08/15/15: Screenshots!

Negrek
Website: Thousand Roads
Commenting on: 08-15-15

Yeah, it turned out to be a caching issue. My bad!

I seem to recall Lugia being referred to as the "Guardian of the Sea," which I took to mean that he was generally in charge of stopping tomfoolery like what the birds were getting up to, and that to be referred to as such he must have demonstrated that role at least once or twice in the past. Whether the birds had a run-in with him before, I figured they would understand he was on his way to make them simmer down. But! It's been a long time since I actually watched the movie, my recollection may not be all that accurate, and I'm not feeling inclined to re-watch it at this point. :P

[19/08/2015 23:58:55]

Butterfree
Admin
Website: The Cave of Dragonflies
Commenting on: 08-15-15

Are you sure you're not having some caching issue on your end? The stylesheet floats them, but the screenshots are a new class that I added for this, so if your browser is loading an old version of it, that could explain it.

(Alternatively, the images are only floated if the window is wide enough - if you shrank your browser window in between, that could explain it.)

Fixed the typo, thanks. God, I must have read the thing over at least a dozen times and yet somehow that slipped through. (I also noticed almost immediately after putting it up that I was using "throughout" twice in very close proximity in the "Good" section.)

Eh, what bugs me is mostly that the birds attack Lugia in unison without him attacking them or otherwise getting involved first - they just jump to "Oh, Lugia's here, so let's forget about our conflict and just bring him down, quick!" I guess that could make sense if they have prior history with Lugia and know that he's going to try to interfere somehow, but there's no indication in the movie that the birds fighting like this or Lugia popping out to stop them is something that ever normally happens; there's this one prophecy about it, and that one time it happens Lugia fails pathetically at stopping them by his own power, so if that's the case I can't help but wonder how Lugia ever managed to stop them the previous times. Meanwhile, if they just thought of him as another competitor, it seems odd for them to all turn to singlemindedly attacking only him instead of each other.

[18/08/2015 03:55:56]

Negrek
Website: Thousand Roads
Commenting on: 08-15-15

Am I going nuts, or did the screenshots used to be wrapped with the text, and now they're not? They do look nice, but I think it's a bit awkward to have them all left-justified between the paragraphs as they are now. Also, from the second movie review:

"The legendary birds all frantically attack him for some reason, and he defends manages to dodge and defend himself for a while, but eventually the birds manage to hit, and Lugia falls limply into the water, having accomplished exactly nothing."

Extraneous "defends." It's also a little weird to have the two "manages" so close to one another, and it's a pretty extraneous word anyway. It would work fine as:

"The legendary birds all frantically attack him for some reason, and he dodges and defends himself for a while…"

FWIW, while the birds' aggression and territoriality does get turned on/off in odd places, I never found it strange that they go after Lugia the moment it appears. Depending on how intelligent you want to make them out, I always assumed they either saw Lugia as a potential competitor, another big, powerful pokemon who might be taking advantage of the chaos to try and claim an island or so for itself, or they're aware of Lugia's role as mediator and want him to buzz off so they can finish their fight. It's not that they're aware of the prophecy per se, but rather that they've probably had brushes with Lugia in the past and know that it's going to try to shut the battle down. If they genuinely dislike each other and/or have a strong desire to expand their territory and/or have a strong desire to prove themselves the strongest then I think it's understandable that they want Lugia to butt out so they can keep fighting–not forever, but until things are resolved by one bird winning or some new equilibrium being established.

[18/08/2015 02:50:51]