relo 📉

"My skin didn't char but I was screaming in agony, my tears just sizzled away." Homelander has a few moments that give insight to his relationship with pain. It defined his life and yet he has grown numb to it. He responds with anger in almost every instance of challenge but that's not because of the pain, it's the sheer desire for vengeance on a world that created him to receive and perform every torture and manipulation. Homelander took on three supes at once, got beaten, tossed around and nearly killed. He was inches from losing everything...but he didn't even hint at begging. He simply got more and more furious. Watch his fight with Maeve in s3, she can and does make him bleed but he goes for vengeance and immediately takes her eye. Not because he's so scared of her causing him pain but because he wants her to suffer much like anyone else crossing him as part of getting his pay back. Same for the guys who tortured him when he was a child. Homelander lasered his own arm open and didn't give much of a shit because pain isn't new to him whatsoever. He's an egomaniacal psychopath with a horrific history of intense childhood trauma turning him into a vengeful monster. This ending feels more like a self masturbatory fantasy where Kripke sees his enemies begging to suck his cock while he kills them. It does not however, for many in the audience, feel like the ending for Homelander. A broken monster losing the only avenue of enacting vengeance on the terrible world that he always wanted approval from. I would have perhaps expected him to see red, to enter an impotent rage, unable to do the damage he's desperate to achieve only to reach a despondent end. Knowing he is now incapable of taking that revenge, and has to simply deal with his psychopathy. Ending on a hard fought, bloody fight with Butcher, who would eventually win due to his training but at the very least give us a decent back and forth about how much meaning could be drawn from this fight. Butcher was created by Homelander and there's something to say about both men being exposed nerves turned empty shells, struggling to feel anything by taking even a sliver of vengeance whenever possible. I would picture them both drenched in blood, fighting to the bitter end, devoid of humanity, demanding payment for something they can't even fully rationalise anymore, after having taken so many lives. At the end, they couldn't even follow through on the threat Homelander was warned to be throughout the entire series, stemming from having lost a loving mother and father to protect and raise him as opposed to a sterile laboratory. The countless humiliations and tortures he suffered as a child, created Homelander as we know him. I guess, him being humiliated at the end is a good enough throughline to argue this was somehow worth it? "Evil Superman" was mostly a bad joke and they cashed in a petty ending for social media instead of finding something more in the material. Nothing here has layered thematic value for the history the show presented, your just supposed to vicariously enjoy kicking your own personal monster while he's powerless, enjoy him begging to suck your cock and eat shit while you kill him. It's all a rather long waste of time and can happily sit next to so many other stories that fail to realise their potential in this generation. But oh well, we still have Mandalorian and Grogu I guess...

9/11 was likely not an inside job, says former CIA officer John Kiriakou.

Quite literally the moment most realized this show was gonna be a parody of itself and lose the plot

Horizon 6 is actually insane 😂

i hate to be a contrarian, but it’s genuinely insane how the second game completely ruined everything that’s so interesting about the first assassins creed game. i’ve never cared for this series, but this game is amazing so far.