOMGOMG, and the next was, "Wait, what? Noooooooooo," followed by confusion and a kind of "meh" feeling. I mean, I wasn't too thrilled with the comic several years ago, and apparently, Rainmaker Animation is going to combine live action and digital stuff because Users are now Guardians or something. I don't know. I'm trying not to pre-judge the show like I did with Supergirl, which I am totally enjoying by the way, but as someone who is kind of over reboots, it's proving to be rather difficult to keep an open mind about it.

This is one of those times I feel like things should be left alone and that the entire series should just be released on Blu-Ray. Yes, even the dismal fourth season. I am, after all, the person who owns all of the seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Friends because I am a completionist. So that is what I would prefer to see.

And here ends my 30 Day Challenge! Onto your regularly scheduled programming, I suppose, at least until February, which seems a lot closer than it should, actually. Damn, time flies.

< Day 29: How Reboot Inspires Me

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30 Day Reboot Challenge, Day 29: How Reboot Inspires Me

Good gracious, the easier thing to do would be to write about how Reboot doesn't inspire me, because damn if my list isn't long: the world creation, the gradual character development, the storylines (except the fourth season in general, naturally), the visuals, the diversity of the female cast, etc. Even with its issues, which I've gone over this month, Reboot is still miles above a lot of TV that came after it.

I really do wish that children's programming took a bit of inspiration from Reboot. It was obviously made for children, especially evident in the first two seasons, but it didn't necessarily dumb things down for them (unless they were forced to by censors, but whatever) or put a moral-of-the-story at the end of each episode. Like John Hughes movies from the 80s, where the main characters were all teenagers dealing with teenager angst and confusion and what-have-you, the audience wasn't looked down upon and expected to be too stupid or inexperienced to understand what was going on. I mean, just take a look at My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic as another example. Both MLP and Reboot have a large following of adult viewers, and both the adult and child audiences appreciate the messages and the fun of each show, even if they're on different levels. While I don't think I'll ever create something meant for kids - I'm not saying ever, but it's highly unlikely, since I like to use the word "fuck" a lot and apparently, people aren't too keen on introducing their kids to swearing early on - it is definitely encouraging to see that writers can still talk about Issues without completely dumbing it down or treating children like they are incapable of getting more complex messages than what they get out of Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood.

< Day 28: Best Fan Art

Day 30: What I Would Like to See Next >

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