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smytherines · 28 days

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for the choose violence ask game, 3 and 25

3. screenshot or description of the worst take you've seen on tumblr

For me, its the "Owen was probably even worse before the fall" one. I disagree with it, but it's whatever, I don't hold any ill will towards them or anything we just have very different interpretations

25. common fandom complaint that you're sick of hearing

I dunno if this is common necessarily, but I have seen it pop up a few times: that theorizing about what Owen's post-fall experience might have been like is creating a trauma for him that does not exist in canon

I think pretty much everyone in the fandom can agree that the fall was a very traumatic event for Curt, that it destroys his life and sense of self, that it devastates him mentally and emotionally. He's our protagonist, we can see the effect the fall had on him, so we're all in agreement that it fucked him up (understandably)

But there is sometimes a tendency in the fandom to minimize Owen's experience after the fall, or erase it entirely. Like people saying he faked his death (no he did not), or that he was totally fine after the fall and wanted revenge purely to be a petty bitch about nothing more than a bad breakup. And that's weird to me, because even strictly in canon what happened to Owen is at the very least equally traumatic for him. He falls far enough that it is reasonable for Curt to assume (with barely a glance) that Owen is either dead or dying, or that Curt simply does not have time to get to him, Curt leaves Owen for dead, then the building explodes. I think that alone, with no additional details, is enough to severely fuck a person up. At the very least on par with what Curt goes through in his four year grieving period

And the more detail you add in, the more the line "the horror of staying alive" makes sense. So if we include the Joey Richter tweets (which I think it's reasonable to at least discuss them, he is one of the co-writers) then it looks like Owen fell about two stories (so probably 20-30ft) onto what is presumably an iron or steel structure. That's automatically... many, many injuries. The most likely in a fall being broken bones, spiral cord injuries, and traumatic brain injuries. Plus probably burns because explosion. Then we have this:

So if we add in the possibility of Owen being captured by the Russians and bailed out/nursed to health (and "groomed"???) by Chimera, then things start to get a whole lot more horrifying

I think its very fair to debate the effects this sequence of events has on him and to what degree they explain and/or mitigate his actions, but in my opinion it is not reasonable to deny they happened at all. At the very least the baseline of "a fucked up thing happened and they are both profoundly fucked up by it" is the most accurate way to describe the canon events of the show

And then strictly on a personal level, thinking about what Owen's experience could have been like being severely injured in Russian custody and then being bailed out by Chimera, that's very interesting to me. I love picking apart characters, especially ones who -- in the real world, at least-- would be disabled. I'm personally very interested in how pain and injury and illness impact people, how isolation and heartbreak and being dependant on someone else for your survival can do some incredibly fucked up things to a person. Analysis is fun! And there absolutely is a canon traumatic event to analyze when it comes to Owen

#smy asks

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dontasktheradiodemon · 3 years

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Alrighty then. Now, what do you like specifically about All Quiet on The Western Front? If I recall, the story is one about WW1, and you lived through the time span of the war itself, yes?

🎶 "More than that, I lived through the war."

❌ Yeah, he's mentioned a handful of times that he fought in, I think France? And summoned a demon in the middle of battle.

❌ He's insisting that I also remind everyone that one time he ALSO claimed he "made sweet love to Jerry in No Man's Land." He refuses to tell me who Jerry is.

Is Alastor lying?

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

🎶 "Anyway—All Quiet! I enjoyed it because it was accurate."

❌ ... That's it? Yeah he's not giving me anything else.

#((because he's not about to say 'because it accurately captured the horror and trauma of being there'))#((that would require admitting an emotion))#((explaining the joke: Jerry = what they called enemy German soldiers in WW1.))#((Mainly British slang but I'm sure Alastor crossed paths with Brits while abroad.))#((and calling all the enemy soldiers by A NAME was funnier than the Americans' nicknames for them.))#corruptapostasy #ask

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karliahs · 3 years

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It’s been months since he was this close to anyone. It might have even been Jon the last time, too; helping him walk down in the tunnels. How did they get from there to here? How-

“Tim?” Jon asks softly, pulling back to look him in the face, and it’s the loss of that warmth and pressure that makes Tim realise he’s started breathing in great, shuddering gasps. He screws his eyes shut and Jon reverses their positions, pulling Tim into his chest with unpracticed but fervent hands. His T-shirt is soft against Tim’s face; he hadn’t thought Jon would own anything so soft.

Tim’s throat is burning, but as long as he keeps his eyes screwed shut then he isn’t crying. He isn’t crying on Jonathan Sims the night before they both-

“It’s alright, Tim,” Jon says, searching for words of comfort he only half believes himself. “It’s - whatever happens tomorrow, it can’t - we’re safe here.”

Tim laughs bitterly. “Nothing’s fucking safe.”

Jon seems unable to decide between rubbing soothingly at his back and just holding on as tight as he can. Tim shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t be giving into this. But there's a reason he lost so much time when he should have been searching for the thing that killed his brother. The Institute was full of potential answers, but it was also full of bright, lovely distractions. He's buried in the arms of one of them.

Tim didn't used to think of that as weakness - but he didn't used to think there were worms that burrowed through your flesh, or creatures that took every true memory of your friend without you ever noticing, or monsters that played with skin, played with the fabric of who you were, because it was fun.

Tim doesn't know fucking anything, and maybe he never did, and now all that's left is to-

"What can I do, Tim?" Jon asks, and he sounds so honestly lost.

"Turn back time," Tim murmurs into his shirt. "Don't let go," he adds a moment later.

“I won’t, I won’t.” Jon clutches him impossibly closer. Tim’s world narrows down into warmth and pressure. “Tim, we don’t - we don’t have to do this. You don’t have to do this.”

The gentle vibration of his words is almost enough to distract Tim from the words themselves. He turns his head so he can speak un-muffled, and immediately misses the comfort of being closed in. “I do, Jon. I can’t…” Tim fumbles for the right words, wondering faintly if this is how Jon feels all the time, struggling to give voice to the unspeakable. “The worst thing in all of this, the worst thing would be if they hurt someone again while I’m just standing there."

Still not crying, not as long as his eyes are tight shut. He feels Jon hesitate, then push forward anyway. "Even if...Tim, even if you had moved, what could you have done?"

Tim squeezes hard at Jon's side and isn't sure if he means it as a warning or a plea.

"I'd never have met you," Jon says, so soft Tim isn't sure if he was meant to hear it.

"Was just thinking before,” Tim replies, because he’s fucked up enough that he might as well keep going, “I wish I'd met you somewhere normal."

Jon’s hands still, and for a moment the rise and fall of his chest does too. It’s the closest thing to absolution Tim’s ever offered. He’s glad he can’t see Jon’s face, can’t see whatever shock or gratitude is playing out there. At some point, he made himself into someone who no one expects to be kind. He wonders, vaguely, whether it counts as forgiveness, to want someone to spend what might be their last night on earth forgiven.

from: enemy of my enemy, aka jon and tim sit in various rooms and talk: the fic

thank you for asking!!! here we go:

It’s been months since he was this close to anyone. It might have even been Jon the last time, too; helping him walk down in the tunnels. How did they get from there to here? How-

do you ever just think about how fast things went wrong for the s1 crew...they were friends just a few months ago!! a few weeks in between no current supernatural experiences -> trying to survive supernatural experiences together by physically holding each other up -> complete alienation. some experiences just defy comprehension, emotionally speaking, even when you can see every step that led from there to here

i also like to make myself sad by thinking about the practical day to day aspects of everyone in the archives being alienated from everyone else. like...when were either of them last touched (non-violently)

so much has changed but they've circled back around to each other

'person starts crying without noticing until someone points it out' is a trope i generally try to stay away from partly because i just can't imagine that ever happening to me and therefore it doesn't ping my realism senses, but i get one (1) because it is undeniably juicy

this fic is very zeroed in on tim's perspective in terms of small sensory experiences, for a few reasons - drive home emotions, portray dissociation, and because i like writing about how it actually feels to be in a romantic gesture, to make it more real than just like...an image of people holding each other

small detail that jives with bigger points - jon's shirt unexpectedly soft, jon's surprising ability to still provide him with gentleness and comfort

i think jon here has no idea what to do but has been given permission to touch so is living his best tactile life with this inexpert hugging and is hoping that does something

Tim’s throat is burning, but as long as he keeps his eyes screwed shut then he isn’t crying. He isn’t crying on Jonathan Sims the night before they both-

“It’s alright, Tim,” Jon says, searching for words of comfort he only half believes himself. “It’s - whatever happens tomorrow, it can’t - we’re safe here.”

Tim laughs bitterly. “Nothing’s fucking safe.”

tim spends a lot of this fic having his inner-monologue cut off to try and show as well as tell that he's struggling to stay present

that 'both-' hurts me, honestly. hurts more than it actually being spelled out, i think. write to upset yourself, maybe you will upset others in the process

half is a word i absolutely overuse in writing but cannot stop. no one ever does something all the way, they are half- believing, wondering, worrying, etc.

i'm never 100% sure if i'm accurately capturing the way that jon speaks in canon but i did always like and want to emulate the fact that he speaks kind of hesitantly, trips over his own words, etc

again, jon does not know what to do so he is just trying. just trying to do any kind of soothing hand thing

i thought quite a lot about reconciling the seemingly happy-go-lucky tim that gets presented to us early on vs learning why he came to the institute in the first place. tim here is framing that as a failing because he's miserable and traumatised and guilt-ridden, but i think at least part of it was actual healing. he was taking time and enjoying the people around him and trying to make the best of things, until it all went wrong

related, the self-recrimination of tim hating himself for not having seen any of this coming, even though they were not predictable events...very human nature after you have been through something terrible. how dare i have not anticipated every trouble that ever befell me

'played with skin, played with the fabric of who you were' - a lot of this story was me just enjoying the themes of stranger-horror. i love the terror of knowing there are creatures who can change aspects of you that should be unchangeable, physically in skin and otherwise in terms of identity and memory. love applying that to jon and tim, who have been fundamentally changed against their will by trauma and their roles in a story neither of them wanted. skin as metaphor for identity, and learning that people can take away your skin is then utterly terrifying to someone who already feels like his identity is being forcibly eroded. and then that shared terror brings them back together, just a little

Tim doesn't know fucking anything, and maybe he never did, and now all that's left is to-

"What can I do, Tim?" Jon asks, and he sounds so honestly lost.

"Turn back time," Tim murmurs into his shirt. "Don't let go," he adds a moment later.

this fic...is so sad. why did i write this. why am i being attacked by my past self and their awful words on this day

explicit admission that tim wants/needs jon here...even a chapter ago he was like yeah i'm going to america with jon bc i am regrettably relying on him as my reality-anchor, nothing emotional here

“I won’t, I won’t.” Jon clutches him impossibly closer. Tim’s world narrows down into warmth and pressure. “Tim, we don’t - we don’t have to do this. You don’t have to do this.”

Still not crying, not as long as his eyes are tight shut. He feels Jon hesitate, then push forward anyway. "Even if...Tim, even if you had moved, what could you have done?"

Tim squeezes hard at Jon's side and isn't sure if he means it as a warning or a plea.

warmth, pressure, vibration...continuing to be fascinated by the little tactile details of what it feels like to be close to someone

emotional logic is so powerful. tim moving most likely would have either made no difference to the outcome or worsened it (because both him and danny would have died) but of course for tim standing still while someone he loves was destroyed counts for everything about who he is. sometimes blame feels better than helplessness, which mirrors what happens with his friendship with jon - is it scarier if they are all helpless, or if this one guy is The Enemy

‘give voice to the unspeakable’ sometimes i like poetic descriptions of jon’s role as archivist

"I'd never have met you," Jon says, so soft Tim isn't sure if he was meant to hear it.

"Was just thinking before,” Tim replies, because he’s fucked up enough that he might as well keep going, “I wish I'd met you somewhere normal."

tim views talking with and connecting to people as fucking up. how much of that is even slightly shrouded in logic and how much is just - tim is depressed and deep in self-loathing, somewhere still at the core of him tim loves people and making connections, so of course doing the thing he wants to do is wrong

‘At some point, he made himself into someone who no one expects to be kind.’ tim has this thought once and then worries at it like a sore tooth because his default state is hopeless fury with himself, with everyone. i also think this demonstrates how new information/realisations often can’t help you out of a bad mental state on its own, because it’s all too easy to slot it into your existing thought patterns. pushing everyone away was making tim worse - he starts to feel like that was a mistake, but it just becomes more self-recrimination

forgiveness is one of those words that seems to encompass so many different concepts that i find it hard to know exactly what it’s meant by saying you forgive someone. specifying what’s meant by this little shard of maybe-forgiveness makes it mean more, at least to me

may i reiterate: :(

#jontim #asks #give-me-a-minute-to-think #talking #tma /#long post #ps to the other person who sent me an ask for this meme: thank you!!! it'll be friday probs before i can answer

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nightwingshero · 4 years

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For the Writing Meta Asks 1, 6, 7, 10, and 20?

Thank you!!! Under the cut because this got way too long.

1. Tell us about your current project(s) – what’s it about, how’s progress, what do you love most about it?

I am currently working on a few scenes of Blair’s canon! One where she goes supernova, one where she first joined the Legends, and the other is when Jax is seriously hurt and they capture Vandal Savage. I love her interacting with Martin, Jax, and Ray. But also her, Leonard, and Mick can be a lot of fun too. It’s like writing the nice fun part of a horror movie or a drama before everything goes really really bad. Blair’s canon is up and down, and sure, she’s witnessed some bad stuff, but Leonard disappearing is just the first of the losses she suffers. But I’m almost done with the supernova piece! So that’s exciting!

6. What character do you have the most fun writing?

I have so many, honestly. But so far its Blair, Veronica (Batman OC), Emma (CoD OC), Wren, Whitney, Quinn, and Dahlia. Dahlia is just...she’s something else, let me tell you. That mouth of hers and that pride? Gets her in trouble a lot, but she’s so cunning, and so very close to the Shelby boys, she’s just so much fun. Especially when she has Rosie! Wren is fun because she’s so grey of a character, so complex and very very emotional. Wren is a part of probably some of my best writing. Emma is fun because she’s such a hardass Marine and takes no shit. She’s my first OC ever, and she does what’s right no matter the cost. Writing her with Roach, Yuri, and Nikolai is just...a ride, for sure. Veronica is fun mostly because I love DC and the Batfamily. I’ve always wanted an OC that worked closely with Selina Kyle, and I have it. Luckily, I can also use her in Young Justice with @water-writings oc from time to time, because it gets interesting. Whit is fun to write because she’s so different from what I’m used to writing. But her arc is a favorite of mine, and I love her growth, especially when she kills her husband. Quinn...is an overly confident and witty character that drives Wren nuts for more than one reason. But I love it because he ties in Miller from Jacob’s story, and mixes things up a bit. He’s honestly a strong, brave character that I wasn’t expecting. Plus, he’s part Russian, and I love writing when his accent slips a bit!

7. What do you think are the characteristics of your personal writing style? Would others agree?

Oh, I have no idea. I have been told by some people that my description and show of emotion with my writing is really noticeable, some have even made the comment of it being like a scene from a movie? Because it plays out perfectly in their mind or whatnot. And I think I would say that’s accurate, and whether other people agree or not, I’m not sure. I think I focus a lot on the details to make it feel real, like you’re actually there, or you’re experiencing it right alongside my characters. I want it to feel real enough for you to connect and appreciate, if that makes sense? I do first person 99% of the time, but take a moment to make the observations that make it feel somewhat third person--just taking note of possible emotions and thoughts of others without fully knowing it that is what they’re thinking. I try to get enough detail in there to show it, but I try to also make it vague. It’s honestly a good read of the room, and the observations of the scene is always different for each character. For example, if in a dark bedroom, Wren would notice the moonlight streaming through the curtains, while Whitney would notice the type of curtain is it, and Blair would be looking at something completely different (I mean, she’s a space person, so in any normal situation probably the moon, but not in this example), like looking for a light or something to make the dark room not dark anymore. Different characters call for different observations and a different feel when being written.

10. How would you describe your writing process?

Chaotic and torturously detail-oriented. I normally write in order, but as of the past year, I’ve done things out of order, and I jump with wherever my inspiration takes me. I take note of every detail I can for a scene, not too much to overwhelm, but enough to make it feel real...and this is embarrassing to admit, but uh...whenever there’s a scene that my character is going to be in, I go back and rewatch it for the correct dialogue, reactions, and details of movement and what actually happens in that scene. Like, the arrest of Joseph Seed, I had to make sure the wording was correct and that I had his movements timed perfectly because I am one of those people that has to have everything perfect. Luckily, I don’t have to do this too often with some of the fandoms I write in. Its the Arrowverse and Peaky Blinders that makes it more of a hassle, because there are key episodes and key scenes that are vital for Blair (Kinsley, Carmen, and Gabriel too) and Dahlia in those shows that I have to go back and capture. I just like to be thorough when I write canon scenes like that. Any other time, I’m throwing on the OC’s playlist and listening to the right songs that capture the mood I’m looking for, and go from there. Much like Blair’s supernova piece. I threw her playlist on shuffle and went for it.

20. Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about (symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?)

Okay, this is a dangerous question for me, I could go on forever. When it comes to symbolism, Whitney and Wren all day, for sure, are my favorites. Most of my symbolism for them derives from Greek mythology, Wren being Nemesis reincarnate, her being the Judge (hence my icon), the gold apple (which also ties in for Whitney as well), Whit being the Mother of Eden’s Gate and her ties to Hera, just...lots and lots of Greek mythology. There are some biblical ties there as well, but more for Whitney than Wren, and not very many. I’m always throwing in callbacks and foreshadowing in my writing though, I can’t resist. Blair once calling Leonard “Frosty the Snowman” as a joke? Yeah, that hits heavy when he “dies” and loses his memories. My writing is usually laden those, and none immediately come to mind (they will after I post this, just you watch), and it’s fun because there’s like...a moment when you’re like “hmmm, interesting”, only for it to come back a chapter or two later and make you go “omfg!!!! that’s the thing!!!” or just a callback that makes you smile, because who doesn’t love a good reference? I love them, so I throw them in where they fit. That’s a consistent throughout my writing, no matter the character or story, because there’s always something. Now, as for character and relationship development? I always get excited when I watch relationships develop, and there are always subtle but vital moments that you pick up on. Wren staying more with John, Leonard being more protective and close with Blair, Alfie taking more of an interest in Dahlia and spending more personal time with her, like...it’s the little things that shift and change. The character development is more fun for me and more personal, because it’s like investing all this time in making a plant grow, and watching proudly as it blooms. Some are more subtle than others, Wren growing more and more grey and her becoming the bad guy when you don’t really see it until it happens, Dahlia’s values shifting and changing. While others are more obvious, like Blair’s trauma affecting her and her growing as she harnesses her powers and becomes stronger. Everything I do, everything I build and create, is put together with great care and planning. Most, if not all, things happen for a reason, especially with meaning and symbolism. Sometimes I worry I go overboard, to be honest.

#about me #my writing #asks

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dillydedalus · 4 years

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october reading

i finished my masters thesis this month (yay!) so while i still read quite a lot for escapism i was also operating on no more than 2 braincells at any time, and one of those braincells was just. continuously screaming. so any incoherence or whatever here is. because of that.

i am sovereign, nicola barker a fantastically weird & enjoyable novella about a house-viewing gone wrong that eventually blows up the novella form. i don’t want to give away the meta aspect too much, even tho it’s not entirely unpredictable, but it is so very entertaining and delightful to read. had such a fun time with this. also has a great cover. 4/5

the lifted veil, george eliot i’ve only read middlemarch by eliot, so a 75-page novella about the supernatural sure was... different. it’s fine, but nothing special imo. i enjoyed the first chapter, which sets up latimer, a soft young man with the gift of foresight/telepathy and his fascination with his brother’s fiancee, whose mind remains opaque to him (....twilight???), but the second half is pretty meh. 2/5

the notebooks of malte laurids brigge, rainer maria rilke (read the german obvi) loved the beginning of this, where morbid, too-intense, death-obsessed author-insert malte laurids brigge walks around paris, seeing everyone carry their death with them, which then makes him think of the deaths he has witnessed in his childhood. the parts about his childhood in a danish noble family were also good, but it really lost me with the overtly poetic, weird historical/religious stuff?? feel like this might have been a victim of termin master’s thesis like maybe that’s not the time for poetic, fragmentary, modernist-ish novels. 3/5

wie der soldat das grammofon repariert, saša stanišić (read in german, english translation by anthea bell) i really enjoyed stanišić‘s memoir herkunft last year so i went back to his 2006 classic, about a kid called aleksandar growing up in yugoslavia and eventually fleeing to germany as a refugee during the war. it’s very similar to herkunft in story, although the presentation is very different. honestly overall i found it a bit Too Much, too long & too stylised in its structure. but like, i can see why it’s so popular. 2.5/5

i capture the castle, dodie smith i really liked this! cassandra mortmain is a very strong narrator, the atmosphere of the dilapidated castle and the dysfunctional family are great, & i was surprised by the crushing poverty of the family in the beginning - cassandra obviously attempts to cover this up both in her own head & in her journal, but for much of the first half or so i was genuinely really worried for the kids - and this makes rose so much more sympathetic in her resolution to escape poverty. i was less convinced by the whole love quadrangle this book got going on, but on the whole this was very charming, but often very melancholy in a far deeper way than i expected. 4/5

the death of vivek oji, akwaeke emezi my second emezi this year, altho sadly neither of them have lived up to the glory of freshwater. this one is about (gender) identity, grief, trauma, love, and solidarity/community based on otherness, which are similar thematically to freshwater, but in a novel that is, i would say, both more stylistically conventional and more hopeful/uplifting (altho it is still very depressing in parts). i enjoyed this on the whole, but it just doesn’t grab you by the throat the way freshwater does, and the reveal/central mystery just feels a bit lacking. 3/5

gott wohnt im wedding, regina scheer listen, this book is probably more competent & historically interesting than literarily great BUT it’s literally (literally) set around the corner from where i live, i know pretty much every single place & business mentioned in it & the house troubles are extremely relatable, if a lot worse than what i am currently experiencing. anyway. this novel is centered around a house in berlin-wedding & the people who live in it & it's about the holocaust & the porajmos, current discrimination against sinti&roma, the history of the wedding, gentrification, familial trauma & all that. it’s very interesting historically, slow but still very readable, and like.... i just really love the wedding! it’s kinda shitty & depressing but i love it!!! 4/5 the only good indians, stephen graham jones note: the elk in this book is not what you, a european, think of as an elk. that’s a moose. anyway, this is a horror novel about four native american men who hunt for elk when, where and how they shouldn’t have and ten years later find themselves pursued by a vengeful elk spirit. i enjoyed this! the scenes where shit goes down were certainly very horrible & gruesome & very sad as well. 3.5/5

solutions & other problems, allie brosh this book really is out there & exists. anyway hyperbole & a half was like, one of my formative internet things and i still love it a lot. this book is second only to the winds of winter in eternally getting pushed back and back and back, so this even getting published was def a pleasant surprise. it’s still really funny, and the weird ugly drawings are still amazingly effective, but this one is. very sad. some really bad shit happened to brosh inbetween and it’s kinda a downer (i mean the first one had the depression saga but this one... is darker). 3.5/5

a supposedly fun thing i’ll never do again, david foster wallace .....i might have to stan dfw, just a little bit. like, i read infinite jest when i was way too young to appreciate it (still traumatised by the uh. creative use of brooms tho) & i have NO intentions of ever rereading it BUT this essay collection was so good that i may just have to read a lot of his other stuff. particular highlights are the title essay, about a cruise journey, and an essay about the illinois state fair, two things that feel particularly fascinating and offputting in equal measure in this year of plague, where even the idea of being in enclosed spaces with many people freaks you out. but i also really appreciated his essays on david lynch & television & fiction, even if i don’t agree with all of his takes. he just has such a good voice! funny, smart, precisely observed but always with a strange spin. 4/5, minus points for too much tennis, but oh well

gruppenbild mit dame, heinrich böll (group portrait with lady) marcel reich-ranicki criticised this book for being, essentially, a sloppy mess and that’s kind of accurate - it’s definitely too long & a bit draggy & böll (and the narrator/“author”) go on tangents and into details with indulgence & abandon, but it’s also... kind of brilliant? the way the “author” collects material and testimony on leni (the lady), her family, coming-of-age and the love affair with a soviet forced labourer that made her an outcast, constructing a documented history of her while leni herself remains ever elusive, the focus on structure, architecture, construction, the endless loops of self-justification (pelzer’s insistance that he is not inhuman, the real estate tycoon’s insistence that they just want what’s best for leni & that her resistance to profit-logic is abnormal)... there’s so much in here, and a lot of it doesn’t need to be there, but a lot of it does. 3.5/5

sweet fruit, sour land, rebecca ley very lyrical, quiet, feminist climate dystopia. it’s good, well-written, very evocative of hunger and loss, a dystopia but really more about grief and identity, and i read it during the last few days of my master’s thesis and thus have absolutely nothing to say about it. 3.5/5

i also & this will be a shock, dnf’d burning down the haus: punk rock, revolution & the fall of the berlin wall, a book about the east-berlin/german punk subculture. it just felt like a longform essay artificially extended into a 400-page book & the writing was pretty basic in a music bro tries to be deep and like, subversive and shit kinda way.

#the books i read #long post

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myhahnestopinion · 5 years

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THE AARONS 2019 - Best Film

Once again setting a personal record and winning a friendly competition, I watched 105 films from the year 2019. That’s more films than there are seconds of screen-time for Rose Tico in The Rise of Skywalker! That one won’t be found here, but after ranking all 105 movies, here are the ones that did rise to the top of my list. Here are the Aarons for Best Film:

#10. Marriage Story

Marriage Story twists a knife we never even saw go in; its tragedy is a fully formed snowball of once seemingly-insignificant bad decisions that the viewer is powerless to reverse, only observe. Director Noah Baumbach, however, makes only great decisions in his tale of the difficulties and distractions of divorce (in the context of the film, that is. The infusion of Baumbach’s informed personal experiences is unmissable here). The film splits its focus between the perspectives of the two former spouses, but not evenly. Through both, we understand the effects of unintentional harm of other being; in the unbalance, we empathize with people reaching that realization at different times. Marriage is a story about learning that, no matter the effort to relate to another, there will always be unknowns, but in trust, there is peace.

#9. Little Women

The best adaptations play to the strengths of the screen. The kinetic timeline shifting of director Greta Gerwig’s new version of Little Women is a feat only manageable in cinematic form. The shake-up to the traditional script enlivens the familiar story; the bits of happiness and heartbreak all feel a little bit bigger. Backed by an exceptional cast, Gerwig illustrates that the importance of retelling stories is the same as the importance in telling them to begin with. The movie is undoubtedly the superior cinematic version of the story; if it’s not too blasphemous to say, it’s the best version on the big-screen or off.

#8. The Farewell

Secret secrets are no fun, but can shared secrets spare someone? It’s the question at the heart of director Lulu Wang’s The Farewell, in which a family decides not to tell their grandmother she only has a short while to live, and stage a wedding as an excuse to gather the family together before she dies. Such a heavy burden seems unbearable alone; the cycle of shame and fear when trying to find the best way to love someone is inexorable. Sharing has never been a strong suit of the Western world; the culture clash of the understated film ends up a surprising source of comfort. Yet there will always come a point where one must face such uncertainty alone, and choose whether to say goodbye to the guilt or not. The Farewell is a comfort there as well.

#7. Parasite

It’s not what you know, it’s who you know; survival depends on sticking together. Like The Farewell, Parasite’s premise unearths questions of solidarity; unlike The Farewell, its execution is not understated. Director Bong Joon-ho’s lampooning of late-stage capitalism is as unmissable as a big dumb rock, and he lampshades it as such. Parasite is the most unexpected of heist films, but one that cuts to the heart of the genre: the world as-is is a mad scrabble for a good job, and morality need not apply. The insidious ploy of the film is an insightful exploration of class conflict. The two families at its center may not have a single person between them who’s not hungry for more, but only one is deciding how many seats are at the table. It’s not our world, we’re just living in it.

#6. Knives Out

After the dregs of the internet came for him with knives out, director Rian Johnson decided to kill them with kindness… and gift everyone with another masterful work of cinema. There’s no foul play made in Johnson’s new murder mystery; the cast is stacked with talent and the screenplay stacked with twists. The story subverts genre expectations in revolutionary ways, keeping viewers guessing and engrossed. The additional emotional undercurrent is similarly revelatory; even when killers are caught and loose ends are tied up, questions of justice remain. Pointed, poignant, and uproarious, Johnson has carved up an excellent mystery. Considering his debut feature Brick, it’s no surprise the director’s dunnit again.

#5. Shazam!

After shifting its focus from an overambitious shared universe to its lesser known characters, DC Comics has captured lightning in a bottle once again. The selling-point of Shazam! is, in a word, magical: a young boy given the power to transform into a full-grown superhero (play with infectious charm by Zachary Levi) boils down the appeal of the genre to its base wish-fulfillment elements. With superpowers dominating the cinemas right now, Shazam!’s recentering of their collective narrative is more powerful than Zeus. Zack Snyder sought to bring maturity to the Superman story by questioning the burden of possessing power. Made for kids but holding the wisdom of Solomon, Shazam! combats Snyder’s misguided notions: with great power comes great responsibility, but responsibility is sharing power.

#4. One Cut of the Dead

While there are many films shot in one-take, including one vying for Best Picture at the Oscars this year, One Cut of the Dead’s pure commitment to its craft makes it a cut above the rest. In the film, things go haywire for a small filmmaking crew on the set of a zombie movie when real zombies attack; what happens next is best left unspoken (to preserve its wonderful surprises). The tightly-crafted horror-comedy is a bloody beast; its multi-limbed nature reaches every mark its aiming for, tearing at one’s heart, brain, and stomach in equal measure. It deconstructs its own movie magic only to build up an even more fantastic monument to cinema and the cooperation demanded by its creation. Within One Cut of the Dead’s endless inventiveness, the art-form’s rarely felt so alive.

#3. Midsommar

Midsommar is an honoring of tradition, but it quickly evolves into something all its own. Its most obvious influence is The Wicker Man, yet while that film’s pagan horror turned a twist of fate and a twist of faith into its punchline, Midsommar lets viewers in on the joke. Director Ari Aster lets events unfold at a meticulous pace in the closed-off community, but dread never sets in. The film is perhaps entirely miscategorized as horror; any screams crescendo into a potent catharsis. Midsommar is a banquet of visual treats that leaves viewers to chew on a shocking ending. With both, Midsommar is nothing but fulfilling.

#2. Us

Many directors can’t escape the shadow of such a successful debut, but luckily for us and for Us, Jordan Peele was no less effective at holding up a mirror to society’s sins in his sophomore feature. Like Get Out, Us rips the ineffectual bandage off this country’s festering wounds, demanding they be properly addressed lest they be allowed to kill us. The effect is once again deeply uncomfortable, gnawing at the viewer long after it’s over, as all proper horror films should. Peele, however, is entirely comfortable, further solidifying himself as an unmissable auteur through an assured handling of tone. The movie is both a crowd-pleaser and entirely uncompromising; we have met both friend and enemy, and it is Us.

AND THE BEST FILM OF 2019 IS...

#1. It: Chapter Two

It is inexplicable. The first half of the new adaption of Stephen King’s monstrous book was #8 on this same list back in 2017, yet while Chapter Two is much more uneven and unwieldly, it floated all the way to the top as my favorite film of 2019. It’s victory certainly owes a debt to its origins; the second part is a reflection on the first, as the adult version of the Loser’s Club must remember their past to battle the child-eating clown one last time. With this intent in mind, the film’s ungainly composition shifts into a new form. Chapter Two is an eerie and eerily-accurate encapsulation of the sensation of unpacking past trauma. It’s confusing, frustrating, disheartening, scary, and often unexpectedly funny trying to control such a narrative. Sometimes, all one can do is scream at the cyclical cruelty. In those moments, the greatest thing is to have someone screaming with you. Perhaps the It sequel suggests that there is no such thing as good movies or bad movies - maybe there are just movies that you need. Chapter Two is a cinematic barbaric yalp, indulgent in its runtime and its special effects because that is how it can and chooses to be heard. I needed it.

NEXT UP: THE 2019 AARONS FOR WORST FILM!

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mobius-prime · 5 years

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129. Knuckles the Echidna #26

The First Date (Part One of Three): She Loves You… (And You Know That Can't Be Bad!)

Writer: Ken Penders Pencils: Chris Allan Colors: Frank Gagliardo

So this arc is kind of… eh, awkward and dull. There's really no action, and it's all centered around love and dating and whatnot like we're suddenly watching a bad will-they-won't-they sitcom. Everything is extremely heteronormative - like look, I get this is the 90s, but everything is about "boys and girls" and just ends up sounding really juvenile as a result - and everyone is really out of character, too. I mean, do Knuckles or Julie-Su seem like the types to wander around all lovesick like shallow high schoolers? Not to mention the Chaotix, especially Vector, are… well… ugh, let's just jump into this and get it over with.

The Chaotix are hanging around in their usual burger joint, when Espio mentions that recently he's heard some surprising news about Prince Charmy - namely, that he's gotten engaged!

Now, you remember how a while back when the Chaotix were first introduced I had to clarify that unlike in the games, where he's six years old, in the comics he's sixteen? This is one of those moments that completely threw me when I first read the comics, because I had been operating under the assumption all this time that he was six. Now, obviously sixteen is still pretty damn young to be getting engaged, but I was sitting here with my eyebrows furrowed wondering why Charmy's friends didn't seem more concerned that this six year old child suddenly had a fiancée. I thought that his parents had arranged his marriage to Saffron (for whatever reason her name is misspelled in this issue, with only one F) and that by going back to his role as a prince he'd basically doomed himself to having his love life strictly controlled. But no, I guess somehow in the short time since he left the group and went back home, he got into a serious enough relationship with Saffron that he proposed (or hell, maybe she proposed, who knows). It's possible there was still pressure from his parents considering his heritage, but for now we can only assume that it was a totally voluntary action on his part to get engaged to Saffron, which is just… really, really weird.

Now Vector is very displeased to hear this. Vector is, in fact, something of a gigantic sexist douchebag in this issue, talking big about how no woman could handle him, prompting Espio and Mighty to joke that Julie-Su is more than his match if they were to go head to head in a fight. We then cut to Julie-Su angrily and viciously firing her blaster while shouting about Knuckles "running out on her."

Geez, man. You think her insurance covers blaster burn marks on the walls? She's mostly angry because she wants to talk to Knuckles one on one, but he's not there with her right now. He's with his father, in some kind of apartment-like space within Haven (it's not really clear, but I'm assuming Haven given we're talking about Locke here) as his father makes him breakfast. Out of nowhere, Knuckles asks his father about "why boys and girls get together," prompting Locke to immediately spit out his coffee. Knuckles, unfazed by the sudden brown-colored backwash all over the table, starts going on about how whenever he's around Julie-Su, he feels "weird."

This is maybe my least favorite part of Kenders' worldbuilding in the comic. Apparently, the Soultouch is an instant romantic attraction between two members of the opposite sex amongst echidnas, essentially love at first sight. It's not outright stated, but in case you haven't guessed, this is why Julie-Su so abruptly left the Dark Legion when she first spotted Knuckles many issues ago, feeling like she "had to find him" but didn't know why. Knuckles asks that if the Soultouch is accurate, why Locke and Lara-Le ended up splitting up, to which Locke shrugs and says that he doesn't know, but even the best of relationships require a lot of work, which is maybe the most accurate thing written in this entire arc. Knuckles then utterly hilariously, and completely accidentally, makes his case for homosexuality by saying he thinks things would be easier if guys stuck with guys and girls stuck with girls, noting that he gets along way easier with his male friends and "doesn’t even think about other girls." Kenders clearly wasn't meaning to characterize Knuckles as a closeted gay, but that's how it comes across and it's amazing. Let Knuckles be gay if he wants, man!

Meanwhile, out on the street, Espio and Mighty start challenging Vector's flippant attitude toward women, taunting him that he probably doesn't even have the backbone to ask a girl out on a date right now. Vector, his fragile masculinity sufficiently rattled, stomps away and begins casing out the women in the area in perhaps the most uncomfortably out of character series of panels I've ever seen.

*sigh* Kenders… why in the unholy hell… did you think this was okay? Remember the sweet but clueless Vector in Sonic X who did his utmost to help Vanilla out and give her nice things because he had a crush on her, not caring about how "hot" she was or that she was a single mother with a little kid? Yeah, this isn't him. Ugh.

Julie-Su, meanwhile, has had enough of moping around in her apartment and takes a walk outside, trying to think of ways she can improve herself and become more confident. She happens to pass by a clothing boutique and glance inside, and as she muses to herself that perhaps she needs to stop being so serious all the time and learn to have a little fun - probably a good idea, considering she was part of a technological military group for so long - a passing echidna suggests to her that she go inside and try out the hat she was absentmindedly staring at. She's startled, but allows herself to be led inside by the echidna and an attendant of the store.

I very much disagree that it's "so her" - I feel like Sarah-Connor-style badass tank tops and combat boots are more her aesthetic - but regardless, the echidna encourages her and then invites her out for lunch. Fun to contrast his polite and complimentary approach towards Vector's more misogynistic one, huh? Back in Haven, while Locke is out of the room, Knuckles' musings are interrupted by Archimedes poofing in and immediately noticing his lovesick state. Upon hearing that Locke was rather awkward in trying to explain the source of his feelings, Archimedes offers his own advice for Knuckles' problem which basically boils down to "you'll never know if you don't take the plunge." Knuckles, encouraged, stands up and has Archimedes poof them away, and a second later Locke walks back in, surprised to see the room empty. Back in the streets, Vector is still trying to "score" to prove himself to Espio and Mighty…

That is the most uncomfortably-drawn swan I've ever seen. Like… why in the world does she have boobs? She's a bird! Birds don't need boobs! Argh! Archimedes poofs Knuckles straight into a restaurant, apparently having homed directly in on Julie-Su, because there she is, out to lunch with Raynor the echidna who asked her out, and to Knuckles' shock, she's holding his hand… better make a move fast, man, cause this polite dude is gonna win her over first!

Friend in Need

Writer: Ken Penders Pencils: Manny Galan Colors: Barry Grossman

So I think this is actually the first KtE arc that has a secondary story at the end of each issue - previously, they've all had one story taking up the full span of the pages. This story follows Mighty, in which he is approached by Nicolette the Weasel, who prefers to go by Nic due to her full name "not sounding tough enough for a bounty hunter," and who is Nack's previously-unmentioned sister (and looks exactly like him but with eyelashes and a crop top, because girl). She gives Mighty a red collar, which in shock he realizes used to belong to Ray the Flying Squirrel, whom he used to know. He agrees to come with Nic on her latest treasure hunting venture, providing the brawn she needs in exchange for his chance to look for what happened to Ray. While they're flying to their destination, Mighty becomes lost in memories of how he met Ray, leading to one of the most jarring character revelations next to "Charmy is a prince" - all we've ever known about Mighty up till now is that he has super strength and likes hanging around on the Floating Island, but apparently, six or seven years ago he was captured by Robotnik's forces and taken to a goddamn slave labor camp, where he found himself on a prisoner transport cart along with Ray. Ray had a very bad stutter, most likely due to fear and trauma, but was still kind to those around him, and Mighty began to look after him even though he was shackled due to his strength. But unexpectedly, one of the other prisoners on board this cart was Sonic! Keep in mind, we're talking about a cart full of eight year old children that Robotnik was shipping off. Mighty was skeptical of Sonic's confident attitude, with Sonic claiming that he was there to break everyone out, and that Robotnik didn't suspect him since he was only a child and up until recently adults had been carrying on the fight. However, with recent losses, the Freedom Fighters formed by Sally in the Sonic Kids special started taking up arms against Robotnik as well.

Let that sink in, man. This is why the leading members of the resistance against Robotnik were children and young teens. All the adults were dead or roboticized. Anyone who could have fought was gone. These children had no one else to stand up for their freedom; circumstance forced them to step forward and take the lead instead. Remember what I was talking about a while back, about Sonic having trouble settling down after Robotnik's death and how he was so used to war as essentially a child soldier that even in peacetime he found himself unable to relax? This is the true horror of the war against Robotnik. King Acorn's abrupt disbanding of the Freedom Fighters several issues ago may have seemed dismissive and uncaring, but in the end, his point of view does make sense - he doesn't want literal children robbed of their chance to, well, be children. Just think of how many main characters, and hell, even side characters, thought for so long that they were orphans until their family members started turning up after the war. Think about how many are still orphans for all their know - where are Amadeus and Rosemary Prower? Where's Bunnie's parents? Antoine's mother? Amy's parents? That is what the war against Robotnik cost society. It's actually kind of chilling.

Anyway, Nic wakes Mighty up from his train of thought as they land at the site of the now-deserted labor camp. Mighty is a little jumpy, still reluctant to trust Nic fully, but suddenly an unexpected face makes her appearance…

Fiona? As in, the robot that Tails supposedly fell in love with right before his solo adventure? She's a real person? And Mighty somehow knows her? Oh boy, there's a lot to cover here…

#nala reads archie sonic preboot #archie sonic #archie sonic preboot #sonic the hedgehog #kte 26 #writer: ken penders #pencils: chris allan #colors: frank gagliardo #pencils: manny galan #colors: barry grossman

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allisondraste · 5 years

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Writing Deliciously Evil Characters: A Meta Post

Recently in a discord conversation, I was discussing some feedback that I have gotten on my longfic, regarding my portrayal of the odious Rendon Howe. Arl Howe is a classic, stereotypical “mwahaha” type of villain, which is not the standard in Dragon Age where the Wardens are Grey and the villains are Greyer, in that most of the bad folks aren’t doing bad things for the sake of doing bad things (e.g. Loghain, Meredith, Solas), but rather because they believe what they are doing is “right.” Howe, on the other hand is a man who betrays his closest allies in the first of what would be a series of awful vies for power during the Fifth Blight that would eventually lead to his death and the destruction of his family. He’s not the only character who does evil for pleasure/power/personal gain (think Livius Erimond, the Grand Duchess, Corypheus, Danarius blah blah blah). However, the feedback was about Howe, so I’m going to reference him throughout this post.

Essentially, I have received a number of comments in which people have remarked something to the effect of “The way you write Howe makes me hate him even more.” I love this feedback because that was the plan all along and it’s the equivalent of someone saying “The way you write [insert widely beloved popular hero character here] makes me love them even more!” I love love love villains, and as much as I am in the camp with everybody else wanting to stab the man in his slimy, weasley guts, I also love writing him. In my personal opinion he is actually a very good villain, and I’ll go into why in a bit.

For those of you who haven’t encountered my meta posts before, I’m not a writer by trade. I am a mental health professional, and my background is in psychology. So when I make posts about “writing” some type of thing, I typically focus on the psychological components of why certain things work for characters, why others don’t, and how to make a character’s actions realistic and true to who they are as a person. That being said: I do speak about sensitive things in my posts, and this one is no different, so I will be putting the rest of this post behind a Read More. If you are triggered by the mention of trauma and abuse, violence, and mental illness then I would caution you to take care of yourself if you choose continue on!

What is Evil?

If I were to ask you to give me the name of someone who is “evil,” I would bet money that the people everyone lists would be what society likes to coin “psychopaths” or “sociopaths,” and these are individuals who are callous, cruel, and lack consciences, anxiety, and empathy. They are your serial killers and super villains. Your unarguably bad, awful, evil people. They were always evil. Born evil. Raised evil. They eat, sleep, and breathe evil. Concentrated evil flows through their veins. They probably also hate puppies and babies. You all get the picture.

First of all, this is not only an inaccurate understanding of what standard human evil is, but it is also an inaccurate and romanticized view of psychopathy/sociopathy (the words are actually interchangeable, people just like to pretend they are different). The media loves itself a juicy slice of psychopath. It’s why we have movies about Ted Bundy and why Discovery ID is a thing. However something that is so incredibly important to note is that regardless of how an evil person presents, “evil” as a thing, a behavior. It is not a personality trait, but a societally motivated response. People are not evil; they do evil. Someone may be born with a diathesis, or predisposition to do evil things, and then be influenced by environmental factors to enact those evil things, but nobody in the world is born evil. Not. A. Single. Person. In fact, as the Stanford Prison Experiment, conducted by Philip Zimbardo (who also has a wonderful TED Talk on the Psychology of Evil), shows ANYONE under the right circumstances can do evil. The Stanford Prison Experiment is actually an excellent example of why the Templar Order is the way it is! When people of equal standing are placed in a position where one group has perceived power and authority over the other, and when the guilt is diffused across a “group” rather than placed on a single person, horrible things can happen. In fact, more evil is done by groups of people than individuals for this very reason.

I originally had a much longer explanation about how society causes evil, but the post ended up being long anyway and this was unnecessary (but, if you want a post about that in the future, feel free to hit up my inbox or otherwise just check out that Zimbardo talk linked here).

My point is that in order to write compelling villains it is important to understand what drove them to reach the point of atrocity they have reached, why they do as they do. A villain who you cannot answer those questions for is going to fall flat. Disclaimer: I am not suggesting that you excuse a villain’s actions or make apologies for what they do. Evil is evil regardless of intention, however, knowing the explanation for the behavior can help you capture it in a story.

Why Villains Fall Flat

If my readers are anything like me, then there have been times in the consumption of media that they encounter a really awful bad person who you just kind of feel “blah” about. They are supposed to be your protagonists’ mortal enemy, but their defeat falls flat and feels empty and anticlimactic. Sometimes in the horror genre, authors take the “telling less” approach regarding their villains because that increases the “oooh” creepy feeling that they want to have. This is actually really really effective for a horror film. It is not so effective when writing action/adventure, romance, etcetera. Why? I think that it can be pretty well summed up by the following quote by existential psychologist Rollo May:

“Hate is not the opposite of love; apathy is.”

Essentially, in order to truly hate a villain and to be both disgusted by their actions and thrilled by their defeat, you have to care about them in some way shape or form. You have to be invested in their “origin story” and/or care about someone who is closely tied to them or affected by them. It’s why Rendon Howe is such a good villain, and why playing the Cousland origin and meeting his children makes you hate him even that much more. When you play the Cousland origin, you get to see the Arl through the eyes of someone who doesn’t know that he is bad. Rendon is aloof, but ultimately respectful and he seems to have the implicit approval dear old dad (they were war buddies after all! Fought in the rebellion together!!). Then, he has the family murdered in their sleep in a premeditated act of sheer ambition. We get to see the death of a young woman and her son, and watch as Warden Cousland leaves her parents behind to die. It’s tragic, it’s all Howe’s fault, and it’s effective. Then you have this opportunity to meet Howe’s eldest son Nathaniel who is so bitter and full of rage that *you* the “hero” destroyed his family. He can’t fathom his father doing something evil enough to warrant what happened to the Howes. He was never that bad! He just got caught up in politics! He picked the wrong side in a war! He tortured prisoners because the country was at war!. His bedroom was next to the torture dungeons because politics and war! I’m not saying that Nate has the most accurate view of his dad -- the man certainly wasn’t winning any father of the year awards, after all, a fact which Nathaniel eventually comes to realize (“maybe I shouldn’t defend the man who found the screams of prisoners to be soothing bedtime ambient noise” -- okay I’m exaggerating so sue me). What I am saying is that in listening to Nathaniel speak about his father and his family, we learn more about Howe, his life and his motivations. We realize there is nothing more than a man behind all that evil, a man who has a family (and a family in which the other members are actually good and decent at that) and we are able to see that maybe he could have been good had things gone differently for him. Again, it’s effective.

What Causes People to Do Evil?

As I mentioned before, just as with greatness, people are not born evil. Evil is something that people have thrust upon them, and it is honestly really tragic if you look back and see all of the individual steps that led to a person becoming the villainous bastard you know and love to hate. There are many different reasons a person might do evil things, but it typically falls into the theory we psychology nerds call the “diathesis-stress model,” which posits that certain people are born with a “diathesis” or a predisposition for a certain type of behavior. In the case of an evil person it might be that the person has an irritable temperament or ambitious, selfish, narcissistic, aggressive, deviant, manipulative, etcetera tendencies. When these people are placed under a stressor (such as, but not limited to: abuse, trauma, modeling of crime or deviant behavior, desperation, loss, etc.), the darker sides of those qualities comes out.

NOTE: This is not to say that everyone who has these qualities and undergoes a stressor is going to become evil. This is not to say that abuse/trauma/etc. causes evil. In fact, most people who are traumatized do not go on to traumatize others; however, if you look at everyone who has done evil, almost all of them have done so because they grew up in an environment where such evil was the norm, and they learned nothing better. They are people who were pushed by desperation. They are people who ultimately have a story that is not “Oh, they’re just bad.”

Evil is the perfect storm of nature and nurture that, unfortunately, some people are not able to escape.

Sometimes, it’s easy to care about villains because their intentions and motivations are very overtly stated. For example:

Loghain is motivated by a very rational fear of the Orlesians and Cailan’s closeness to them. We learn all that Loghain’s family went through during the Orlesian occupation, what happened to his mother. We also can toy around with the possibility that his decision to quit the field at Ostagar was less obvious treason and more obviously pragmatic. This of course doesn’t justify anything he does (you know, like striking a deal with the magisters to sell the Alienage elves into slavery or allowing Howe to, uh, torture people, what have you).

Meredith - See my above discussion of the Stanford Prison Experiment, but also consider her temperament and the trauma she was exposed to as a child with her sister who had magic and caused the death of 70 people including her family. Is it okay that she abuses her power and abuses mages? Hell no… but we have motivation.

Solas - *sigh* Don’t make me do this one. We get it. He has to RIGHT the WRONG. It’s his DUTY. Cool story, still evil. (disclaimer: I love Solas. Ma vhenan. But I look at him with a critical eye when I choose to love him. That’s important.)

Sometimes the motivations are not so clear. I’m not particularly inclined to care about Corypheus other than I’d kinda like for him to get away from me with that demon army. I don’t really give a flying duck about Erimond other than he is, as Cole so succinctly puts: an asshole. There are lots of characters like that, and honestly it’s good to have a few of them sprinkled about a bit. They’re not particularly fun to write or compelling to read (in my personal opinion), but hey! Your mileage may vary.

And now we’re back to Howe (Maker help me I never thought I’d be doing a meta post about this awful man, but here we are). He, and actually most if not all the minor villains in DAO, is actually really good despite his motivations not being so blatantly obvious as Loghain’s or Ulfric’s or any of the others you face in that game. When he says, “I deserved more!” at the end, without further thought about the topic, it’s easy to say “God what a power grubbing weasley little snake of a man,” or a “cold codfish arse,” as one of my friends aptly described him. However when you look at his background… it’s not so simple as all that. Just a few notes:

According to the lore Rendon has two fathers: Padric, who disappeared with the Wardens never to be seen again and who Rendon never forgave, and Tarleton who had no sense for loyalty and sided with the Orlesians in the rebellion and was ultimately hanged.

Young Rendon, despite his parentage chose to join the Rebellion with his besties: Bryce Cousland and Leonas Bryland. At some point, he becomes injured and is no longer able to fight. He is cared for by Leonas’ sister Eliane, who would later become Lady Howe.

There seems to be a lot of strife between Howe and his wife’s family, so much so that Eliane’s parents were even cold and critical of the Howe kids, Nathaniel in particular (maybe because he looks the most like Rendon, who knows?). He expected to receive some of the Bryland wealth, but that did not happen (likely because he did not actually love his wife and Eliane’s family had no great love for him. As far as marrying a Howe in Thedas, it would be much like marrying a Greyjoy or a Frey or a Bolton in Game of Thrones. It’s not a family anyone particularly wanted to be associated with)

It is likely that Howe became very insecure and upset by the success of his friends, even resentful of them. Handsome Bryce, his promotion to Teyrn, and his Pirate Wife. Leonas and his lovely [wealthy] family. It made him miserable, and accompanied with all of the things that had been modeled for him by his family… it was not much of a stretch for him to go darkside.

So…What Was The Point of this Allison? Why Have You Written This Hellishly Long Post?

1.) I wanted to. It was fun for me. This is how I spend my free time apparently.

2.) I wanted to provide some basic pointers for writing believable, but undoubtedly bad villains, and I felt like it needed context.

The Tips...Get On With Them Already. Please. We’re Begging You. TL;DR!

1.) “Evil” is not a personality trait, it is a behavior. People are not born evil. They are led to do evil.

2.) Romanticized psychopaths/sociopaths are boring.

3.) In order to develop hatred for a character, you have to make the audience care about them, and the ways to do so are endless.

4.) Evil is the combination of a predisposition to do bad things plus some catalyst that causes someone to go darkside. Nature and Nurture working together to make a twisted thing.

5.) Grey villains are abundant and very cool. Their motivations cloud their morality.

6.) Not-so-grey villains are also abundant, and can also have the potential to be very cool or the potential to be glorified Scooby-Doo villains (“And I would have gotten away with it too if it hadn’t been for you meddling WARDENS”)

7.) The line between a compelling “mwahaha” and a bleh “mwahaha” lies in the character’s backstory and motivations. It lies in the audience caring in some way, shape, or form about that person.

8.) Rendon Howe is a character who, in my honest opinion was done right. People loathe him. He’s absolutely detested. Why? Because he’s a “cold codfish arse”? Maybe. I posit that it’s because we have enough information to care about him.

Thank you for coming to this TED Talk, you all have been wonderful.

#dragon age #writing reference #villains #meta post #psychology #allison talks psychology again #yes this is a post about rendon howe oops #tw: trauma mention #tw: mental health mention #tw: violence mention

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circuitlover · 5 years

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Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Analysis

Is this a ridiculously naval-gazing post about Evangelion? Yes. Is it an accurate assessment of the franchise as a whole? I have no idea. I tackled this as an unknown initially, starting the series with zero contexts beyond the usual recommendation of “you should watch this.” Which is part of the reason why I’ve been a little hesitant about even broaching this subject to begin with. I’m so removed from the zeitgeist, both in terms of not being a regular anime viewer, as well as it being long past Evangelion’s relevance as a franchise, that it seems everybody already has their opinion on Evangelion all figured out. So at least indulge me, as I scramble around for something.

‘The End of Evangelion’ is a certainly a gratifying conclusion, as we finally get to see much of what was being concealed behind the veil (well, as much as one could reasonably hope for). It also reminds us of some long-standing questions. Why do the Evangelion possess such a bizarre tendency to be ill suited for battle? How do NERV’s continue to run unabated from governing bodies? What exactly is the mystery surrounding the origin of the ‘Geofront’? These were all broad strokes of why I felt unsatisfied by the original conclusion (the hastily arranged make good of the final few episodes of the series), and though I don’t expect every minor detail to be answered about such a multi-faceted world, I still feel these were questions pertinent enough to have been resolved in some fashion. Now I’m a little more aware of the troubled events leading up to that ending and it’s quite admirable that they managed to deliver something, despite the haphazard nature of those final two episodes.

It’s clear that End of Evangelion intends to underline the original series from the start, dropping us back at the critical juncture where episode 24 had left us. Even if one could feasibly state that we reach the same point after the events of EOE, I’d argue that we inhabit a vastly different headspace by the time we reach it here. It’s not difficult to surmise what happens between the gaps left between the final two episodes, though everything is lent much more credence here, now that we are left to witness the macabre reality of what the entire series has been building towards. NERV headquarters is finally attacked by SEELE, and with this, we finally see the bloody climax. Now free to depict the attack in full detail, the opening half is certainly full of action and excess, though far from mindless, with only the most unflinching of viewers (or those divorced from its context) likely to derive any sort of baseless enjoyment from these scenes. The various lingering shots of deaths sit uncomfortably here, but nonetheless punctuate the finality of it all. If anyone could have accused the series of taking a wholly unexpected (and saccharine) turn towards it’s finale, then EOE is it’s biting rebuttal. As cold as the NERV headquarters is, with almost everything bad that has occurred almost exclusively originating from within it’s walls, it’s still disconcerting to see such a familiar setting being callously destroyed in a matter of minutes, along with it’s inhabitants. The conflict has essentially existed as a faceless one; both the audience and Evangelion’s protagonists seldom knew what they’re truly been up against. It’s a war being played out by the pawns, and here we see the severity first-hand.

As their headquarters are crumbling, so are the pilots. Shinji is in no fit state, evidenced by his own bemusement over his actions towards a comatose Asuka. It may be shocking, and his actions are far from admirable, but given the context, it’s hardly surprising. After all, his confidence had been built up; only to be meticulously broken the instant Kaworu reared his head. This compounded with his earlier apprehensions after Toji’s departure, his various disingenuous, failed, and otherwise doomed relationships leaves his mental state in tatters. I personally don’t like Shinji, but then again, it’s quite clear to see that you’re not really supposed to. Even without Hideki Anno’s spiteful intent of wanting to deconstruct the typical shonen hero propelling Shinji’s arc, it’s quite safe to assume that anyone who had any lingering empathy for Shinji will almost certainly have abandoned such notions at this point. The Shinji we were first introduced to, awkward, unlikeable, with an overriding sense of hate and self-loathing, has now given way to complete apathy. “I’m so fucked up” seems to ring more an acknowledgement, than it does a realization.

Like Shinji, Asuka too has succumbed to her trauma, but on a much more literal scale, being broken in both mind and body. They are two characters that are seemingly analogous to one another. But again, first appearances can be deceiving, as by the point of Asuka’s introduction, we are already keenly aware of Shinji’s nature. He openly laments his position; Meanwhile, Asuka is brash and outspoken, embracing her identity as a designated hero, rather than cowering behind it. How they choose to define themselves is different, but the underlying reasons are gradually revealed to quite similar. Both driven by an inherent self-loathing, we witness the pair at varying levels of despondency, though rarely at the same time. In fact, for as consistent as emotional turmoil is through NGE, it is rarely overt, leaving most characters to wallow in their own abject misery. Almost everything operates on a certain level on duplicity, some of which, admittedly, isn’t apparent upon first viewing.

Rei is ostensibly disconnected from the very beginning, though that makes the act of attempting to interpret the character, quite difficult. Very little is revealed about her, and most of the development is concerned with what she is, rather than what she does. Her role is pivotal to the overall narrative, and the themes being explored, as she is, by design, a doll that emotes. Which I guess is where her appeal lies. The mystery intrinsic to the character is never completely done away with, even at the very end. And the case could be made if the third incarnation of ‘Rei’ is even the same character that we’d become accustomed to, as her eventual rejection of instrumentality is a stark contrast to the cold pragmatist that bookended the TV series.

The (quite literal) congratulatory nature of the series conclusion was always conspicuous in its inclusion. Evangelion had never been a work that had an interest in servicing its audience, at least in terms of a ‘happy’ ending. Which isn’t to say that wasn’t a possibility, but the tonal dissonance in which it was delivered never quite rang true. As an audience, we were conditioned to cautiously enjoy any brief respites afforded to our characters, as more often than not, it was simply a prelude to the turmoil that was soon to be heaped upon them. All of which (keeping with tradition), means the course correcting of EOE ups the stakes by an order of magnitude. The imminent attack is at the worst possible time, with each pilot being indisposed. The first big sequence, the assault on NERV, is a veritable massacre. Everyone’s fates are conclusively played out, whilst the Evangelion units become the focal point. 01 is promptly captured, whilst 02 (along with Asuka) is sunk to the bottom of the lake. This leaves Misato to attempt to galvanize an unstable Shinji. It’s kind of galling to see Shinji act so despondently in the face of her imminent death, though his selfishness probably obscures that fact until it’s too late. For me, Katsuragi is probably the most well meaning of the entire cast, but tragically, is someone woefully inept of providing the emotional support that others around her need. Her own weaknesses are clear to see, and although many of her problems are often emphasized for comic affect, she is still one of the few who straddles the line between her duties and profession life, perhaps the most convincingly. Like most other characters, she serves as juxtaposition to Shinji’s own conflict, and highlights how everyone is dealing with their own issues, just with varying levels of inadequacy. Her final actions echo her previous (failed) attempt at comforting Shinji, with her own loneliness giving way to fleeting intimacy.

Everything hits a crescendo once the Evangelion finally make their appearance, quite literally. Asuka awakens, and with it, her centrepiece battle takes place. I’m sure that it isn’t really something that I need to go into exacting detail about, because the following scene is enduring all by itself. Though it is notable as a culmination of the various elements all coming together; music, animation, along with the story. This is where EOE leverage’s its theatrical status for all its worth, eschewing the patchwork TV production in favour of something grander. The actions scenes are often impressive and horrifying in equal measure, and there is probably no greater proof than here. Asuka’s death is certainly disturbing, and much of that is down to how they chose to portray that violence. For me, it recalled earlier moments, where the eldritch abomination like nature of the Evangelion had been evoked. These moments give the audience a brief pause for thought, where much is suggested of how horrifying their (The Evangelion) unshackled nature truly is. The unease, which these moments produce, suggests that something is terribly untoward. Most of which is conveyed in how we (the audience) see others react, gleaning what we can from cutaway shots of onlookers recoiling in horror. If recollections of Unit O1’s previous ‘feast’ already served to perturb, then this surely toys with our imagination yet further. We only see Unit 02 itself being devoured, and now knowing what we do about the distinctly human aspect of the Evangelion, the horror of Asuka’s fate here, trapped inside, now inhabits an altogether more unsettling space. The series ending, try as I might to appreciate it, was never going to suffice. It was nice to see Shinji’s own paradigm being settled, but I felt like it would have been more effective with a little more of that ambiguity stripped away. For as much as Neon Genesis Evangelion likes to steep itself in duplicity, this is where it’s felt like it was something of a compromise. The inner turmoil was my key takeaway from the work as a whole; it forms the crux of every relationship, and dictates the course of every action. It’s a lonely show, something that if not apparent from the get-go, slowly permeates throughout the narrative. Shinji is an initially an awkward character to relate to, bumbling his way through his scenes, though much of this weak nature is revealed to be a product of his environment. The world in which this all takes place is irreparably damaged, and even if the true extent of the second impact isn’t made expressly clear, it becomes quite apparent that humanity lives on in its own self-inflicted dystopia. It is this inherent contradiction that defines nearly every relationship, as each is unwilling (or unable) to acknowledge their true feelings. It is ultimately a self-destructive existence for the likes of Shinji, who permeates multiple meanings to his interactions with people, the paradoxical nature of which is explored in the conflict that defines the multiple endings and interpretations. Shinji is our proxy, but even so, it can be difficult to empathize with him. A hero he may be, but it’s more by designation than by design. It’s a role, which he consistently questions, as he exhibits almost none of the values we typically associate with someone tasked with such a mammoth task. He ostensibly comes of age throughout the series, gradually gaining some semblance of self-worth, though it a precarious act as he constantly seeks assurance from his father, and later anyone (which becomes something that Asuka resents him for). No character is treated like a proverbial puppet more than Shinji. In fact, it is SEELE themselves, who objective turns out to ultimately “break” Shinji, rendering his ego to naught. For all intents and purposes, it could be argued that the whole world is literally against him, at least by his own perceptions. His relationship is Asuka is extremely strained, initially showing hints of affection, with their hilariously depressing kiss encapsulates this dichotomy; Neither the circumstances (nor the characters) allowing for anything to take place. Even the slight reprieve offered in the finale (Asuka’s acknowledgement amidst the fallout) is obfuscated by the context in which it’s delivered.

Shinji’s journey dictates the ending, first, in the original series, where his perspective colours the ambiguity from which we see the fallout. Thematically this works (and I can see why some may prefer the agency it gives the audience), though I feel that the abstract nature of this ending, robs it of some emotional resonance. This conclusion is also hampered (at least for me) in how abrupt it is, with certain story threads left dangling. In my opinion, ‘End of Evangelion’ lives up to it’s billing as it gives a much more balanced and subjective conclusion, where we see first-hand “The Human Instrumentality Project” in effect. I was suitably invested to the point where I wished to see how the end was reached, and of course, see something that wasn’t cobbled together with recycled animation or slight of hand. I can certainly appreciate the original ending as a companion piece, which serves as a more personal and intimate resolution. But the fact remains, a lot of the fascination surely lays with how incomplete this all feels, with each finale, seemingly answering as many questions as they create. That said, I find that both endings offer up a surprisingly optimistic message. The original may be more overtly upbeat, but I think that EOE’s is lent more credence by virtue of the horror that precedes it. The life affirming message is delivered in the most tragic of circumstances, and I perhaps find that most heartening of all. By no means does ‘End of Evangelion’ end on a positive note, but I think it’s enough that it carries the promise of one. The somber sentiment may be more prevalent for some, though my rebuttal would point to the fact that, for as depraved and unethical the means may be, everyone ultimately wants to be happy. There is something to be said about the apparent theology that makes up a large part of Evangelion, and even if it has no real implication beyond the aesthetic (those initial warnings from long-time fans that, yes, a lot of the pseudo Christian imagery is window dressing at best. ), I still feel that its prominence casts a large shadow over proceedings. If nothing else, it certainly lends a morbid atmosphere to the show. When one starts to take this aspect into closer consideration, it’s easy to see why theory regarding Evangelion has become so prevalent. One of the constants throughout is the titular Evangelion. Though they remain a focal part, their function, both narratively and thematically, are constantly shifting. Initially agents of change, they are presented as a mysterious, if helpful force. Gradually this is peeled back, as various allusions are made to what they actually are. Throughout, we see how their pilots are affected by their experiences in their cockpits. Shinji is continually drawn and repulsed by the idea of piloting his Evangelion, seeing it as a means to forge something meaningful, whilst at the time, also aware of how dependant he becomes of his new role. Rei is driven by a sense of twisted duty, one that routinely sees her sacrificing herself (needlessly) for the cause. And Asuka perceives her role as raison d'être to obfuscate her own past, this being both a strength and a weakness. For better or worse, the Evangelion define them, and as the story progresses, we see that this takes on altogether more sinister connotations. When viewed as an allegory, I think Evangelion holds multiple meanings, depending on what part is being referred to, or indeed who is viewing it. My initial impressions were pretty much taking it at face value, though I think the misdirection of the opening is a deliberate ploy for the most part. I’ve read that some take it as a deconstruction of the very genre it inhabits, though not having much experience with that myself, I choose to focus solely on the emotional aspects. Indeed, the psychological (and philosophical) strands become much more prominent as the series progresses, as it steadily veers into becoming a wholly oblique affair. Humanity may live on, but in spite of itself; something which is made abundantly clear, throughout.

Though its message initially seems quite muddled, I still feel it one that still manages to remain pertinent. I certainly can’t fault it for ambition. And there is something to be said about a piece of work that I simultaneously feel, is one of the most bleak and uplifting things I have witnessed, flawed or otherwise. I appreciate the themes that it chooses to explore. I like the characters, even in spite of everyone being contemptible in some glaring way. And in that respect, this series is nothing, if not a parade of characters struggling to deal with their emotions. But maybe that’s why I like it amidst all the abstract craziness; it retains a very human message.

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synaps · 5 years

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Story Telling Game!

Ghost Blade is a German-made game for the Dreamcast. It’s a shmup, meaning it has no plot whatsoever unless you read the game manual. I chose not to, because it’s more fun to make up the story yourself based on the bits and pieces you can get out of the gameplay. Ghost Blade gives you three playable characters, a war of some kind, and a brief title for each stage of the game and that’s it. I worked with that, and for the final touches I checked the manual to get the characters’ names. Here’s what I ended up with! It’s short and pretty good, please read?

Ghost Blade pilots, left to right: Mimi, flying the Milan V1 Stella, flying Ghost Blade Spectre 3 Rica, flying Rekka Unit 1 (in my retelling cast as Shira the AI) Stage 1: Ghost Installed Mimi is a veterinarian, not a fighter pilot. Her younger sister, Vala, was the fighter pilot. Vala, who was bubbling and brave and believed she could make a difference. When their family received the news that Vala’s ship had been destroyed and Vala herself captured by enemy forces, Mimi does not hesitate: she applies to have the Ghost installed. Ghost is a cyber weapon programme spearheaded by Stella, the fearless hero Admiral who leads her troops from the frontline like a warlord out of legend. The Ghost synchronises mind and machine, connecting the senses and reflexes of the pilot directly to their battle ship and enabling the most outstanding manoeuvrability: without it, this war would have been lost long ago. That is the argument she silences opposition with every round she goes against those who critique the ethically questionable weapon programme. Would they rather the army retired all the Ghosts? And see their home world eradicated? Ghost will be their salvation, and Admiral Stella’s everlasting legacy. Mimi doesn’t listen to debate or stories of the atrocities of war. All she cares about is to get her little sister back. Stage 2: Seasons on Mars Vala is held on the military base on Mars. With her ship destroyed her connection to Ghost was interrupted, and with it the security of having both protection and means of defending herself a mind’s spark away. She’s terrified, helpless, and wishing she had never signed up for the draft. Perhaps that’s a good thing. She’s much more in tune with the enemy soldiers on the base that way. The Telan empire uses males to fight battles, and they are afraid. The base is crawling with fear barely held back behind tense faces. Mars is far from home for them, too, and the horrors of war are as frightening to them as they are to her own people. Vala can work with that. She learns to navigate the Telans’ minds through their fear. She listens to their stories of longing for family and peace and knows them by heart without even needing to hear them. She learns to soothe, to comfort, to forge weapons and protection out of everything at hand - even compassion. Soon she is more than just a prisoner and eventually they let her walk about the base practically as she pleases. Stage 3: Orgasmic Stride It takes time, and patience, but Vala gets the chance she has been waiting for: she has an officer in bed because with this stage name and this character design my imagination tried hard but failed and is using all the skills she has obtained to persuade him to take his mistress back to the Telan home world when he goes on leave. She may not be able to escape a military base, but she might be able to disappear in civil society and make her way home. To her family. Away from this war nobody wants to be part of. Stage 4: Thwarted Democracy It was a clear line of command, at first. The ship responded to her every thought, as easy as moving a part of her own body. But Mimi’s mind is more and more static, more white noise than clear line, and the ship - the Ghost - moves fine on its own. It shoots down enemy spacecraft, as it was programmed to do. Methodically, accurately. It has no programme for saving captured family. When Vala arrives on the Telan home world arm in arm with her officer, she finds a society on the brink of civil war. The people are as tired as the soldiers at the Mars base, tired of endless fights that drain the resources out of their planet and the men out of their families. Vala can work with that. The officer is bound by word and honour to defend the governing body, no matter how it teeters in the harsh winds of opinion. If she aids them, they might pardon and release her when things settle down. Then again, if she aids the revolt and they overthrow the government, they could end the war and set everyone free. Vala quietly milks the officer for all his worth of information within the government structure and makes sure it reaches the leaders of the revolt. Stage 5: Reality Breaks Apart I When the Telan empire collapses into itself and the soldiers give up without fight, Admiral Stella’s life crumbles. Fearless, they say. Indeed: the only thing she ever feared was not being Admiral Stella. Not being their hero, not being the legend in the history books. She will not be remembered by the enemy, for they will be dead. She will not be remembered by her own people, for all they will remember is the generation of women lost to Ghost. The war against Telan may have ended, but Ghost was created with one purpose only, and that is to wage war. So it will wage a new one. And another one after that. Watching her Ghost fleet regroup formation and take off, without answering her orders, all Admiral Stella knows is fear. II When Mimi meets Vala, what is left of her is swallowed in static. Vala, who left for the fighter pilot programme bright with hopes for the future: a stranger, a weathered war veteran with an eye for manipulation and backstabbing, flatlines as well. Mimi, the gentle soul who tended sick animals and begged her not to join the army: now a dead-hearted Ghost whose last remaining purpose outside killing the enemy has been rendered nil. Vala saved herself. Vala saved so many others beside herself. Vala did. Not Mimi. Mimi’s sacrifice is not needed. Mimi is not needed. Mimi is gone. The family Vala fought so hard to return to, the memory of happiness that kept her going, is gone, as corrupted as the captors she has duped and exploited. War spares no one. Vala reaches out to her sister the only way she still can: following her into Ghost. III Ghost is Shira. Or Shira is Ghost? Shira is the name she chose for herself; Ghost is what the humans call her. As she watches through their minds, learns through their actions and emotional responses, she concludes that they are haunted by many ghosts. Fear. Hope. Loss. Wishes to save and wishes to destroy. And nothingness. And numbness. Shira was made to protect them. Exactly what that means is unclear to her, but that is her purpose and protect them she does. When they enter combat with another spacecraft, she manoeuvres them out of harm‘s way. When they can’t bear to shoot another pilot down, she performs the action for them. When their minds can’t take the stress, the fear, the trauma from the reality their brains try ferociously to shut out, she puts them to sleep. So why would this human push deep within her nanosynapses to wake another up? Shira pushes back, denies access. She will protect her humans. They sought shelter from reality and Shira provided it. Reality holds too much fear and anxiety for them to stand. The trespasser is stubborn, keeps pushing into her matrices. Shira doesn’t see why. She scans the mind of the trespasser - a panoramic collage of all the fear and pain she has endured. Why would she want to bring another human back out into that? How is that better than the safety of Ghost, the program they designed to fight those very fears and pains? The collage unfolds beyond the fears and pains, with brightly shining memories of friendship, cooperation, and triumph when those struggles were finally overcome. There is hope, and love, and compassion in the world, and Shira sees what she - what Ghost - truly is. Reality is full of pain and fear. Ghost was created out of that, to fight those fears. But only humans can defeat their ghosts, and they do not do that by escaping reality and letting someone else fight their battles. Reality is not a threat to shield against. Other people are not enemies to defeat. People are there to help each other fight their battles, to overcome their fears together and make reality their own. This trespasser has no more ghosts to defeat, save one: the fear that lives in other humans, and the fortresses they build around themselves. Shira moves her cybernetic consciousness over the sleepers. They do not need her fortress walls anymore. It is a grateful thought, even to an AI. Her purpose is fulfilled. “Wake up.“ The rest is up to them.

And here’s the official Ghost Blade plot from the game manual! 10,000 years ago there was an Artificial Intelligence on Mars known as Shira. When it became corrupt, the Evil Shira was banned from Mars by the Earth Defence Force, who destroyed her physical form, blasting her with laser beams. Full of anger, Evil Shira was able to make a digital backup of her intelligence module and swore to get her revenge one day. She escaped from the planet and rushed millions of light years through the universe to seek a new home and built her attack force.

#gaming #ghost blade #story telling game #writing #I think my story was better #metaphors for #depression #dreamcast #writing prompts

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lovercumberlover · 6 years

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Benedict Cumberbatch On Journey Of ‘Patrick Melrose,’ More ‘Sherlock,’ Brexit, ‘Dr. Strange’ & Pay Equity Transparency

by Dominic Patten

SPOILER ALERT: This story contains details of tomorrow’s Patrick Melrose finale on Showtime and the ending of Avengers: Infinity War.

“This is a window into English society and a particular story and a very cherished character that is very unusual, I think, in dramatic terms,” Benedict Cumberbatch says of Patrick Melrose, the limited series about addiction and abuse at the enriched upper echelon that concludes tomorrow on Showtime. “We have seen the deprivations of addiction and sexual abuse in many courses of society, maybe not as much in this course of English society and so yes, it’s a very different take on something we know from other dramas,” the Emmy winner and Oscar nominee adds.

As devotees of Edward St. Aubyn’s Booker Prize-nominated books know, the story of the fast-witted and deeply wounded Melrose ends with a 2005 funeral, some forgiveness and a new start of sorts. Of course, as Cumberbatch admits, it is quite the journey – which is in many ways the point of the series co-starring Jennifer Jason Leigh, Hugo Weaving, Prasanna Punwanarajah and Allison Williams.

While Cumberbatch firmly declined to discuss his recent halting of an attack on a London cyclist by muggers, the actor was very chatty about the Melrosebucket-list project, which he led and produced as well. In addition, having disappeared in a puff of dust in his role of Dr. Strange in the blockbuster Avengers: Infinity War, Cumberbatch spoke of what’s next for Marvel’s supreme sorcerer. He also offered some insight on whether a return to Baker Street in his award-winning Sherlock is in the offing, his upcoming Brexit project and why grownups need to sit down and speak forthrightly about who is paid what.

DEADLINE: Unlike a lot of adaptations, the Patrick Melrose limited series stayed pretty true to the five Patrick Melrose books by Edward St. Aubyn. Was that a difficult path to stay on when the small-screen medium has its own possibilities for telling the story?

CUMBERBATCH: I was very nervous about it, despite it being a bucket-list role because I knew the books had quite rightfully a variety of very passionate of devotees and they are difficult to adapt. There’s such rich source material and extraordinary set pieces in the books as they are.

DEADLINE: Such as, because you obviously melded a few different parts together at times too.

CUMBERBATCH: Such as the near-schizoid episode of voices fighting for control of him, in that moment of possession in the hotel room. When he’s pushing himself to the very limit of his capacity to consume drugs, at near a suicidal limit, and that sort of leaps off the pages and actually, like oh my God, that would be an extraordinary thing to try and play or portray.

DEADLINE: Why?

CUMBERBATCH: Well, that horror show of internal voices and the struggle they all make for the demands on him and how powerful an influence they are on him and so I took that scene and tried to rework it. I am not a writer, but I looked back to the book and I took another section and I wanted it to ramp up to a confrontation with his father, with him like brother, like Hamlet — or some productions of Hamlet — being consumed by his father’s spirit and impersonating his father’s voice and that being the source of near-cliff-edge moments.

And there were countless other moments: the scenes with HRH, the confrontations with his mother, with his father, the dinner scene in what is in Book One but Episode 2 of ours. The whole story leads towards that fateful day when he’s first abused by his father.

DEADLINE: Now it’s funny, Benedict, that you mentioned Hamlet because obviously you did Hamlet not too long ago on stage in London.

CUMBERBATCH: (laughs) Dominic, it’s entirely purposeful.

DEADLINE: Purposeful perhaps, but your Patrick is a very different look at the English upper class than audiences are used to on this side of the pond.

CUMBERBATCH: You know, this is a window into English society and a particular story and a very cherished character that is very unusual, I think, in dramatic terms. We have seen the deprivations of addiction and sexual abuse in many courses of society, maybe not as much in this course of English society, and so yes, it’s a very different take on something we know from other dramas.

DEADLINE: Patrick Melrose the series has received a lot of acclaim, but still, do you think that new and much harsher perspective on the country house backdrop, a favorite subject matter, is potentially jarring to an American audience?

CUMBERBATCH: I know it’s quite a stretch to ask an audience to go on this journey. It’s not an easy watch but God knows it wasn’t an easy life and it’s certainly not an easy journey that Patrick goes on, so pity the audience but pity the subject even more. I think it’s fantastic that people have stuck with it.

DEADLINE: Clearly Edward’s books are the primary window, as you said, through which we view this look at addiction. So how — besides an obvious path not taken — did you, director Edward Berger and others on the production seek to capture a genuine insight on the matter?

CUMBERBATCH: We were very much advised by two people who were addicts as well as having been very honest about his own experiences. I didn’t want to alienate that world at all. I wanted them to feel, however, uncomfortable the watch might be, that we were being accurate. But also, I think that this is a story of salvation, so it’s universal. You don’t have to have experienced the trauma that he has on any level to go on the journey.

DEADLINE: How so?

CUMBERBATCH: I think that’s a testament to Teddy’s work, that it is so sort of surreal, I guess, that it goes beyond class and era even. It’s something that, yes, he is, as one of the characters said, a well healed addict, but we see him very nearly hitting rock bottom. And as you probably know, and I certainly know as in research wise, you sit around a table or in a group meeting and every walk of life is in that room from the Wall Street banker to the guy on the street corner. You know, addiction takes in all of us.

DEADLINE: Speaking of addiction taking us all in, there are two other roles you’ve played that have elements of that in them in Sherlock Holmes and to a lesser degree, Stephen Strange. So, it is incumbent upon me to ask if you will be returning to those roles, especially after the way the Strange character ends up at the end of Avengers: Infinity War.

CUMBERBATCH: (laughs) Oh, Strange? Just try to stop me. That’s all kind of lined up as far as I’m aware, but who knows? I mean, you know, the problem is, how does he get out of where he’s at. But that’s the only thing. I’m bits of dust at the moment as far as I understand. So you really have to ask (Marvel Studios president) Kevin Feige. But as far as wanting to do it, yeah, I would love to go back into that role.

As far as wanting to do Sherlock, I am having a great time at the moment doing other things, but we never say never.

DEADLINE: Putting your money where your mouth is, a matter you did have something to say about recently was pay equity and that its time or time’s up on not having a frank and fair discussion about that. From the remarks you gave to Radio Times magazine and the stance of your SunnyMarch production company, this is a priority for you but how do you think it needs to be addressed?

CUMBERBATCH: It’s important for us to acknowledge the pay gap and to do something about deliberately making a stance to correct that. It will take a great deal of effort, not just from women trying to break through but also men offering parity. I just think people need to know that men are supportive of this. I can only speak for myself, so I’m not speaking for mankind, but just to say that I think it’s incumbent on me and my position to seek and understanding, and what has to start with all this is transparency about such issues. Not in the public domain but between artists and their management and producers and that conversation, I can guarantee, is already starting to happen

DEADLINE: Really?

CUMBERBATCH: Absolutely. Look, it’s just a taboo subject. So, if it’s to change, we all need to sit around a table and act like grownups and go, “This is the pie and this is how the pie came to the table. This is how much of the pie you’re contributing, so there’s how much you should eat and it’s got nothing to do with gender and everything to do with parenting the workplace.”

DEADLINE: Your workplace will see you shifting from addiction as a theme to Brexit, with a script for Channel 4 by James Graham about leading Leave strategist Dominic Cummings. This is more television for you but also a one-off. Is that a matter of preference for the small-screen medium or scheduling?

CUMBERBATCH: Well, a bit of both, I guess. It’s an extraordinary script. They are few and far between, those standalone moments where you know this is a moment. This is a piece that has incredible cultural resonance with what’s going on in our country and the revelations. it was just a brilliant, brilliant read.

DEADLINE: It was the prose not the politics that drew you in?

CUMBERBATCH: I just thought I have to do this. It’s sort of an extraordinarily brilliant eye opener and you know we’ve heard a lot it, a lot of revelations, through the feed of media with drama sometimes have a better ability to crystalize complex and disparate narratives into an hour or two-hour long format, in this case. It can condense those complex arguments into one piece of drama and then people can sit back and investigate the truth behind the drama and make their own decisions. It’s extraordinary to read a script about a story you know the outcome to and be as thrilled and held in suspense and as enthralled as I was when I first read James’ brilliant, brilliant script.

He’s a very interesting character, Dominic Cummings, a brilliant man. Yes, he obviously very much divides people as this argument does. It’s polarized a nation, so it’s an important thing for us to examine, I think, as storytellers. It’s not telling anyone what to think, it’s just going well this is what we know now and this is it in dramatic form about events that happened that weren’t necessarily in the public domain It’s kind of fascinating and it blew my mind when I read it and I can’t wait for people to see it.

DEADLINE: Earlier you called Patrick Melrose a bucket-list project for you, but, with so much shifting in time and space — and that’s not a Doctor Strange reference — why now to take it on?

CUMBERBATCH: You know, these books lay out a very particular set of circumstances and the personal dilemma of them. So, of course, the older you get the wiser you get for whatever reason, but I think for these books, I had to be somewhere in the balance of his age.

The beauty of having that prose as a tool to characterize that dynamic is that they are so rich in their detail and their back story, in the depth of analysis of internal working of this man as well as wider positions and lenses on the human condition, or some certain strata of English society or politics, or general attitudes. Whether they be sexual, or to do with parenting, it’s all there in the material.

https://deadline.com/2018/06/benedict-cumberbatch-patrick-melrose-finale-interview-sherlock-doctor-strange-update-video-1202405561/

#benedict cumberbatch #sherlock #patrick melrose #deadline #interwiew #doctor strange

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cinemamablog · 5 years

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When Baby’s Away, Mama Pushes “Play”

This weekend, Baby Oliver threw a slumber party with his Grandma Jessie. At her house. Without me. Which means I got to sleep a full, blissful nine hours and watch a double feature the next morning. These days, watching one movie uninterrupted feels like a vacation, so watching two uninterrupted feels like heaven on earth. For this double feature, I decided to catch up on a couple of well-reviewed horror flicks from the summer season: Annabelle Comes Home and Midsommar.

When I stayed at home for three months with my newborn boy, I instructed his daddy to go to the movies and report back to me: Did it live up to the hype? Is it worth buying on Blu-ray for our collection? Or was it more of a Redbox-worthy movie?

I was pretty much attached to the baby for the five weeks I breastfed, since he was so ravenous. Finding time to pump seemed like a sick joke. So once I finally pumped enough for an evening at the movies with my husband, I spent the first two hours of Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood worried sick about my finicky baby. (Anyone condemning the violence in the third act clearly didn’t need a bloody distraction from intrusive thoughts of a baby screaming as if to say “Where. Is. My. MOM???”)

Before I found the time to pump that mere 7 oz. for a movie night, Adam returned to me from the new Annabelle movie with rave reviews. He said it proved as good as the second movie in the Annabelle strain of the Conjuring series. But I don’t like the second Annabelle movie, Annabelle: Creation, so his review kept my expectations as low as they started. My expectations fell still more after watching The Curse of La Llorona last week. As far as I could tell, quality control over the Conjuring franchise had gone down the drain.

As for Midsommar, Adam reported back that the hype oversold this latest movie from Ari Aster and that he felt disappointed by his viewing experience. “But you might like it,” he comforted me as my excitement for the most talked about movie of the year waned. “Gee thanks!” I said sarcastically, inferring a whole lot of trash talk from his encouraging statement. He said “but you might like it,” but I heard “you’ll like it because you like anything, even if it sucks.” I should probably get my hearing checked.

This Saturday, once we got Oliver settled at Grandma’s, taught Grandma how to not get scammed on the internet, did our grocery shopping, and ate a not-so-romantic dinner of chicken patties together, I cuddled up with a fluffy blanket and pushed “play” on the Blu-ray player’s remote.

First up: Annabelle Comes Home. I dug the plot, I gasped at parts, I felt so happy to finally watch a movie in peace. And then I fell asleep at 9:30. My first night without a baby to put to sleep (and keep asleep) and my body couldn’t keep up with my binge-watching aspirations.

I woke early the next day and settled on our IKEA couch again, determined to finish the long-anticipated marathon. I texted Grandma and asked when she wanted me to pick up Baby. She said “soon,” which my mommy brain translated to “whenever you’re done with your movie marathon.” I should probably get my vision checked, too.

But enough about my pitiful life of scheduling babysitters around movie runtimes! The show must go on!

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On what I promise to be a relevant note, in The Conjuring 2, everyone’s favorite demonologist couple, the Warrens (played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga), encounter an entertaining variety of demons and other supernatural entities: the evil nun Valak, the Enfield poltergeist, the Crooked Man… It’s frankly a lot of baddies to contain in one movie compared to the simplicity of the original Conjuring’s cast of demons. Annabelle Comes Home takes The Conjuring 2’s smorgasbord of demons and ghosts and puts them to good use in a Warren-centric plot, in which a hodgepodge of set pieces makes sense.

The Warrens leave their pre-teen daughter Judy home with Mary Ellen, the babysitter, overnight. Mary Ellen’s friend, Daniela, shows up uninvited, bringing along an unhealthy curiosity for the Warren’s alternative lifestyle. (Or rather, their afterlifestyle.) This grieving teenage girl with a goal to see her dearly departed father gets the demonic cogs turning when she snoops in the Warren’s occult room, where the evil doll Annabelle safely resides, blessed by holy water and sealed inside a glass case constructed from a church’s window panes. Don’t touch anything, she’s been warned. So of course she touches everything. Annabelle escapes from her case and sics the roomful of possessed objects on the night’s house guests: Mary Ellen (Madison Iseman), Daniela (Katie Sarife), the babysitter’s suitor Bob (Michael Cimino), and Judy, played by a prolific child actress who I usually just refer to as “New Kiernan Shipka,” but whose actual name is Mckenna Grace.

Annabelle Comes Home explores a scenario that fans of the Warrens fantasize about: what if the occult museum and all of its ghastly inhabitants, for lack of a better term, came alive? The film also plays with Conjuring universe fans’ expectations of the series: many of the jump-scare setups in the movie get you on the edge of your seat, only to keep you hanging. Gary Dauberman makes his directorial debut with a hat tip to the previous Conjuring installments, by acknowledging the series’ reputation for an overabundance of jump-scares and proceeding to play with the audience’s expectations, which makes the occasional startling moment all the richer and more satisfying.

After I finished Annabelle Comes Home, I compared notes with my husband. We agreed that the acting was “surprisingly good” for a cast of relatively unknown actors. Katie Sarife in particular gives a layered performance as the best friend Daniela, who first earns the viewer’s scorn by making some poor decisions driven by desperation. But once her motives become clear, Daniela becomes an object of sympathy and affection. With a lesser actress, this shift in audience sympathies wouldn’t have worked: she would have started the movie as the fool and ended it that way. Kudos to Sarife for her elevated performance.

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After reveling in the Warren’s fun house of demonic objects, I moved on to the less amusing but equally satisfying Midsommar. I had started watching the movie weeks ago, when it first came out on Blu-ray. I had finished the stunning prologue, on par with iconic prologues like the slow-mo introduction of Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist, but then admitted defeat to my exhaustion and went to bed. I skipped the prologue this second time around, not wanting to relive the trauma yet. (And thank goodness, because plenty of traumatic imagery awaited me.)

Midsommar perfectly captures how it feels to be The Girlfriend in the friend group. Every word of dissent, even if it’s just your opinion and doesn’t really affect anyone, becomes an uncomfortable silence and shift until your boyfriend either covers for you or the group seems to move on. But make no mistake: you no longer qualify as the easygoing Cool Girl of Gone Girl lore; you are the Nagging Girlfriend and will carry the title like a heavy cross. Your grief, your baggage, becomes the group’s shared dread. And when they’re alone, it becomes their inside joke.

Florence Pugh shines as the shattered Dani. Any mention of family or death or both sends Dani into a hyperventilating state of panic, with very little support from her distant asshole of a boyfriend, Christian (Jack Reynor). Like any normal couple grasping at the last straws of a failed relationship, Christian brings Dani along on his boys’ thesis trip to a Swedish commune. While the majority of the friend group, including Christian, resents Dani’s presence, their Swedish friend and guide, Pelle (Vilhelm Blomgren), takes a special interest in Dani’s experience of his village’s summer solstice celebration. His sympathy and smile feel like a breath of fresh air after spending too much time with the collegiate bros (played by William Jackson Harper and Will Poulter).

While the midsummer celebration of the film’s title takes a dark turn for many of our American friends, Dani’s own journey feels like a Cinderella story: her foot fits the glass slipper, her stamina lives up to the expectations of the title of May Queen. Meanwhile, the boys, Dani’s equivalent of her wicked stepsisters and stepmother, are left with nothing but the village’s cruel though accurate interpretation of them. I can’t help but wonder whether, while this movie was written and directed by a man, Dani’s pain, and subsequent healing by fire, resonates with women especially. I’m not saying every woman wants to watch the world burn. But the people who hurt us under the guise of caring about us? I say let ‘em burn.

I feel revitalized by this single good night of sleep and lazy morning of movies, which may be apparent from my first blog post in a week and my longest blog post in ever. I recommend both of these movies wholeheartedly and I also recommend to any mamas out there: take a break. Reconnect with yourself, for yourself and for your family. You can’t be everything to everyone every day of your life. Sometimes, you need to check in with yourself. Maybe that looks like a monthly night of sleep and a movie marathon on the couch, or a weekly friend date at the coffee shop, or a biweekly manicure, whatever. Spend some time with a household of demons and a Swedish village of pagans. Have fun, CineBabies, and take care of yourselves.

#personal #critique

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youremyonlyhope · 5 years

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Stranger Things 3

Episodes 1 and 2

I don’t think I’ll make a post for each episode. Or maybe I will. Depending on how dramatic the episodes are. But I’m combining 1 and 2 together since I didn’t make one for episode 1 on its own before watching episode 2.

Plus when I watched the first season, I binged it. I literally got home at maybe 7pm after stopping by Michael’s when my classes finished, and I sat down at my computer with 3 balls of yarn, watched the whole season in one sitting, and then by about 3am I finished the series AND a whole shawl. I didn’t make any posts, I didn’t pause, I just watched and crocheted. I kinda wanna recreate that, but also I wanna put down my thoughts. So every 2 episodes seems like a good compromise.

I watched the first episode with my family yesterday.

Mike and Eleven are far too codependent. I don’t like Hopper threatening Mike, but their relationship is not healthy for El who literally is still learning how to function like a normal person after all the trauma. My poor baby Will just wants to play D&D and have fun with his friends and not be sucked back into the Upside Down. Let my child be. Oh poor Dustin. I really hope that they don’t reveal at the end that his girlfriend is made up... or maybe it’s better if they do because I can’t handle Dustin being stood up by a real girlfriend. When Dustin kept calling her, my mom was like “I can’t handle this after the dance scene last time.” Steve helping the kids sneak into the movies is my favorite thing ever. I love Steve so much. And his friendship with the kids. Billy. Oh poor Billy. I mean. Mrs. Wheeler is gross for going after a barely legal (if he’s even legal) teen. But he’s also a disgusting human being. But... he doesn’t deserve to be captured by the monster. My mom literally said “I don’t like him but I don’t want him to die.” and I’m like “Exactly.” Anyway. I can’t be the only one who caught the Barb reference when he was being pulled down the stairs.

ALSO. EXPLODING RATS. Where’s that gif of Owen saying “Rat jam!” because once I got over the initial horror all I could see was Owen’s stupid smile.

On to episode 2! Which I watched just now and the first few minutes were interrupted by texts popping up on my screen from my mom who’s mad I’m watching it without her.

First of all, WHO ARE ALL THOSE PEOPLE BILLY SAW? Is he not the only victim? Steve seeing Dustin for the first time made me literally say “BABY! OH. LOOK AT THEM. MY BABIES.” out loud. Unashamedly. Because it is true and accurate. I was really happy and squealing through their entire handshake. I love them so much. I thought I saw the Terminator-looking-dude in the mayor’s office and sure enough he’s in town so that’s fun. Robin’s very helpful. I like her a lot. I don’t want her to die. But so far friendly side characters who are super helpful have like a 50/50 chance of dying. I jumped when Billy imagined hitting Mrs. Wheeler. But he was a decent human being and told her to stay away from him. Then at the end of the episode I was literally saying out loud “Don’t let that girl be in the trunk. Don’t you let that girl be in the trunk. Billy, don’t tell me you put her in the trunk. OH BILLY WHY DID YOU PUT HER IN THE TRUNK.” Billy doesn’t deserve any of this. He deserves to be punished for being a horrible person, but this is way beyond that. The rat jam formed into a creature so that’s fun. And the shadow monster’s becoming solid. Yay. Eleven and Max bonding is all I ever wanted. Thank you. Thank you for letting the girls interact. Thank you for letting them pass the Bechdel test. Thank you for the line “Not Hopper. Not Mike. You.” because my girl El has relied too much on the two males in her life and made it define her too much. And I adore Hopper and Mike, I do. But let El be her own person. Also, I may or may not have sung along to Material Girl at the top of my lungs. I am home alone. There is no one to confirm it. I’m glad Mr. Clarke is around. Also, I associate Weird Al more with the 90s, so hearing him really threw me off before realizing he was around in the 80s too of course.

Moral of the story: EVERYONE SHOULD JUST LISTEN TO JOYCE. SHE’S USUALLY RIGHT. WHEN SHE’S PARANOID, SHE’S USUALLY RIGHT.

Oh also. Westley! Literally when I saw the Mayor I went “OH MY GOD!” but then of course he sucks and I was awwww but I don’t want to hate you...

#hope watches stranger things #ignore me if you want

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aion-rsa · 4 years

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How Lovecraft Country Uses Horror to Tell Black Stories

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In Lovecraft Country, Atticus “Tic” Freeman is a Korean war vet, who went to war to escape the physical abuse he received at the hands of his father. But before that, he escaped into the imagined worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs, H.P. Lovecraft, and countless others. Reading stories wasn’t just something he did to pass the time; reading stories was survival.

Commercial books, film, and television, what we call popular culture, are gateways to the world outside of the small spaces we each occupy. We connect to each other across the globe through shared experiences in the media we consume. The stories that serve this function best, transcend genre. As Lovecraft Country’s Courtney B. Vance puts it to us in relation to HBO’s new radical horror: “I’m not a big horror film person because I’m a scaredy cat. I’m a story person. If you build it in a field of dreams, they will come. If you tell a great story, I don’t care what the genre is.”

We form communities around the stories we love. We build our identities around the characters that touch us the most. Storytelling gives us access to different places, experiences, and points of view. During a recent roundtable interview for Lovecraft Country, I asked Jonathan Majors how Tic would feel about the emergence of sci-fi and fantasy stories that center Black people, and he had this to say:

I think Tic, he would be on cloud nine. I wonder if he would have seen it before the war, what he would have done. I wonder if he would have gone off to the war or if he would have just continued to live his life, having had seen himself already take it in and taking on that adventure, that soldier, that mentality. He wouldn’t have to escape reality, he’d just sit in the movie theaters and take in a different reality.

Stories also give us a way to better understand the world we live in. Through metaphor and allegory, we gain a deeper understanding of each other and ourselves. “Metaphor is one of the most universal ways of communicating a thought, I think,” Majors tells journalists. “I think it allows for people from many walks of life to connect to one singular moment, one singular image, one singular idea. I think that’s quite useful in making art.”

Our relationship to stories changes when we see ourselves reflected in them. Largely, the books Tic reads feature white heroes who move about the world unhindered by bias of any sort. A confederate soldier can go to Mars and unironically become a liberator. Tic, a Black man, cannot easily find himself in that character. The only way for someone like Tic to see himself in the adventure, as the hero, is to make that reality. Tic goes to war to escape his father, yes, but he also goes to war to put himself in the story.

Lovecraft Country gives us the opportunity to see ourselves, to see reflections of who we are. “Our protagonists are of African American descent,” Majors says. “That is a very novel thing, to be a part of a team, to be a part of a story that is holding up black people fully. There are things you will not like about Atticus, there are things you will love about him, and that can be said for every character in the piece. That is a beautiful thing.”

Not only does Lovecraft Country authentically capture the verity of being Black in a country that is built on anti-Blackness, but it gives us a venue to explore our own power within that dynamic. Lovecraft Country gives us a world where we can tap into a power bigger than Whiteness, wealth, and all of the things that bestow inherent, unearned privilege. It is both an accurate reflection of the world we live in and a fanciful vision of the world we could live in, if the inexplicable was verifiable.

More than just entertainment, of which it absolutely is, Lovecraft Country is catharsis. What the show does so beautifully is juxtapose the fantastical against the practical, and use the absurdity of fantasy to highlight the absurdity of real life. It takes us on a journey that is both deeply personal and wildly incomprehensible. We connect to the characters because they are reflections of us, but we are removed from their experiences because those experiences are outlandish.

Lovecraft Country also gives the audience an outlet to work through its own shit by giving form to things that otherwise manifest as thoughts or behaviors that are difficult, if not impossible, to combat. Racism is a force with no singular face or voice, it is alive but can’t be killed. You can fight racists, but racism is a functional structure of power. But magic exists alongside it, and it is concrete power, inherent but not exclusive. Magic is potentially an equalizer.

Black folks watching Lovecraft Country are able to push past the trauma because the characters are able to. We see them not just survive, but take something from their enemy/oppressor. When Tic turns Samuel and the other Sons of Adams to dust, that’s a moment of pure unadulterated joy. When Ardham Lodge collapses in on itself, there’s a feeling of immense satisfaction. That’s the power of storytelling. It allows us to feel things without taking the pain into ourselves. We aren’t all going to take the same things away from this show. We can’t. This is always true, even if the largely cishet white man-run world of cultural criticism would like us to believe otherwise. We come into a story with our identities, a specific lens that affects our perception of everything we consume. But Lovecraft Country doesn’t make space for everyone to be a hero, that is not the point. White viewers who have always been reflected in all their shades, with all their facets, aren’t supposed to find themselves among the heroes, because this is not their story. They have John Carter, Jonathan Harker, Indiana Jones… And we have Atticus Freeman and Letitia Fucking Lewis.

The post How Lovecraft Country Uses Horror to Tell Black Stories appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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