Aly

Lets not even talk about the prison part lets just talk about the surface.

There are FOUR (4) different "locations" on what basically amounts to a ten minute chase scene as our protagonists try to outrun the sun and the wardens. The sun that will fucking obliterate you to ash if you stand in it. And the wardens who will shoot you to death with their guns if they see you.

We've got- !

Melty lava floor

Ashy wasteland

Which also features fantastic weird melty shapes they have to run through. Literally just in two shots for mere seconds of screentime.

Giant wall of spikes

Like, they didn't have to make it look this pretty, or distinct!

I instantly know what this is. Visually this is telling me everything I need to know. Nothing can survive here. This is "kill you the fuck dead" levels of environment.

IT'S COMING!!!!!! SUN'S COMING!!!!!!

GONNA BURN YOUR ASS TO A FINE ASH!!!!

THAT PANICKED WHINE AS THE MUSIC AND THE VISUALS LETS YOU KNOW IT'S CREEPING OVER THE MOUNTAIN!!!! BETTER FINISH YOUR FIGHT QUICK OR YOU'RE DONE!!!!

Like... Bitch!!!! this is a ten minute sequence about space criminal Richard B. Riddick running real fast and a five minute sequence of him doing a fight. You did NOT need to go this hard visually. In 2004!

I can't explain how, I can't explain why, but I know in the modern day and age they would have gone with something significantly more boring if this were made today. They would have done something subtle and understated and it would have gotten heaps of praise and it would suck. No!!!!!!!! Make it pretty!!!!!! It doesn't have to look accurate it should look cool!!!!!!

Video references:

Outrunning the Sun

Completely committed to being as edgy and horny as conceivably possible in 2004. It unflinchingly makes such noble decisions as "calling the prison planet where daylight burns everything instantly to death 'Crematoria.'" It introduces space magic to a setting where previously there were only feral aliens and pretty well-grounded like "humans spread to the stars but have the same problems as we did on earth" vibes. A man pulls someone's soul out of their body. Air elemental Judi Dench can glide quite well, actually.

Absolutely beautiful because of this.

Like. I was talking to @quillusquillus about it and so much newer scifi is only beautiful in this very... Clean sort of arty-farty highbrow way, which is well and good, that's moving and beautiful, but I need more scifi that commits enthusiastically to being as deeply and unapologetically cringe as possible with literally no self awareness and therefore circles back around to being full of unbridled drive and creativity. You could not tell Chronicles of Riddick it was cringe in 2004 because it genuinely honestly thought it was doing the coolest possible thing at the time and it was right.

Granted, the series is very 2000s deeply evil to women, every single woman (and lbr many of the men) who ever sees Riddick is instantly thirsty for his broody criminal ass but like... It also vibes with a particular brand of rampant dirty horniness unmatched in today's sterile media. I would probably also be horny for this man. The space goths are sadomasochists who sicko kiss open mouth with tongue while planning plot-relevant betrayal. Literally no character except Imam has any kind of grasp of what constitutes normal consent behavior because this is a world where apparently roughly 1/3 of the population is scuzzy mercenaries (1/3 is normie civillians, 1/3 is evil space empire drones, and 0.00000001% are super special protagonist humans from the super special space magic protagonist planets).

Riddick is so OP he can insta-murder 90% of the characters and knows it so all he does is make edgelord comments all day. And not in the new Marvel way where it's like "tee hee we're so funny" this shit is 100% earnest. "Who's the better killer." "It's an animal thing." You know men were in the writers room completely in love with him as a character 100% convinced he was the best thing since sliced bread original character Do Not Steal. He has special pink nightvision and comes from a planet of badasses so badass there's a magical prophecy about how cool they are and every time characters try and get him to do the right thing he refuses! And not in a cool protagonist way! In a shitty asshole way!

It was also during that age where CGI was good enough to make scenes fun but still cringe but everything is mostly practical, so it's gloriously tactile. All the spaceships have bigass chunky clunky buttons. One of the main villains is wearing replica historical knight armor. Islam still exists and canonically New Mecca is a real place and theoretically people live completely normal lives while all this bugfuck nuts space drama is happening around them.

It is simply. So good.

in aotearoa, june isn’t our pride, it’s theirs. marsha p johnson and sylvia rivera are their historical figures, not ours. the phrase that “you owe your rights to Black trans women” is true there, but here we owe our rights to (mostly) Māori historical figures. i have the freedoms i do because of the legacy of an entirely different set of people operating in an entirely different context at entirely different times.

But because of american cultural imperialism, most queer people in Aotearoa don’t even know our own queer history. Carmen Rupe, Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, the Dorian Society, Gillian Laundon, Georgina Beyer, and the Wolfenden Association are some of our queer history. We should know their names! we should know what they did for us! but because of the power of the american imperial machine, we don’t.

our national pride month should be july, the month that the Homosexual Law Reform Act passed in 1986. our two largest cities hold their pride festivals in february and march, respectively. american queer history has very little (or nothing, depending on who you ask) to do with our queer history. anecdotally, from my own queries, queer youth in aotearoa know more about american queer history than our own.

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[TW: blood]

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S01E06 And

the Fables of Doom.

Extra bricks up for grabs -> 🧱🧱🧱🧱

“Ooughh…”

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