The Pros and Cons of... The Vampire Diaries

Well, this took longer than usual. When you have kids, some of the more violent stuff has to be put away for a bit. This kind of happened with The Vampire Diaries. I guess Andy wasn’t the only one who doesn’t like Rippers! So, where do I start with this show especially since I watched its spinoffs first? I guess the beginning’s a good point.

The Vampire Diaries was a supernatural soap opera that aired on the CW from 2009 to 2017. Twilight was in its hey-day at this point, so the CW decided to throw their hat in by adapting this young adult series. When it was airing, I only watched one episode, and that was because either Supernatural or some other show came on beforehand. It really wasn’t until last year where we had an inkling of watching the show in full. Besides, we had to see how it all began. We took a break around the third season because of Andy.  We didn’t get back on the Mystic Falls train until this year. We just finished the show recently.

So, the show takes place in the fictional town of Mystic Falls, Virginia. It mainly revolves around a young girl named Elena Gilbert (Nina Dobrev) as she falls for a handsome, generous 160-year-old vampire by the name of Stefan Salvatore (Paul Wesley). Of course, things start to go down into the depths of Hell as Damon Salvatore (Ian Somerhalder), Stefan’s older brother, comes into town. Not only does Damon notice something familiar about Elena, he also has a massive bone to pick with Stefan. Eventually, we find out why Damon hates Stefan as well as why Elena has a stark resemblance to Katerina Patrova, another woman Stefan and Damon loved back in 1866. Of course, a lot of other stuff happens like death, more vampires, witches, werewolves, Klaus mother-loving Mikaelson, doppelgangers, prison worlds, vampire-like witches, bad writing, broken necks, and the Devil… kinda.

5 Pros/4 Cons - Neon Genesis Evangelion

While I’m not the biggest connoisseur of anime, I watch a little here and there. Which reminds me… I gotta get that one post on Digimon Tamers finished. Before I get back to that as well as other things, I thought I would talk about something that most fans would consider to be a gem in anime. Neon Genesis Evangelion was released in 1995. It ran for 26 episodes, had two movies (technically one since the other was a glorified clip show), had an accompanying manga series, and even got revamped in the late 2000’s. Imagine someone mixes in big monster action, psychologically scarred people, and religious iconography. You’d either get this or something Zack Snyder produced… I’m joking about that last one. Even Snyder wouldn’t be this overt!

Where's Film Brain when you need him?

My first exposure to Evangelion was actually through Bennett the Sage’s thrashing of the series and its finale, End of Evangelion. That may be why I never got into it since the stuff looked bonkers at that time. It wasn’t until Netflix released all of the original show re-dubbed that I got remotely interested in it. I also ended up checking out the first manga on Comixology, and that got me even more interested. I ended up going through all 26 episodes, Death and Rebirth, and End of Evangelion over the last few weeks.

5 Pros/4 Cons - The Legend of Korra

Last night, I finally finished The Legend of Korra on Netflix. It took me a while to get through four seasons of it (season 2 was a drag, but I’ll touch on that below), but I finished this race. I never got to watch the show as it aired on Nickelodeon since we didn’t have cable at the time. Yeah, I could’ve found a way to watch it online, but I wasn’t really into getting a lot of streaming services at the time.

For those not in the know, The Legend of Korra was the sequel to Avatar: The Last Airbender. I talked about Avatar here years ago, and my opinion on it hasn’t changed: it’s perfect. There aren’t many American animated series that I can say that about. Can I say the same about Korra? Well, this is 5 PROS/5 CONS, so that’s a no. I do think it was a pretty fun show, though. I know the show was kinda divisive with some fans of the franchise. Avatar: The Last Airbender is a perfect show, so trying to create that again would be tough.

Five Pros/Five Cons - Chris Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy

Next up is something that I’ve been meaning to re-visit here. A few years ago, I briefly talked about the Nolan trilogy right when The Dark Knight Rises was being released. Now that we have had more live action Batmen come and go, I thought it was time to see how this momentous trilogy stacks up now.

I don’t remember when I first heard that new Batman movie was coming. I also didn’t know who Christian Bale was, but I knew he was that jackass racist from the 2000 Shaft movie. Anyway, Batman Begins was released in 2005 and I was really surprised. I even read the novelization and played that PS2 game. Then, The Dark Knight came three years later and set everything ablaze. After that, you knew a sequel had to come. It took four years, but The Dark Knight Rises made its way to theatres in 2012. I’ll have you know that I haven’t seen this movie since its release until now. I know, it’s kinda weird to say that especially since I’ve seen the first two plenty of times. Now that I’ve finished my re-watch, what are the 5 pros and 5 cons of the trilogy? Yeah, it’s got some problems… come at me, Nolanites!

Five Pros/Five Cons - The Star Wars Sequel Trilogy

Well, we’ve come to the end of the year and the decade… whew. While the year (and decade) had it’s share of ups and downs, I can say that “I Maaaaade It!” I’ll do a year-end post later, but I thought I’d touch on the latest topic of these Decembers: Star Wars. Yes, I bet y’all are pretty tired from hearing about the franchise. I honestly thought I’d post more after the Rise of Skywalker, but I kinda didn’t. While there are other things on my mind, I just didn’t know what else to write about. So, I thought about starting a new thing here: 5 likes and 5 dislikes.  Yeah, I know other sites do this, but I wanted to do something new especially when a now-complete trilogy is on my mind:  the Star Wars’ Sequel Trilogy.

I bet we now all have an opinion on the Sequel Trilogy. I’ve touched on the last two movie a bit here, but I haven’t gone into detail about them yet. I think this post should do it! So, the plan is to talk about the six things I liked and the six things I didn’t like about the Sequel Trilogy. If you’re new to Star Wars or this new trilogy, Wikipedia should help you out. You could also watch the Original trilogy since these movies are more or less revamps of those movies… guess what might show up on the Dislike list. Let me get the good stuff out of the way, though.