I hate how they made Stella so dumb to the point that I question how she survived in Hell for so long because of how intellectually, politically, powerfully, and emotionally inadequate she is. I'm surprised she hasn't been assassinated, or been killed off by an enraged noble, or gotten killed by one of the carnivorous plants.
It is impossible that she has survived this long IN HELL! In Hell POLITICS especially! Shit is probably GoT on steroids and more magic.
Now when people say that, "It's Hell of course she's horrible," I just laugh because they're right, she is horrible. Horrible at being A NOBLE in HELL!
Someone who survived so long being betrothed and married to one of the most important members of Hell politics and no one tried to vie for her position? No one has ever challenged her to actually think?
what the fuck do you mean he’s on the internet again
much love. but i do not ever need to hear real life animatronics compared to fnaf in any capacity. scott cawthon is just some republican and he did not invent the concept of animatronics
And it still looks like shit.
Managing to be more VFX intensive than an Avengers movie is insane to me. How in the hell is that possible.
Reblogging this so people get reminded
Reminder: Michelle in the book is a lesbian. They erased that part of her in the movie adaptation for no reason at all. Fuck Netflix and the Russos.
Since it is getting warm again will we get to see Fievel peeled once more?
Soon They Peel Me
Watched the horrible minecraft movie trailer </3 My friends and I decided to make this stupid thing while suffering Bingo to find out how bad that movie is actually going to be
@a-witch-in-a-dumpster thank you for half the ideas <3
huh
i think i finally found a gender i like
after seeing the godawful trailer, I did a reread of the Electric State and i cannot physically understand how the russo brothers did not "see potential" in the story
i'll admit, i underappreciated the writing on my first read! going over it again there is so much richness to the character building and the dread of the atmosphere. There's a vibe that I can only describe as desiccated americana and i love it. The world is rotten and dying, and there is really nothing left to do but go on for going on's sake.
anyway i'm doing a very large essay on Stålenhag's whole body of work, but the Electric State holds a special place in my heart as the first of his books I discovered and the most resonant to me, so i just had to share my thoughts right after the reread.
This is less about the artwork, which i could talk about for ages, and more just a general overview of the story themes specifically!
(Moderate general spoilers? i don't go into much detail, and it's not a story overly reliant on its plot twists anyway)
The hopelessness of The Electric State is rather unique among Simon Stålenhag's works - his other books, set in Sweden, are much more fondly nostalgic, though they of course offer strange horrors of their own - but of a much more physical, immediate level.
The Electric State is different. It takes place in an alternate 90s US even more drowned in consumerism and blind greed than our own. A civilization that is crumbling, not from nuclear war or global crises or meteors, but by its own hand, by capitalism driving itself into the ground. The perfect pleasure machine, the neurocaster headset, leaves people twitching, comatose creatures whose minds lie in vast Silicon Valley servers as their bodies are left to starve.
Michelle does not have the privilege of escapism. She is one of the few left to wander a silent world, an apocalypse without people to see it. She is privy to the horror of watching the inevitable trajectory of a world falling to its death, and feels only recognition that it's probably better this way.
Michelle is never sad about the end of America. She doesn't ever reminisce about how good things used to be, or how we should have "appreciated it while we had it." But she certainly does reminisce.
She has the memory of her foster parents, who derided the government "coddling neurine addicts" like Michelle's mother. She has the memory of her grandfather coughing himself to death in their tiny apartment, irradiated from his lifetime of underpaid work assembling gigantic war drones. She has the memory of her mother overdosing on a drug the government hooked her on during her service in the military. She has the memory of her first and only love, a love which the world hated, how it kept her alive in her foster home of Soest City, and how it was ripped from her by the pastor.
Unlike Stalenhag's other stories, there is no element of nostalgia or quiet undertone of hope. Only disgust for what came before, and quiet fear for what comes next.
The horror of the Convergence, the eldritch machine god hivemind, is not even very relevant to the story - if anything, it's a side plot. When Michelle faces actual danger, it's never from giant robot gods in the mist; it's from cops and hotel clerks, from doomsdayers hoarding guns and a FBI agent hunting her down. She lives in fear of other people, of people who say they want to protect her.
But when she sees the gigantic silent machines wandering through the mists of Oregon, she isn't afraid. It's almost peaceful. The Convergence is beyond understanding. It grew out of the servers where millions of minds seeking oblivion from the world went to escape, and they converged into something unknowably vast who wanders the world in a hundred million thoughtless bodies. It's otherworldly. It does not fear, it does not dream, it does not hope, it does not hate. Maybe that's better.
I was scared. But I also felt something else when that thing stepped out of the mist in front of our car. I can't think of a better word than awe. Like when you suddenly become aware that you've walked into the wrong part of the woods and come face-to-face with a gigantic wild animal. Beyond the grotesque, there was also something else - something majestic.
And in its wake, the citizens of Point Linden, hundreds of people linked together, their neurocasters connected to the oily god in the mist, floated across the ground in front of the car, and they looked almost happy. Calm and peaceful, they moved past the car and formed a single group again behind us, and soon disappeared into the mist again.
Before I made this post I explored the turkey tom tag and WOW! the amount of people who are fans of this piece of shit is insane! How can anyone be fans of this piece of scraped off gum? Fucking disgusting.