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blackswaneuroparedux · 4 years ago

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Anonymous asked: I really enjoy your erudite and literary posts about James Bond in your blog very much. Your most recent post about Connery as best cinematic Bond and Dalton as the best literary Bond was brilliant. Although the PC brigade have been inching towards making Bond a woman or even non-white, Ian Fleming’s legacy of a suave but cold hearted English gentleman spy hasn’t been completely trashed. As someone familiar with Fleming literary lore can you also tell me where was James Bond educated? Was it Oxford or Cambridge? I was having a discussion over Zoom with friends and the Oxonians like myself thought it was Oxford because in Casino Royale with Daniel Craig it’s made very plain it was Oxford. Your thoughts?

I appreciate your kind words about my posts on James Bond and his creator Ian Fleming. It’s very hard to ignore the cinematic James Bond because he is very much an icon of our modern culture that needs no translation to transcend across cultures. Alongside Sherlock Holmes, another British literary and cinematic export, the name alone speak for itself.

James Bond appeals to both genders very well.

For the men, Bond dresses well and lives in a care free way. He is both ferociously intelligent and resourceful to get out of any tight corner. He drives incredible cars (from the incredibly stylish Aston Martin DB5 to the incredibly awful AMC Hornet) and uses awesome technology (he is the archetypal boy with toys). He's not afraid to get down in the dirt to fight or engage in lethal gun-play and spectacular car chases. He sleeps with beautiful women, regardless how strong and independent they are (or even lesbian if we’re being honest about Pussy Galore).

For us ladies, while he's not averse to action, he's also a cultured gentleman with suave and sophisticated manners. He's also a generally pretty good looking guy. In many ways, he's a conventional male ideal. So while his conventional good looks and manners aren't for everyone, they hit right the sweet spot of what women like. For everyone, he's a spy! Not at a grey real world nondescript spy, but a cool spy fighting larger than life bad guys whose bland sartorial choices scream mad super villain. It's a very black and white world that James Bond lives in. These bad guys truly are villainous in the desire to re-order humanity, and we need a debonair British MI6 agent to save us from these mad men who want to harm us by laying waste to a bonkers Armageddon.

When all is said and done I think that what makes James Bond so iconic across gender and generations is what Raymond Chandler wrote back in 1959, “every man wants to be James Bond and every woman wants to be with him”.

That sounds about right. Men want to be him, women want to be with him.

I know my first introduction to James Bond was through my grandfather on my Anglo-Scots father’s side who was a dashing gentleman in his day with a long rumoured hush hush work for Her Majesty’s government firmly shoved under the carpet to avoid further discussion that he - being self-effacing and humble - would find embarrassing that would paint him in any heroic light. Years later he had bought his Bahamas beach pile in Harbour Island out in the Caribbean for the family to rest up from cold winters in Britain. Amongst his immense stack of books dotted around the place were (and still are) first editions of Flemings novels which a few were signed by the author as he on occasion met Ian Fleming when he would sail over to Jamaica (they were also OEs which helped). We were not allowed to touch these but instead picked up the dog earred paperbacks that still retained their 60s musty smell.

On my teen sojourns there I would spend time along with my siblings just reading anything we could find to take to the beach or lounge around in a hammock or a chaise longue. That’s how I came to read the Fleming books - really out of necessity to avoid boredom on a beach (which isn’t really my thing as I prefer the rugged outdoors). But I was pleasantly surprised how well written the books were and I actually enjoyed the stories; it was a refreshing change from the more heavy literary tomes I was trying hard to wade through. As for the Bond films, I watched them on film nights at boarding school; I remember having a school girl crush on Connery, Dalton, and Brosnan.

There are many reasons for the successful longevity of James Bond in popular culture and literature but perhaps one of the most pertinent to our discussion is that James Bond is actually a blank slate and therefore malleable as a character and so he can capture the current zeitgeist in time.

This ability of the film to adapt to different generations while remaining relevant is an important factor for its longevity. For example, the early James Bond films were unashamedly sexist with characters using women as objects and discarding them. In the most recent James Bond films, certainly starting with Timothy Dalton, there is a subtle change in attitude with a few chauvinist attitudes.

James Bond today is more serious, seduces fewer women, and is more respectful towards women in his life, including his boss. This shows how the film changes concerning the rise of feminism in the West. For example, Miss Moneypenny used to be a minor character in the very first James Bond films. Today, she is more formidable and doesn’t tolerate sexist remarks.

Perhaps it is precisely because of this blank slate malleability that has allowed different actors that have been cast to play James Bond their own way - rather than get a straight like for like Scottish sounding actor to replacing Connery for example the film producers went across to Moore via Lazenby for example - and letting each actor imbue the super spy with different moods. They each added their own colour from the same broad palate to create different tones. However, each of these characters maintained the essential character that defines James Bond. The actors have broadly stayed true to the inherent mix of character and class associated with James Bond.

For this reason I have some empathy towards your concern that Bond would be held hostage to the current zeitgeist of white washing or genderising everything so as to avoid being a victim of cancel culture. But it’s only empathy because I feel there is a danger of misunderstanding just who James Bond is and what he represents.

What do I mean by this?

I mentioned James Bond is a malleable character to the point he’s presented as a blank slate. This is ‘literally’ true - certainly as far as the books go. Ian Fleming doesn’t tell us much about Bond other than his appearance in his books. Indeed - as I mentioned in my past blog post on Connery as the best Bond - Fleming wasn’t convinced by Connery as Bond. He was reported to have said, ‘I’m looking for Commander Bond and not an overgrown stuntman’ and even dismissed Connery as “that fucking truck driver”. Fleming has good reason to rage. His Bond as written in the books was someone like him.

Like Fleming, Bond was an Eton educated Englishman; an officer and a (rogue) gentleman who was a lieutenant-commander in Naval Intelligence. As Connery began to wow and win over Fleming as Bond, Fleming had a change of heart. Fleming in his later Bond books re-wrote a half-Scottish ancestry for Bond as a tribute to Connery’s portrayal. Bond’s Scottish father was a Royal Navy captain and later an arms dealer, Andrew Bond from Glencoe; and his mother, Monique Delacroix, was Swiss from an industrial family. Bond himself was born in Zurich. Bond isn’t English at all but half-Scots and half-Swiss according to literary canon.

So I mention this because the question who can play James Bond is not as straight forward as it might seem.

But clearly we now have a canon of work, both cinematically and in the literature, where we have base line of who Bond is - or what audiences could possibly suspend their disbelief and go with what is presented to them as James Bond.

I do vaguely remember the hullabaloo and hand wringing around Daniel Craig playing Bond because he didn’t conform to the traditional tall, dark, and handsome trope of James Bond super suave spy. People couldn’t get past his blond hair. Some still can’t. But in my humble opinion he has been an outstanding James Bond and has reimagined Bond in a fresh and exciting way. Craig is in fact mining the Fleming books for his characterisation of Bond as a suave, gritty, humourless killer of the books. Dalton got there before him but that’s a moot point. To our current generation Craig has modernised Bond and dusted 007 down from being a relic of the Cold War to being a relevant 21st Century super spy.

Can anyone play James Bond OO7? Yes and no. It’s arguing that two different things are one and the same. They are not. James Bond is separate from OO7.

Can a woman play Jane Bond or a black woman or non-white man play Black Bond? Respectfully, no. That’s not who James Bond is.

James Bond is a flesh and blood character with a specific genealogical history - whether in the books or on the screen. This Bond has literary back story that is canon and makes him who he is. Bond does transcend time - he can’t be 38 years old for over 75 years in the real world - but at the same time his character only makes sense when rooted in a specific historic context we know existed (and still exists) and not some wishy washy make believe fantasy of British society. He’s an Old Etonian and therefore an upper middle class male product of the British establishment that is identifiable in a very British cultural context.

Jane Bond would have to have gone to Cheltenham Ladies College, Benneden, or Roedean I suppose if we are talking about equivalence - but such girls’ boarding schools were not the breeding ground for future spies (more likely they married them or became trusted secretaries in the intelligence services as well as flower arranging in their Anglican parish church).

I believe they are letting in black pupils on bursaries at Eton these days to be more inclusive but again it’s an an exception not the rule and Eton doesn’t even get public credit for the inclusive work they try to do because it’s not well known.

Moreover we know Bond loses his Scottish-Swiss parents in a skiing accident. I don’t mean to sound racist but I ski a lot in Switzerland and I can say you don’t really find droves of non-white skiers on the slopes of Verbier or Zermatt. Of course there are a few but it’s the exception and not the norm. Again, I’m not trying to be racist but just point out some obvious things when it pertains to the credibility of character that underlines who Bond is. You pull one thread out of the literary biography and the danger is the rest of the tapestry will unravel.

Of course one could try and go for a Black Bond on screen and then hope there is a huge suspension of belief on the part of the audience. But I suspect it’s a bridge too far. It just doesn’t fit. Audiences around the world have an image of who Bond is - British at the very least but also male (damaged and flawed in many ways) and coming from a specific British social class background that serves as an entree to a closed world of English gentleman clubs, Savile Row, English sports cars, and the hushed corridors of Whitehall.

Any woke film maker with an ounce of creative vision and talent and one who is invested in this would be better off creating a new character entirely - with their own specific biography that is both believable and relatable. Can you imagine an American James Bond? What a ghastly thought. Or worse a Canadian one? Canadians are far too nice and far too apologetic to produce a cruel cold eyed killer. But look what clever film makers like Spielberg and Lucas did with Indiana Jones and even later Doug Liman did with Jason Bourne - both fantastic creations that are part of the cultural zeitgeist now.

Or look at Charlize Theron who plays a MI6/CIA/KGB triple agent in Atomic Blonde or Rebecca Ferguson as Ilsa Faust in any of the Mission Impossible movies. I would eagerly watch any movies with these two badass women on the screen. All this talk about making Bond a woman or even coloured is just lazy thinking at best and at worst kow towing to the populist tides of PC brigade.

But I firmly believe one can have a female and a person of colour portraying 007. This is because James Bond and OO7 are two different things entirely. Many mistakenly believe 007 is Bond’s own code name and specific alias to him alone.

007 is a license to kill for a very specialised kind of intelligence officer. Bond has that privilege for as long as he serves at the service of Her Majesty’s pleasure. His 007 license can be revoked - and it has been in the past Bond films - and he’s back to being a just another desk jockey civil servant in Whitehall. So my point is OO7 is not sacred to Bond’s identity. Bond could continue to be Bond even if M took away his 007 license to kill.

The origins of the Double O title may date to Fleming's wartime service in Naval Intelligence. According to World War Two historian Damien Lewis in his book Churchill's Secret Warriors, agents of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) were given a “0” prefix when they became "zero-rated" upon completion of training in how to kill. As part of his role as assistant to the head of naval intelligence, Rear Admiral John Godfrey (himself the inspiration for M), Fleming acted as liaison to the SOE.

In the novel Moonraker it’s established that the section routinely has three agents concurrently; the film series, beginning with Thunderball, establishes the number of OO agents at a minimum of 9. Fleming himself only mentions five OO agents in all. According to Moonraker, James Bond is the most senior of three OO agents; the two others were OO8 and OO11. The three men share an office and a secretary named Loelia Ponsonby. Later novels feature two more OO agents; OO9 is mentioned in Thunderball and OO6 is mentioned in On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

Other authors have elaborated and expanded upon the OO agents. While they presumably have been sent on dangerous missions as Bond has, little has been revealed about most of them. Several have been named, both by Fleming and other authors, along with passing references to their service records, which suggest that agents are largely recruited (as Bond was) from the British military's special forces.

Interestingly, In the novel You Only Live Twice, Bond was transferred into another branch and given the number 7777, suggesting there was no active agent 007 in that time; he is later reinstated as 007 in the novel The Man with the Golden Gun. As an aside, in Fleming's Moonraker, OO agents face mandatory retirement at 45 years old. However Sebastian Faulks's Devil May Care (an authorised Bond adventure from the Fleming estate and therefore arguably could be considered canon) features M giving Bond a choice of when to retire - which explains why Roger Moore (God bless) went past his sell by date.

In the films the OO section is a discrete area of MI6, whose agents report directly to M, and tend to be sent on special assignments and troubleshooting missions, often involving rogue agents (from Britain or other countries) or situations where an "ordinary" intelligence operation uncovers or reveals terrorist or criminal activity too sensitive to be dealt with using ordinary procedural or legal measures, and where the aforementioned discretionary "licence to kill" is deemed necessary or useful in rectifying the situation.

The World is Not Enough introduces a special insignia for the 00 Section. Bond's fellow OO agents appear receiving briefings in Thunderball and The World Is Not Enough. The latter film shows a woman in one of the 00 chairs. In Thunderball, there are nine chairs for the OO agents; Moneypenny says every 00 agent in Europe has been recalled, not every OO agent in the world. Behind the scenes photos of the film reveal that one of the agents in the chairs is female as well. As with the books, other writers have elaborated and expanded upon the OO agents in the films and in other media.

In GoldenEye, 006 is an alias for Alec Trevelyan; as of 2019, Trevelyan is the only OO agent other than Bond to play a major role in an EON Productions film, with all other appearances either being brief or dialogue references only.

In Casino Royale with Daniel Craig’s first outing as Bond, we see in the introduction the tense exchange between Bond and Dryden, a section chief whom Bond has been sent to kill for selling secrets.

James Bond: M really doesn't mind you earning a little money on the side, Dryden. She'd just prefer it if it wasn't selling secrets. Dryden: If the theatrics are supposed to scare me, you have the wrong man Bond. If M was so sure I was bent...she'd have sent a Double-O. Benefits of being Section Chief...I would know of anyone being promoted to Double-O status, wouldn't I? Your file shows no kills...and it takes - James Bond: - two. (flashback of Bond fighting Dryden's contact in a bathroom.)

The OO is just a coveted position and nothing to do with who occupies it. Ito use a topical comparative example it’s like a football team in which a new star player would be given an ex-player’s shirt number e.g. Messi wears Number 10 for Argentina which is heavily identified with the late great Maradona. So conceivably there would be no problem having a woman or anyone else play 007. I think it would be an interesting creative choice to have a woman or someone else play OO7 and Bond is out of the service and yet he has to work together with this new OO7 - the creative tension would be a refreshing twist on the canon.

Your question about James Bond’s Oxford or Cambridge education is more easier to answer.

It really depends again which Bond one is talking about. The literary James Bond or the cinematic Bond.

In the Fleming books, James Bond’s didn’t go to Oxford or Cambridge or any of the other great universities of Britain. In the books Bond’s education is not gone into much detail. We know he was raised overseas until he was orphaned at the age of 11 when his parents died in a mountaineering accident near Chamonix in the Alps. He is home schooled for a time by an aunt, Charmain Bond, in the English village of Pett Bottom before being packed off to boarding school at Eton around 12 years old. Bond doesn’t stay long as he gets expelled for playing around with a maid. He is then sent to his father’s boarding school in Scotland, Fettes College.

Bond is then briefly attends the University of Geneva - as Ian Fleming did - before being taught to ski in Kitzbühel. In 1941 Bond joins a branch of what was to become the Ministry of Defence and becomes a lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, ending the war as a commander. Bond applies to M for a position within the "Secret Service", part of the HM Civil Service, and rises to the rank of principal officer. And that’s it.

In the cinematic Bond universe things get more complicated and even contentious as you alluded to in your question. It’s never made quite clear which of the two - Oxford or Cambridge - Bond attended because it depends on how much weight you attach to the lines being spoken in each of the films where it is raised.

In Tomorrow Never Dies, Bond is up at Oxford (New College to be exact since his Aston Martin DB5 was parked in the courtyard at the entrance). He is seen bedding a sexy Danish professor, Inga Bergstrom, to brush up on his Danish (to which Moneypenny on the phone retorts ‘You always were a cunning linguist’). But it’s definitely doesn’t mean Bond studied there as an undergraduate.

Casino Royale is the film many think yes, James Bond went to Oxford because it is mentioned by Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) as she sizes up Daniel Craig’s Bond on the train. Here is the full quote as said by Vesper Lynd, “All right... by the cut of your suit, you went to Oxford or wherever. Naturally you think human beings dress like that. But you wear it with such disdain, my guess is you didn't come from money, and your school friends never let you forget it. Which means you were at that school by the grace of someone else's charity - hence that chip on your shoulder. And since your first thought about me ran to "orphan," that's what I'd say you are.”

The thing to note is that it’s Vesper Lynd taunting Bond and even then she takes a wide stab by saying ‘Oxford or wherever’ because she doesn’t really know and Bond doesn’t oblige her with an answer.

That whole scene struck me as strange because she’s guessing by the cut of the suit it must be Oxford (or Cambridge). Bond is wearing an Italian suit (Brioni to be specific) and not and English Savile Row one that presumably someone of Bond’s taste and background would be sporting.

A more plausible answer if we are going by the cinematic Bond universe is Cambridge. Indeed it is stated explicitly by Bond himself. Can you guess?

You Only Live Twice which is has the distinction of being the only Bond film (as far as I can tell) from being set in just one country - Japan.

You remember the scene. Lieutenant commander James Bond has just had a briefing with M on board a submarine and is naturally flirting with Moneypenny on his way out. Moneypenny playfully tosses him a Japanese phrase book, saying he might need it.

“You forget,” Bond responds with an expression just short of a smirk as he tosses it back to her, “I took a first in oriental languages at Cambridge.”

So it seems James Bond is a Cambridge man.

A first means - as any British university student would know - first class honours. It’s the highest classification grade one can get in their undergraduate degree ie a ‘first’. Although at Cambridge, like Oxford, you can also get a double first in the part I and part II of the Tripos. Both universities also award first-class honours with distinction, informally known as a ‘Starred First’ (Cambridge) or a ‘Congratulatory First’ (Oxford).

Another oddity is he says ‘oriental languages’ when one got a degree in ‘oriental studies’ at the Oriental Faculty at Cambridge. That is until 2007 when Cambridge bowed to public and student pressure and chose to drop its Oriental Faculty label and instead adopted the name the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. Oxford still hangs on to its name the Faculty of Oriental Studies.

My only reservation about crowing over an Oxonian is how truthful was Bond being with Moneypenny in this scene?

Is this line meant to be taken seriously or ironically? Most people seem to take it seriously, despite much of Connery's dialogue being obviously ironic and playful. Certainly, Bond is shown to have never been to Japan before and is incapable of saying anything in Japanese other than the odd "sayonara" and "arigato." But then again Bond does know the correct temperature sake is meant to be served at. So there’s that.

Or it could be Bond was speaking a half-truth. I know speaking from experience as someone who very nearly read asian languages instead of my eventual choice of Classics that ‘Oriental languages’ at the ex-Oriental faculty in Cambridge can mean many other languages e.g. Sanskrit, Hindi, Farsi, Hebrew, Arabic as well as Korean, Japanese and Chinese. It opens up so many other delicious possibilities for Bond. If he read Arabic then perhaps he’s being deeply ironic with Moneypenny (after all she would have drooled over read his MI6 personnel file).

If you think I’m losing my mind then ponder on the fact it was Roald Dahl who penned the screenplay of You Only Live Twice. Dahl was not above snark. Indeed pretty sure he would have got a starred first in snark at any university.

Of course the most obvious explanation is that it’s plot armour as a way for Bond to just get on with the story by suspending the audience belief. Why wouldn’t Bond know Japanese? He seems to know everything else imaginable.

However if it ever was it’s now become canon as EON - the production company behind the Bond films - have stated officially for the fandom that Bond’s official bio has it that he went to Eton and Cambridge, where he got a first in oriental languages. So that seems settled then.

In hindsight it makes perfect sense that Bond went to Cambridge since historically Cambridge has provided the bulk of the spies not just for Her Majesty’s service but also for the other side, the Russians - the so-called Cambridge Spies of Philby, Maclean, Burgess, Blunt, and Cairncross, and a host of other traitors. We seem to be an equal opportunities employment service.

I’m sorry to disappoint you and other Oxonians that despite what you might think James Bond didn’t attend Oxford. Believe me as a Cantabrigian it gives me no pleasure to say this…..too much.

Thanks for your question.

#ask #question #james bond #bond #film #cinema #ian fleming #oxford #cambridge #oxbridge #university #education #cancel culture #culture #society #britain #british #personal

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kingstylesdaily · 4 years ago

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Why Conservatives Are So Threatened by Harry Styles in a Dress

Unlike in previous generations, men in skirts and dresses aren’t intended as a joke, to shock, or to titillate — it’s meant to be sexy

There’s a TikTok video of a young man with tousled dark hair wearing eyeliner and a sweatshirt, throwing a smoldering gaze to the camera as Ariana Grande’s “Positions” plays; the camera then cuts to the boy in a full-blown French maid costume — white cap, dainty gloves, apron, and all. In another video, a girl with short hair and a nose ring rests between the legs of her boyfriend in a French maid costume, his hairy legs peeking out beneath frilly white lace, which transitions into them switching positions and outfits. Both of these videos have a combined more than 12 million views.

A decade ago, when social media was in its infancy (and when this author was around the age of the kids featured in these homemade videos), the image of a young, masculine-presenting person in a dress would’ve been seen as a punchline in itself, like a gag from a Seann William Scott vehicle. With the French maid trend on TikTok, however, the effect is quite different. The subversion of gender tropes is the point, but it’s not intended to be shocking or even mildly amusing: It’s intended to be sexy.

One wonders what conservatives would make of the TikTok French maid trend in light of the uproar over last month’s Vogue cover shoot featuring Harry Styles, who appeared in a lace-trimmed dress and tuxedo jacket designed by Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele. Almost immediately, professional right-wing trolls started frothing at the mouth. On Twitter, Candace Owens issued a call for society to “bring back manly men” and Ben Shapiro (who previously went viral for expressing his consternation about the female sexual empowerment anthem “WAP”) tweeted, “Anyone who pretends that it is not a referendum on masculinity for men to don floofy dresses is treating you as a full-on idiot.” In response to the furor, on Wednesday Styles reemerged on the cover of Variety in a pleat hem suit eating a banana, posting the photo on Instagram with the caption, “Bring back manly men.” In the story he says: “To not wear [something] because it’s females’ clothing, you shut out a whole world of great clothes. And I think what’s exciting about right now is you can wear what you like. It doesn’t have to be X or Y. Those lines are becoming more and more blurred.”

Given that Styles has long publicly embraced gender fluidity, and that the Vogue cover marked the first time a male celebrity had appeared solo on the cover of that publication, the photo shoot was clearly intended as a nod to that milestone. There’s also a long and storied history of rockers like Kurt Cobain and David Bowie donning dresses, with the latter looking ethereal in paisley on the cover of the single for “The Man Who Sold the World.” The Styles Vogue shoot appears to be an homage to those musicians (indeed, in the accompanying profile, Styles explicitly calls out Bowie and the similarly androgynous Prince as influences), not as a provocation. But right-wing commentators immediately interpreted it as such, precisely because it was framed as such a non-issue. Like the TikTok maid videos, the point of the cover wasn’t to shock or to titillate. The goal of the shoot wasn’t any different than that featuring a female model in a similar garment: to show a gorgeous person in a gorgeous dress, looking gorgeous. What really incensed conservative commenters like Owens and Shapiro was precisely how mundane the image was supposed to be.

The Gen Z-ers who make up Styles’ fan base display demonstrably more progressive attitudes toward gender expression than previous generations: they are more likely to know someone who uses gender-neutral pronouns or rejects the binary, or to self-identify as nonbinary themselves. This attitude is reflected in the masculine-presenting men elevated by zoomers: male e-boys on TikTok regularly don nail polish and eyeliner, and Timothée Chalamet, with his razor-sharp cheekbones, porcelain skin, and Victorian ghost child features, is one of the most prominent sex symbols. While none of this is to say that the binary has completely collapsed, and transgender, and gender nonconforming teens still suffer from depression at higher rates than their cisgender counterparts, it is to say that when it comes to gender roles, the ground is rapidly changing beneath our feet. But rather than embracing a more flexible and inclusive approach toward masculinity, conservatives like Shapiro and Owens must perform outrage — if not just to preserve their more traditionalist audiences, but to preserve the patriarchal status quo that ensures they will have such audiences to begin with. Their followers, with their feverish fantasies about drag queen story hours indoctrinating their children and kombucha turning their teens queer, are so terrified of the perceived boundaries that surround gender and sexuality crumbling that they are primed to see boogeymen in every closet and in every corner, and Shapiro and Owens are all-too-happy to capitalize on such fears.

In truth, there is nothing remotely threatening to anyone about Harry Styles in a dress. But in order to maintain their grip on institutional power, Shapiro and Owens must at least feign that there is — even if the truth is that Harry Styles in a dress is more super-duper hot than anything else.

via rollingstone.com

#kingstylesdaily #Harry Styles #hs: article #rolling stone #December 2020

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destielotp · 4 years ago

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Incoming long post of my (unpopular) thoughts on the spn prequel: I’ll start with the bad Destiel will not be canon: I love that all of you are still optimistic about canon Destiel, but I am not. Anything that Jensen has ever said has been against Destiel and against canon bi-Dean. I don’t like it but it is what it is. Plus all the negative stuff he’s said about Dean’s sexuality never sat right with me. There’s also no evidence Misha/Cas will be involved and I’m under the impression he didn’t know about the show either until Jensen’s tweet. I refuse to let myself have hope to be destroyed again. Target fan base: At first I thought he was trying to appeal to J2 stans until everything that has transpired since. He’s alienated a lot of the J2/Wincest fans because of Jared’s reaction and I’m not sure all of us Destiel fans (I’m not) are really prepared to watch this heterosexual “love story” only to be let down again, which leads me to believe his target audience will be the straight white males (Kripke’s original target audience). It sucks, but that’s how it seems to me. Things I’m not excited about: The story being about John and Mary Winchester. I honestly can’t see any way this story is going to work without completely destroying canon and disregarding John’s abuse. Jensen’s tweet today made me feel a little better, but I am still not hopeful this is going to translate well. First off, these two characters are not even that well liked within the fandom. His first tweet the article drew concerns about canon and John’s abuse which is reassuring. However, the second tweet article describes it as “the epic, untold love story of how John met Mary, and how they put it all on the line to not only save their love, but the entire world.” I’m sorry but that sounds dumb as fuck. You know whose love did save the world? CASTIEL’S LOVE FOR DEAN, but we’re not allowed to acknowledge that for (omitted) reasons. John’s abuse: Some are hopeful after Jensen’s tweet that his abuse won’t be swept under the rug, but I’m not so sure. The last episode with John was Lebanon which retcon a lot of his abuse and tried to show him in this different light as a better father. They (lightly) touched on his abuse but nowhere near where it should’ve been discussed. While this episode is highly rated I was never a fan as John feels completely out of character. As someone who had a father with a lot of similarities to John I don’t think I can subject myself to an entire show about him. With Jensen’s recent tweet it seems he is (somewhat) aware and will touch on this but is it going to be mostly washed over like in Lebanon? If so, I’m 100% not interested. It’s one thing to show a character like John that can be more than one dimensional, but to have him as the main hero? He has done some good things and I do think he cares about his sons (despite his abuse), but this ain’t it. Even if this is shown properly I don’t think it can ever work as a main character especially one who is going to be made out as the hero. We’re supposed to like and identify with the main characters which will be impossible for me and many others who had abusive parents. His character could potentially work better as a background character but that won’t be the case even if they decide to make Mary the true main character/hero. The only people who seem to disregard John’s abuse are a few J2 stans and the white het. males further showing this is probably their target audience. Things I’m excited about: Robbie Thompson as show runner. After the shit show of a finale I told myself I wouldn’t watch any prequels/sequels on spn unless Eric Kripke, Robbie Thompson or Ben Edlund were the show runners. I just never thought it would be a prequel about John. Despite what I’ve said about this prequel show I do think Robbie is a phenomenal writer with wonderful (mostly in-canon) ideas and has a good chance to do this show justice. He has given us some amazing characters (Charlie, Eileen just to name a few) and some amazing pro-bi/Destiel scenes. He’s also given us wonderful

Winchester focused episodes such as the beloved episodes Baby and Fan Fiction without disregarding found family. A scene was deleted in fan fiction specifically talking about found family and I doubt it was Robbie’s idea to delete it. Other personal favorite episodes of his: The Girl with the Dungeon and Dragons Tattoo, LARP and the Real Girl, Time After Time, Goodbye Stranger, First Born, Book of the Damned, Angel Heart, Into the Mystic, Safe House, Don’t Call Me Shurley. If anyone is interested here is a complete list of all his episodes - 7x06 7x12 7x20 8x04 8x11 8x17 8x20 9x04 9x11 9x18 10x05 10x11 10x18 10x20 11x04 11x11 11x16 11x20 I’m also excited for having Dean Winchester back even if we never get to see his face. While I’m curious to know what brings about his narration (who he is narrating to) I still don’t think it will have anything to do with Cas. Will I watch this show: Honestly, I don’t know yet. I want to support Jensen (and Danneel) and Robbie but I really need more information on how this story is actually going to work. Jensen still doesn’t seem very aware how the finale affected some fans. It wasn’t about canon Destiel, it was about the erasure of Cas after he had finally come out and told Dean he loved him. His death was problematic, but in a show like spn it wasn’t that odd to think he would come back. The confession should have been addressed – even if it wasn’t at the very least they shouldn’t have tried to completely erase his character and act like no one care about him. I know Jensen has said more positive things about the finale recently but it was pretty clear to me in the beginning he was not happy about it. Unfortunately I don’t think it had anything to do with Cas. I think Jensen was only upset about Dean’s ending (one dimensional pie lover, death). Basing the story off John and Mary is probably the least interesting story they could give me but Jensen seems dead set on this Winchester family show rather than the found family motto that this show used to have. Hoping Jensen and Danneel can prove me wrong.

#spn prequel #spn #jensen ackles #dean winchester #castiel #destiel #john winchester #mary winchester

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spaceorphan18 · 4 years ago

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99 Perspectives on a Single Love Story #31

A/N: The Story of Kurt and Blaine told through the eyes of everyone else but them. Each chapter is a different perspective in the ongoing tale of their love story.

I started something like this a while back - and now I’m taking the idea and really running with it. Each chapter is a ficlet of a different character at a different point in Kurt and Blaine’s life - documenting their love story. This starts in Audition, and each chapter will be paired with a different episode until reaching Dreams Come True.

[Ao3]

***

Don Barowski (Extraordinary Merry Christmas)

PBS Station Manager Don Barowski sits in his office with McKinley High student Artie Abrams. Artie has brought in a demo of the Christmas special he and the McKinley High Glee Club are preparing to do. Baroski couldn’t be happier. Baroski has always been a choir aficionado and after seeing the glee club in action, he hadn’t hesitated to call their director to see if they would be free for the open slot. Thank god they were! Not only is his butt saved with his higher-ups, but he gets to enjoy good Christmas music. What could possibly be better?

Of course, he has asked Artie in to review his vision. While Barowski trusts handing the reins over to a high school student, his bosses aren’t as confident, and one stipulation they have is to go over Artie’s plan before they start setting up for the special. So, Artie has brought in a tape of their rehearsal to show off his vision. Barowski wiggles in his seat, hand clutching the remote excitedly as he pushes play.

What he sees isn’t exactly what he expects, as the two kids on screen start in on a rendition of Let It Snow. The music is fine, but the style is very old-timey, which is a bit jarring as they are modern kids acting it out in their choir room. Barowski pushes pause, to look over to a thoughtful Artie.

“You mind explaining it a bit better for me,” Barowski asks. “I’m not sure I’m getting it.”

“That’s because it’s not staged right yet,” Artie assures him. “Think black and white, Judy Garland and those specials of the 60s. I’m wanting to bring it back old school. Really old school. A homage to the classic Christmas specials of an age long past.”

Hey now, Barowski thinks. That was his childhood. Kids these days. “So, is one of these kids supposed to be Judy Garland?” he asks, using the remote to point at the TV screen.

Artie lets out a laugh. “Oh, not exactly. That’s just Kurt hamming it up. He does do a fantastic Judy. I saw him do a really good Liza once, too.” He tilts his head thinking about it.

“Oh, it’s two boys?” Barowski says. He has to admit, the one with the high voice, and strange, half-cut women’s sweater had confused him. “Is he one of those trangender folk? I mean, don’t get me wrong -- I am all in support of that. My nei-nephew, Alex, says that he is a transgender male. Delightful young person. I do what I can to support him.”

Artie’s jaw drops slightly, his eyes bulging. Oh no, did he say something wrong? He tries to be up on the lingo, but admittedly, he’s not always good with it.

“No,” Artie says slowly.

“Oh, well, that one boy he looks, oh what’s the word? Androgynous. Not that I care. I was around in the 80s. Annie Lennox, Boy George, even David Bowie. They were all androgynous back then. But Don Barowski does not care what you look like, as long as you’re making good music,” Barowski gives a grin to Artie.

Artie snorts into his hand. “Well, other than his voice and his unique sense of style. Kurt definitely identifies as a man. Don’t worry, once we get the costumes on them, you’ll see that they’re most obviously a family friendly gay couple. And I think it’s ingenious of myself to cast a young, gay couple at the center of this production. Completely progressive.”

Barowski furrows his brow in confusion. “But they said they were roommates.”

“Well, yes, that’s the joke,” Artie explains. “Back in the 60s, being roommates was code for being gay.”

“But we’re no longer in the 60s. Can’t they just be a couple?” Barowski asks. “PBS would not mind, and I think it sends a good message to our, shall I say, rather conservative audience that these kids are okay.”

“Let’s just watch the tape,” Artie says, in a huff, grabbing the remote, pushing play.

A couple of young girls join the two boys. “So, are they a lesbian couple who are roommates, too?” Barowski asks.

“No,” Artie says sharply.

“But an interracial lesbian couple would be even more progressive.”

“The lesbians are later.”

“Where does the Wookie fit in?”

#s.o. writes things #99 perspectives #inspired by the true story that I spent most of the pilot trying to figure out if Kurt's gender #the first time I watched

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innuendostudios · 5 years ago

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Here’s How to Radicalize a Normie, a video essay on how the Alt-Right and their fellow travelers recruit. Clocking in at 41 minutes, 6756 words, 633 individual drawings, and 27 sources (including three full books), it is by far the longest and most heavily-researched video in The Alt-Right Playbook. I am very tired.

It took so long to put this behemoth together that my Patreon started to dip. So, maybe a little more than usual, if you want to keep seeing videos like these, please consider backing me on Patreon.

Transcript below the cut.

Say, for the sake of argument, your friend Gabe is starting to worry you.

Gabe’s always been just, you know, a regular guy. Not very political. He likes video games, sci-fi, comics, Star Wars, and anime. White guy shit. The only offbeat thing about him is you suspect there’s like a 20% chance he’s a furry. For all intents and purposes, Gabe is a normie.

But recently Gabe’s been spending a lot of time on some radically conservative forums, and listening to radically conservative podcasts, and picking some radically conservative arguments with you and your friends. You never would have expected this, not from Gabe, and, given the speed it’s happened, it’s worrying to think where it might be headed.

How have the Alt-Right gotten their hooks into your friend?

If you’ve ever known a Gabe, this video is for you. Here’s How to Radicalize a Normie.

Step 1: Identify the Audience

What you need to know before we begin is: around 2013, the Nazis went online.

Hate groups in the US, as tracked by the Southern Poverty Law Center, had been growing in number since the noughts, but, between 2012 and 2014, they dropped by almost a quarter. Patriot groups dropped by over a third. However, hate crimes stayed about the same. Radical conservatism was not shrinking, but decentralizing. Still radical, still often violent, but now full of white nationalist nomads unlikely to join a formal organization.

This didn’t make them harmless. What it did was protect their asses from the typical hate group cycle: getting the public’s attention, making allies in conservative media, swelling their numbers, and then eventually disgracing themselves with failures, infighting, and, often enough, members committing horrific acts of violence, which come with social and sometimes legal consequences for all the other members.

So the Alt-Right and their fellow travelers these days don’t so much have members. They have hashtags, followers, viewers, and subscribers. This insulates them from their own audience. If Gabe, as a member of that audience, were to go out and commit a crime on their behalf, there’d be little doubt they had a hand in radicalizing him, but it’d be very hard to claim they told him to do it. On some of these sites, where Gabe spends hours and hours of his day, he’s never created an account or left a comment; the people radicalizing him don’t even know he’s there.

This distributed nature is what makes the Alt-Right, and the movements connected to it, unique. (You may remember a notable proof-of-concept for this strategy.) Doing almost everything online has, as compared with traditional hate movements, dramatically increased their reach and inoculated them from consequence. The trade-off, as we will see, is a lack of control.

And so we come to Gabe.

Gabe exists at the intersection of the kinds of people the Alt-Right is looking for - straight white cis men who feel emasculated by modern society, primarily, though they do make exceptions - and the kinds of people who are vulnerable to recruitment. Gabe fits the first profile in that he got bullied in high school, and often feels he has to hide his nerdy side for fear of getting ridiculed. The Alt-Right also has success with men who can’t get laid or recently got divorced or feel anxious about an influx of non-white people in their community. These things can make one feel like less than the confident white man they’re “supposed” to be. And it’s the closest they will ever come to being minoritized.

Regarding the second profile, it’s important to know that Gabe is not categorically different from you or me. He’s a cishet white dude - his problems are not unique. There isn’t a ton of research into the demography of the Alt-Right, but there may be a higher-than-average chance Gabe has a history of being abused or comes from a broken home. You don’t know if it’s true of Gabe, he’s never said. But most abuse survivors don’t become Nazis. The things that make people like Gabe recruitable tend to be situational: it happens often during periods of transition, as dramatic as the death of a loved or as benign as moving to a new city. Things that make people ask big life questions. Gabe has concerns like economic precarity, not knowing his place in a changing world, stressful working conditions. In other words, Gabe is suffering under late capitalism, same as everyone, and it’s entirely plausible he could have gone down the path to becoming a Leftist.

This is not to make an “economic anxiety” argument: the animating force of the Far Right is and always has been bigotry. But the Alt-Right targets Gabe by treating his “economic anxiety” as one of many things bigotry can be sold as a solution to. It is their aim that, when dissatisfied white men go looking for answers, they find the Alt-Right before they find us.

Step Two: Establish a Community

Were Gabe pledging an old-school hate movement, there would probably be a recruiter to usher him into an existing community. But that’s the kind of formalized interaction modern extremists try to avoid. Online extremism has many points of entry, and everybody’s journey is unique, so rather than be comprehensive we will focus on what are, in my estimation, the two most common pathways: the Far Right creates a community Gabe is likely to stumble into, or infiltrates a community Gabe is already in.

The stumble-upon method has two main branches, one of which is just “Gabe ends up on a chan board,” which we’ve already done a video about. The other is kind of the polar opposite of 4chan’s cult of anonymity: Gabe ends up in the fandom of a Far Right thought leader.

These folks are charismatic media personalities (that’s charismatic according to Gabe’s tastes, not ours; I don’t understand it, either). These personalities may gain traction on any number of platforms, from podcasts to reportage to blogging, though the most effective platform for redpilling is, and yes I am biting the hand that feeds me, YouTube. They may get Gabe’s attention through fairly standard means, like talking about or even generating controversy to get themselves trending, while some of the more committed will employ dubious SEO tactics like clickbait, google bombing, and data voids (just pause for definitions, we don’t have time).

What they tend to have in common, especially the most accessible ones, is that they don’t present themselves as entry points to the radical Right. In fact, many did not set out to be Far Right thought leaders, and may not think of themselves as such (though they are often selling products, of which the Alt-Right are among their biggest purchasers, and it’s not like they’re turning the money away). How they present is the same way anyone presents who wants to be successful on social media: accessible, approachable, authentic. The face-to-face relationship a budding extremist forms with their recruiter or the leader of their hate group’s local chapter are here folded into one parasocial relationship with a complete stranger.

Why this person appeals to Gabe is they’re not selling politics as politics, but conservatism as a kind of lifestyle brand. They rely heavily on criticizing or ridiculing the Left: feminists are oversensitive, Black people unintelligent, queer folks doomed to loneliness, and trans people insane; I dunno if it’s a coincidence that these are all things Gabe thinks about himself in his low moments. By contrast, they don’t sell conservatism as having sounder policies or a more coherent moral framework, but that abandoning progressive principles and embracing conservative ones will make Gabe happier. Remember, Gabe isn’t looking for white nationalism or misogyny, what he wants is the cure to soul-sickness, and these friendly micro-celebs are here to offer a shot of life advice with politics as the chaser. It is extremely important that politics be presented as a set of affects, not a set of beliefs.

The second pathway is infiltration, which is its own beast. Media personalities sometimes become gateways to the Right almost by accident: they do something edgy, a part of their audience reacts positively, and, facing no real consequence, they do it more; this leads to further positive reinforcement from conservative fans, the rest of the audience acclimates, and the cycle repeats, the personality pushing the envelope further and further based on what flies with their increasingly conservative audience. In this way, they become a right-wing figure by both radicalizing and being radicalized by their audience.

Infiltration is deliberate.

The Far Right will reliably target any community that has 1) a large, white, male population, 2) whose niche interests allow them to feel vaguely marginalized, and 3) who are not used to progressive critique of said interests. This isn’t to say progressive critique doesn’t exist, or hasn’t been baked into the property from the beginning, but that it has been, so far, easy for white guys to ignore. As such, progressives within that community probably don’t talk politics much, and women and minorities are perfectly welcome to post, same as anyone, but just, you know, don’t, don’t make identity politics, you know, like, a thing.

Given Gabe’s proclivities, he’s probably already in a number of fan communities where he can geek out and not get teased. And this is where the Far Right will go looking for him

Communities are at their most vulnerable to infiltration at times of political discord. This can happen naturally - say, a new property in the fandom has a Black protagonist - or it can be provoked - say, a bunch of channers join the forum and say provocative things about race to get people arguing - or both. Left to its own devices, the community might sort out its differences and maybe even come out more progressive than they started. But, with the right pressure applied in the right moment, these communities can devolve into arguments about the need to remove a nebulously-defined “politics” from the conversation.

The adage about bros on the internet is “‘political’ means anything I disagree with,” but it’d be more accurate to say, here, “‘political’ means anything on which the community disagrees.” For instance, “Nazis are bad” is an apolitical statement because everyone in the community agrees. It’s common sense, and therefore neutral. But, paradoxically, “Nazis are good” is also apolitical; because “Nazis are bad” is the consensus, “Nazis are good” must be just an edgy joke, and, even if not, the community already believes the opposite, so the statement is harmless. Tolerable. However, “feminism is good” is a political statement, because the community hasn’t reached consensus. It is debatable, and therefore political, and you should stop talking about it. And making political arguments, no matter how rational, is having an agenda, and having an agenda is ruining the community.

(Now, it is curious how the things that provoke the most disagreement tend to be whichever ones make white dudes uncomfortable. One of life’s great, unanswerable mysteries.)

You can gather where this is going: a community that doesn’t tolerate progressivism but does tolerate Nazism is going to start collecting Nazis, Nazis whose goal is to drive a wedge between the community and the Left. Once the Left acknowledges, “Hey, your community’s developing a Nazi problem,” the Nazis - who are, remember, trusted, apolitical members of the community who might just be kidding about all the Nazi shit - say, “Did you hear that, guys?! Those cultural Marxists just called all of us Nazis!” Wedge. Similarly, any community members who say, “but Nazis though” are framed as infiltrators pushing an agenda, even if they’ve been there longer than the Nazis have. They get the wedge, too.

This is how fandoms radicalize. They are built as - yeah, I’ll say it - safe spaces for nerds, weebs, and furries, and are told that the Left is a threat to their safety. Given a choice between leaving a community that has mattered to him for years and simply adjusting to the community’s shifting politics, the assumption is that Gabe will stay. This assumption is right often enough that a lot of fandoms have been colonized.

What is true of both of these methods - Gabe finding the Right or the Right finding him - is that Gabe does not come nor stay for the ideology. He’s here for the community, the sense of belonging, of being with his people, of having his fears validated and his enjoyment shared. The ideology is simply the price of admission.

Step Three: Isolate

There is a vast, interconnected network of Far Right communities out there, and Gabe is, at this point, only on the periphery. In order to keep him in, they need to disrupt his relationships to other communities, and become, more and more, his primary online social space. Having made this space hostile to the Left, they now seek to break his connections to progressives elsewhere in his life.

This is hard to do online. The whole appeal of moving radicalism to the internet is that your away-from-keyboard life doesn’t have to change. You are crypto the moment you log off. Some thought leaders will encourage their audience to cut ties with Family of Origin, or “deFOO,” but, even then, they can’t monitor whether the audience has actually done it the way an in-person movement could. And so alienating Gabe from the Left is less controlled, and, consequently, may be less total. How much Gabe isolates is up to him.

But the vast majority of Far Right media presumes an alienation from the Left. Part of conservative bloggers and YouTubers making the Left look pathetic is doing a lot take-downs and responses. This is a constant repetition of the Left’s arguments for the purpose of mockery, and, for Gabe, it starts to replace any engagement with progressive media directly. He soon knows the Left only through caricature. It also trains him, if he does directly engage, to approach the Left with the same combative stance as his role models. (For reference, see my comment section.) And this is only if he doesn’t partake in one of the many active boycotts of “SJW media.”

In addition to mocking the Left’s arguments, they also, curiously, appropriate them. This is one part sanitization: liberal centrism is more socially acceptable; indeed, many figures on the outer layers think of themselves as moderates, even as they serve as gateways to radicalism. But, also, many of Gabe’s problems could be addressed by progressive leftism, so they sell him racist, sexist versions of it. Yes, there is a problem with workers being underpaid and overextended, but the solution isn’t unions, it’s deporting immigrants; yes, there is a chronic loneliness and anger to being a man in the modern age, but it’s not because of the toxic masculine expectations placed on you by the patriarchy, it’s women being slutty; yes, wealth disparity does mean a tiny percentage of elites have more influence over culture and politics than the rest of us combined, but the problem isn’t capitalism, it’s the Jews. And it’s hard for Gabe to reject these ideas without, in the process, rejecting the progressive ideas they’re copied from; the Right’s “take the red pill” is, to the untrained eye, similar to the Left’s “get woke.” (Or, at least, the bowdlerized version of “get woke” that is no longer specifically about race which came to fashion when white people started saying it, grumble grumble.)

Take the red pill or reject them both; either is a step to the right.

As this rhetoric slips into his day-to-day conversation, even as seemingly harmless “irreverence,” it may strain relationships with people who are not entertained by this shit. Off-color comments about race and gender can certainly be wearying for female and non-white friends, which can lead to a passive distance or an eventual confrontation [“why is everyone but me so sensitive?!”], which only seem to confirm what his reactionary community says about liberal snowflakes. If he says these things on social media, he may get his account suspended, and, if he comes back under an alt, you can bet his new reactionary friends will be the first to reconnect, applaud the behavior that got him banned, and repeat should he get banned again. A few cycles of this and he’s lost touch with everyone else.

Also, his adoption of the insular, meme-laden terminology of this community makes him less and less comprehensible to outsiders.

Over time, sources of information get replaced with community-approved ones: conservative news, conservative YouTube, conservative Wikipedia if he’s really committed. The Algorithm soon takes note and stops recommending media from the Left. He stops watching shows with a “liberal agenda,” which usually means shows starring women and people of color. Now, there is evidence that the human mind responds to fictional characters similarly to real people, and that consuming diverse media can decrease bigotry in ways roughly analogous to having a diverse group of friends, which is one of many reasons we say representation matters. By consuming a homogenous media diet, Gabe stymies his ability to have even parasocial relationships with anyone who isn’t a cishet conservative white dude or one of their approved exceptions.

To the extent that any of this happens, it happens at Gabe’s discretion and at his own chosen pace. It has not been forced on him, only encouraged and rewarded. But the fact that it hasn’t been forced can make him all the more willing to accept it, because it seems safe to consider; even though his life and social circle are changing to accommodate, he does not feel committed. But many Gabes have walked these halls, and, if they close the door behind them, there’s nowhere left to go but down.

Step Four: Raise their Power Level

(...and they say we ruined anime.)

Consider the ecosystem of the Alt-Right as layers of an onion, with Gabe sitting at the edge and ready to traverse towards the center. (No, I’m not just going to reiterate the PewDiePipeline, though, if you haven’t seen it, go do that.)

The outer layer of the onion is extremism at its most plausibly deniable. Without careful scrutiny, the public-facing figureheads could pass as dispassionate, and the websites as merely problematic rather than softly fascist. It is valuable if Gabe believes this as well; that, at this stage, he believe the bigotry is simply trolling, the extremists an insignificant minority, and any report of harassment faked. That he believe where he is is as deep as the rabbit hole goes. And that he continue to believe this at each successive layer.

People in the deepest crevices of the Alt-Right self-report getting redpilled on multiple issues at different times in their journey to the center of the onion. If Gabe’s first red pill is about the SJWs coming for his free speech, he’ll think that’s all anyone in his community believes; there’s no racism here, people are just making a point about their right to use slurs. Then, when he gets redpilled on the white genocide, he’ll laugh at those Alt-Lite cucks who tried to sweep the race realists under the rug, and at himself for having once been one, but acknowledge that those channels and websites are still useful for onboarding people, so he won’t denounce them. At the same time, nobody takes those manosphere betas seriously.

And this process is reiterated with every pill swallowed: gender essentialism, autogynephilia, birtherism, Sandy Hook truth, pizzagate, QAnon if he’s really out there. The heart of the onion is typically the Jewish Question, but these can happen in any order, and in any number. But each layer sells itself as being, finally, the ultimate truth. Each denies the validity of the others; the layers ahead don’t exist, they’re made up my liberals, while the people behind are asleep where you are now awake. That’s why they chose “the red pill” as their metaphor: take it, and everything will be revealed. That’s why it cozies up with conspiracism. But what’s supposed to follow is that this knowledge help Gabe in some way, and it doesn’t. Blaming immigrants doesn’t actually fix the economy, and hating women doesn’t make men less lonely. But, having been alienated from everything outside the onion, once that sinks in, the only recourse on offer is to seek out the next pill.

And pills are easy to find. Those within the network have laissez-faire relationships, even as they, on paper, disavow one another. When they need a source or a guest host, they aren’t going to go to the Left; they’re going to feature each other. The Left is the enemy; their ideas are beneath consideration, and the only reason to engage them is for public humiliation. [Shapiro’s book.] But you can interview “western chauvinists” and that doesn’t mean you’re endorsing them, just, you know, it’s fine to hear ‘em out, nothing should be off-limits in the marketplace of ideas. Besides, Nazis are apolitical.

And because these folks keep showing up in each others’ metadata, regardless of what they say, Google thinks there is definitely a relationship between the guy “just asking questions” and the guy denying the Holocaust. Gabe is softly exposed to many flavors of conservatism just slightly more radical than he is now, and is expected, at the very least, to not question their presence. This is an environment where deradicalizing - listening to the Left - would be sleeping with the enemy, but radicalizing further? You do you, buddy.

Gabe’s emotional journey, however, is somewhat more complex. If you’ve spent any time reading or watching reactionary media you’ve probably noticed it’s really. fucking. repetitive. It’s a few thousand phrasings of the same handful of arguments. Like, there’s only so many jokes about attack helicopters! But these people just crank out content, and most of it’s derivative; the reason to pick one personality over another isn’t because they say something different, but because they say it differently. Gabe just picks the affect it’s delivered in.

Repetition dulls the shock of the most egregious statements, making them appear normal and prepping him for more extreme ideas. Meanwhile, the arguments themselves? They’re not good. (BreadTube will never run out of shit to debunk.) They are repetitive because they’re not good. They’re mantric. A good argument you only need to hear one time; if you can follow it, internalize it, and explain it to someone else, you know you’ve understood it. But a bad argument can’t convince you on its own merits, so it will often rely on affect. This can be the snappy, thought-terminating cliche, or the long, winding diatribe that sounds really sensible while you’re hearing it but when someone asks you for the gist you can only say “go watch these 17 videos and it’ll all make sense.” Both these approaches are largely devoid of content, but, gosh, if they don’t sound sure of themselves.

And that mode can be very persuasive, but it doesn’t stick the way a coherent argument does. It needs to be repeated, the affect replenished, because the words matter less than the delivery. There needs to be a steady stream of confident voices saying “we’ve got this figured out and everyone else is stupid” or Gabe’s gonna notice the flaws. They are not well-hidden.

And the catch-22 of returning to that stream over and over is that these communities are stressful even as they are calming. People afraid they will die virgins go to forums with people who share and validate that fear, and also say, “Yes, you will die a virgin.” People afraid Syrians are coming to kill us all watch videos by people who share and validate that fear, and also say, “Yes, Syrians are coming to kill us all.” Others have already pointed out that rubbing your face in your worst anxieties is a form of digital self-harm, but I need to you understand the toxic recursion of it: Gabe is going to these communities to get upset. Every emotion is converted into anger, because sadness, fear, and despair are paralyzing but anger is motivating; Gabe feels less helpless when he’s pissed off. And so, while he’s topping up on reassuring nonsense, he’s also topping up on stress. And, being cut off from everything outside the network, the only place he knows to go to release that stress is back to the place that gives it to him. It’s a feedback loop, pulling him deeper and deeper on the promise that, at some point, relief will come.

It is a similar dynamic that keeps people in abusive relationships.

When someone in Gabe’s community makes a racist joke, they are presenting Gabe with a choice between the human interaction of laughing with his friends and his societal responsibility not to be a fuckin’ racist. And not laughing seems ridiculous; everybody’s friends here; no one’s getting hurt; this is harmless. And so the irreverent race joke draws a line between the personal and the political, and suggests that one can be safely prioritized over the other. One way to look at radicalization is being asked to stick with that seemingly innocuous decision as the stakes are raised incrementally: first with edgier humor, and then comments that are funny because they’re shocking but you couldn’t really call them jokes, and then “funny” comments that are also sincerely angry, but, in each instance, since he laughed with his bros last time, it stands to reason he should keep favoring the personal over some abstracted notion of “politics.”

This is why the progressive adage “the personal is political” is among the most threatening things you can say in these spaces.

I’m not trying to make a slippery slope argument. Most of us who laughed at edgy jokes when we were teenagers didn’t grow up to be Nazis. It is a slippery slope in the specific context of being in community with people trying to radicalize you. Gabe is a lonely white boy in need of friends, and laughing at a racist joke is personal, while not laughing is political. Staying in a community that has Nazis in it is personal, and leaving is political. The personal is what brings people together and the political drives them apart. (The “only if some of them are bigots” part of that sentence is usually lopped off). There’s this joke on the internet that nerds perceive only two races: white and political. Following that logic, what could be more apolitical than an ethnostate?

They are banking on his willingness to adapt his beliefs to suit an environment that meets a need. That same need can be satisfied by white nationalism. There are few things more seductive to people who doubt their own worth than being told you are valuable simply for being white. And you can sub in male, cis, straight, allosexual, or able-bodied. It just takes priming: by the time Gabe officially embraces bigotry, he’s already been acting like a bigot for months. The red pill is simply the moment he says it out loud.

Change Gabe’s surroundings, and you change Gabe.

Step Five: ???

The final step in a traditional extremist group would be getting a mission. But that is one thing the Alt-Right can’t do. Once you start giving clear directives, you can’t play yourselves off as a bunch of unaffiliated hashtags and think tanks; you are now a formalized movement accountable to its followers, and can be judged and policed as such.

To my mind, Charlottesville was an attempt to become such a movement, taking things offline and getting all the different groups working collectively. And, as so often happens when these people get in the same space - especially with no official leaders or means of control over their members - it backfired. Their true colors came out before they were ready and a counter-protester lost her life.

This would be the point where, historically, an extremist group starts to disintegrate. Their veneer of respectability gone, they’re now hated by the public, the media wants nothing more to do with them, and everyone not in jail turns on each other or goes underground. This is also the point where the liberal establishment says, “My job here is done,” and utterly fails to retake control of the narrative, allowing the next batch of radicals to pick up more or less where the last one left off.

But to an already-decentralized group like the Alt-Right, Charlottesville was bad but eminently survivable. People retreated back to the internet, with its code words and anonymous forums, but that’s where much of the work was already done anyway. The platforms where they organized kept tolerating them, the authorities still didn’t classify them as terrorists, and any disgraced figureheads were replaced with up-and-comers.

The major change in strategy is that it doesn’t seem anyone has tried to formalize the Alt-Right since.

So where does that leave Gabe? He’s gone through this whole process of largely hands-off indoctrination - and I should stress his journey may look like what we’ve outlined or it may look different in places, this video is not comprehensive - but now he’s swallowed every pill he cares to, he blames half a dozen minorities for everything he sees as wrong with the world, and no one will give him anything to do. You’ve got this ad hoc movement frothing young men into a militant fervor and then just leaving them to stew in their own hate. Should we really be surprised at how many commit mass shootings?

This is a machine for producing lone wolves.

Leaving men to take up arms of their own volition is a way of enacting terror while being just outside the popular conception of a terror cell. There are also, of course, more classic militias that will offer Gabe clear directives - they’re recruiting from the same pool. And Gabe may stop short of this step, settling in a middle layer that suits him or finding the inner layers too extreme. But violence is the logical conclusion of an ideology of hate, and, should Gabe take this step, he can approach violence in the same incremental fashion he approached conservatism.

He can start with yelling at people on Twitter, and then maybe collective brigading, DDoS attacks, sharing dox, leaking nudes, calling their phone numbers, texting them pictures of their houses from the sidewalk. These acts of cruelty become games of oneupmanship within his community. All this can start as far back as Step 2, and get more intense the deeper he goes. Some people join explicitly partake in harassment and violence the way Gabe joined to talk about anime.

But this behavior can serve as a kind of buy-in. The Left and the feminists and the LGBTQs and the Muslims and the immigrants are all, within his community, subhuman. You’ve maybe heard the conservative catchphrase “feminism is cancer”; well don’t treat cancer by having a respectful exchange of ideas with it, but by eradicating it down to the last cell. Cruelty against the Left is framed as righteous.

From any other perspective, posting someone’s bank information is something you might feel ashamed of. Which creates a psychological imperative not to consider other perspectives. A thing that keeps people in is staving off the guilt they will reckon with the moment they step out. Gabe is also aware that anything he’s done to the Left could be done to him if he leaves; some communities even keep dox on their members as insurance. And the things he’s been encouraged to do to the Left will likely make him feel that the Left would never take him now; the radical Right is the only home he’s got. Harassment becomes another tool of isolation.

Steadily, options for Gabe are whittled down to being a vigilante or a nihilist. There are periods of elation: moments the Alt-Right feels it’s winning - or, more accurately, the people they hate are losing - are like cocaine. They are authoritarians, after all. But the times in between are mean and angry. They are antisocial, starved of emotional connection, consuming incompatible conspiracies that may at any point run them afoul of one another, devoted to figureheads who cater to but cannot risk leading them, and living under constant threat of being outed to the Left or turned on by the Right for stepping out of line. Gabe took this journey for the sense of community and purpose, and, but for the rare moments everything goes their way, the Alt-Right can’t maintain either. They can only keep promising his day will come, a story he could get from a $5 palm reading.

The feeling there’s nothing left but to kill yourself or someone else is so common it’s a meme.

But there is always a third option: Gabe can leave.

Pre-Conclusion: For Fuck’s Sake Do Not Make Gabe Your Whole-Ass Praxis

Before we continue, I want to state plainly that Gabe went off the deep end because he found a community willing to tell him that, because he is a cishet white man, the world revolves around him. Do not treat him like this is true.

If a fraction of the energy spent having debates with America’s Gabes were spent instead on voter re-enfranchisement, prisoner’s rights, protections for immigrants, statehood for DC and Puerto Rico, and redistricting, Gabe’s opinions, in the societal sense, wouldn’t matter. Reactionary conservatism is a small and largely unpopular ideology that is only so represented in our culture and politics because they’ve learned how to game the system.

And I get it. Those are huge problems that are going to take years to address, where, if you know a Gabe, that’s a conversation you could have today. And, if you think you can get through to him, it is worthwhile to try. This is a fight on many fronts and deradicalization is one of them. But it is only one, so please keep it in perspective. It sends an awful message when we spend more time trying to get bigots back on our side than we do the people they are bigoted against.

Your value as a lefty does not hinge on whether you can change Gabe’s mind.

Conclusion: How Gabe Gets Out

He may just grow out of it. These communities skew young, and some folks hit a point where hanging with edgy teens doesn’t feel cool anymore.

He may become disillusioned after the movement fails to deliver on its promises.

He may become disillusioned if something goes wrong in his life and his community isn’t there for him, if he feels they like his race and his gender but don’t actually care about him.

He may be shocked if he sees the Alt-Right at its worst before being appropriately conditioned. Charlottesville was a step too far for a lot of people.

His community may turn on him for any perceived unorthodoxy, and he may leave out of necessity.

He may be separated by circumstance from the community - a trip with no internet, hospitalization, arrest - and not be able to top up on the rhetoric. This may lead him to question his beliefs.

His community may disappear, either tearing itself apart or getting shut down by authorities.

He may have incidental contact with populations he’s supposed to hate, and have trouble reconciling who they are in person with what he’s been told about them. In his community, people bond over shared intolerance, but, suddenly, being tolerant helps him make friends. (This is one reason the Alt-Right has made a battleground of the college campus.)

He may form or revisit relationships outside the network, people who can offer him the connection he’s been looking for. This may reintroduce outside perspectives. More importantly, it rekindles his ability to have healthy relationships at all, something the Alt-Right has estranged him from.

As with recruiters, it seems these “escape hatch” relationships can sometimes be parasocial; coming to respect a public figure who is on the Left, or is critical of the Alt-Right.

Someone he is close to may compel him to choose, “me or the movement.” A lot of young men leave to save a romantic relationship.

Hearing stories from people who’ve already jumped may help; there aren’t a lot of public formers, and some raise suspicions as to their sincerity, but it is getting more common, and may be the closest we get to exit counseling for the Alt-Right.

He may become aware of the ways he’s being manipulated, or have them revealed to him, maybe because he stumbled into BreadTube, I dunno. Knowledge that you are being indoctrinated is no guarantee it won’t work - you are not immune to propaganda - but it can help one resist.

And he may revisit a core belief system that used to guide him, be it religion or social justice or a really wholesome fandom, and be reminded of the identity he used to have.

Moments like these, in isolation or in aggregate, can inspire Gabe to jump. They are also good times for friends to intervene. The reach and the impunity that comes with the internet means it has never been easier to fall into reactionary extremism. It has also never been easier to get out. People who exit skinhead gangs often fear for their lives; for Gabe, there’s a chance getting out is as simple as going to a different website. Much of his community does not know his name or his face and he may not important enough to dox.

What doesn’t get Gabe out - not reliably, not that I have seen - is an argument with a stranger who proves all his facts wrong and his ideology bunk. Facts don’t always work because facts don’t care about his feelings. This was about staying in a community, and holding onto an identity, that mattered to him. It was about belonging, and that is something a rando from the other side of the culture war can’t give him and probably shouldn’t be responsible for.

The theme here is human connection. Before he can do the work of disentangling himself, and facing the guilt of what he’s believed and maybe done, he has to know there’s somewhere for him on the other end of it. That the Right hasn’t ruined him. They’ve told him all of history is groups fighting each other over status, and, without his clan, he’ll be an exile. He needs a better story.

I don’t know that lefty spaces are ideal for this, in no small part because bringing someone who’s a bit of a Nazi but working on it into diverse communities is… questionable. And it probably wouldn’t be good for him, either; having just gotten out of a toxic belief system, he’s going to be deeply skeptical of all ideologies. In a perfect world, people who care about Gabe could build for him - to use a therapy term - a holding space. Someplace private - physical or digital - where Gabe can work out his feelings, where he is both encouraged and expected to be better but is not, in the moment, judged. That comes later. It is delicate and time-consuming work that should not be done in public, but we find these beliefs, built up over the course of months or years, tend to fall away very quickly with a shift of environment. Change Gabe’s surroundings and you change Gabe.

But, instead, a lot of people who jump are functionally deprogramming themselves, which is working for a lot of them, but it’s haphazard, and there are recidivists.

If you don’t personally know a Gabe, or have training as a counselor, you may not be in a position to help him. Possibly there are things you can do to disrupt the recruitment process or prevent infiltration of spaces you’re in - I’m looking into it, but talk to your mods - but, elephant in the room: meaningful change will require reform on the part of platform holders. Tools to disrupt this process already exist and are being used on groups like ISIS, but they’re not being used on the Alt-Right because they try oh so very hard not to get classified as terrorists (and also any functioning anti-radicalization policy would require banning a lot of conservative politicians, so there’s that...).

But what makes our story better than theirs is that the fight for social and economic justice, though it is long, and difficult, and frustrating, when it works, it fulfills the promise the Right can’t keep: it materially make people’s lives better. I am not prone to sentimentality, or to giving these videos happy endings. But one thing we have that the Alt-Right doesn’t is hope.

#video essay

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mothsandbutterflies13 · 4 years ago

Text

Shadow and Bone Pt 2

The General/The Darkling/Aleksander Morozova: I like this character. Like, a lot. It helps that he's the epitome of "Tall, Dark, and Handsome" (TDH) but Aleksander Morozozva, as a person, is so interesting. There are so many things I'd like to pick his brain on; human nature, court politics, the war with Fjerda and Shu Han, Zlatan and his independence movement, etc. As a character, I wish they had injected some more darkness into him. I get it, the show is supposed to be marketed towards a younger audience, so it's not logical to have your tall, dark heartthrob be a literal jackass with no redeemable points. I applaud the show for giving him a more human side to him, but I also wish they would be clear on which couple is endgame. B/c if Darklina is endgame, I don't think you're doing enough to sell it. And if it's not, then you're doing waaaaay too much to sell it.

Alina Starkov: I love the actress. She seems so funny and kind. Her biracial status is just an added bonus. As a character, though… let's just say, Alina might not be a Mary Sue, but she's not not one either. Let me explain. I can't say I was thrilled to hear Alina Starkov was written as biracial in the show. It just felt like they were trying to score diversity points in being able to cast Jessie Mei Li as the female lead in a major TV production. I mean, in the context of the universe of Shadow and Bone, it was fine. I guess. But we really only get one piece of dialogue wherein Alina is discriminated against by the army camp cook for her different looks (which, if we're talking different looks, Mal looks waaaay more Shu Han than Alina, but that's just my opinion) and the confrontation with the tsarista and the maid's comment about changing her eyes, but that was about it. And Botkin, who looks and sounds like a Shu Han, NEVER comments on her appearance. For some people, that's great, it means he doesn't see her any different than anyone else. However, in a country where Ravkans sometimes openly discriminate against anyone that looks Shu Han (not Fjerdan cuz they look way too similar to their southern neighbors🙄🙄), you'd think Botkin would give Alina some advice or, I don't know, impart some knowledge about their shared cultural heritage!? If you're going to portray a character as a different race than she was (implied) in the books, AND make a big deal out of it, I should think you'd at least TRY and highlight why this change was necessary or important. But, if you're not going to do that, then please don't emphasize that particular fact. Just treat her like you would if she were of Caucasian descent.

And don't give me the same-old speel about representation. As an American-born Chinese, I grew up in a predominantly white town where I only had a few classmates who looked like me. I know what it means to be discriminated against or never seeing someone who looked like me on TV or in movies. I don't like watching the animated Mulan movie because she was a Chinese princess amongst a sea of white princesses. I like her because she doesn't take shit from anyone, not even her commanding officer. However, I identified the most with Belle because we were both bookworms and saw the beauty in the written word.

As for her powers… Like I said above, I really want to see what she could do with them. Light + physics = pretty OP.

Ok, so on to some of my biggest gripes with Alina.

One. She's angry that Aleksander has kept her letters from Mal and Mal's letters from her, leading her to believe that Mal doesn't care about her. As a way to woo the heart of possibly the only girl who'll ever be your equal, definitely not the best move. But as a general in charge of an army of grisha who now has finally found the one person who could make all his wishes come true, a necessary evil. True, Aleksander is half a millennia old, you'd think he'd have learned some patience by now. Alternatively, he could just be stubborn and set in his ways because no one has been able to challenge him and he hasn't had to stop and think about the consequences of his actions in terms of the individuals it will affect in a long time. However, in terms of what he could've done (send Mal on some impossible mission that was 100% going to get him killed) (Ok, yes, so the hunt for Morozova's stag probably should've been that, but we're not here to talk about what-ifs), confiscating their letters to each other was practically not even in the top 100. So, I honestly don't get why she seemed to make a mountain out of a mole hill.

Two. Aleksander didn't disclose that he was the Black Heretic and that he was planning to get the stag to be able to control Alina and her powers. I mean… would youdivulge your deepest, darkest secret to someone you just met not even a week before? Especially when it's about something as big as this. No? Point made. As to his plans for the amplifier, it's not like he could've known what the Sun Summoner was going to be like. And this goes back to my point before, that he can't see the trees for the forest because he's used to thinking in big-picture terms and what's best for the grisha as a whole, not the individual person. If you can't predict what this nebulous person is going to be like, you might as well hold all the control in your hands so as not to leave anything up to chance. Maybe Alina just can't see the forest for the trees.

Three. The above points are why (probably, most likely) why she chose Mal over Aleksander in the finale. Oh my God, I don't even know where to start. First of all, I have it on good authority (from someone who's read the books) that Alina is never Mal's first choice (and for that rant, I suggest you read the next point below before coming back to this one) but she still chooses him. When there's a perfectly good, emotionally-available, TDH man who accepts you, boils and all, standing. RIGHT. THERE. Second, this teaches young girls a bad precedent (granted, book!Darkling was a jackass so maybe not him). Why hang onto a guy who's made it clear to you, through his actions, that he'll never see you as his #1? Why waste your time, money, affections for someone like him? He doesn't deserve it and he CERTAINLY doesn't deserve you! You should only be with someone who treats you like a princess, who makes it clear to you that you have been, are, and always will be his #1. (I'm assuming the other person is male, but you don't have to read it like that. Don't @ me.) Trust me, Zhi Hua chasing after Yong Qi in HZIII scared me enough as a child and I have no desire to go through something like that in real life.

Mal: "This is why I have such a problem with Malina as endgame! If they were endgame, why is Mal always treating her like a second choice and Alina always content with the scraps he throws at her?! At least, with Aleksander, Alina was, is, and always will be his first choice and he makes it ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY clear he thinks the world of her! I thought Aleksander was the kind of guy we were taught to grab and hold on to, not some childhood bestie who always puts you on the backburner!" That's all I have to say for this one.

Zoya: I would have liked to see some complexity in this character, other than the whole "unrequited love for the Darkling". Granted, I only saw a quarter of the show, so I don't know about later episodes.

As for the Crows, I wish I had seen more complexity and character backstory from Kaz. Jesper is amazing but, my favorite has to be Inej because she's fulfilling all my Assassin dreams!

My sister claims I'm expecting too much out of a TV show that is based on a YA fantasy novel series, and maybe I am. I just want to see a well-made fantasy TV series or movie with a great cast that has amazing acting chops, beautiful set pieces, intricate costuming, and a well-written plotline with a dash of sarcasm and wit. Is that really so hard to ask for?

#grishaverse #shadow and bone #i might be too picky #but honestly I really want to love this series #but I somehow feel that the fanfictions for this fandom are way better than the actual canon #you can @me for it #but I won't change my mind #Chaotic potential

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allofthefeelings · 5 years ago

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Hi. I forgot that sad endings exist, and now, I'm scared stupid after your last BW movie post. She's dead already! I want something close to happy! (Oh god, I hope the fanfics come through 😭😭😭)

(Before I begin, I would also like you to know that, while this is over 4000 words long, I did cut a several-paragraphs-long digression comparing the BW movie to Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas. You’re welcome.)

I know I’m once again outing myself as an optimist here, and I’m sure I’ll also end up getting smug asks in four months when much of my speculation is wrong, but what the hell. If I was on this tumblr to be right I would have made a LOT of different decisions.

So.

I really, truly don’t think we’re going to get a sad ending.

But the question is, how does it achieve a not-sad ending? Or, to completely re-frame and re-structure: for a character like Natasha, what exactly is a happy ending?

Buckle in, because this gets long.

I think we can all agree that, by definition, we’re starting the movie from a point of melancholy at best, just because we know that in 2023 Natasha will be dead. She doesn’t get to ride into the sunset in any way, shape, or form. Every other solo movie- even the ones with tragic endings, like Thor Ragnarok’s destruction of Asgard and a large portion of its people- have given characters a path forward and the odds that even if this won’t give them a happy ending, it gives them a way towards one. It ends with hope. There isn’t room for that here, for obvious reasons. But what there is room for- and this is, ironically, achievable because of one of the major flaws of IW- is the idea that she did achieve growth, and then had six years to live the life she wanted.

Or, not the life she WANTED, which probably would not have been one part on the run/five parts half of society obliterated by Thanos. Let’s say she had the chance to live a terrible life self-actualized.

IW’s complete and utter lack of meaningful characterization for 90% of the cast means that we don’t really have a sense of where Natasha was in that movie. That gives a lot of room to play with, to put Natasha at the end of the BW movie in a place that she wants to be in. In other words, they can retroactively argue that the reason Natasha isn’t given room to grow in IW is that she had achieved her growth in between CW and IW.

Which, look. Doylistically this is beyond bullshit. Doylistically this is actually offensive, and if they’re looking to retroactively placate us about how Natasha’s arc went, it really doesn’t work. I’m not talking about what was intended, or what was achieved; I don’t think this is either of those. I’m talking about what we can choose to read into it.

And, frankly, as a Natasha fan, that’s pretty much all we do anyway. I can argue (and clearly have argued) her arc for ages, but that’s all the work I’ve done, and you (collective, Natasha fans) have done- not the work the text has done.

None of this is remotely answering the question. But I think it’s necessary groundwork to begin to answer the question.

Because what the BW movie can give us is that growth arc that takes place in the negative spaces of canon.

Well, first of all, the BW movie gives us the fact that things happen at all in the negative spaces of canon. I know I’ve discussed this already, but it’s worth mentioning again: the way audiences are supposed to read texts is that everything pertinent happens on screen. Even supplemental texts that are considered canonical (cut scenes, novelizations, official tie-in comics, movie scripts) are deemed inherently less valuable because they aren’t on the screen. This movie affirms that important events are happening off-screen, to everyone- or at least everyone who isn’t front and center.

This is, again, infuriating, and I feel like when I say this I’m inadveretently contributing to justification. That is not my intention. Natasha’s growth should have been on screen and should have been seen as important. I hate that it’s reduced to a single movie after ten years and the character’s death. I don’t think this justifies it. AT THE SAME TIME, I think this opens space for us to look at lots of characters who haven’t gotten the screen time they deserved.

(Like, they may never give Rhodey the movie he deserves, but at least no one can tell us that if he did something worth seeing it would have been on screen. This movie’s existence is a rebuttal of that. This is a digression but one I’m gonna keep making until everyone starts casually referring to awesome shit Rhodey did off-screen because WHY THE FUCK NOT, YOU CAN’T PROVE IT DIDN’T HAPPEN, “IT DIDN’T HAPPEN ON SCREEN” IS NO LONGER PROOF OF ANYTHING EXCEPT THEY HAVEN’T DONE THE SET-IN-THE-PAST MOVIE YET. Y E T.)

But we also get the possibility of growth, and to analyze what growth means for Natasha’s character.

So here is an issue: I can tell you, with a frankly absurd amount of confidence, what I read Natasha’s arc as. I can lay it out from film to film, I can point to key growth moments, I can read a lot into every scrap that made it into the final cut and I can tell you exactly why, and I feel like if you dig into my history you’re going to find a lot of me citing specific scenes to make my point so I’m not going to go too in-depth on an already-long post that is getting exponentially longer. I think that Natasha’s key arc is in figuring out who she is and what she needs, and how to be a person rather than a reflection of what is asked of her. I think that the mirror imagery in the trailer and in the SDCC/D23 BW footage lends credence to this being a key theme of the movie.

But I have absolutely no idea if I’m right, because the MCU has never considered Natasha to be important enough to be the focus, and as a result I read her arc mostly through the ways she mirrors other characters’ stories, usually to show their strengths by comparison. I do my best to make arguments that are textually supported, but at the same time, it’s like describing the sun entirely from the way that its light reflects off the moon.

So I can say that for the BW movie to be satisfying, it needs to offer completion to her arc, which is then capped in IW/Endgame but would have reached its climax in the BW movie. But since I cannot confidently tell you what her arc has been so far, I can’t figure out exactly how that arc could be satisfactorily completed. Which means, after SEEING the movie, I will have to retroactively figure out how they saw her arc, and then figure out if this was a satisfactory way to end it.

But an argument done in hindsight is colored by what I’ve already seen, and that’s a cheat. So let’s start over.

Here is what we know:

Natasha was taken from her family very young (Endgame: didn’t know her father’s name). As a child, she was abused and manipulated by the Red Room (Agent Carter; Age of Ultron). She was trained to be a Black Widow, did terrible shit for them for a while, defected, became a mercenary, did terrible shit for the highest bidder (Avengers). Clint was sent to kill her but made a different call and brought her in to SHIELD (Avengers). Natasha quickly rose in the ranks and became one half of a STRIKE team watched over by Fury’s right-hand man, Coulson (Avengers). Natasha also became very close with Nick Fury, the head of SHIELD (IM2, Cap2). At some point in there she was shot by the Winter Soldier (Cap2). She was one of the people behind putting together the Avengers Initiative, identifying Tony Stark as not qualified (IM2), and recruited into the team herself (Avengers). She did not leave the Avengers teams for the next 11 years; she was on the first iteration (lasting through Age of Ultron), the second (Age of Ultron through Civil War), and then the Secret Avengers (which we can now assume starts post-BW through Infinity War) and Avengers 3.0 (five-year gap team), as well as the Quantum Realm Team-Up Team right up til she got yeeted off Vormir.

We’ll set Secret Avengers and Team 3.0 aside for the moment, as they’re things that will exist post-BW movie canon.

Natasha’s narrative role has often been to be so amazing that when she’s bested, we know the other person is really good. The best way for me to pull this together into a coherent throughline is that Natasha tends to be bested by people with passion and emotional stakes. When Natasha is just doing her job, but Pepper cares about Tony or the Dora Milaje care about T’Challa, she is outmatched. In Cap2, when Natasha cares deeply about SHIELD and who she’s loyal to, she is able to outmatch everyone she faces, but since she’s a secondary character and her act isn’t as highly visible on screen, her heroism isn’t as spotlighted.

(That said, make no mistake, WE WILL BE COMING BACK TO HER HEROIC MOVE IN THIS MOVIE.)

Her role has also been, as I mentioned earlier, to be a mirror to the white male heroes. She mirrors Tony in IM2, Clint in Avengers, Steve in Cap2, and Bruce in Ultron. I can make a strong argument, that I feel is supported by each text, that each of these mirrors is about moderation, and both the white man of choice and Natasha finding that the ideal is somewhere between both points: the space between how and why Tony and Natasha handle secrecy; between how Clint and Natasha handle guilt; between how Steve and Natasha handle trust; between how Bruce and Natasha handle self-hatred. That the writers and directors often disagree with my read of this does not, in any way, dissuade me from believing it, but it does mean that this may not be the arc we’re looking at in the movie.

By the arcs that I’ve traced, though, they have a fair amount of leeway to give a satisfying conclusion no matter what the plot is. By having other characters mirroring Natasha, she is centered in a way she never had been, and simply being the protagonist of her own story is part of Natasha’s journey we haven’t seen. We know that this is going to in some way revisit the Red Room, and that means that we’ll get to see a story where Natasha is passionate about and personally connected to what she’s fighting. We also know that whatever the story is, it will not be Natasha mediating someone else’s approach to the world, but Natasha’s approach to the world with someone else (I’m guessing Yelena?) mediating her worldview, in a way that gives Natasha growth but does not undercut her as someone who had so much to learn from the REAL hero.

All plot to the side, simply because Natasha is the protagonist, there is an element of satisfaction inherent, both textually and metatextually, because Natasha’s role of being sidelined is both within the text and within the media landscape a struggle she’s finally able to overcome. There is also a metatextual satisfaction just in cleaning up the bits and pieces of canon that we’ve gotten that were left hanging. For example, in her heroic climax in Winter Soldier, Natasha- who was so focused on being able to transform into whatever was necessary- released a fuck-ton of national security information on the internet, including her own history, that made her both immutable and knowable. (Do you ever think about how this means that people living within the MCU know more about Natasha’s background than we, the audience, does? Because I do, c o n s t a n t l y.) Natasha went from working undercover and in the shadows to being an Avenger and releasing not just her own and not just SHIELD’s but also the Red Room’s dirty laundry in public, and that has never had narrative consequences; this is a great opportunity to use that, closing a loop that most people probably forgot even existed.

Speaking of closure.

I think this movie HAD to be designed with that specifically in mind. I don’t think they necessarily expected the backlash they got from Natasha’s death (I’m going to be honest here; I didn’t expect it from anyone but Natasha fans), but at least they had to know that people who had been promised Natasha would get her due in canon would be frustrated and want some sign that the complexity of the character that had been talked up for a decade was actually part of the story they put on film. Marvel wants to placate fans, yes, but they wouldn’t waste millions upon millions of dollars on a movie to get us to shut up; their job is to bring in money, and it’s not like they haven’t gotten ten years’ worth from us. They’re also savvy enough to know that for a character who’s no longer alive in canon, they need to do things that make their story relevant even without them having future appearances- and I think we’ll see that in Yelena and Taskmaster- but also to make this story have stakes.

Yeah, we never spend a Marvel movie saying “Oh geez, what if the hero dies?” (well, aside from Civil War, because comics oontext), but right now we’re going in knowing (or, bare minimum, thinking we know) exactly what happens to Natasha. Where she’ll end up just under two years from when the story starts is set in stone (NO PUN INTENDED). So we need another way to give the story stakes. Natasha’s life and her future aren’t up in the air. Her past is, I guess, but they’ve been clear this movie isn’t about her past. And where that leaves us is the emotional journey. I outlined above what I think that is, but it doesn’t have to be that to be satisfying- it just has to be some way to leave Natasha changed in a way that surprises us as audience.

And, sure, that could be loss- that could be betrayal from everyone in this movie, leaving her alone and with no one to turn to but the Avengers- but I don’t think that is. I think that’s looking at Natasha’s story like she’s still a secondary character, rather than the protagonist. The basic structure of a superhero movie (and specifically a Marvel movie) is that the protagonist suffers defeat but ultimately triumphs, internally if not externally, having learned something that takes them farther on their emotional journey. Since (as far as we )know this is the only movie Nat’s getting- she’s not getting a trilogy or a Dis+ show- this needs to take her farther than most single-protagonist movies have.

In terms of another kind of closure: If the movie doesn’t offer at least a hint of a way Nat could come back (and I’m still hoping for that no matter how unlikely it is, and if it doesn’t happen I’m hoping for it in the Dr Strange sequel, and after that I’m sure I’ll find another path), I think there’s an excellent chance the post-credits scene will be a funeral for her. Given that they have SebStan and Mackie and Emily Van Camp shooting together right now, it would be very easy to at the VERY least get us a scene of them mourning her. It’s not the same as Tony’s giant lakehouse memorial, but it’s about half the characters who were close to her when she was alive (the others being Clint, Maria, and Fury, and I’m pretty sure they could have put an hour of time on the FFH set to the latter two having five seconds of looking solemn). I think that, given the backlash to Endgame, they need something like this: we need to see, on screen, conclusive proof that Natasha’s life mattered, not just for the audience, but for the world she lived in.

My dream would be for the entire movie to use a frame story OF her funeral- people talking about her, different memories and different understandings, that combine in different ways to collectively show a whole. Fucking Rashomon that shit. But we all know they’re not going to do that.

I recognize I am still talking satisfying and not happy.

But what exactly is happy? What exactly is the happy ending Natasha might want?

She’s not a character who wants to retire or settle down somewhere. As much as we in the audience talk about wanting her to get a break, we’ve never seen that from her, and we also don’t see a world that could really offer that to her; especially post-Cap2, Natasha does not have the luxury of escaping her past even if she did want to.

We don’t know her goals. We don’t know what she wanted outside of making amends for her past. We’ve gotten that from almost every other character- say what you want about Steve’s Endgame ending (god knows I have), or about Bruce being a public figure that kids love, but at least there was groundwork laid for it.

i think the best argument we have for what makes Natasha happy is in Civil War, when it’s taken away. Natasha is willing to give up things that are important to her (her autonomy) in favor of not losing her team; being together is the priority for her. By the end of Civil War, she’s lost even that; she’s seen to have betrayed her entire team and has no one. By IW we know that she re-finds her group, that she and Steve and Sam and Wanda are a tightly-knit unit, but we have to piece it together ourselves, and we have no way to know that it’s by choice rather than necessity. (The BW trailer is really the first time we get evidence that Natasha has more resources than just the Avengers or SHIELD; even fic has tended to just posit she has empty safehouses, not living people she can go to.) The BW movie could give her that team, and retroactively make her appearance in IW a reward for her- having found the team she wanted- rather than just the natural place for her to end up.

But I can’t see how that would even work without at least some of Chris Evans, Anthony Mackie, and Elizabeth Olsen appearing in this movie and showing on screen that Natasha has her people. We haven’t seen evidence they aren’t, but at least I haven’t heard any rumors they are, the way we’ve heard rumors about RDJ.

And there’s something awful, to me, in Natasha constantly being supporting in other people’s movies, which exist to seem self-contained even if they’re not, but then in her movie her emotional fulfillment relying on things that happen elsewhere- the implication that her emotional arc can’t even support a single movie.

In terms of what we’ve seen achieved, Natasha seems happiest when she’s solving a problem, when she’s fighting and winning and being the hero she doesn’t quite believe she is. But that’s not something that can be an end to an arc, of a decade or even of two hours. No matter how great that is, it’s a momentary thing, and it’s fleeting. That’s happiness but not narratively satisfying

This remains not an answer to the original questions.

I think part of the issue is, it’s not necessarily that we need Natasha to be happy, for her to have a happy ending. It’s that we, the audience, wants to be happy- and frankly, I don’t think that’s unreasonable; we’re not going to blockbusters to have our hearts torn out (and I think that after Endgame especially, Natasha fans are not ready or willing to do that again). And so we’re looking less at how Natasha can be happy, but how we can be happy. Selfishly, I’d even add: how we can be happy without doing the work. How we can be happy without conspiracy-theorizing our way to a satisfying narrative, but rather, a narrative that’s already on the screen, that we can just roll around in and enjoy.

I realize how bizarre this is to say after 3000+ words, but: I want the opportunity to be a lazy viewer. I want the chance to take things in without having to take responsibility for making them into something I want to see. I don’t want to have to reverse-engineer her story; I want to dig into the minutiae that is maybe actually intended.

On some level, that’s going to be the happy ending for me. Just having a whole text to dive into is a gift. (I am probably monkey-pawing myself just by saying this, which is the same kind of bullshit I argued for Age of Ultron- but then, I still can rewatch Ultron and find a lot that I like.) And Natasha getting a narrative win- which, as protagonist, she kind of has to- will be a happy ending for me.

But I’m a Natasha fan. This is expected.

What I think is the real question under all of this- what I’ve been struggling to tease out from my own feelings, and maybe now I’m finally getting to it- is a different question entirely: how can Marvel craft a story that sticks with their formula of giving a protagonist a win and something like a happy ending, while telling a story about a character who has been sidelined for ten years until they killed her off? Setting aside those of us who are overly invested in Natasha’s arc, what is the path to telling a story that the majority of the audience- most of whom haven’t traced her history, many of whom are casual fans, some of whom probably didn’t even see Endgame- finds fulfilling and happy?

The hero has to win, obviously. The hero has to triumph. Natasha has to come away having saved the world (stopping a villain from destruction), her world (protecting those close to her), and her internal world (some kind of emotional progress/catharsis). There will be moments intended for the audience to cheer. That’s a formula that you can find in nearly every superhero movie, and with good reason; I can’t think of why it wouldn’t apply here.

So looping back around, the question about the sad ending really is just for those of us who are deeply engaged. It’s not “will Natasha triumph?” because yes, she will- of course she will. We are going to get a movie where the world will be saved by Natasha (which has happened before) and the text will acknowledge that (which it really has not). The real question at hand is “will Natasha’s triumph be enough to mitigate the substantial losses she’s had in the other movies, or will it be bittersweet, her success here just underscoring the way that her biggest narrative win was to kill herself for no recognition?”

Which, of course, on some level, will vary from audience member to audience member. But I think that, with the awareness of how Endgame worked, and the knowledge of exactly when this movie is coming out, they have to at least try to give her- and us- this.

It’s now 5:15 AM and this is over 4000 words long and if you’ve read all this you deserve a medal. I’m happy to clarify or expand on anything in a few hours when I get up; I know that I circled a few points rather than clearly making them, but I’m no longer even completely sure what is common knowledge and what is me projecting. Hopefully this can at least start a conversation?

ETA: And anon, I am sure no matter what happens, fanfic will have our backs.

#allofthereplies #Anonymous #meta #Black Widow #Black Widow movie #BW speculation #Natasha Romanoff #IM2 spoilers #Avengers spoilers #Cap2 spoilers #Avengers2 spoilers #Cap3 spoilers #Avengers3 spoilers #Avengers4 spoilers #I cannot stress enough that I'm sorry I'm like this #long post

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introvertguide · 5 years ago

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On the Waterfront (1954); AFI #19

The next film on the AFI top 100 under review is the award winning crime drama, On the Waterfront (1954). This film was nominated for 12 Academy Awards and picked up 8 including Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Screenplay. The film is based on a series of articles in the New York Sun from 1949 that depicted the condition of the eastern seaboard and all the corruption that was involved at the time. I did a lot of historical digging for this film and realize how important the accuracy was and it seemed pretty spot on. Before I get into story, let me give the standard announcement...

SUPER SPOILER WARNING!!! I TOOK A LOT OF NOTES DURING THE FILM AND THIS WILL SPOIL THE ENTIRE THING!!! WATCH THE MOVIE FIRST AND THEN COME BACK AND CHECK OUT THE ARTICLE!!!

The film starts out with the murder of a man named Joey Doyle. Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) calls to Joey’s window at night to have him meet up on the roof concerning a pigeon. We see that Terry is with a bunch of gangsters who are waiting up on the roof for Joey. The audience doesn’t see the actual meeting, but a person falls off the building a couple seconds later and it is assumed that Joey is dead. It seems that Terry was not aware that Joey would be killed, he thought they were going to rough him up or intimidate him.

Terry is not put out too much because he goes to a local pub right after and we meet the local crime boss. Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb) is a stereotype mob boss who runs a tight ship and could snap at any moment. It is an awkward scene where one person in the room is having fun and everyone else is nervously waiting for something to go wrong. Friendly’s right hand man is Terry’s brother Charley (Rod Steiger) and Friendly has a fondness for Terry because of the relation and also that Terry used to be a boxer. Before the night is over, Terry is given a stack of cash for his help with Joey and the promise of a cushy job on the dock the next day.

The next morning, a group of people look over Joey’s body on the street and his sister Edie (Eva Marie Saint) is understandably angry about the event. She shames her father and the other workers for not saying anything and she yells at the local priest (Karl Malden) for not being more involved. She wants to get involved and help her father get work so she goes down to the docks with the priest to see what the situation is really like. People attached to the mob are given preferred treatment (including Terry) and all the other workers have to scramble in hopes of getting work. The priest sees the corruption and decides to hold a union meeting in the church to encourage the workers to speak out against Friendly to improve the working conditions.

A group of dockworkers not part of the corruption meet at the church, but all remain quiet. The stay “D & D” (deaf and dumb) to what is going on so that they don’t get hurt. Joey is sent by Friendly to the meeting to see if anybody talks and he sits in the back. It seems apparent that he is there to intimidate the others into remaining silent. Before the meeting is officially over, a brick comes through the window and a bunch of gangsters pound sticks on the ground, waiting for the workers in the meeting to leave. Most everyone is attacked and beaten on the way out except for the priest, Edie, and Terry. The priest convinces one of the workers named Dugan (Pat Henning) to talk to the Waterfront Crime Commission to prevent another attack like this.

Dugan agrees to testify and we move forward to the day before he is supposed to go in front of the court. He is working on unloading a ship of Irish whiskey and an “accident” occurs in which a pallet of booze falls on Dugan, killing him. The priest comes to give last rights and gives an impassioned speech to the surrounding workers about how keeping quiet is a crucifixion and good men would not let this happen if they could stop it. Some of the gangsters through garbage at the priest while he is talking, but he continues on and Terry starts to feel guilty about his part in the deaths and injustice. He punches one of the enforcers who is going to throw something and this does not go unnoticed. In a very symbolic image, the priest rides a crane up out of the ship and ascends out of the hold like an angel ascending towards heaven. Very cinematic and full credit to cinematographer Boris Kaufman for this fantastic shot that no doubt contributed to his Oscar win for his work on this film.

Terry starts to fall for Edie and considers testifying against friendly. He knows, however, that she will learn of his connection to her brother’s death and fears show will hate him. Friendly gets wind of Terry’s connection with Edie and sends Charley over to convince him to not testify. In a very poignant scene, Charley and Terry talk in a taxi and Charley tells him that he needs to promise not to squeal or Charley will take him to the docks to be executed. Terry says that he can’t live being a bum. He used to be a prizefighter and Friendly had convinced him to take a dive during a fight and all his potential was wasted. It is the famous “I could have been a contender. I could have been a somebody” scene. Charley let’s Terry go and goes in to stall so the Terry can escape and instead Charley is killed and left hanging from an ice hook in an alleyway as a message to Terry.

This goes too far and Terry goes to the local bar to shoot Friendly. Instead of the crime boss, Terry runs into the priest and is convinced to testify in court as a better form of revenge. He agrees and Terry identifies friendly in court as being corrupt and ordering the murder of both Joey Doyle and Dugan. After testifying, Friendly threatens Terry and says that he will never find work on the docks. Terry is shunned by all the other workers for squealing and only finds kindness from Edie.

Terry shows up the next day for work recruitment and every person there (including a random hobo) is given work except for him. Terry goes to confront Friendly and is summarily beaten by a group of gangsters. The dock workers see this and say that they will not work unless Terry is allowed to work as well. Friendly has lost his power over the docks and can’t kill Terry since he has already talked and is now being protected by the police. The priest shows up and tells Terry to stand up and lead the workers onto the ship, cementing the shift in power. A severely beaten Terry is helped up and he stumbles onto the boat followed by the rest of the works. The movie ends as the plank doors to the ship’s hull close.

Although the characters are sensationalized, the situation was very representative of what life what life was like on the East Coast docks during the late 40s and early 50s. This film is a time capsule for American life right after WW2 and a lesson concerning what can happen with complete corruption. Very fascinating from a historical perspective as well as an artistic one.

I have a little bit of an issue with Brando and his acting in this film. I do not think he is that good. He mumbles his lines like he does in every movie and it is apparent that he is a good actor but not that great at line delivery. Also, when I say he is a good actor, I don’t mean this film. He comes across almost whiny and conceited and I never really get behind the character. I freely admit that I don’t really like Brando in general as a person (at least from the stories I hear, I have never met him) and that might taint my judgment of his performances. I never bought him as a boxer and I never bought him as being tough. He is acting like a soft hearted bully, but it just doesn’t impress me. He got top billing and his name is bigger than the movie credit on the opening title cards, but I thought Karl Malden did a much better acting job. I am thankful for Brando’s contribution to creating method acting, but that doesn’t make this a great performance and I don’t think he deserved the Oscar.

Also, just like with The Godfather, Brando played a part that was memorable with great lines and won the award for Best Actor while the rest of the male cast who gave outstanding performances were relegated to Best Supporting Actor (three actors nominated in both cases) and came home empty handed. Brando kept getting quirky character roles in well written films and surrounded by incredible talent...and then he was given all the credit for the incredible result. I just don’t like that guy and I realize it is a personal bias. I just don’t like how he is given all the credit (and takes all the credit) for projects he was a part of. But moving on...

I again want to point out the cinematography for this movie because I am not generally impressed by this aspect of films, especially when they are in black and white. I think On the Waterfront, Citizen Cane, and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf are all examples of how prop placement, camera angles, pans, and lighting can be used to tell a story beyond just the acting and dialogue. A well deserved Best Cinematography award for Boris Kaufman.

So does this film deserve to be on the AFI top 100? Yes. For the famous “contender” speech, the reflection of history, the visual storytelling, and the wonderful acting, it absolutely deserves a spot. Would I recommend it? Well...I would say yes but not for Brando. I was so bored by the part of Terry Malloy that I found many other things that I liked to get through the film. The first time I watched I was expecting this great performance and I was thoroughly disappointed. Watch the film for everything else besides Marlon Brando and you will be impressed.

#on the waterfront #marlon brando #karl malden #eva marie saint #elia kazan #crime drama #longshoreman #union #movie review #afi films #introvert #introverts

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qqueenofhades · 6 years ago

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I know she wasnt one of your favorite characters and you dont watch the show anymore but what is your opinion on this whole mad queen Dany thing from a storytelling perspective? I personally hate it. But I am really attached to her character.

Short answer: It’s an idiotic giant pile of steaming bullshit.

Longer answer: It’s an IDIOTIC GIANT PILE OF STEAMING BULLSHIT BY A COUPLE OF MEDIOCRE-ASS FAKE-WOKE MISOGYNISTIC RACIST WHITE MALE HACKS WITH ABSOLUTELY NO STORY-TELLING OR COHERENT NARRATIVE ABILITY WHO THINK THEY ARE BEING ~LE RISQUE AND IN FACT ARE ACTUALLY JUST FUCKING DUMBER THAN A BOX OF TRUMPS.

(Deep breaths. Deeeeeeep breaths.)

Obviously, the question of whether Dany was going to be “mad queen Dany” was played with a little and could have been thoughtfully or subtly done (if these hacks possessed any writing ability, which as noted, they do not). But (again, bearing in mind that I don’t watch the show), from what I saw, she went evil in the span of like… an episode and a half? After Jorah, Missandei, and Rhaegal died, and she is justifiably upset and fucked into a corner by illogical plot decisions and contrived writing, apparently these misogynist fuckburglars were just like “oooohh that would Drive a Bitch Crazy!!! UNLEASH THE KRAKEN OF CRAZY!!!” Which perhaps isn’t unique to Dany, since they busily destroyed everyone’s character arcs and 7 seasons of development, but wow.

(Plus I have heard spoilers/hints about Jon having to kill her next episode, which is a whole new LEVEL of Yikes. We knew they were misogynistic asshats and the treatment of female characters had always been gross, BUT WOW.)

Dany’s arc, both in books and show, has had some other problems. I.e. the very cringy “white saviour” business and how POC were generally reduced to props for her story, whether “savage” or as “noble savages” or slaves who needed saving – as usual, the show made that much worse, because again, they cannot write and their entire ethos has been to hammer home Shock Value Grimdark as much as possible. Especially since they apparently claimed that Dany’s turn into madness was foreshadowed in season 1 when she had a “chilly” reaction to Viserys’ death. You know, the brother who mentally, physically, and sexually abused her and sold her into an arranged marriage for his political ambitions. According to these monumental crapsacks, that definitely means a woman is Crazy, if she doesn’t break down in tears over her abuser’s death. They have managed to send a fuckton of gross messages about women throughout the show in general, but that’s a new one.

Dany has, at this point, struggled for seven-plus seasons in show canon to make the right choices, to realize how hard it is to be a ruler, to deal with her Targaryen heritage, to help the entire North in the Long Night (honestly, why didn’t they end the show after that? It’s been nothing but downhill since). They already forced her to act irrational and to play up the Dany-Sansa feud, rather than acknowledging two complicated female characters and their different philosophies and allowing them to find actual common ground. So having us believe (again, when apparently the takeaway here is to kill everyone she cares about Because Bitches Be Cray and then have that drive her into murderous insanity) that within like…. 1.5 episodes, she’s supposed to be the End Level Boss is… wow. (After Cersei got killed by…. a falling ceiling, and don’t even get me started on Jaime and Brienne.)

As far as I can tell, these bogglingly incompetent hacks either got bored with the season/project (since they were offered the budget for 10 episodes but were like “nah we’re good with six!”) or indeed, this was the plan all along. I would not be surprised. They have been absolutely wedded to ham-handed Shock Value as their main plot tactic all along (it was one of the many reasons I quit several seasons ago) and mistake gruesome mistreatment of their female characters as Gritty Medieval Realism ™ or Strong Female Characterness ™. So we can’t say they weren’t on brand until the end. The assumption here is clearly that we were all chumps to “expect a happy ending from Game of Thrones!” …. which, I seriously doubt anyone was. In my version of the ending (TNR), it’s genuinely bittersweet. Not all the favorites make it, in the epilogue it’s clear that the post-war years have been difficult, and so forth. But it’s also not a pointless, nihilistic bloodbath of eight seasons of audience investment masquerading as Woke Postmodern Grimdark Super Smart Cutting Edge Ending.

(Also in my version, Dany melts down the Iron Throne to help fight the Others, survives the final battle, forgives the fake Aegon, becomes Queen of the South, eventually gets married and has a son, deals with the death of her dragons and the contestations to her rule long-term, and doesn’t go goddamn crazy.)

I don’t care how Realistically Grimdark your media is (and I have written many posts on how I would like this whole trend to die with fire and I blame GOT for making other franchises think this is the way to go). In no universe is your audience going to think that sending everything to hell within less than 2 episodes of the final season is a satisfying and meaningful ending, and if you think so, you really have no idea how fiction works and should not be writing it. A GOOD ending does not need to be a rainbow-fluffy-bunnies one. But in no realm, as evidenced by the uproar that my entire dash is in, does this one qualify. The paranoid terror of social media and spoilers is making them go so far as to gaslight actors, film false endings, and then break their hearts when they find that a decade of their hard work is going up in smoke like this.

As far as I know, Emilia Clarke had at least two serious health scares while working on GOT, and when she found out this ending, she left the house and just wandered aimlessly for three hours and tried to drink her sorrows away. How is that acceptable to do on a professional level, far less what you may think of Dany or her character or anything else? When again, the takeaway from this is that anyone who ever identified with Dany or her struggle to overcome abuse, enslavement, helplessness, etc, and admired anything about her, was a chump to do that. Sure. “Mad Queen Dany” was one narrative possibility. But if they were going to pull it off (which, again, I cannot emphasize enough how bad they are at writing) this needed to happen way before. Not out of the blue in the last two episodes of the show, because Women Are Emotional LOL, Must Be Stopped.

I am so sorry to everyone who loved her, or any character on this show, but I honestly, deeply am not surprised. As bad as it is, I have… known for a long time that they were capable of ruining this on a fundamental level, have never actually understood the characters or cared about narrative coherency, and their treatment of women is disgusting on just about every level. But even I am gobsmacked at how badly they managed to fuck it up. That should tell you something.

Me to D&D, every time they have or will open their mouths for the rest of time:

#got critical #got spoilers #daenerys targaryen #anonymous #ask

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dragonofyang · 6 years ago

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The Heroine with a Thousand Faces

As the youngest member of #TeamPurpleLion, not only have I learned a lot in just the four months we’ve been working together, but I’ve explained a lot of what I’ve learned to others. Sometimes it’s about the history of Defender of the Universe and Beast King GoLion that @crystal-rebellion researched, sometimes it’s referencing @felixazrael‘s musical knowhow or @leakinghate‘s animation knowledge, and most recently, it’s leaning on @voltronisruiningmylife‘s expertise in how to break down and identify writing to provide corrections to those who see something in a show or article not working but can’t tell why. One big thing I learned since starting this crazy ride with my team is a massive hole in my college education on writing, which Felix filled in for me since we hit the ground running. Sure in my fantasy literature class we discussed Aesop and The Hobbit, and what the phrase “The Hero’s Journey” means and why it’s the monomyth, but there was one thing that my dear professor never taught us, although I’m sure she will in the future. Compared to Joseph Campbell’s heroic journey, this other monomyth is much younger.

What is it, you may ask?

Simply put, it’s a heroine’s journey.

[Image description: Princess Allura with her hair up and wearing her flightsuit from season 1 “The Rise of Voltron” backlit by white light.]

Let’s go on an adventure together.

To understand the heroine’s journey, I want to give you all a rundown on what exactly the hero’s journey is first. While it was never neatly labeled as “The Hero’s Journey” until Campbell, studies on common themes and plot points began back in the 1870’s. As time moved forward, Campbell published his 17 steps to the monomyth in 1949 (The Hero with a Thousand Faces) and as we move toward the present his monomyth is eventually dubbed as “the hero’s journey”. I won’t overload you with the dates and stuff I needed to study since that’s a) not the point of this piece and b) Campbell’s monomyth is actually secondary to the main one in Voltron: Legendary Defender. That said, it’s the backbone of a lot of literature both old and new, and while not every story follows these 17 steps outlined by Campbell or approaches them in the same order, you’ll find everything from the story of Christ to Lord of the Rings somewhere in these steps. It’s just that a lot of times the steps of the hero’s journey aren’t ever really explained, so you as a reader/viewer/consumer will see them and will have a gut instinct as to what’s supposed to happen, and when it happens you feel great! The story followed a formula that satisfies its audience! But it also makes a story that doesn’t follow a formula feel fundamentally wrong, from just a mild discomfort like putting on a shirt and buttoning it slightly off, all the way to triggering strong emotional responses including panic attacks or tears. Stories are designed to bring forth emotions from their audience, but what good is a tragedy without a lesson to learn? How can we enjoy an empty marriage when the couple has no chemistry?

So with this piece, I hope to illuminate just what the steps of the heroine’s journey are, contrast them against the hero’s journey, where VLD fits into all of this, and through that demonstrate why they are not interchangeable even though they share similar names.

Part I: Of Heroes and Heroines

In The Hero With a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell outlines seventeen steps, which are laid out in this diagram by Reg Harris:

[Image description: diagram of The Hero’s Journey using a circular diagram shape separating out the seventeen steps into eight categories, divided into the Known World and the Unknown World.]

In Maureen Murdock’s The Heroine’s Journey, she writes the heroine’s journey as follows:

[Image description: The Heroine’s Journey depicting a cyclical diagram of the narrative, featuring 10 distinct steps that loop back to the beginning at the top.]

The Heroine’s Journey is fundamentally cyclical in nature, and while the diagram above shows the Hero’s Journey as a circle as well, it ultimately has finite start and end points. One of the key differences between these is that the Hero’s Journey explores internal character in an external adventure and the hero achieves a (theoretically) lasting peace once their journey is finished. Conversely, the heroine must constantly evaluate themselves in the bigoted environment that tries to disenfranchise them.

As a note, while I use gendered terms such as “hero” and “heroine”, I use them as gender-neutral placeholders to label which monomyth I’m speaking about at present. Women can undertake a hero’s journey, and men can undertake a heroine’s journey, particularly when you examine them in an intersectional lens.

A heroine’s journey, at its heart, is an examination and acceptance of the self in an unaccepting environment, and its cyclical nature stems from the fact that whenever a heroine moves into a new environment, they have to make that journey over and over. They can be a queer man of color, a white stay-at-home mom, a disabled nonbinary person, whatever the case, the constant need to re-evaluate their place in the world is what marks the heroine’s journey as separate from the hero’s journey.

But while it’s cyclical in nature, we should start at the beginning nonetheless.

[Image description: Alfor (right) holding Allura (left) in the Castle of Lions. She says, “We can’t give up hope!” and he replies, “I’m sorry, daughter.”]

In The Heroine’s Journey, the story begins when an event causes the heroine to separate from the feminine. A significant event spurs them to reject the prescribed role of the patriarchy, which in the case of a woman could be a mother, a damsel in distress, a wife, etc. The heroine is put into a box and chafes against its edges because it cuts them off from their ability to reach for the masculine, the power and privilege it affords. This marks a stark difference from how our archetypal hero lives and begins their own adventure. The hero lives a fairly mundane life for the brief time we see them before the first element comes into play: the Call to Adventure. This is generally an external force spurring the hero to action, as opposed to the internal force of the heroine.

The hero then will Refuse the Call and will be introduced to the Mentor they will come to rely upon, whereas the heroine typically immediately begins on a journey to become more powerful/masculine, generally through rejecting femininity. Princess Allura does not inherently reject her own femininity. She rejects the helplessness of being forced into cryostasis after her people have been destroyed and embarks on embracing her masculinity by finishing the war her father and Zarkon started 10,000 years ago. The heroine Identifies with the Masculine and Gathers Allies, which we see Allura do in the pilot of season 1 of VLD. She awakens to find a team of five men and her male adviser Coran, her allies in the coming intergalactic war, and she takes up the metaphorical lion herself as the pilot to the Castle of Lions, changing into her armor--pink, to honor the fallen--for the fight against Sendak as he tries to claim the Lions of Voltron for Emperor Zarkon. Her choice of pink, particularly pale pink, is reminiscent of the breast cancer awareness ribbon, baby pink, it is an intrinsically female color that she dons to assume the role of her father, King Alfor. The narrative is reminding the audience that Princess Allura--the first nonwhite Allura, no less--is just as much a princess as her previous white and blonde iterations are warriors.

After choosing their allies and undertaking this quest of gaining power (not to be confused with empowerment, our heroine is still operating within the confines of the patriarchy here), our heroine undergoes trials and faces enemies that try to persuade them back into the box, into what’s known and fundamentally safe and silencing. The words may be kind, be delivered kindly, but ultimately they can be boiled down to a single message: “go back to where you belong.” For the hero this is a point of no return as an external journey. The hero can choose to go home and leave saving the world to someone else, or they can choose to face the trials that bar them from their prize. But the heroine? They can’t. There is nobody who can save the heroine’s world because for them because their world is what they are trying to escape, and often they are the prize for a hero. It’s up to them to save themselves, and at this point in time, adopting the masculine and the power of the father figure is the way to go. And it works. Princess Allura, again while she does not get discouraged by the men around her to remain an idle princess, because this is the 21st goddamn century, her conflict arises from inexperience. King Alfor supports her drive to finish the war and take decisive action, to finish what he started. The Paladins challenge her authority as a sovereign in the beginning because even if she’s a princess by birth, she has no planet and they’re not of her planet or species anyway, and until they themselves undergo trials in the first few episodes do they appreciate that Allura is still critical as a person, despite her lack of sovereign weight.

Together, she and her team move through the obstacles and the war against Zarkon together, while simultaneously trying to build a coalition of allies to aid in the fight. In fact, much of the plot of VLD takes place during this stage of the heroine’s journey, and it’s here where we as the audience follow Allura as she meets her animus in the form of a Shadow figure: the cunning Prince Lotor. He takes on the role of the challenger to force Allura to better herself, and as Allura rises to the occasion each time, he is textually impressed by her battle skill, then by her intellect. The most iconic moment of Lotor as a Shadow (aka: the half of herself that Allura doesn’t want to accept yet), is when he baits Voltron into battle, then pilots his cruiser through the volatile environment of Thayserix. He expresses disappointment at Voltron’s ability in battle, but when Allura in Blue rises to meet the challenge he lays out, he praises her, even if he textually does not realize who is in Blue at the time.

[Image description: Prince Lotor in profile, a pleased expression on his face, and the subtitles read “Someone’s learning.”]

As a brief aside: the animus comes from Jung and is often paired with an anima, or masculine and feminine energies. The key takeaway is that these energies are complementary to each other and exist in a balance. While they typically are portrayed in a more heterosexual context, like everything else in this meta, the terms are used in a gender-neutral context when not applied directly to Allura’s storyline. While Lotor could be likened to either Meeting the Goddess or (Wo)Man as Temptress in the hero’s journey, a key difference between the heroine’s journey animus and either of these feminized roles is that the Goddess and Temptress are two separate figures--generally women to male heroes--and are generally not equal to the hero physically or mentally. The animus, however, is intrinsically the perfect match to the anima of the heroine, being their complement and their intellectual and physical equal. Lotor is not meant to be seen as the woman on Indiana Jones’ arm, he’s meant to be a force in his own right, challenging Allura to better herself and raise the standards for them both. It’s fitting that this occurs in an episode full of fog and a dangerous abyss, because the traditional hero descends into a metaphorical (or literal) one to encounter these flattened versions of feminine energy.

The trials continue for Allura through the seasons, and she makes many allies and continues to face their enemies head-on, and once Prince Lotor, now Emperor, cements his place as one of Allura’s allies he shifts from the Shadow figure challenging her to the animus in full, being encouraging and supportive as they work together as allies to find Oriande, a mythical place that should yield them the secrets of unlimited Quintessence. While Lotor challenges Allura in a traditionally masculine way (physical trials, battle, strategy), he also encourages her in a decidedly feminine way through Altean history and mythology, as Altea is very feminine-coded compared to the Galra Empire, which through Zarkon represents a familiar and violent strain of masculinity that seeks to crush Allura and force the universe to fit his will through abusive language and physical violence and genocide. Allura taking up the battle in Alfor’s place is simply her continuing the cycle and seeing power in masculine terms, rather than breaking the cycle.

Now here is where the diagrams diverge even further. Until this point, the journeys followed fairly similar trajectories. After the trials and battles of the heroine’s journey, they experience the boon of the journey, which the hero does not achieve until they face further trials and temptations. As such, we will continue to follow the heroine’s journey model and I’ll explain the significance of the flip.

Part II: Not the Place to Arrive

One of the significant things about the heroine’s journey is that when a woman undertakes it, it’s empowering and her becoming her most unified self. Campbell once reportedly said to Murdock, “Women don’t need to make the journey. In the whole mythological journey, the woman is there. All she has to do is realize that she’s the place that people are trying to get to.” In the hero’s journey, often a woman’s place is as the prize, rarely is she her own agent. As I stated previously, the hero and heroine journeys do not have to ascribe to gendered protagonists, however the reality is that the hero’s journey is very patriarchal in nature since it was formulated primarily through the study of male heroes and does not take into account the constant reassessment heroines must face. For heroes, they simply must survive going from point A to point B. Heroines are always subjected to reevaluation within their environment and the people around them, so their journey never really ends.

All this is to say that the hero receives their boon at the end of their story and that’s the end of it. They get a happily ever after and can return to normal life and spread their bounty to those in need or dearest to them.

The heroines?

They get their boon at the middle of the story.

And there’s still more to come for our heroine as they build toward the climax (pun intended).

Princess Allura receives the boon of Oriande’s secrets with Lotor by her side, which in pretty much every literature class would become a discussion on the ways this represents sex, or the the ways Allura is interacting with the world in terms of gender, particularly how they discover Oriande after having an emotional reaction in Haggar’s lab and activating the Altean compass stone. In the heroine’s journey, this boon is often of the same significance as the hero’s boon/reward at the end of their journey, but for the heroine it’s false. It’s fleeting. It’s not meant to last. This is the turning point for our heroine because while yes, our heroine achieved the goal of the adventure, they did so by consciously or unconsciously shunning the feminine. In Allura’s case, she’s still taking after her father, trying to follow in his--and to an extent Zarkon’s--footsteps by mastering the unlimited Quintessence.

And true to form, before season 6 is out, our heroine seems to be betrayed by her animus, returning him to the status of Shadow figure as he challenges her to unleash the power within one final time. Princess Allura thinks Lotor lied to her and has been harvesting Alteans for their Quintessence when Keith and his mother Krolia discover a living Altean in the Quantum Abyss, and with the budding on-screen romance between Allura and Lotor, this betrayal cuts our heroine deep. To her, he not only lied about there being no more Alteans left, but he actively continued the genocide his father began 10,000 years ago. That’s not an easy thing to get over. So Lotor assembles Sincline, which bears a visual resemblance to a wingless dragon--the last metaphorical dragon she faces before moving into the next step of the heroine’s journey--and with Allura in Voltron the two battle it out in a tragic action-packed scene that leads to Voltron overloading Lotor with Quintessence and leaving him in the Rift.

With the dragon defeated and the boon lost, the heroine has to sacrifice not only her animus, but the last vestiges of her home to try and undo what following the masculine has done: close not only the original Rift, but all the fractures in reality caused by their battle.

And what does a girl who has already lost her planet, people, and lover have left to lose?

[Image description: The five Lions of Voltron flying away from the massive Rift, the Castle of Lions flying straight toward the center of it.]

The heroine following the footsteps of the masculine always comes at a major cost to them. In Allura’s case, she has to sacrifice her castle in order to make right the harm done to the literal universe. In this case, she mirrors Zarkon in his destruction of the universe, but rather than directly harming billions of lives on uncounted planets, she creates a literal hole in the universe because of her blindness to the consequences of the actions of herself and those around her.

And much like her father sending away the Lions, she must send away her castle in the hopes of saving the universe from greater destruction.

Part III: Transcending the Rift

From the gain and loss of the boon, things look dire for the heroine at this stage in the journey. In Allura’s case, she is without people, without planet, without castle, and as she learns at the beginning of season 8, her found family has families of their own--other than Coran, that is. Our heroine continues to lose pieces of the things and people surrounding her at the beginning of the story: which Murdock refers to as awakening feelings of spiritual aridity or death. She is losing her place in the universe even faster than before, when she stood on the shoulders of her father, and she must move forward. Allura passed the point of no return all the way back in season 1 episode 1. As the heroine, she broke free of the safe mold she knew for the past 10,000 years, and every episode since her awakening she has had to try to forge forward on the path she knew: that of her father. Now, though, her father’s methods have failed her, just as they failed him, leaving her with no option but to keep moving forward and to approach her journey from another angle.

[Image description: from left to right, Veronica, Allura, Romelle, and Pidge (mostly off-screen) in a clothing swap shop as Allura speaks. Caption reads, “I could give you a royal decree of service from the Crown Princess of Alte…”]

Allura not only must deal with the loss of her place in the universe, but she must also deal with the fact that by leaving Lotor in the Rift, she abandons half of herself as well. Physically she is a whole person, but if we look at her role as an anima and what her fears and strengths are, destroying her animus throws her self-knowledge out of alignment. She’s careening away from the safe path of her father, but she must now rediscover the strengths within herself without succumbing to her weaknesses and do so by stepping out of her father’s shadow.

Season 8 is rife with emotional buildup and no payoff. We as the audience don’t know what happened to Lotor for the whole of season 7 and we see Allura struggling to deal with all her losses, we travel to Earth and meet the MFE pilots, a plucky bunch who probably were meant to lay groundwork for a new Vehicle Voltron, and we see that Haggar/Honerva is the final big bad of the whole show, ready to vindicate the son she lost to the Rift, but also 10,000 years ago when he was born and she became the Witch we love to hate. So when we join Allura and the gang on Earth with Luca in the infirmary, and Allura’s final trials begin…

Or they should have.

[Image description: Lance and Allura kissing in rainbow lighting where they are artificially-colored in red, then pink, then blue from top to bottom in front of a fading background of warm yellow at the top to gray at the bottom.]

Instead, we are treated to the final acts of a hero’s journey, but still following our heroine through the steps.

Our heroine wears down to the persistence of Lance, who in a heroic journey would receive a fair princess as his boon, and Allura is trying to find a place to belong. In seasons prior to this, Lance acts like a goofy everyday guy, very much a typical character in many present-day stories that allows the audience to see themselves in him. He fantasizes about wooing the princess, calls himself a ladies’ man, tries to be funny, he’s a pretty typical character that a male audience is more likely to sympathize with, and as such the fantasy is pairing up with the prettiest, smartest, etc. girl in the story. The woman as a boon, the Goddess, and the Temptress are never on equal footing with the male hero, and even in the case of female heroes, the meeting with a god(dess) means that the female hero is worthy of being a consort rather than the equal that a heroine is to the anima/animus. In fact, Campbell reportedly told Murdock, “Women don’t need to make the journey. In the whole mythological journey, the woman is there. All she has to do is realize that she’s the place that people are trying to get to.” In the hero’s journey, if the hero is male and heterosexual, the women will always be the prize, the virginal ideal, or the sexualized damnation, and in all of them, the woman is meant to be receptive to the man (and doesn’t THAT sound like some familiar rhetoric). Never is the woman an agent in the hero’s journey when it fulfills a male fantasy. And it is this very same box that spurs a heroine to begin their heroine’s journey: this breakdown of people to individual parts as determined by a patriarchal society.

While Lance is a hero in his own right, in Allura’s heroine journey, he acts as an ogre that comes dressed as a male ally all the way back in season 1. He’s a Subverted Nice Guy in that he’s constantly trying to woo Allura, but ultimately he’s still reinforcing the same patriarchy that not only plagues Allura in this iteration, but also in previous iterations of the Voltron franchise. The Nice Guy doesn’t challenge the heroine like the animus, but rather encourages them to stay in place or to fit a predetermined mold once more.

Look familiar?

[Image description: Lance’s fantasy, with him standing triumphant over Zarkon as the team cheers him on, Allura kneeling at his right side and looking up at him, while a flag with his face waves on his left.]

Many of the silly shots in the series have been foreshadowing, whether in the most direct sense or in the promise of subverting what’s portrayed. In the case of this screenshot, by the time Lance gets the girl, Zarkon is killed (by Lotor), Allura has already had an intimate relationship (with Lotor), and the team collectively became heroes and allies of Lotor before the end of season 6 happened. Lance, textually, is not Allura’s equal as an animus, and while he doesn’t quite view her as his equal--especially in earlier seasons--he can only textually become her equal when she is at her lowest point, and he’s still affixed to the idea that she’s a prize, going so far as to say that “winning prizes is my specialty” in “Clear Day”. Really, it’s a messy relationship dynamic that tries to show the audience why, as they stand in the canon material, they don’t work. Not only is Allura still not his equal, but his fantasy comes about at the hands of others, or with the help of others, and he comes second. He plays a role, but he is not the singular hero he once fantasized about being. Textually this subversion is teaching him a lesson about becoming his best self and acknowledging that he doesn’t have to be the hero, the payoff of which should have come in season 8 as Allura completes her heroine’s journey to become her most unified and realized self. It’s meant to be his apotheosis, the new perspective and enlightenment brought to the hero after facing all the trials of the journey as a part of the final reward.

Allura, fighting with this sudden loss of herself, must now also help spearhead the war against Honerva, the archetypal Bad Mother, in an alchemist-versus-alchemist battle for not only Lotor’s physical soul but for Allura’s metaphorical one as well. This is a new fight, the gauntlet thrown by someone other than her animus, and after all his tests, she must still rise to the challenge with the same energy, but she must do so with new knowledge now that she knows she cannot rely solely on her father.

But what’s the next step for a heroine trapped in the arid desert of the unknown self and with the weight of the world pressing onto them?

They must descend to the underworld and begin the transformation from the masculine methods to unleash the femininity that’s been locked away this whole time.

And who do we have to escort Allura to the metaphorical underworld as she falls asleep?

[Image description: A close-up of Lotor’s face in deep shadows as he stares head-on at the “camera”.]

Her Animus, acting as a Shadow once more.

His entrance is littered with sex. Not literally, but metaphorically. He greets Allura while she’s in bed, the camera does a gratuitous slow pan over his body in a way that many cameras exclusively afford to women, the presence of a blooming flower with an erect stamen, the lighting of the preview--altered in the final season itself--is purple even, a romantic and spiritual color. You know the joke in college English classes about how everything is sex except sex? That’s this scene in a nutshell. He’s always been drawn and behaved in a way designed to appeal to the female gaze (an essay in itself), but this scene really takes the cake.

[Image description: Lotor as viewed in profile from a low angle in a Garrison room, looking down at a juniberry flower in a pot.]

And it’s this scene where we see Lotor give Allura the first critical piece of information for how she can stop Honerva/Haggar, but also reminding her that some people do not change. While Allura must change to achieve her realization, he reminds her that Haggar is still the same witch, and that her pain of losing Lotor becoming public does not excuse the fact that she has not expressed remorse or tried to change herself, let alone her hand in not only his downfall but in the brainwashing of the Alteans. She is an antagonist so focused on the wrongs done to her that she justifies the wrongs she does to others with them. Allura, however, expressed remorse and wanted to save Lotor as soon as she realized what was going on, which further cements the ways in which their fates could have been the same or switched had they made slightly different choices. Honerva is 10,000 years too late. Like Lotor mirrors his father and in “Shadows” is shown to be more empathetic, Allura mirrors Honerva and both prove throughout the show to have stronger moral compasses than their predecessors. They are the Emperor and Alchemist, and while fate decrees they must take up the mantle left behind, their free will dictates that they should not blindly follow their footsteps if they truly wish to make a lasting change. Narratively, they must forge a new path if they are to bring the universe to peace again.

[Image description: A close-up shot of the juniberry flower with Allura visible in the background, but blurred. The subtitle reads Lotor’s line, “The witch may change her name, but she will always be a witch.”]

Lotor tempts Allura to take the entity into herself, and when she reaches out to connect with it, she is taken further into the dreamscape and finds herself back on Altea and greeted by her mother. This marks the beginning of the reconnection with the feminine, but while Allura has always so desperately missed her family and Altea, she finds herself in a precarious position. Suddenly, she is in the very same mech suit that Luca was found in, and to save Altea from the Galra fleet overhead, she makes the decision to use the planet’s Quintessence. However, in the process of destroying the Galra fleet, destroys Altea as well. As her world crumbles, her mother congratulates her for a job well done. This presumably mirrors the dropped plot about the Altean Colony and the decisions Lotor would have been faced with, and after “Shadows” would lend both Allura and the audience a greater appreciation for the position he was in before he died.

And when she finally wakes?

[Image description: Allura sitting up in the Garrison bunk, looking at the mice, the juniberry dry and wilted in the foreground, blurry. The subtitle reads, “It was only a dream.”]

Our oh so sexual symbol is wilted, and Allura wakes up alone.

With the visual deflowering and this new revelation about the kinds of decisions those before her have had to make, Allura can begin reconnecting with the feminine in earnest without falling into the old placements she may have been subjected to at the beginning of the story. This would have continued further with Allura reconnecting with her animus in the missing episode @leakinghate titles “The Descent”, especially fitting as she continues her descent to her feminine roots as a heroine and to reconnect with her lost animus. Reconnecting and reconciling with him--and with the side of herself he represents--is critical to her achieving unity within herself and being able to face Honerva head-on.

Once the heroine has descended to the underworld, begun the reconnection to the feminine, and returned with new knowledge on their relationship to their emotional side and the aspects overshadowed by the masculine, they are ready to begin healing the mother/daughter split. This in essence is the heroine returning to the old knowledge she has cast aside when following the path of the masculine/father, but approaching it with a new understanding and perspective. Think of it as understanding why your parents enforced rules like “don’t run into traffic”. As a kid, the danger may not be obvious, but as an adult you’re able to look at the same situation, see over obstacles younger you might not have, and realize “oh shit, that’s a car”. That said, the heroine does not allow themselves to get put back into the same or even a different pre-prescribed role because they now have a greater understanding of the situation at hand.

In Allura’s case, this means revisiting the plan on how to take down Honerva, and realizing that she must pursue the course laid out by her trip to the underworld to not only save the universe, but awaken Lotor from being a robeast. Part of the conflict against this plan comes from the team, who see the entity she took within herself as dangerous. While that’s true, stopping the plan also prevents Allura from growing in strength to be able to fight Honerva. The power flowing within her that Lotor referred to back in season 6 is at her fingertips, and like his visit in “Clear Day” reminded her, she need only take it. During both parts of the “Knights of Light” episodes, Allura is confronted with shades of Honerva’s memories as they dive deeper, and it’s here that we as the audience and the cast are meant to learn what truly became of Lotor after he was imprisoned in the Rift, and it’s meant to be utterly jarring to everyone. Instead, with how the scenes were edited together during the post-production alterations, Hate aptly points out in “Seek Truth in Darkness” that Honerva promising vengeance and seeing Lotor’s corpse has next to no impact. Or rather, it does to the audience--a melted corpse isn’t exactly Y-7 appropriate--but the characters don’t really react to this revelation at all.

That said, it’s more than likely that Allura genuinely believes Lotor to be dead (as opposed to a sleeping prince), which would explain her aggressive reaction to seeing pre-Rift Zarkon, and we don’t see his reaction to learning what he did to his son, either. This would be a prime location for Zarkon to experience and express remorse for what his actions have done to his son, subverting the toxic masculinity narrative his character had been representing prior.

At the end of “Knights of Light Part 2”, Hate mentions that Allura would need to make another trip to the underworld to commune with Lotor and realize that no, he’s not dead, but also that she not only must defeat Honerva, she must do so in order to save Lotor and free everyone of the cycle of violence that began 10,000 years ago. This is the final descent she makes before she can heal the wounded masculine, both in herself, and Lotor directly.

[Image description: Allura in profile inside the cockpit of Blue Lion, unconscious. Her window displays measurement increments and stars in red-tones, while Allura herself is lit in blue tones.]

After the end of this episode, however, Hate mentions that much of what was there is butchered in the post-production editing, so I will be extrapolating based on the content we have in the season as well as utilizing her analysis of the story as it should have been.

When Allura wakes up from falling unconscious, this is when we should see her proposing to save her animus, and it should come with a discussion with Lance about how they don’t click romantically. That said, in the version on Netflix, we see their relationship continue, however much of their shared body language doesn’t necessarily even match up with an awkward couple. Lance seems sullen and possessive, and while he might still be sullen in Allura’s original heroine’s journey, he would have had this moment of growth in which he learns to let go of Allura. She’s his fantasy, and not only is that unfair to Allura, it’s also unfair to him, and he doesn’t need to be the hero or the guy that gets the girl. He can be himself, silly, sharpshooting, video game-playing Lance. A genuinely nice dude, which completes the subversion of the Nice Guy trope his character embodied for so long.

“Uncharted Regions” is a hot mess of an episode in terms of narrative flow and consistency, but this would have marked the beginning of the alchemist vs. alchemist fight for not only Lotor’s soul, but the universe. Honerva uses the Sincline mech and her new mech to start tearing holes through realities, and once Allura jumps into the fray, that moves the audience into the next missing episode proposed by Hate: “Storming the Pyramid”. This would be where Honerva uses Allura to revive Lotor because she did not receive the life-givers’ blessing, and Allura would do it, literally healing the wounded masculine, but also falling right into Honerva’s trap in the process. This would almost certainly be a highly-controversial thing among Allura’s allies, but like Allura remaining on the path she knew, it’s easier to accept Lotor as pure evil who got what he deserved, when at no point is there a definite case against him. In fact, “Shadows” is designed to render him as a sympathetic character, and seeing his melted corpse is even more horrifying after seeing him as a baby and child. But that’s the way it is when a heroine breaks the mold. The heroine defines their own role, and as part of that, it gives them the ability to help others break theirs. The heroine experiences true empowerment by divorcing themselves from the power structures that defined them before, and doing so with the greater knowledge of their internal masculinity and femininity. Allura revisiting the war of her father with the lifegivers’ knowledge to compound her intrinsic alchemical abilities is the moment when she achieves union within herself, and it manifests physically as reviving Lotor, her animus.

It’s after this point that we see the Purple Lion and Purple Paladin manifest, our namesake.

In “Day 47”, Kolivan references the team sizes the Blades of Marmora use. He references four and five as the usual sizes, but six occasionally happening, but what he says next is particularly interesting.

[Image description: Kolivan being filmed for an interview, saying, “Seven seems rare, but… it could happen.”]

The Voltron team had four Paladins briefly after Shiro disappeared and before Allura took up the mantle, but the full team always has five. After Shiro returned for good, their team became six Paladins.

Now, with the healed animus Lotor on their side, they could have the rare seven-person configuration that Hate discusses at length in “Seek Truth in Darkness”.

With the anima and animus aligned together at last with no secrets, they can unify externally the same way Allura unified internally, and battle against Honerva properly. Now, Team V, Lotor, and the entire universe can face Honerva head-on and stand a chance at winning.

We also should get the emotional payoff for Lotor as an abuse victim in his own arc, closing up this nice little loose end that hurts way more than it did before season 8 dropped.

[Image description: An up-close shot of Lotor glaring into the “camera” in green lighting and saying to Haggar, “maybe I will take pity on you when the time comes.”]

And it’s worth mentioning that while the final battle is exciting and action-packed, the final surrender of Honerva comes quietly, in the rift of all realities. The characters of Team V are able to deliver their character-based arc lessons, it’s a somber moment of learning as Allura, using once more the blessing of the lifegivers, enlightens Honerva to her memories and what she’s done, but also restoring her sense of self the way Allura was. This is the final healing of the mother/daughter split, and it’s significant that Honerva’s abuse victim not be her healer. Not only does Lotor (as far as we know) lack the ability, but it’s never the victim’s job to heal their abuser, just as it’s not the obligation of the oppressed to appease their oppressor. Honerva can finally move on and begin atoning for what she did by setting the ghosts of the Paladins of old in her mind free, but that still begs the question of what our heroine and her animus must do to finish the job.

This is where Lotor would get his second chance, in the most literal sense of the term, where he faces a similar trial to the one in Oriande back in season 6 and the burning question for a man so concerned with survival and cunning.

Is there something he would give up the life he has known and fought so hard to keep for?

And this time, the answer is yes.

Allura.

It was always Allura.

While Honerva is able to stop the rift from expanding by, well, not expanding it herself, she lacks the ability to properly close it the way that it was closed the first time. It takes one final adventure, one final unification by the anima and animus, by the heroine and her Shadow, and one final goodbye. Allura and Lotor, born of an age long past, become the lifegivers eternal through staying behind to close the rift.

The lionhearted goddess of life and her stalwart champion of survival.

[Image description: The final scene after the credits, where an Allura-shaped nebula is nestled up against a smudged, darker nebula with a sea of stars among them, and the five Lions of Voltron flying toward the nebulae.]

Sources

Dos Santos, Joaquim and Montgomery, Lauren. Voltron: Legendary Defender. Netflix. 2016-2018.

LeakingHate. “Seek Truth in Darkness”. VLD Visuals Detective and Imperial ApologistTM. 2 Mar. 2019. https://leakinghate.tumblr.com/post/183160042843/seek-truth-in-darkness

“Maureen Murdock’s Heroine’s Journey Arc”. The Heroine Journeys Project. https://heroinejourneys.com/heroines-journey/

Murdock, Maureen. The Heroine’s Journey. 1990.

University of Kansas. “Science Fiction Writers Workshop: Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey”. KU Guinn Center for the Study of Science Fiction. http://www.sfcenter.ku.edu/Workshop-stuff/Joseph-Campbell-Hero-Journey.htm

#dragon's ramblings #TeamPurpleLion #vld #the heroine's journey #voltron #allura #lotor #writing #literary analysis #strafe #hero's journey #lance #executive meddling #freevlds8 #free vld s8

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sailor-cresselia · 5 years ago

Text

Zero One 01: A JUMP TO THE SKY TURNS TO A RIDER KICK

Okay, I’m gonna start liveblogging from the start of a show this time! Because oh wow, just watching this live was a trip… and now I get to properly understand it. >:3

––––

So, it appears that the shot of a HumaGear in the shadows in the trailer was not, in fact, in the satellite, like the trailer implied. Instead, he’s from the Hiden Intelligence sizzle reel.

Said sizzle reel also includes a shot of the “HumaGear Skin Fitting Gate System”. That’s the part of the manufacturing process that gives them their human-like appearance, as opposed to the base robot form.

Interestingly, each of the newly-humanized HumaGear has a rectangular tattoo, with some sort of hexagonal design in it. The male one has it on the left side of his chest, and the lady we see up close has it dead center a little below her collarbone.

The support HumaGear that they show next all have it on the side of their necks. And isn’t that a handy way to tell who’s a HumaGear, if they ever elect to make the ‘ears’ smaller?

Actually, I think the lower part of it has the Hiden Intelligence logo, and the top is the hexagon glyph. Still can’t get a good look at it, though.

Also, it’s probably a very bad idea to have all of your HumaGear managed via a single broadcast satellite. I’m just saying, with tech this advanced and ubiquitous, having some backups might be to your benefit.

–

So, Hiden Korenosuke, Aruto’s grandfather, was 75 when he died. Additionally, he wasn’t just the CEO of Hiden Intelligence – he was the founder.

The news spot about his funeral is being played on a giant hovercraft, via holographic screens.

I really do love how we’re clearly going all-in from the start on ‘this is not the mainline World of Riders.’

Meanwhile, Aruto shows us his dumb puppy nature right off the bat, being late for work despite having set five alarms.

We zoom out on the city, seeing the hovercraft in better detail than the grounds-eye view from before. We also see that the Hiden Intelligence headquarters absolutely dwarves the surroundings.

The logo appears on screen. When it zooms in for the transition, the black of the ‘01’ becomes a tightly layered pattern of binary.

–

There’s no opening credits today, since it’s the first episode and all. Opening Credits on the first day is not how Takashi Yuya-san rolls, as we saw during Ex-Aid.

The sponsor segment, however, does exist. It shows Zero One and his bike – which doesn’t have an individual name yet that I can find, just the term for the phone that has as a primary form. It’s a really cool shot, too. They’re under a blacklight. I’d thought they were glow-in-the-dark when I watched the raw, but seeing this in better quality shows that the blue and red accents are reacting, too.

That is so cool.

–

Aruto nyooms to the amusement park on his bike, because he’s super late. Turns out he’s a comedian in a stage show, with a truly hideous blue sequened suit and oversized red bowtie. His act is supposed to be a Manzai show… excpet for how he’s absolutely terrible.

Like, to the point where his straightman is his phone.

There are exactly two people in the audience… and it’s an older couple, who aren’t even watching. They’re having lunch.

This kills the Aruto.

–

And so does the fact that he’s fired. As his manager says, the era’s more suited to HumaGear entertainers.

Aruto disagrees – how could an AI understand a person’s sense of humor?

And then Ab-cruncher Taro, a HumaGear comedian, comes on stage for his act… and the audience loves it. Including the older couple from Arutos act.

I mean, this might be in part that nobody in World of Zero One likes manzai anymore, too, but also Aruto’s just terrible, and this guy did have a pretty decent pun on ad-libbing… as he exploded his abs off.

The manager points out that everyone is laughing, that having such a lively theme park is his dream. Aruto feels the same – he just wants to make people laugh, that’s all.

…Except that his now-former manager is already walking off. He already has someone who can make the crowd laugh, and Aruto really should find a new dream.

–

A car pulls up to Hiden Intelligence HQ, with Fukuzoe Jun and his HumaGear assistant, Shesta. I really like her red-and-grey outfit, not gonna lie.

Anyway, he’s the vice president of HI, and, admittedly rather justifiably, assumes that he’s the new CEO. He’s got quite an ego on him, apparently, because the funeral was today. He’s already got his portrait commissioned, made, and ready to be lowered over the portrait of the late CEO. And it’s larger, dwarfing the old one.

Dude.

Maybe you should have waited a bit on getting the portrait. Like, at least until after the funeral.

Just saying.

–

We switch to somewhere called ‘Daybreak Town.’

…It’s surrounded by massive, high-tech security fences. And is a bit of a crater. A flooded one.

Entering a run-down, semi-abandoned room, we meet Horobi and Jin. Admittedly, we don’t hear their names, but that’s who they are. Horobi is stoic and calm, and Jin… well, he’s basically an even more hyper Parad.

Horobi says that now that CEO Hiden is dead, they can start the Magear Plan.

…Jin, what was that you were messing around with on that stand?

Jin’s probable attention issues aside, Horobi goes to explain a bit further, while unplugging a pseudo-driver from a cable, probably where it was being programmed. They’re going to use the HumaGear singularity – that is, the hypothetical point when Artificial Intelligences become more intelligent than humans, often including sentience. Bascially, they plan to use that to surpass humanity… somehow. As he’s saying this, he takes a Progrise Key out of a holder, and we get a few shots of the room.

The MetsuboJinrai.NET emblem is on the wall, and we see some of the assorted items. Including a katana, for some reason. And, on a platform with the same pattern as where Jin was messing around earlier? That is a gun right there. Yay!

Horobi hands the driver and key to Jin, while saying that it’s time to annihilate humanity… just like this city was, long ago.

Zoom out from his face, where he stands under a beam of light… that is coming in from a hold in a ceiling. That is to day, the hole in a roof, of a former apartment building.

Zoom out further to see that it’s one of the handful of buildings around the perimeter of the flooded crater.

At the very center of said crater? Underwater?

That sure looks an awful lot like the satellite that controls the HumaGear.

This is why you have redundant backup systems, folks.

–

So, at this point, Aruto’s got Shotaro’s meme faces, Emu’s pratfall humor (although thankfully toned down a bit), and Sento’s phone. Now we’ve also got Kabuto’s Shibuya disaster 2.0.

This is fine.

–

At Hiden Intelligence, we see a room labeled ‘Three Dimensional Printing System’. Like, it actually says that in English, same as the gate earlier. An Ai starts speaking, saying that it’s receiving orders from BS-ZA – the broadcast satellite. What does the ZA stand for? Who knows! The sizzle reel didn’t actually tell us that.

I can not understate how incredibly concerned about the ‘we have a single point of control for all of this technology’ thing that’s going on.

Anyway, a holographic pattern gets displayed inside the printing… room, I guess, and two manufacturing robot arms emerge and start. Uh.

Okay, so. That’s not how 3D printing usually works. You can’t really makes something solid out of beams of light. That’s not how it should have worked with the HumaGear skins earlier, and it’s not how it should work now.

Unless, like, it’s not light? It could somehow be a sort of plasma version of the materials needed? But it was able to make, like, the hair and eyes and such for the HumaGear earlier, so… ugh. I’m putting too much thought into it.

My hangups about how things work aside, they’re making the driver.

Outside of this room, in an office, a female HumaGear in white and teal is sitting, inactive, until she receives orders from the satellite. She gets up, and goes to fulfill her task.

Hi Izu! I didn’t notice that you had little teal highlights in your hair before! There’s just these little streaks hidden in there. It’s cute.

–

A dejected Aruto walks his bike away from the amusement park, lamenting his inability to get the crowd to laugh. Sorry bud, but you’re just not funny.

A car pulls up, Izu stepping out. She identifies her ‘target’ via the object recognition analysis that CEO described in the sizzle reel earlier. I didn’t notice before, but even though they still says peoples names in the ‘family name first’ order, the HUD shows them with given name first. Interesting.

She describes him as a ‘self described’ comedian, who is unknown. We see her face during this, before she blinks and looks downward.

Aruto’s on the ground. He’s collapsed.

Izu has known him for all of less than a minute, has no real personality of her own (yet), and is already roasting him.

When he asks who she is, she tells him that her name is Izu, and she’s the President’s secretary. Please note that she does not say which president, which probably only furthers Aruto’s confusion.

–

Back at the comedy stage, we’ve got… a human manzai duo, who are getting a laugh out of the crowd. So, it’s just that Aruto’s terrible, not that they don’t do manzai anymore.

Backstage, Taro sits, presumably waiting for his next set. He’s playing back the crowd as they laugh at his joke, and oh nooo he’s smiling so widely. He’s so proud that he was able to make them laugh! Taro is a good guy and I feel really bad for what’s coming.

Not!Parad Jin ominously comes up from behind. He doesn’t say anything more than that he’s found him, before taking the imitation driver and slapping it onto Taro’s waist.

I like absolutely NONE of the hacking process! Not the red circle of light around the buckle as the driver activates. Not the fact that the ‘belt’ starts off as fuck-off huge cable strips with ‘connector pins’ on them. Of course, since said cables are basically as wide as an arm, this means the connecter pins are more like giant spikes.

Not the fact that they jam into poor Taro, and he immediately starts seizing up with red sparks everywhere.

Not him dropping to his knees, making pained sounds.

Not Jin saying ‘You’re my friend now, so go wreak havoc on this place!”

Not the fact that he says that with a smile.

–

Elsewhere, a belt has just finished being printed, and is now being assembled and given a spiffy new coat of paint.

–

Taro is trying to not do the thing, because his job is making people laugh.

Jin chuckles. Not anymore. Now his job is destroying humans.

We switch to Taro’s perspective, and see a download progress bar fill and complete. It has ‘metsubojinrai.net’ written underneath it. When it completes, the display is replaced with their logo.

Taro cries in pain, and his memory of the crowd turns greyscale. He reopens his eyes, and instead of the cool blue light they were lit with before, they’re glowing red.

Tonelessly, he says that he is connected to metsubojinrai.net, and the ‘connecting’ lights on his earpieces glitch from blue to red.

Jin hands him the Progrize key from earlier.

–

The driver’s done.

–

We switch to the Hiden Intelligence boardroom. Jun had called a board meeting earlier, and for some reason, Izu received instructions to bring Aruto there.

Nearly everyone in the room has a HumaGear secretary standing behind them. Shesta’s tattoo is on her left wrist, and Izu’s is on the back of her left hand.

The meeting was called to read the CEO’s will. Apparently, nobody even knew he had a grandson, much less one like Aruto. According to Izu, because he is, in fact, related to the CEO, and the CEO had requested he be there, there won’t be problems regarding the legality of all of this with Aruto here. She slides the will in front of him, and walks out of the room.

Jun tells him to hurry up and read it, he’s got to get to work taking over as CEO.

Aruto opens the envelope, and starts reading – forgetting to read out loud, because he’s just a confused puppy. (He’s 22, he’s legally an adult, but that does not stop him from being a dumb puppy.) He looks incredibly distressed over what’s in the will.

It’s ominously shown with a red static overlay, is hand-written, and segments of it are appearing on top to highlight themselves.

And I have no idea why some of the overlaid words are highlighted in red, because I don’t know Japanese.

Jun, frustrated with Aruto’s distress and lack of reading out loud, grabs the paper away from him.

“In the near future, our company will face a serious crisis.” Jun’s brow furrows, and the rest of the room starts muttering, wondering what crisis that could be. “The HumaGears that our company was making will be misused and will attack humanity.” This shot goes from Jun reading to a generic HumaGear, his eyes turning red, and zooming out to show that it’s a crowd of them, in a ruined city. They all crouch down and start. Freaking. Swarming, on all fours. It’s absolutely terrifying, especially when one leaps up at the viewpoint, shrieking. (It’s the same ‘vocal’ sound effect from the bugster unions, by the way.)

Back in reality, the boardroom is starting to panic a bit. Izu comes back through the door, carrying a briefcase. Jun resumes reading. “There is only one counter measure: the Zero One driver and Progrise Key.” Izu opens the briefcase, revealing the items in question. “Built into it is the new era’s security system, in order for human hands to take control of the HumaGear.” Aruto looks at the case and driver, his expression blank.

Jun continues, with us scrolling down the will. “Only the company’s President is authorized to use it.” He can’t restrain his grin. “And my successor whom-” his face falls “I entrust this to is my grandson, Hiden Aruto?!”

Nobody expected this, least of all Aruto.

“I want him to become a part of staff, and overcome the company’s crisis. That is all.”

Jun is not okay with this, and neither is the rest of the board. He’s treating this like a family business, that’s absurd! I mean, never mind that he was the founder.

All of them start protesting over one another, before Aruto yells at them all to calm down. He then says that there’s no way he can be a president. He just wants to make people laugh. Without another word, he picks up his duffle bag and walks out.

Izu tilts her head, blinking confusedly.

–

As Aruto, somber, rides the elevator down, he thinks back to when he was a little kid.

A tiny little Aruto is trying to practice a routine with someone who seems to be his father, who laughs a little. Babby Aruto insists on trying again, because he wasn’t laughing from the heart.

The man says that the result will always be the same. His headphones are white and blue – namely, with blue lights, the same color as a HumaGear’s earpeices.

Aruto swears that he’s going to make his dad laugh – oh no, this is his dad.

An explosion goes off, and blue fire fills the screen.

Little Aruto wakes up, on the ground, his father next to him.

His father, with sections of his skin blasted off, revealing a mechanical, HumaGear face underneath, bleeding blue and dying. “Aruto… head towards your dreams… jump to them…”

The shot zooms out, with elementary schooler Hiden Aruto crouched over his HumaGear father, surrounded by rubble and flames.

–

In the present, Aruto watches as Jun’s portrait is lowered off the wall. He apologizes to his grandfather.

–

At the comedy stage, the manzai act is still going on. Everyone applauds as they finish, the manager included. It looks like Aruto is about to go ask for his job back, but he hesitates, thinking back to what the manager had said. It looks like he’s trying not to cry as he turns back around to leave.

As he turns, someone shouts to be let go.

The hijacked Taro is holding another HumaGear, probably one of the staff, by the collar as he walks on stage, before tossing him to the side. “My job is to make people laugh…” Taro’s viewpoint is shown, red static overlaying the glitching sight of the crowd as they start to back away. “…and to annihilate them.”

He activates the key, and inserts it into his driver. Red ‘wires’ extend from the buckle, breaking into and through the key.

I am not okay with any of this transformation sequence!

Not with the fire burning away his human appearance.

Not with how his normal HumaGear face withdraws and reveals what is basically a robot skull.

Not with how his jaw opens wide, and green… I dunno. Green pipes come out of his mouth, and start surrounding him in what is basically the Mad Rogue transformation.

Not with the orange dna spiral that lights up around him, and turns purple before the whole thing – spiral and pipes alike – burst out of existence, leaving Taro as the Berotha Magear.

As per Rider Wiki: The name Berotha is from Kujiberotha teruyukii, an extinct insect that lived in the Cretaceous period. It’s a recently named type of thorny lacewing, which are closely related to mantises. Aka, the species that Berotha takes his appearance from.

Two HumaGear staffers go to try and stop him, but he tosses both of them to the side, and proceeds to use whip-like extenstions to attack them… and overwrite their programming, shredding their human appearances and causing their original faces to retract. they’re left with the skull appearance briefly, before full faceplates slide down, creating the anonymous mooks of the season. They run off stage to attack.

The manager watches all of this, stunned. Aruto watches, before running at Berotha and tackling him around the middle, trying to stop him. He gets thrown into a sign for his attempt.

–

In another section of… oh lord. In another section of ‘Giggle Dreamland’, we see that there are a lot more than two mooks now. A van pulls up, the body-armored grunts of AIMS grabbing machine guns as they rush out and get in formation.

Yaiba Yua, who will eventually be Kamen Rider Valkyrie, steps out as well, saying that they are to collect data on the rampaging HumaGear and that they need to- she’s cut off by machine gun fire. Fuwa Isamu, who will eventually be Kamen Rider Vulcan, gives the order to destroy all of them.

As Yua says, at least let her finish before you start going all gun-happy!

–

Aruto, now distinctly missing his jacket and bag, gets to his feet, seeing the destruction all around him. MaGear mooks are attacking people, and ohhh nooo I think they’re repeating some of their stock ‘amusement park employee’ phrases as they do it, and that’s just tragic.

The whole area is a shambles, and the manager is on his knees in despair. Aruto remembers how the manager had said that making people laugh with joy was his dream, before Berotha comes up to the manager, extending his arm blade. Aruto tries to tackle him away, but it’s no use – he gets tossed away again. Izu runs onto the scene, carrying the breifcase. Berotha grabs the frozen manager by the collar, saying that a future where humans have dreams will never come, and starts laughing maniaclly.

Theres the sound of a heartbeat as Aruto flashes back to his father’s death.

“Don’t you laugh!” He pushes himself to his feet. “Don’t you dare laugh at someone’s dream, when you know nothing about it!”

“I do know.” Berotha starts rattling off a dictionary description of ‘dream,’ his earpieces lighting up as they connect to the web, before Aruto cuts him off.

Aruto is all but shouting. “A person’s dream isn’t so simple that you can just look it up!”

Izu looks slightly aside, averting her gaze.

“Hey! With that driver, I can do something about this, right?!” We only see Aruto’s lower face as he asks this, same as when he told Berotha not to laugh.

Izu says that yes, though it is available only to the companies president-

Aruto cuts her off, desperation written on his face as he tells her to just give it to him.

“Very well, Aruto-sama.”

She walks up, and hands him the driver and key. (In the distance, we can see that Berotha is charging energy to his mantis sickles.)

“Equip the driver to your waist.”

Glaring furiously at Berotha, Aruto places it at his waist…

There’s the sound of a heartbeat, as blue ones and zeroes glow around Aruto, and…

His soul, glowing that same bright blue, straight up leaves his body, and transports into the satellite.

(Me, a Double fan: YOOOOOOO!)

The similarities to how Philip enters the Gaia Library only increase in his visualization of the BS-ZA’s ‘cerebro’, which is a white void with occasional columns of binary scrolling upward. And written in the same font as the logo, at that.

Izu appears in there, in much the same manner – they’re both in their usual appearances again, though. Whereever they step, the binary ripples out beneath their feet. It’s a nice touch to give a sense of where the ground is, since otherwise it’s all just pure white.

She tells him that his brain is remotely accessing the satellite. He… doesn’t quite take this well.

Also, now that I have a proper back view of Izu, I can see that the earpieces have a headband behind them, so they’re basically behind the head headphones. Except, you know, most likely mounted.

Anyway, she continues. Right now, he has the same thought processing speed as an AI.

Their surroundings change, to have the void show where they are in the real world, while they appear as data projections. Just to drive the point home, she walks through the real-world Aruto.

Who is very much unconscious, standing upright with his head dropped down. Berotha’s still charging his attack, rearing back to fire.

“Left like this, in five seconds, you will die.”

Only an AI could deliver this line so casually. Aruto is not okay with this. He’s not okay with any of this.

The surroundings change again, this time to a grey and purple tinted void with hexagons in the background.

“Until then, you can learn from the manual.”

So. They’re just actually having him read the manual, in virtual form, while his real body is very, very vulnerable, so that he can learn how to use his driver.

Now This Is Kamen Rider.

‘Opening Tutorial Mode’

–

Meanwhile, over with the Zectroopers – I MEAN – AIMS troops, the machine guns do absolutely jack all against the Magear mooks. They can knock them down, sure, sending them sparking to the ground, but they just get right back up again.

Isamu, frustrated with the fact that his bullets do nothing, climbs back into the van and punches his way to grabbing what will eventually be his driver.

It seems that Yua is supposed to be his boss, because she tells him to wait, that he doesn’t have her permission – he ignores her and shoots the gun in her direction.

For a brief moment, the audience assumes he’s shooting her, but he’s aiming right over her shoulder, the ‘bullet’ sending her hair waving, and hitting a Magear mook right in the eye.

It doesn’t get back up.

Also, the top of its foot has a skeletal… well. Foot. Zero One’s going all in on the robot skeleton theme they’ve got going here, then.

Looks like Isamu’s whole attitude is ‘when in doubt, apply a bigger gun.’

–

Aruto snaps awake. “Learning complete.”

As he activates his Progrise key, Berotha launches the energy scythes.

A yellow light beams down from the satellite. It was either rapid-fire 3d printing, or it was actually teleporting, but either way. A silver grasshopper with neon-yellow lines lands in front of Aruto, blocking the attack.

Interestingly, along with the impact dustcloud, there’s yellow and blue circuitry patterns radiating away along the ground.

Hot damn I like this background music. I’d ask when we’re getting the OST, but I know the answer is ‘after the season ends,’ so instead I will just mourn my lack of soundtrack.

The grasshopper starts bouncing around Aruto as he prepares to properly transform, a holographic screen projecting from the driver in front of him. Said giant robot grasshopper is making even more of a mess of the area, and said projection is slightly 3D – the images have depth to them… and are made, of course, of closely-placed zeroes and ones.

The owner of the park is watching all of this, by the way.

“Henshin!”

We actually get to sort of see the driver reading the data on the key – kind of like when we used to see the action inside the Build Driver.

The base Zero One suit is black, with glowing red lines and a disconcerting face plate. We don’t have to see that for long though, because the grasshopper quickly dissassembles itself and turns into his armor.

In a very interesting detail, you can see it breaking down into wires and metal, and the lights that pull it towards Zero One are DNA spirals.

A JUMP TO THE SKY TURNS TO A RIDER KICK

…Hey, didn’t Aruto’s father say he should jump towards his dreams? Just saying. ;)

The grasshopper didn’t just become his armor – it also seems to have turned one of its limbs into the Attache Calibre, which makes its way to Aruto’s hand as the transformation ends.

“Who are you?!”

“Zero One! That’s my name!”

He immediately launches into an attack against Berotha, punching and kicking to great effect. Berotha tries to slash right at his feet – if he can just stop him from moving, he can annihilate him. Except Zero One leaps over the blades.

And by leap, I mean that our good grasshopper boy is now on top of the rollercoaster. Aruto is, justifiably, super impressed by his new leg power.

(I’m just saying… Aruto got the Pink Cure’s ‘WOW I can jump really high now!’ moment for this year, because Cure Star didn’t get it. She had her first fight in space, so it was already a given for her.)

Berotha is decidedly less impressed, and fires an eye beam at him. The eye laser does nothing, as despite it being almost as wide as he is tall, Zero One just tanks it as he jumps back down. As the light breaks apart around him, there seems to be a faint helix pattern there, too.

Aruto’s about to go after Berotha some more, but then he sees the owner getting attacked by a pair of mooks. Mooks who used to be his staff, and can just barely be heard stuttering around their rote phrases, repeating them without context or intellect. He goes to block them, and yells at his former boss to get out of there.

As Aruto redirects the mooks elsewhere, Izu comes running up, carrying the attache weapon that had been abandoned. She calls out to him, and throws him the case…

And it whacks him upside the head.

The mooks just watch as she apologizes, and he, rubbing his head, says he’s okay.

An honest-to-gaim insert song kicks in as they start fighting again. Like, this isn’t the OP. I’ve heard the OP. This isn’t it. This is an insert song. In episode one. It’s only a short part of it, yes, but it’s still an insert.

This is going to be a good season for music, especially since you can actually hear said insert. Not quite clearly, and it’s too brief to really get anything from aside from the tone. But that tone is awesome and I can’t wait oh god it’s going to be a long wait for this soundtrack.

Also, at some point the mooks acquired guns.

–

The insert ends when we see Not!Parad Jin bouncing in joy as he watches all of this happen from a nearby roof. “Yeah! Come on! Get ‘em! This is so fun!”

A damaged mook gets up, stuttering. “A-a-a-attention! A-a-a-a lost child has been reported!” This confirms that the mooks are, in fact, still saying their lines. It tries to attack him, because that’s what they do. He’s human, after all. (Right?)

Still giggling, Jin grabs the mooks arm as it goes to stab him, and in one smooth motion and without looking, twists it behind said mooks back, holds it around the neck, pulls out an honest-to-god gun, and shoots it in the head.

Everything goes silent for a second as the gun fires.

He doesn’t stop giggling wildly the whole time, nor does he even spare the mook a glance.

The mook falls to the ground, broken and unmoving, as he continues laughing.

It’s a normal gun. That is straight up a normal gun. Not a fancy sci-fi one, just a normal gun with normal bullets and a normal bullet casing that ejects in front of him as he laughs.

…Can we go back to our hero, please?!

–

Oh, good, we’re going back to Zero One versus Berotha. Thanks!

And thank you even more for the OP kicking in as Berotha fires a volley of energy blades. These are powerful enough to slice through cars and set off explosions wherever they hit. But they don’t even graze Aruto, not the way he jumps and rolls in mid air to dodge them.

His fighting is super graceful and deliberate, so much unlike how he moves as himself. The intro beats to the song transition into the song proper as he leaps, angled yellow lines of light trailing behind him as he uses the flying cars as jumping points, bouncing from one to the other, dodging blades all the way, before the actual bus that’s in the air comes up toward him.

He just barrels through it, still dodging the blades, using the support bars to flip and spin around and over. He manages to tap the ‘stop request’ button with his foot as he rebounds at one point, which is a hilarious little detail that they didn’t need to put in. But that lets the bus announcement of ‘stop requested’ play as he comes through the rear window right before it hits the ground.

MAN, the attention to DETAIL in this episode. I know that it’s mostly Episode One Budget in action, but damn is this promising.

Those yellow lines start following him again as he resumes his beatdown on Berotha, giving a pre-asskicking one liner. “There’s only one person who can stop you: me!” He activates his finisher.

RISING IMPACT!

A brief projection of the robo-grasshoppers foot appears over his own as he braces himself to start moving. Neat. And move he does, going faster than the camera can follow, slowing down only long enough to deliver a few punches and kicks, tossing Berotha into the air. Zero One follows suit, leaping far higher, and diving down with his Rider Kick.

He goes through the MaGear, shattering it to pieces. Gears, wires, and dark blue hydraulic fluid go everywhere, as the eyes on his helmet have a line go from front to back along the facets. Huh.

A special projection of ‘rising impact’ appears on screen as Zero Ones kick approaches the viewer, and since holo-tech is a thing here, may or may not actually be there. The key that had been used to hack Taro into Berotha, definitely cracked, also flies at the screen.

Zero One lands, digging a gouge into the path, and when he comes to a stop… Aruto twists his ankle, winds up rolling bodily into one of the buildings, and gets covered in rubble. He pulls himself up a bit using some of the debris, saying “Aaaand here’s my stop.” He collapses backward.

–

The AIMS troops seem to be wrapping up their defeat of the mooks, but as Yua says, they’ve still got a lot to do.

Isamu’s stomps on the chest of one of the downed mooks, who isn’t quite as done as he’d looked. It grabs his ankle, before he apparently shoots and shatters it, going by the sound effect.

He glares, hands trembling in apparent rage, saying that history is repeating itself.

–

Jin hands Horobi the damaged key. When Horobi ‘questions’ the damage, he just ‘asks’ “Zero One?”

Implying that there was a previous Zero One.

This implication is only furthered with Jin’s comment, as he pulls down his hood. “Seems like the previous president didn’t simply die, huh?”

We still can’t see his ears under all that hair.

The suspicion that these two aren’t human only grows. Why would Horobi want to turn humans into an endangered species if they, themselves, are human?

The ‘eye’ on the sunken satellite glows red.

–

As they exit the amusement park, Aruto’s going on to Izu about how cool he was. She says she’ll be escorting him home, calling him ‘Mister President.’

“Wait, what?!”

Turns out he completely blanked on the fact that only the president of Hiden Intelligence is allowed to be Zero One, and he accepted the position by putting on the driver.

Our protagonist, ladies and gentlemen. He’s just a big ol’ puppy.

He’s protesting this fact – the president thing, not the puppy thing – to Izu when he hears a child asking the parks owner if he’s going to be closing the park.

“Not at all. A mysterious yellow hero protected it. So we’re going to keep on giving smiles to our guests!”

Aruto looks absolutely touched by his former bosses words, just by the refusal to close, and the ‘mysterious yellow hero’ part. …He has no idea that his boss knows exactly who that hero was.

Not until said boss turns to him, and winks.

Izu lifts one hand. “I have detected many smiling expressions that Master Aruto is responsible for.”

He laughs, just a little, a light chuckle at himself. “There’s more than one way to make people smile, huh…?”

He bounces the driver a little in his hands, and gets into the car.

As he buckles in, and Izu doesn’t – sweetie, I know you’re an android, and thus can’t technically die in the way most people would see death as, you should still use your seat belt and model good behavior for the kiddos watching at home – she hands him ‘the presidents’ Rise Phone. It looks like it’s just an upgraded version of his phone from earlier, or they upgraded that phone itself.

He tries to make a terrible pun about the hassle the board of directors gave earlier… which Izu, now putting on her seat belt, thank you so very much, starts explaining. Aruto cries that she shouldn’t be trying to explain the joke as the car drives away.

The episode title finally appears.

––––

Aaand that’s Kamen Rider Zero One, episode one! This is sure gonna be something, and I’m super hyped!

#kamen rider zero one #sailorcressy says

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