STAND TALL, BE CONFIDENT, STAY PROUD

.

…

a…

…

And you contrast that with how gentle he is with Calliope. How upset and terrified he is for her. How he actually begs her to accept his help, because he cannot bear to see her in this situation a second longer. How scared he is she’ll refuse out of pride as he did, because he’s been there and he knows the regret that comes after, and because he sees her imprisonment as so much worse than his. Because he knows Calliope, and it horrifies him that something like this has happened to her.

the brilliant casting choice of arthur darvill as richard madoc, a likeable actor who has played likeable characters, someone we would probably never think as a bad guy, to be calliope’s captor. richard madoc’s claims of being a feminist, citing famous female authors as his source of inspiration, using feminism and anti-racism as a marketing ploy to make himself look “woke”, dehumanizing calliope because she’s a muse, because she’s immortal, because he was told not to view her as human. 

the single scratch as a symbol of an unforgivable violence, dream’s acknowledgement that his over a century imprisonment is nothing compared to the decades she spent having men forcefully take from her, calliope’s gentle reminder not to compare their traumas because they are different but both valid, dream asserting that richard madoc still must be punished, calliope’s decision to forgive him in the end not for him but for herself, her setting off to rewrite the laws which imprisoned her in the first place and dream vowing to do the same in his realm. 

every aspect of this episode is so so relevant and it’s handled well at every turn, beautifully adapting its source material, giving its antagonist a punishment from his own mind, giving him an abundance of what he unjustly took from someone else and plaguing him with it until he has nothing left because that is what his actions deserved. 

Morpheus and his long, black coat

+bonus: 

THE SANDMAN

in case you’ve never heard of dinosaur king:

it’s a pretty mediocre anime from the early 90s, that was pretty much just made to market this dinosaur trading card game. the plot was extremely boring (until stuff suddenly started happening around episode 35), and for some reason they decided to have all the dinosaur fights with these incredibly stiff 3d models, which was.. a choice..

all together it was so bad that it’s good (but not particularly good), and kinda forgettable

and then they decided that it needed a remake. they were releasing some new toys, and a video game was being worked on, so in 1999 they released a fucking remake of that weird show

the writers and producers were these two austrian guys, suppenheimer and vemovich

the remake was planned to be two seasons

the original dinosaur king had two seasons as well, the first had 49 episodes, and the second had 30 episodes

the remake was 60 episodes total, and completely ignored season two of the original

suppenheimer and vemovich only retold season one, expanded it a bit, reshuffled some events (namely putting the twist from episode 35 way earlier), giving the characters actual motivations… they actually managed to make the show good

(they still kept in the weird 3d dinosaurs, and the card game tie-ins, because at the core the show was still about marketing the toys)

and then season two ended, neatly tying up the story, and it was genuinely good

and then the network renewed the show for a third season

suppenheimer was done with the show at that point. they only ever wanted to make two seasons, and they had told exactly the story that they wanted to tell, so they were out

but vemovich wasn’t done yet, so he stayed on and wrote season three.

and season four.

and…

the entire remake turned out to be twenty seasons long

and it got weird, lemme tell you

the very first thing vemovich introduced in season three of dinosaur king, the anime about dinosaurs and traveling to the ancient past, was alien space pirates

which i guess makes sense, because they can travel through time, so the future is technically also viable

and then season six was all about one of the main characters becoming a werewolf? which was never fixed, but they also just never mention it at any point after the season six finale

season eleven was all about the love story between one of the supporting cast and one of the antagonists (who had a redemption arc early in season two, but vemovich cast him as a villain again anyway starting in season four)

season sixteen only had one episode where any dinosaurs appeared?? in a show called dinosaur king? and i’m pretty sure they said the word “dinosaur” zero times in that entire season

it was weird, okay, the entire remake was weird after season two

meanwhile, on the forums (and later on twitter), suppenheimer has completely divorced themselves from the show’s production, but they are definitely still watching, and loudly complaining

suppenheimer and vemovich were actually said to be on pretty good terms during the production of the first two seasons, but after that suppenheimer got mean

[id: a tweet by @ cimminimmi from december 2016 that reads “what was the worst show you guys watched this year?”, with a reply from @ suppi_sr (suppenheimer’s twitter) that reads “dinosaur king. for the 5th year in a row.” end id.]

we never really heard anything from vemovich. he was never on any of the forums, and he had a rule of never publicly interacting with any hate whatsoever

so we had suppenheimer just tearing the show down at every point, calling for people to stop watching, and even making several petitions to have the show cancelled, none of which ever went anywhere of course

because we then got season seventeen, which introduces vemovich’s author insert. they are absolutely not subtle about it, the character pretty much goes “hey, my name is vemovich, i’m the guy who is writing this story”

and he just occasionally pops up during the next four seasons

and then season nineteen and twenty are building up to this great unseen danger that is threatening to wipe out the universe

and at the very goddamn end of season twenty, the finale of the entire show, the big threat is finally revealed

so, i’ve said that this entire thing is an anime with weird 3d dinosaurs inserted into it

the big bad, the last villain that was threatening to destroy the fabric of reality… was suppenheimer

a live action suppenheimer, who is greenscreened into the anime world

he is of course stopped by vemovich’s author insert, who up to that point had been 2d animated, but now he is also greenscreened into the show

so the goddamn epic finale of the show is a live action suppenheimer and vemovich fighting, using 3d animated dinosaurs, on this 2d animated battlefield

it looked bad

and then the show is over

but this story is still going

because suppenheimer has spent the last eighteen years tearing apart the show and tearing apart vemovich publicly at least once per week

and then, two years after the show is over

those bastards tweet out that they are married

[id: a twitter conversation between vemovich, suppenheimer, and twitter user abblycidre from october 2021. vemovich is replying “love you, babe” to suppenheimer. suppenheimer replies “love you too.” abblycidre replies “don’t you two have beef?” suppenheimer replies “we can have beef and be married at the same time. it’s fine.” abblycidre replies “married?!” in all caps. vemovich replies “last i checked we’ve been married for 13 years now, yeah”. end id.]

so i guess the tweet where suppenheimer threatened to divorce vemovich wasn’t a joke after all

[a tweet by suppenheimer from june 2012 that reads “@ vemovich. if you don’t stop ruining dinosaur king i will divorce you.” end id.]

suppenheimer and vemovich have been living together for the entire goddamn run of the dinosaur king remake, while suppenheimer was constantly starting shit about the show online

they’ve been dating since before the show even started, and they got married during season nine, and they’ve just been keeping up those personas for twenty fucking years

and i just kinda don’t know what to do with my life now that i know that

Yep, it’s real all right. If you’re interested in learning more about the show itself, I recommend reading through these couple of articles on the series: https://www.fandom.com/articles/dinosaur-king-internal-controversy or, for a more in-depth analysis, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/dinosaur-king_(season_1).

You should give these sources a good read-through either way because in all honesty, OP missed out on some prime groundbreaking material. For example, the fact that this show’s depiction of an ankylosaurus is thought to be the most accurate depiction of ankylosaurs in the 20th Century. Or how those first 2 seasons somehow have the lowest overall score of the series on IMDB and other rating systems, despite the controversy of later seasons (which might not seem like much, but it at least explains why none of the aforementioned petitions had any effect).

Hm I'm hungry

Forgets about it

Everything Is Bad. I'm gonna attack someone. Shut up. Die

Hm I'm hungry

[Eats something] oh shit I'm cured

Kitten Encounters Bubbly Water