#And it complicates the plot in ways that feel easily fixable

[herbofgraceandpeace]

Here’s the thing about Doomsday Book that I can’t stand. Kivrin is the dumbest person in the whole world, ever, in any century.

I’m supposed to believe that she was the “brightest and most resourceful” Oxford student? She can’t critical think for shit, if you’ll pardon my language. What do they teach them at these schools???

aside from her oddly specific areas of medical knowledge and ignorance (she has the symptoms of a bajillion diseases memorized, but she doesn’t know that being unconscious for several hours is totally abnormal and signifies serious brain damage?), she’s ridiculously ignorant about what the Middle Ages were actually like (and the author is at fault here for not knowing either).

but it’s really the critical thinking (or lack of it) that gets my goat. Her whole objective TWO-THIRDS OF THE WAY THROUGH THE BOOK has been to figure out where the drop is by getting Gawain to tell her. He has refused to do so BECAUSE SHE CANNOT BE TROUBLED RO INVENT A COMPELLING OR CONVINCING REASON FOR WANTING TO DO SO. She spends ages thinking of ways to get close enough to Gawain to ask but no time at all thinking of how to convince him to tell her!!!!

what’s worse, much of this could be solved if the author had simply thrown in the fact that Kivrin is a terrible liar, or has an aversion to lying, or even simply feels bad lying in this particular situation. Any of those would serve as an explanation for why she isn’t putting any thought into how to get what she wants from these people and keeps trying the same dumb thing over and over again. Like, girl, your life is at stake, can you be bothered to invest some energy into saving it???

also, it would be less annoying if she wasn’t supposed to be a particularly bright AND RESOURCEFUL AND PREPARED person!!! I do not know of anybody less resourceful!!! I don’t think I would mind so much if she tried to come up with solutions and failed . But she doesn’t even try most of the time, and the few times she does, she puts in the minimum effort to come up with a very silly excuse and is shocked when no one believes her.

it’s been really weird to dislike this book and it’s protagonists so much when I absolutely loved both in To Say Nothing of the Dog. Ned and Verity were far more resourceful and had more genuine reason to be befuddled by their circumstances!

SPOILERS BELOW

*john mulaney voice, “and now there’s bubonic plague again.”

But can Kivrin be bothered to think of a convincing lie to keep everyone away from the sick person? No, she just yells at them, ignoring the fact that from their perspective she lacks authority and expertise and even a sound mind.

Sigh

[vidalinav]

The one thing I hate about SJM’s POVs in ACOTAR

is that the narrator always seems to be completely biased to their own perspectives in a way that they seem to not understand at all what another character might be going through. Which is just UNREALISTIC. 

Let me point out all the ways and explain: 

None of the IC know that Mor seems to be uncomfortable with Azriel’s unrequited love and that she’s gay, though she frequents a gay bar/restaurant and she’s never shown any feelings towards Azriel and she even actively tries to sleep with other people when he seems to act more on his feelings or show them more fully. Like okay??

In Cassian’s POV, he says that he didn’t know Nesta was aware of how much self-hatred she had and that she didn’t want to exist. Like dude, she spent a year drinking her life away, distancing herself from everyone, and sleeping with randos when she previously had spent most of her adult life not sleeping with anyone and Cassian knew that she was a victim of s*xual a*sa*lt. 

Rhysand who he himself has gone through what Nesta has gone through, didn’t know the extent of Nesta’s trauma??? And even after didn’t really care all that much?? To the point where he was constantly an ass and he threatened to kill her when she told Feyre she might die, even though he should have told her because well feminist rhys over here “you always have choices” didn’t give one to his equal. 

Amren after constantly saying “reach out your hand” didn’t reach out her hand, nor show any empathy to Nesta, going as far as being more aggressive to this person who is literally suffering from PTSD and severe depression, and then sort of blaming her for letting it get that far, and then when Nesta apologized said this well to do speech about living with darkness inside of us but choosing hope, like it was that easy and as if she helped at all or even deserved that apology. 

Mor, wasn’t that bad, comparatively to the rest, because she was barely in the book, but when she was you’re telling me that this girl also doesn’t understand what Nesta could be going through??? That she says that she belongs in the Court of Nightmares, for what reason??? For hurting her friends, which they admit they didn’t help all too much for a whole year because they thought giving her time would have been fine and who also show that they care about Nesta. Because I hate to tell y’all this, but offering to decorate a room is not helping out a person with severe depression. And this is a girl who was raised in the same environment as Mor, who suffered many of the same afflictions of unhappy childhoods and loss of autonomy. Mor who is used to helping women and  s*xual a*sa*lt survivors and then doesn’t see that in Nesta???? 

Rhysand doesn’t seem to understand Azriel’s POV, and then he’s like well he never tells us anything. He’s a tough nut to crack. We know he’s a little bit... ehh how you say--messed up, but well we don’t see a major problem as long as he gets his rage out being our spymaster. But oh no, Elain, you can’t have her. You think you deserve her, even though critical thinking skills might have found him thinking oh hey this guy is probably envious of the happiness we have, he’s probably feeling lonely, rejected from the person he’s loved a long time, both of his brothers have mates now, maybe I should talk to him like a BROTHER and less like a high lord. 

And then in Nesta’s POV, all of her healing comes at the expense of blaming herself. Like I understand taking accountability and she needed to grow and learn that she has definitely ruined a lot of her relationships and she’ll continue to do so if she keeps up this behavior, but you’re telling me that she doesn’t think anyone did her wrong??? You’re telling me that she feels she deserves all of this?? Even after she starts liking who she is, everyone was not at fault, it was only her fault??? Even after Cassian said what he said--being stuck with her??? 

You’re telling me that everyone thinks Elain is fine??? That she’s relatively at peace because she’s calm and gardening and pleasant??? Makes me laugh. 

Like I just don’t understand. It’s to the point where I feel they characters are willfully ignorant OR that SJM thinks that POVs can’t read emotion in other people or connect dots. All POVs are biased, but NOT that biased. A real person talking to someone else will notice how tired a person looks, if they want to talk or not, by the grimaces, by the way they shorten their sentences, their body language, you can reach conclusions based on context. “It’s been a long day at work, I learned that this person has a new baby, this conversation looks to be weighing on them, I should probably cut this convo short, because I feel for them.” That sort of thing. Which is my biggest problem with this series is that I’m like fuck me, why Whhy WHYYY??? They don’t seem to even see each other, let alone understand each other, and if they can’t understand each other or know who they are, they are not considered family!!! The characters in this series make choices like they are blind to the people around them. That they exist only in their own head. Which again is not realistic, but also causes a lot of problems that I don’t feel would be fixable if you were not aware that they were problems. Like I can easily say, “hey maybe SJM did this on purpose because she’s leading up to something, to heal them in some way.” But all characters are like this--so it’s make me wonder if SJM knows that she’s doing it. Like we thought Feyre was a horribly biased character, but damn. Like I understand this imperfect character arc, but at this point are they imperfect or stupid? 

Don’t get me wrong I love this series, but wow... it’s been three years for this next part, she’s written a thousand and one books, it should be better. Every single one of us has pointed out inconsistencies, and they’re not just small things, they’re big overarching writer mechanics and structure and plot and details. So I can hope that eventually it will lead to something, but after four books... I’m losing hope that the issues we’ve pointed out and not just this one are going to be resolved and not just glossed over like they didn’t happen at all. 

It’s an adult book, my word. Make narratives more narratively complicated. (Especially if the plot is not the focus)

[variousqueerthings]

thinking about these awesome tags from @catzy88​ and wanted to just speak to essentially what they talk about and one of my favourite writing choices of the show (so far, considering my predictions for what’ll happen moving forward):

and it’s Johnny’s two-steps-forward-one-step (sometimes several steps) -back journey. 

1. Introduction

there’s a few of things that happen on the show that get wrapped up in a semi-fantastical/wish-fulfilmenty way (Miguel recovering from his back injury like he does, Daniel sorting out his dealership problems with Doyona, etc.) and I’m not mad about it, it fits in with the generally optimistic tone of the show + various circumstances that surround these choices, so they’re not one-note writing decisions - 

ex. aftermath of Miguel’s surgery will continue to be explored on s4 so it’s not done and over with without consequences versus the way Daniel’s journey to Okinawa is about healing in various ways, so that deus ex machina fits in with the tone of that storyline. People’s mileage probably vary, but I think it’s all relatively well-balanced (pun not intended) with the deeper, less-easily-fixable issues and character dynamics that the show explores.

2. Johnny’s Story

If everything on this show were easy it wouldn’t be so watchable. Which is where Johnny comes in (amongst other characters, but I’m gonna focus).

in contrast Johnny’s journey for three seasons has had a lot of good intentions - help Miguel, get his life in order, forgive and forget the past, mend his relationship with Robby, be generally better to himself and others - and the majority of it’s gone pretty badly. 

I have predictions that there’ll be a flip in s4 and Daniel’s going to spiral more obviously, while Johnny’s going to be healing/functioning somewhat better. I also think it’s important to show him failing despite being in a better place than end season 2/beginning season 3. And failing again. And failing again. 

Johnny (and Daniel, but I shall focus!) doesn’t come onto this show with easily fixed issues. He’s likely been an alcoholic since he was in his 20s, he’s isolated to the extreme, he can’t hold down a job, he’s still under the thumb of his stepdad, and his relationship to Robby is non-existent at best. 

In 100 different ways he’s trapped and he’s so trapped that he can’t even envision being less trapped. Starting the dojo is a fluke, combined by meeting and saving Miguel and wanting to spite Daniel. He’s not planning on “getting better,” hell, he doesn’t even think that he has a problem that can be fixed to begin with. Up until this moment life has largely just happened to him and his decisions have been reactionary (and if there were times we don’t know about before now where he tried, he obviously failed)

His thinking clearly goes something like this: “I’ll make this kid not get beat up... and I guess now I’ve got a business so I need other kids? and now I care about this kid I guess, oh and his mom’s pretty nice (and pretty) too... and now I’ve got a business I can buy Sid out, that’s cool... ” etcetcetc. (still reactionary to an extent, although that gradually changes) right up until the tournament happens and he starts to have to face some of the shit he’s been telling these kids and Robby’s with Daniel and Kreese has reappeared...

I’d argue it’s not until mid-ish season 2, when Kreese reveals he’s homeless and Johnny decides that their forgiveness is tied into one another and especially when Tommy dies (still got one thing I don’t... time) that he actually really starts thinking about what all of this means for him longterm, that he can and should want for the future and that he has real responsibilities to do so because of others. It’s also the first time he properly admits that it’s not just “the tournament as a single event,” but the whole philosophy that he was taught that fucked him up (which is scary, because then he’s gotta admit a whole bunch of other stuff - that he has deep-rooted issues and that he needs to try to get better. That he’s both a victim and a perpetrator of this cycle. That just saying things are shit and won’t ever change won’t cut it anymore).

And just as he begins this thought-process and is incredibly vulnerable because of that everything goes to hell.

All of the structures Johnny had been building were on sand, right up to the choice to handshake deal on the dojo, and they all come crashing down spectacularly all at once in the season 2 finale.

Back to square one.

3. Square one (but not really)

This is amazing! It’s giving us a narrative on top of the more fantasy-like narratives that goes: “Not everything can be fixed easily just because we want to fix them,” and, “some things need to fail so that the next time you try, you try better!”

It’s not square one at all. 

A whole bunch of shit that Johnny was carrying with him without being able to voice in the first season is now out there, in the open. The ugliness needs to be exposed before it can be healed and (as myself and so many people who’re dealing with xy and z know) when you first “discover” what’s fucked up you can feel like everything’s worse. Your ability to deal with that thing can get a whole lot worse. 

Johnny relapses into a version of himself that on the surface looks even worse than in s1, but actually he’s way more open to change, he’s got reasons to get back up again, even if it takes a moment for him to pull himself together to actually do that. It takes pretty much all of season 3 for him to get there (and that was necessary too), but now he’s there he can start from a much stronger place than he previously did.

And there’s so much he’s still not facing - can you imagine the fallout when he has to deal with being an alcoholic? 

Johnny as a character has made so many mistakes (note: I’m not a fan of using the word “fault” as a descriptor for characters (as in “whose fault is X”) because they’re fictional and it’s more about motivations than tracing faults) and those mistakes make a whole lot of sense to his character - a broke, drunk, traumatized guy with more failings under his belt than you can count. 

I confess, I’m not sure how I feel about him not visiting Robby in juvie from a writing perspective, however it’s on the show, so now we get to analyse how it can make sense - which, considering that Johnny isn’t good at prioritising - and as an ADHD that’s a mood - it can totally work. Is it very bad? Yes. Does it sound like something Johnny would do when faced between an easy-fix of his relationship with the Diaz family and his much more difficult and complicated relationship with Robby? Sigh, yeah... unfortunately parenting Robby is the biggest fear he has... it’s not pretty, but it’s not meant to be...

4. Anyway, TL;DR 

I’d have felt cheated if Johnny could just magically “become” better - both mentally and in his relationships to others. He’s made big mistakes, has a lot of unresolved mental health issues, and - ironically - has chosen flight over fight for so much of his life that “simply wanting to become better” being  enough of a motivator to change all of that around would’ve been unrealistic for his character and unsatisfying for a longterm plot in which we see how difficult it is and (hopefully) get to revel in the continued upwards journey despite that.

Also it would’ve been kind of insulting to these journeys in real life (to do a little conflating for a moment). 

Trying to make good is admirable, but it sure isn’t easy and it won’t always work, especially if you don’t know where to even start.

The joy of his story is in seeing someone continue to try despite that.

[orchidvioletindigo]

I can't sleep until I get this out of me so here it is: The more I think about it the more I think Season 2 of Carole & Tuesday wasn't very good. It felt confused and disorganized and really suffering from some seriously misplaced priorities.

Carole was facing the possibility of being deported because of Tuesday's mom but that tension barely even got acknowledged. Instead their arc together was all about them just becoming bigger and better musicians. And not even in an exciting way. There was nothing about them bringing back traditional songwriting this time, no suspenseful buildup to the announcement that they'd lost the Best New Artist Grammy to Angela, not even any emotional reaction shots of them learning that they lost. The animation budget was blown on a distracting sequence of Tuesday learning that the guy she liked had a girlfriend already instead of on any part of her and Carole's main arc.

Compare that to Angela's extremely and nonsensically dramatic arc which made this final season feel more like it was Angela's rather than Carole and Tuesday's. Angela had a breakdown that was half caused by learning she was adopted, which shouldn't have been a huge shock at all considering Carole's walking around as a ward of the state. Her mother dropped the name of a character we'd never meet who had no relevance to the story. Tao was gone for most of Angela's breakdown taking care of another plotline that had nothing to do with anything, and when he finally came back he informed her that they were the products of an illegal designer baby experiment and then fucked off forever, that plot thread never to be expanded on.

The name and lyrics of the final collaborative song felt very shoehorned in coming from the minds of a duo whose one half never met her mother and had no kind of special attachment to the concept of motherhood. This issue could have been easily circumvented if they'd had Carole meet her mom instead of her dad, which they chose not to do for some inexplicable reason. Instead what we got read as the writers haphazardly trying to tie Tuesday's (Carole who?) and Angela's arcs together to form some sort of cohesion between the two halves of the show and to give Angela, a character Carole and Tuesday weren't even sure was going to make the recording, a tear-jerking solo while also quickly capitalizing on a current real-life hot button issue.

Overall it just felt like there were several major but easily fixable mistakes that got plowed ahead with anyway. Carole and Tuesday not getting an arc focused on their relationship under the threat of Tuesday's mom getting Carole deported. Carole meeting her dad instead of her mom when the other two main characters got to have big mom-related plotlines that fed into the final song. Angela and Tao's pointless adoption storyline distracting and detracting from Angela's complicated feelings about her mother and Tao's enigmatic relationship with Angela. Splurging on Bones' exquisite animations for one very minor scene.

It leaves me wondering what the hell happened.

[i-just-like-commenting]

Star Wars rewatch, part 3: Episode 2, Attack of the Clones

Following the Machete Order, I’ve gone from tESB to the prequel trilogy, skipping The Phantom Menace. How did that work out? Well... (this gets long)

Overall Impressions

I’ve been sitting on this one a while because I don’t, generally, enjoy writing negative reviews. And this film, in its theatrical release, is a bad movie, albeit bad in a different way than tPM. Episode 1 is just overall below average in everything, from its meandering plot to its weak characterization to its obvious CGI. But other than the racist accents, nothing in it as absolutely horrible.

AotC, on the other hand, has quite a lot of good content in it - but it’s paired with material that is so incredibly terrible that it makes the bad material feel that much worse. And given that there are two main plotlines in this movie, you can probably guess which one I consider good and which one bad.

Because yeah, I make no secret the fact that I think Ewan McGregor was one of the best things about the prequels, but his story in this is also the strongest part of the movie. Yes, I know, some people hate how talky it is, but it works as a political mystery as an assassination attempt slowly is revealed to be just one part of a galactic scheme to destabilize the Republic. Not only is it a good story, it has fairly well-defined characters this time around. Obi-Wan is depicted as very trusting and naive; he can’t even imagine that someone would destroy information in the Jedi library, because what Jedi would do that? Meanwhile Yoda is the voice of pessimism as he grumbles that the Jedi are becoming arrogant. We see how, behind the scenes, he and Mace Windu are painfully aware of the limitations of their small order, how weak their actual position is. Windu himself doesn’t get too much development, but he seems to be the practical, military side of the Jedi operation, while Yoda is more a teacher and a diplomat. It all culminates in a truly chilling finale as the clone army raised to stop a civil war marches into their ships...to the tune of the Imperial March.

And of course there is the magnificent line “The day we stop believing democracy can work is the day we lose it.” Very important message to remember right now.

Meanwhile, you have Anakin and Padme and oh my god this is so bad. Dissecting the why of it is difficult, though. I want to blame it all on the script, but it’s more more complicated than that. One of the worst lines of the film, the infamous “I hate sand” actually works for me pretty well, because Padme and Anakin laugh after he says it, which makes the awkwardness feel intentional, as if Anakin is aware of how ridiculous he sounds. So perhaps the acting can transcend the bad script...except when the script is sound but the delivery ruins it. Just reading the words, Anakin should be rather oblivious to his attraction to Padme, with everyone else more aware, including Padme, who’s not ready to think of him as an adult. But Hayden Christensen often plays Anakin like a stalker, and Natalie Portman is defiant rather than awkward. So are they just bad actors? We know Portman’s done well in other roles, and watch Christensen’s face during the scene where his mother dies - no, that’s not the problem.

I’m going to blame the director. It was Lucas’s job to bring the script to the scene, and everything about this screams poor communication between cast and crew. Their deliveries are erratic because they’re not being told what they’re supposed to be doing on screen. The more experienced actors - McGregor, Oz, Jackson, Lee - all clearly decided what their characters were going to be on their own and stuck to those interpretations, and it works. The younger actors, though, are clearly lost.

Is it fixable?

Yes. A ways back before The Force Awakens came out, I watched what the creator called the “cheese free” edit of the prequels, and while Phantom Menace wasn’t improved much at all by editing out the “cheese,” AotC was, dare I say, quite good. Since it was the first time I’d seen the film in years, I couldn’t remember what had been cut out, but I remember thinking, “Wait, why is this remembered as the worst one?”

Then I watched the original cut and I could tell every last thing he’d removed. Some of it wasn’t necessary, though it did streamline the plot (the R2D2 and C3P0 slapstick never really bothered me, the series has always had that) but what he did with Padme and Anakin was simply amazing, and all it took were a few cuts.

First, he cuts their first kiss, then the ridiculous rolling around in the grass, then all of the anguished dialog in the fireplace room. Oh, and he cut Anakin confessing the murders of the Sand People to Padme, jumping from his rage over Obi-Wan not letting him have enough power to Padme comforting him. It both (1) reinforces Anakin’s turn to darkness as he would hide this from her and (2) doesn’t make Padme fall for a man she knows is a mass-murderer. The result was that when they kissed on their way into the stadium, it felt completely, utterly believable, a steady progression from them being awkward, to getting to know each other, to bonding over their struggles. It worked, and I really wish that the copy of it hadn’t vanished from the internet.

Continuity, Part 1: Relation to the Other Prequels

So is the Machete order correct? Can you jump from episode 5 to 2 without watching tPM? The answer, I’m afraid, is no - but only for the first time watching it.

There’s just a few things that were introduced in Episode 1 that don’t get properly reintroduced in Episode 2. Mace Windu and Senator Palpatine show up and are not named for their entire first scene. Windu and Yoda worry about the Sith without ever defining what on earth they are, and without the “always two there are” speech the master-apprentice dynamic of Tyrannis and Sideous doesn’t work. Likewise, if you skip Episode 1, the first time you hear “Duel of the Fates” will be over Anakin’s anxious search for his mother which is...not right, sorry.

That said, it is true that without Episode 1 you can easily imagine Anakin and Padme as longtime childhood friends separated for a decade rather than as a 9 year old having a crush on a 14-year old and why did Lucas have to do that?

Continuity, Part 2: Relation to the Original Series

R2′s magically appearing-disappearing flight powers is one of the bigger plot holes created by the prequels. But for me the bigger issue is Anakin’s convoluted relationship to Owen and Beru. Stepsiblings that he barely knew does not gel with their reactions to his memory in Episode 4. I have an inkling of an idea to rewrite tPM to fix this and the Anakin/Padme problem. Make Anakin a little older - 12 or 13 - and have Beru be his older sister, maybe 18 or 19, in love with Owen Lars, son of a wealthy man, who wants to buy all of their freedom. He’s resistant to letting Anakin go with Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan. Padme really is one of the Queen’s handmaidens this time, Amidala being a separate, older character who would recur in AotC with a now-grown Padme as a senator. And C3P0 would be a protocol droid in the service of the queen rather than randomly created by Anakin; show his mechanical skill by fixing a droid.

Continuity, Part 3: Relation to the Current Series

In this film, the Geonosians already have plans to the Death Star; how does this relate to the creation of the plans we see in Rogue One? Were their plans just preliminary, and Galen Erso expanded on them? Is this something that gets explained in the various TV series? Well, I’ll start finding that out soon enough...

Meanwhile, if Boba Fett shows up in the Han Solo film he’d better be Maori. The origin story of Boba Fett is one of those things in the prequels that isn’t necessary but that I also don’t mind. So Boba Fett’s father helped create the clone army and died in front of him? Okay. This doesn’t detract from his character, though he’s in the original trilogy so little it doesn’t add that much either. But it was really nice to see Lucas try to diversify his very white universe with the casting of Jenga and Boba.

Conclusion: Droids Had it So Bad

There’s even more evidence of just blatant anti-droid bigotry under the Republic in this film. “If droids could think,” Obi-Wan quips, “none of us would be here.” Yet it’s obvious they do think - organic lifeforms are just in denial about it because they don’t want to admit to supporting a system of slavery and brainwashing. Droids themselves help reinforce this system as we see a droid kick send R2 away saying “Hey you, no droids!” Only R2 seems to be willing to defy the status quo.

Well, R2 and Padme. She is always certain to thank R2, and I remember that she did it quite formally in the first film. Padme seems to reject the notion of droids as non-sentient. Perhaps that’s why she invited R2 and C3P0 to be witnesses to their wedding.

Also, headcanon, but Padme threw the bouquet and C3P0 totally caught it and had an awkward exchange of looks with R2.