#Bo is of course alongside me for the journey

[beskar33]

Srry I'm inactive for a bit, staying at my sister's place for a few days.

Afterwards I'll be wandering around town for a spell, couch surfing, seeing if there're any opportunities to get my life in order again before returning to my trash heap tent. Desperately needed a break from being out there because I've been severely anxious and depressed lately lol. It's fkin wonderful to eat & shower every day and be in air conditioning instead of 110⁰ heat so I'm really appreciating it while it lasts. Grateful to spend some time with my sis :')

Hope everyone's doing okay🙏miss y'all. Sending you cozy sunshiney vibes and a nice cool glass of water. Feel free to tag me in anything

[colossal-fallout]

Ad Victoriam

Finally got off my ass and started the fic I've been wanting to do for weeks. Maybe months? I'll be doing it chapter by chapter and eventually putting it up on Ao3.

I've made it GN as I want sole to be as relatable to you or your OC as possible.

Chapter I - warnings: None.

Chapter I

Arrival of the mechanical birds

The tangerine sunset always looked gorgeous from the Castle; the sparkling glimmers skipping over the restless sea, making it appear crisp and clean – disguising the usual sickly green hue of the salted waves. But the Minutemen weren’t able to take a moment to take in the beautiful daily view they were blessed with. The usual peaceful bliss they felt in their fortress this time of day was today filled with unease, anxiety and even a little fear among the less informed.

“General. Here they come.” Preston’s familiar voice muttered from close behind his leader.

The familiar tone that seemed a lot more welcome than usual. Preston had always been a great guide to Y/N, and more-so a great friend. And as their heart fluttered at the sight of the vertibirds in the distance, heading towards the ancient garrison, his voice helped hold the glue of their stoic expression as their men and women gathered outside of the main gate to greet the guests for the evening. Preston Garvey was their pillar of strength. Always there when they needed an extra pair of shoulders to unload some weight upon. And of course, the favour was always returned.

A chilled breeze whipped around the small gathering, all eyes up towards the old Boston airport across the shimmering sea – the giant, metal, killing machines looking a lot smaller than they were in reality as they made their journey.

Five. They think to themselves, arms behind their back. They would never allow themselves to show fear in front of their soldiers. Five of them. Why would he need five?

Their trust in Elder Maxson had recently begun to dwindle, due to a few reasons. Reasons they'd went over in the confines of their room over and over again. Planning every move for as many scenarios they could possibly think of. If this were a trap – they would be ready.

A whiff of cigarette smoke filled their nostrils, the disgust of the scent still not faltering their spine of steel stance as the ebony sheen of the metal birds grew bigger by the second.

“So, what’s the deal with this guy?” Hancock asks as he inhales his hit of nicotine, gold plated flip-lighter being tucked back into his crimson pocket with an equally coral colored hand. “How much time have you spent with him? What’s his vibe?”

“I’ve spent a decent amount with him.” They reply, eyes blinking but not moving from the airport. “I’ve worked under him for a while now. He trusts me.”

“But, do you trust him?” He gestures with his hand, pointing the smouldering end of his white stick towards the incoming cavalry. “Because I don’t think many here do.” His voice was lowered so only they and Preston could hear him. Hancock is smart. He read the situation pretty well.

“We’ll see.” Their tone is soft, quiet. Their mind ticking.

Preston glances between his General and the Ghoul. “Whatever the case, it’s too late to be speculating that now. I’m sure the General has thought of every possible outcome. After all, they didn’t bring us this far by throwing caution to the wind.”

Their perfect lips part slightly in a small laugh. “That’s exactly how I got us here.”

“Okay... bad example.” He shrugs, head dipping to the right as if shaking off unwanted information. “But... whatever you did, it’s working. So, I trust your judgment.”

“I don’t.” A third voice chimes in quietly, a lilt of light-heartedness in the tone. “They once dragged me to a museum saying it would be fun. ...Tha---t place had a Deathclaw nesting inside.”

MacCready held out his hand to Hancock without even setting eyes upon him. “But, they did get us out alive, I'll give them that.”

Hancock’s beady black eyes roll as he sinks his hand into the inside of his coat, pulling out his box of cigarettes'. “You know, a ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ one of these days would be appreciated.”

“Well, I didn’t ask to be dragged to some old witchcraft creep-fest. So why would I say please and thanks?”

Hancock let’s out a gruff sigh of exasperation as he tucks his cardboard back inside. “Know what? No. No cigarette for you.”

MacCready’s broken nose crinkles. “What? Aw, c’mon! Was it something I said?”

The vertibirds were audible now; the droning hums that once filled the General with pride as they fought alongside their brothers and sisters, now transmuting into a strange dread.

“What the hell does he want?” Mac isn’t as good at hiding his unease as the rest of them, getting visibly agitated. “You know, I could take him out from the wall.”

“And have twelve to fifteen angry men in power Armour charge at us? Use your damn brain.” Preston scolds.

“I’m still a Paladin.” Y/N reminds them. “He’s still my Elder.”

“But, you’re a minuteman first, right?” Preston asks, large brown eyes pouring with his usual adorable innocence.

He’s answered with a single nod as the ground begins to vibrate; the five choppers now close enough to push Hancock to slap his hand over his hat to prevent it flying away; the strong gust of wind blowing the end of his cig off from the rest of the stick.

The landing gear deploys, a mechanical groan emitting from the machines as the engines switch off, all five of them landing in a small semi-circle around the group of gawping minutemen and their leaders.

The ground shakes as large and loud booms emit from the BoS soldiers leaping onto the soil in their robot-like suits; their faceless helmets instantly snapping to look at the group they’ve been ordered to greet.

“Paladin.” One nods to Y/N through his speaker.

They weren't sure who it was but it didn’t matter. From his armour, they knew his rank.

“Knight.” Was their reply with a curt nod as the Elder himself dismounts his personal ride; all eyes instantly gluing themselves to his stiff and proud form.

A Paladin followed – unknown identity thanks to his power armour.

“Ah Paladin.” Maxson’s authoritive voice greets as he makes his way up to the awestruck group – his eyes not once leaving Y/N's form. “I’m glad you agreed to this meeting. From what I hear, you’ve been making positive waves across the Commonwealth. I wanted to see what my underling was doing for myself. And even offer our assistance at ridding the filth that infests us.”

Underling. A power move already? They think as they remain stone-faced, falling into the salute of the Brotherhood.  “Elder. It’s an honour to have you at the Castle.”

Preston frowns at their words – gloved hands gripping his laser rifle a little tighter than intended.

“Like wise.” He returns the salute, his eyes looking... well, they couldn’t quite place their finger on it. It was a look they'd never seen from him before, yet still seemed like a familiar expression. At least from his tone, he seemed pleased. “My men here will remain outside. Only Paladin Danse will be accompanying me. I don’t want to... impose.”

“Danse?” Y/N blinks at the Paladin behind Maxson.

“L/N.” He replies with a nod.

“Ah yes. I thought it would be fitting to bring your sponsor along with us. You seem to work great together on the field.” Maxson smirks – y/n knew that was his usual smile. You’d never catch the Elder in a full-blown beam of happiness.

Y/N felt a lot better for a moment that Danse was with them. Then it came crashing down when they realised that man would run into hell for his Elder. Support from him if things went wrong probably wasn't on the cards.

“Okay, well then... shall we?” Y/N gestures towards the Castle that was now quickly falling into the shadow of twilight.

Maxon nods before turning to his small army. “Remember, we are guests here. On your best behaviour soldiers.”

A unison, robotic chant of “Yes sir!” chimed through the air before Maxson turned back to follow the General.

“It seems we have a lot to talk about.” He comments as they begin their stride.

Something in the way he said that fuelled the sense of dread that brewed deep within Y/N's stomach. Their instincts were usually right – and they were screaming that something wasn’t entirely how it seemed to be.

[ncfan-1]

Because I feel like we’re being set up to encounter Sabine once more in The Mandalorian, some of my more discontented feelings regarding what happened to her in the epilogue of Rebels have been coming to the surface, because I just can’t be 100% okay with anything, can I?

But I really, really do not like what is implied to have happened with Sabine in the epilogue of Rebels. Over the years, I have become more cognizant of the problems I have with certain things in the back half of Season 4 of Rebels, but I think my problems with what happened with Sabine were there in the forefront of my mind from nearly the beginning, even if it was a while before I was willing to really engage with it.

Okay. The natural culmination of Sabine’s character arc over the course of Seasons 3 and 4 was for her to accept the mantle of leadership. We’re all in agreement about that, right? I remember having problems with her shirking that role on Mandalore back in the Season 4 premiere, but I had thought at the time that, from there, her arc would culminate in her accepting the mantle of leadership within the wider rebellion, rather than merely in the Mandalorian Resistance. After all, Sabine has had Hera as one of her most important role models since early adolescence, Hera who decided that it wasn’t enough merely to liberate her own homeworld, but that for liberty to last, she had to go out and free the whole galaxy. Sabine might more readily follow Hera’s example than, say, her mother’s, or Bo-Katan’s. It would have made sense for Sabine to transcend the need for just her own people’s liberation, would have made sense for her take everything she has learned since she was cast out of Mandalorian society as a child and dream bigger than just the dream of a liberated Mandalorian society.

And she really did seem on track for that culmination in the finale. There was a moment that I was sure was the culmination. You guys can probably think of what it is yourself, but it bears pointing out here. It was that moment after Sabine spotted Ezra sneaking off to carry out his own plane, that moment after she covered for him, that moment after the others realized that Ezra had gone off on his own. It was that moment when Sabine stopped Hera from trying to force Ezra to come back, that moment when Sabine took charge of the situation and formulated a plan of action for the team—and her leitmotif started playing.

This was the moment to me. I watched this play out, and I well and truly believed that Sabine had finally reached the culmination of her character arc. I believed that this was Sabine finally pushing past all of her doubts and insecurity. I believed that this was Sabine overcoming her feelings of unworthiness and taking up the mantle of a leader. I believed that this was Sabine accepting herself, accepting the fact that she was capable of being a leader, that she was a leader. And every part she played in the finale after that moment seemed to bear this out—it was Sabine acting as a leader without hesitation, without doubt, without second-guessing herself. She’d finally overcome that block.

And then, the epilogue. Then, Sabine’s voiceover talking about the parts everybody else played in the events to come—and behold, she is nowhere to be found in those recollections, and behold, the absolutely hideous implication that she completely abandoned the fight after the liberation of Lothal, and spent the rest of the war on the planet.

No, it’s never said outright, and that’s the one saving grace of it all. But it certainly is implied, isn’t it? It’s implied, and it’s such a monumental step backwards for her character, so out of left field, that the only way to make sense of it is to look at the man behind the curtain and think about it Doylistically, instead of Watsonianly.

It feels to me like Sabine was forced to abandon the culmination of her character arc in favor of shouldering the natural culmination of Ezra’s arc. Ezra’s arc would have had a natural conclusion in him remaining on Lothal to protect the planet from further reprisals and help it heal from the damage done to it, but it really hits differently when it’s a character whose arc was never heading in that direction before the last five minutes of the show. It’s not natural, is it?

Now, I don’t have as many problems with what happened with Ezra as I do with what happened with Sabine, and I honestly think that what happened with him works fairly well as an alternate culmination of his arc. But it doesn’t work with Sabine, does it? It does not work with Sabine to have her character arc mutilated this way, because what’s happened is that the implication that she abandoned the fight and stayed on Lothal makes her regress as a person as a character. I was originally going to say it regresses her to her early Season 1 self, but actually, it doesn’t, because even in early Season 1, Sabine was still willing to take the fight to the Empire, even if she was daunted by her doubts and all of her baggage. Where it regresses her to is her pre-series self, right after she and Ketsu escaped Mandalore, and Sabine is so utterly discouraged and heartbroken by her family and society’s rejection of her that she abandons the idea of fighting the Empire for a long time, and turns her heart away from the suffering of the galaxy at large.

It makes no sense, but then, forcing one character to take on the arc of another character rarely ever does.

Now, like I said, it is the strong implication that Sabine abandoned the fight after the liberation of Lothal. It is strongly implied, but never outright stated, and like I also said, that’s the one saving grace of all of this, that it’s never outright stated in the show itself. If The Mandalorian has her saying that oh, she actually was out doing stuff with the Rebellion during the war proper, it might go against the implication, but I’ll still accept it, because it would be so much easier to engage with a Sabine I actually recognize, rather than the stranger who was dropped on us in the epilogue.

--

I write all of this both to get it off of my chest, and as a long, long preamble explaining why I am writing this. I write it because I think that after meeting Bo-Katan, the next logical step for Din Djarin is for him to meet Sabine. He’s met someone who performs the Mandalorian identity differently from himself, and by the end of ‘The Heiress’, he seems to be on the way to accepting that there is more than one valid way to perform Mandalorian culture and identity. Sabine is the next logical step in the progression, the next step after Din coming to accept that there is more than one way to perform their culture: someone who has a deeply complicated relationship with her cultural identity as a Mandalorian, someone who has done harm to that culture while also deeply harmed by it, someone whose identity as a Mandalorian includes not only battle and loyalty to her family, but self-expression through artwork.

I think that self-expression through art, always so important to Sabine’s character, might be introduced here as well. Because Din’s unpainted armor has always been jarring to me, and I think that his ability to engage in self-expression might have been just a little stifled (or more than a little stifled) by his raising in the Watch, and the values the Watch inculcated in him. Sabine might well introduce him to the concept of painting his armor, whether in his clan colors (and if he doesn’t have any at present, there could well be a scene of him deciding what they are), or in colors and designs that he chooses, that are personally meaningful to him, without clan affiliation or loyalty to the Watch entering.

There is something else about Sabine that I think will be of interest in this show, especially since she is most likely to turn up in Ahsoka’s company. Sabine provides an interesting inverse to the Child’s present situation—where the Child is a Force-wielder sheltered and cared for by a Mandalorian, Sabine was, once upon a time, a Mandalorian child sheltered and cared for by a Jedi, a Mandalorian child who was in her adolescence brought up alongside a child who was a Jedi.

I don’t think that Din’s journey leads him ultimately to give up the child to the Jedi, because that would be a betrayal of the bond that has formed between them. I think that his journey leads to him finding the middle way, finding that place where Mandalorians and Jedi can coexist, held fast by bonds of care and loyalty and love. That Sabine has all of these bonds with Jedi—with Kanan and Ezra, and by the implication of the finale, with Ahsoka as well—may well be the thing that proves to Din that it can be done, that just because Mandalorians and Jedi have traditionally been enemies, does not mean that they must always be enemies.

Din has gone out into the galaxy as the man who has everything to learn about life and how his can be richer than it has been, who has everything to learn about how his own people can be more than just one thing. Both he and Sabine are alienated from their culture in their own ways, and I’m interested to see the way they might play off of each other, what they can learn from each other, and especially what Din is willing to learn from Sabine. I know it’s not a sure thing that Sabine will show up, but it feels right, and I’ll be interested to see what role she has to play in the show.

[panelshowsource]

of course! i love susie! here is the susie tag! i made a susie set last week!

all the submissions i’ve ever received in the past were just pictures alongside someone’s opinions/questions... i can’t privately respond to those like i can with an ask, and they never felt quite appropriate to post. what would you want to submit? you can always tag your own content with #panelshowsource and i will see it!

nope! we do have something called "comedians of the world" which features joel dommett, mae martin, nish kumar, ellie taylor, and quite a lot of standup specials like james acaster, jimmy carr, greg davies, daniel sloss, jack whitehall etc. but with a basic internet proxy, anyone can easily swap their country’s netflix account to british netflix to stream these (x) :)

hello! wow i watched that last year bc in the film miles jupp is married to james wilby (of maurice fame, you may well know), so of course i had to see it. miles is genuinely a talented actor, i recommend watching him in the new howards end and also journey’s end. as for chicklit, i just googled “watch chicklit” and it came right up for me x

where is the proof

sure! twink!john is ultimate john... the new special was a bit bleak though wasn’t it? and i can do that anon, i’m trying to make more drunk history gifs anyway :)

can u believe??

god made her incredible at street fighter to make up for her shit dancing. and good job, god, if i may say so

i certainly have — the new eps are always posted to /r/panelshow, so it’s easy to keep up. it’s a pleasant enough show if you’re liberal scum like me :)

hahahaha oh anon, how i wish i knew the exact reason. i live for frankie’s apparent disdain for james corden (which did not in fact end in 2014, because he did a joke about it in the first series of new world order)...

...which is apparently not reciprocated...

i’m sure there’s no real contempt on a personal level, and james, as a comedian, understands how and why he is a punchline to some people (and can take it). that said, i think his generally appearing “fake” in his personality and penchant for laughing a lot as well as not being a particularly clever or original comedic writer brings the groans from other comedians. after he started winning major awards is when it became particularly trendy not to like him *shrug*

yes, yes, and it depends...some comics are good presenters, some are good roasters, some are good at standup, some are good at podcasts. so ! i like john mulaney, maria bamford, bo burnham, robin williams, sam morril, and i love roast battles so a lot of the greats on jeff ross presents roast battle (mike lawrence, matthew broussard, etc). but apart from mulaney i can’t think of any i religiously keep up with!

hello everyone! yes i certainly watched it, i thought it was nice :) it was a good selection of guests and it was nice to see so many new gen panelists on one programme; i think it helped josh & james and tom & rob are such old friends, and obviously jess & james know each other at least mildly well. dynamics make panel shows. i think the format is decent but really dependent on the guests...i could tell so many of the answers were pre-planned with elaborate set ups (props) and i generally find the less obvious that is, the better, so i hope that improves as they move forward. james is also a little less weird and a little more talk show host-y, which is an odd look for him and i’m not sure how i feel about it, bc i assumed josh would be taking that role so james could fuck about a bit — but it certainly feels like the james acaster show 😂 i’ll be interested to see how it continues with different guests. i love the “how much money to do xyz” round, because i play that all the time irl and it’s hilarious making people explain themselves. but i’ll say this: like you guys i obviously really like james, but if we’re being real this is not the funniest panel show of all time aljskfhg or whatever. sometimes i think being consistently pleasant (looking at you, insert name here) can be even better than that. so that’s what i’m hoping for it!

i don’t i’m sorry to say anon. i can see select episodes are on dailymotion but it looks to me like you’ll have to go here and politely make a request. but in the meantime, never forget.........

is that a james acaster fan i detect? ;) x

haha i don’t know what kind of magical powers you think i have as a lil american with 400gb on google drive and no other materials other than the interwebz to watch panel shows, but let me introduce you to a well-known resource around these parts...

vlc is king queen! enjoy! x

right here boo! thank you for your patience!

of course not! imo you’re not asking enough! check out this tag, i’ve been working on it...;)

HMM LET’S CONSIDER...

im right here silly

f.a.q. // tags

ps. thanks to everyone for sending in your feedback on double-giffing, meeting celebs, and more! i got all of your messages and i really enjoyed reading all of your perspectives. to keep the blog (mostly) free of drama and debate, i won’t be publishing most of them, but you can always privately message me if you want to talk more :) and sorry i couldnt do original women weds this week; i had a quick surgery yesterday and i was really tired last night. next week will be really good, promise! x sarah

[sliceannarbor]

Jeff Gordinier

Food & Drinks Editor, Esquire Magazine Author/Food Journalist Hudson Valley, New York jeffgordinier.com noma.dk Photo by Andre Baranowski

SPECIAL GUEST SERIES

In this, our 122nd issue of SLICE ANN ARBOR, we are honored to present food journalist and author Jeff Gordinier. Gordinier talks with SLICE about his new book Hungry: Eating, Road-Tripping, and Risking It All with the Greatest Chef in the World — and life.  

Jeff Gordinier is the food & drinks editor at Esquire and a contributor to The New York Times, where he was previously a reporter. In his latest book, Hungry: Eating, Road-Tripping, and Risking It All with the Greatest Chef in the World, Gordinier chronicles four years spent traveling in Mexico, Australia, and Denmark with René Redzepi, a Danish chef and the creative force behind Noma, often referred to as the best restaurant in the world. Gordinier provided commentary for an episode of Netflix's Chef's Table series featuring Jeong Kwan, a Buddhist nun in South Korea and an avatar of Asian temple cuisine. His work has appeared in Travel + Leisure, Real Simple, Entertainment Weekly, Details, Elle, Fortune, Creative Nonfiction, Spin, Poetry Foundation, and anthologies such as Best American Nonrequired Reading. A graduate of Princeton University, Gordinier is also the author of X Saves the World and coeditor of Here She Comes Now. When he’s not working, you can find him taking care of his four children. Gordinier lives north of New York City with his wife, Lauren Fonda; they have a view of the Hudson River from their bedroom.

[Jeff Gordinier will be at the Shinola Hotel in Detroit on Tuesday, July 23, 2019, to celebrate the release of Hungry: Eating, Road-Tripping, and Risking It All with the Greatest Chef in the World, where he will be in conversation with chef George Azar, owner of Flowers of Vietnam, Detroit. The discussion will be moderated by Devita Davison, executive director of FoodLab Detroit]. 

FAVORITES

Book: Impossible to say, but for now, Patti Smith's Just Kids, James Schuyler's Selected Poems, Alexander Chee's How to Write an Autobiographical Novel.

Destination: Anywhere I have never been before, so I will say Japan.

Motto: "I promise I will get back to you."

THE QUERY

How [and when] did the concept for Hungry originally take shape?

When I first met chef René Redzepi, in 2014, I was working as a food writer on staff at The New York Times, and it's safe to say I was wary of the fame he had achieved and skeptical about the New Nordic movement that he had instigated. Redzepi and I wound up traveling through Mexico together for a story I wrote for T Magazine, and that led, over time, to more Noma-oriented encounters and experiences. I soon started spending my own money to check out what Noma was doing in Copenhagen and in Australia, et cetera, and eventually I became intrigued enough that I quit my job to join the circus: I left my post at the Times and began tagging along on the trips that make up the bulk of Hungry. (My gig at Esquire gives me a lot of leeway to travel, and the only way to tell this story was to be free to hop on a plane at a moment's notice.)

For decades I've been a fan of the D.A. Pennebaker documentary Don't Look Back, which captured Bob Dylan at a crucial moment in his career, with all of the friction and frustration that that entails. We're lucky that Pennebaker managed to be present to get footage of Dylan, this pioneering cultural figure, when the singer-songwriter was in the midst of so much pressure and transformation. I guess I hoped to do a similar thing, in a book, with Redzepi — I felt as though I had warts-and-all access to this influential person during a genuine inflection point, and I didn't want those observations to go to waste.

What if, I thought, you were riding alongside Dylan from, say, 1965 to 1968 — from the moment he (controversially) went electric all the way through the recording of Blonde on Blonde and John Wesley Harding? That sort of framework seemed available with Redzepi, because he and the Noma crew were preparing to embark on a series of risky, difficult pop-ups (in Japan, Australia, and Mexico) at the same time that the chef was planning to shut down the restaurant that had made him famous and reopen it in a new form on a site that looked like an abandoned nuclear dump. It was a dramatic set-up - and impossible to resist.

What was your overall vision for the book, before you embarked on the journey?

I had embarked on the journey long before I envisioned it as a book. I was just taking these crazy trips. Along the way I got to thinking that I might have material for a book. The structure of the book came together finally, in my mind, when I realized that it was a cult narrative: Hungry is ultimately the story of a lost man (that would be myself) who found clarity and purpose by joining a cult, only in this case the cult happens to be a restaurant called Noma.

How would you describe the evolution of your relationship with René Redzepi, from day one to the end of the travels? 

He talked. I listened. At first I was slightly dubious regarding the whole mission of Noma, but eventually I realized that there was no point in trying to say "no" to this chef. It was more fulfilling to say yes.

What was a typical day like as you worked your way across the globe?

A lot of eating, a lot of driving, a lot of talking, a lot of analyzing. By the end of each day I tended to be exhilarated and exhausted. But I should point out that I didn't perpetually travel with Redzepi for years on end. Most of the time I was simply back home with my family, working on articles, et cetera. And Redzipi was back in Denmark with his family and his restaurant team. We would take these trips now and then, usually on a whim, over the course of about four years.

Who did you meet along the way from the culinary world (or from other worlds) that you'll likely never forget, and why?

Reporting the book was like being stuck in a culinary version of The Canterbury Tales, because famous chefs floated in and out of our orbit as we moved along. David Chang, Kylie Kwong, Danny Bowien, Enrique Olvera, Roberto Solís, Rosio Sánchez, to name but a few. What I won't forget is the summer day when René and Nadine Redzepi held a picnic in their backyard at which some of the world's top chefs got together and cooked: Jacques Pépin, José Andrés, Danny Bowien, Kylie Kwong, Jessica Koslow, Gabriela Cámara. Daniel Patterson, Bo Bech, Alex Atala. That was wild.

Is there a moment that stands out as most remarkable during the journey?

Really it was one remarkable moment after another. That's why I kept going back. It felt like an amplified version of life.  

How has Redzepi changed the global culinary dialogue about wild and cultivated sourced ingredients?

Answering that would take a couple of days.  

Why did Redzepi "have to do this," a question you asked early in your travels, referring to the closing of Noma in 2015 and its reopening/reinvention in 2018?

Most chefs work hard in a ridiculously challenging environment. Many chefs are perfectionists. But Redzepi is unlike anyone I have written about in the sense that he is never satisfied with sitting still. As readers of Hungry will see, he's allergic to coasting. At this point he and the Noma crew could just keep cranking out the most popular dishes. Customers would continue to beg for tables. But Redzepi seems convinced that his creativity would dry up if he let that happen. So he's always conjuring new challenges — exercises in team-building and flavor-searching that would wear most of us out.  

How did this experience ultimately create reinvention in your life; how did it change you?

When I first met Redzepi, I was feeling stuck, which is something that happens to a lot of us, of course. Redzepi's philosophy — his whole approach to living — represents the opposite of stuckness. Like so many intensely creative people (from Bowie to Beyoncé), he's adept at escaping stuckness by propelling himself forward. He doesn't like to dwell on the past; he doesn't like to stay put. When he and I met, I was in a period of my life that was pretty much all about dwelling on the past, and that contrast seemed narratively fruitful to me. (The book starts off by quoting the first lines of Dante's Divine Comedy, which is sort of an inside joke, because from one vantage point the Divine Comedy can be read as an extravagant metaphor for Dante's midlife crisis.) I felt like both Redzepi and I were at pivotal moments in our lives. As readers will see, I wound up getting kicked out of my mental rut.

What is the wisdom of tearing it all down and starting over?

I think what drew me to Redzepi, long before I tasted his cooking, was his crazy commitment to making the most out of his life and the opportunities that have come his way. For those of us (and maybe it's all of us) who toy with the notion of reinventing ourselves, well, Redzepi comes across as a kind of mad avatar of renewal. He has reinvented Noma itself over and over, and he has also, in a way, reinvented Copenhagen, almost single-handedly turning it into one of the most compelling culinary cities in the world. It can be seductive and intoxicating to be around people who have that kind of energy.

What do you think the Danish chef might have learned from you along the way?

I am still much better than he is at making tortillas.  

[littlebitwriter]

My TOY STORY 4: The Toy Story film Pixar would never make!

My Toy Story 4 isn’t for the kids. I’m taking it to a different place. It’s the Logan of the Toy Story franchise. The tone is true to the original trilogy but more adult. It’s like Logan meets Sausage Party meets Cabin in The Woods. It’d be a Toy Story film that would be a comedy horror film or black comedy. Going to places you would never think Toy Story or any Pixar film would go.

The bio of my Toy Story 4 is ‘Toy Story 4 is an upcoming American 3D computer-animated ‘black comedy’ film produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures. It is the fourth installment in Pixar's Toy Story series, and the sequel to Toy Story 3 (2010). It is the first Pixar film to receive an R-rating. In my mind it would be the highest-grossing R-rated animated film probably of all time.

It is the finale to the franchise. If a kid who was around seven in 1995 watched and loved the first Toy Story then grew up falling in love with film and genre fiction that kid would be around thirty now. This is a film for the kids that grew up with the first two Toy Story films and cried their eyes out during the third but doing a completely different type of movie that ultimately shows why you shouldn’t have continued the franchise.

Since Pixar is just a extremely collaborative company they’d need like a writer’s room for Toy Story 4 with Jordan Peele (Get Out, Us), Drew Goddard (Cabin in The Woods, Bad Times At The El Royale), Michael Arndt (Little Miss Sunshine, Toy Story 3), Michael Green (Logan, Blade Runner 2049) and of course Pixar masters John Lassetter and Andrew Stanton. Even though it is my idea I wouldn’t ever put myself in the writer’s room for a film of such anticipation of Toy Story 4. I think this is a group of writers alongside the Pixar genius of John Lasseter and Andrew Stanton that could 100% do this film justice.

I may not be super in-depth and very vague about the film but I hope it makes sense. It probably is really bad. I’m sorry, I’m young and dumb.

The idea in terms of story is quite a bit like what the team behind Toy Story 4 is actually going to be doing. This would be a Toy Story film with a feel that’s the mix of Little Miss Sunshine and Logan with a lot of dark satirical ideas about society, a lot of plot twist and story turns, that you would never expect. It would be the craziest, darkest, and scariest Pixar film yet but also one that could go toe to toe with many arthouse indie pictures for a ‘Best Picture’ nomination at the Oscars.

The film is set ten years after Toy Story 3 and the toys are at a dumpster. At the beginning of the film you don’t know how the toys got there but they are all completely torn up and nearly destroyed, this dumpster is almost treated like a post-apocalyptic wasteland/underworld for toys. There’s the toys at the dumpster and then on the quest to find this treasure that could save everything. It’s them going across the world on this road trip and there’s this villainous character called ‘The Mad Toy Doctor’ who knows of a toy’s sentience and knows of them as living beings trying to go after this treasure as well. Throughout the film a lot happens but by the end the toys of course win but there’s a heartfelt emotional ending. That ends with a Sopranos-esque ‘Cut to Black’ with instead of Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin’ it’s You Gotta Friend in Me.

Each character individually is going through their own thing going on, Many of the other toys are still around Woody, Buzz, Bo-Peep, Jessie, Slinky, Mr. & Mrs. Potato Head, Rex, Barbie, the little one eyed green aliens, and all of Bonnie’s toys from Toy Story 3 are dead and their remains are seen across this dumpster, throughout the film not at all really acknowledged.

WOODY: The film opens with Woody giving a voice over narration in the film and setting the tone for the movie. Particularly with an f-bomb. Then later you get a look at Woody’s eye and you can see it has fallen off and he makes use of an eye patch looking almost like John Wayne from 1969’s True Grit. Woody feels as if he’s failed all of the toys his friends. Throughout the film he’s on this quest of redemption and for a treasure he and the toys are looking for. Woody is viewing himself as the hero this western spaghetti western cowboy who will do the hard things to save the day. Buzz reminds him that he’s just a toy. Woody doesn’t know how to handle everything and dealing with the fact that to Andy and to Bonnie he thought of himself as more than a toy almost like a father figure of some kind weirdly enough. So Woody would have an arc throughout the film and in the end make a sacrifice to save his friends alongside Buzz.

BUZZ LIGHTYEAR: Buzz Lightyear has become completely unconfident and has become the furthest opposite of everything he thought he was in the first Toy Story film. Where he thought he was a space ranger instead he’s going through this existential crisis. Eventually he and Buzz make the ultimate sacrifice.

Jesse: She is dealing with the death of Bullseye and she is in a relationship with Buzz Lightyear. She is very depressed throughout the film.

Barbie: Dealing with the death of Ken and in a secret relationship with Mister Potato Head.

Mister Potato Head: Cheats on his wife and has an affair with Barbie and feels guilty ever since Mrs. Potato Head’s passing and commits suicide.

Bo-Peep: Bo-Peep has still never come back but there’s this dark twist that the Mad Toy Doctor is using Bo-Peep as a way to get to the toys. She was tortured and killed by the Mad Toy Doctor.

Rex: Rex is personally my favorite character in Toy Story, there is a scene where I kill him off and it’s really sad.

Slinky: He gets broken and tortured by the Mad Toy Doctor.

The Mad Toy Doctor: The villainous character. He calls himself a ‘doctor’ and creates new villainous toys that he sets out to kill the Toy Story gang. The villain is almost like Sid from the first Toy Story and Donny from Ted. However he is an old, old man He sets out to make the toy sentience to the public but by the end of the film is sent to a mental institution. The voice actor of this character in my mind would be Tim Curry. He would be the scariest villain in any animated film. He’d be the guy if all the pixar movies were connected that Carl Fredrickson from UP would punch in the face. The toys he creates are his own Buzz Lightyear, a G.I. Joe/Snake Eyes eseque toy named Jon, a Transformers looking toy who goes by the name of Morpher. He’s like the Superman villain Toyman almost. He is also in love with this old lady who is his wife who is really a baby doll he aged up.

Yeah it would be a yucky, freaky but hopefully funny Toy Story movie. There’s no humor in this post that I wrote but there 100% would be a lot of humor and heart in the film. It would be a true Toy Story film deconstructing all the classic tropes. However the film would be a lot better than what I have written here particularly with the writers I would love to see behind it. It’s a film that I would want from the franchise and could potentially be a real game changer for Pixar. Making not just a good kids movie but a legitimately good movie.

This may be terrible idea but I thought people would be interested :) I hope everyone has a lovely day! It’s just my weird dream Toy Story fanfiction. Very underdeveloped. Hopefully you enjoyed it.

LittleBitWriter

1/27/19

[wrongcarwhy]

Started the year 2021 right by watching a Park Hyung Sik drama, co-starred in SWDBS with the talented and ethereal Park Bo Young, because I was smitten by him while binge-watching Hwarang during the Yuletide season in the preceding year; then spent the next 365 days (of course that’s an exaggeration) by ticking off and *prioritizing* some k-dramas in my ever-growing watchlist.

Now, I’m bidding adieu to 2021 by having a year-end viewing of another PHS-starred drama — his comeback drama months after his military discharge — entitled Happinɘss, alongside THE Han Hyo Joo (her cb drama as well after years of hiatus on the small screen, at last) and Jo Woo Jin to complete a spectacular cast! Heck, Happinɘss keeps me on the edge of my seat and I love everything about its premise and the character dynamics!

Nothing, I just feel giddy probably because the dawn and dusk of my 2021 k-drama fix is strong, wow. Hahaha! Aside from that, I’m glad that my year began and will end in the hands of actors oozing with charisma and high-caliber acting. I am commemorating this moment (PSH and HJH's comeback in the small screen mainly) in a little way since I have the time to do so and, hmm, to somewhat reflect on my journey in k-dramaland... In short, share ko lang. :D

[oscar-isaacs-number-one-bitch]

“Eighth Grade” Movie Review

Eighth Grade is a film written and directed by comedian Bo Burnham (The Big Sick), and stars Elsie Fisher (voice of Agnes in the Despicable Me franchise) as Kayla, a young girl about to embark on her final week as an eighth grade student. As Kayla begins the week, she faces the challenges, triumphs, and emotional turmoil all middle schoolers have faced at one point or another in that small capsule of time. She deals with boys, her seemingly overbearing father, making videos for her YouTube channel, her schooling, puberty, fellow classmates, crushes, high school shadowing…well, you get the idea. But as the week goes on, these challenges seem to weigh on Kayla more and more, and although one knows she’ll be fine, the journey becomes hard to bear for her, and she struggles with these aspects of growing up, particularly as they pertain to her learning to be herself. Nevertheless, she must brave the week. Eighth Grade is a film about learning to be who you are, to be okay with that, and to grow not just into a new world, but into a new you.

If the above description is messy, awkward, and even cringe-y at points, then perhaps that’s the best sort of description I could write for this review. See, that’s just what Eighth Grade is: messy, awkward, cringe-y. And yet, this film is almost entirely, if not exclusively, made great because of these factors. As Kayla traverses the challenges and triumphs of middle school, so to do we, often to uncomfortable degrees in a wide variety of ways. This not only gives the film a sense of authenticity, of a frequently brutal reality, but of a charm and likability unlike any of its type. This is a coming of age movie that actually takes the viewer back to when we were that age, when we were that awkward and uncertain of the future. And in many ways, this film shows us that in fact, many of the things that we thought were big deals in middle school (the future, relationships, leaning to be yourself) still are big deals, but that it’s easier to handle them now because we’ve been through the processes of learning how to approach these issues, with the encouragement and help of a few friendly people.

This is all due to a masterful script by Bo Burnham that feels no need to take a nostalgia trip as it unpoetically presents everything about eighth grade as not just awkward, but at times just downright awful to experience (which it is – again, we’ve all been there). As Kayla faces these aforementioned challenges, we experience her discomfort, her desperate attempts to seem cool in spite of her already being fun as she is, her fears, her happiness, and this is directly a result of a sharply observed narrative, as well as excellent direction that not only feels genuine, but as if the comedian-turned-actor-turned director has been churning out hits like this one for quite a long time.

I’m quite familiar with Bo Burnham’s work outside of this film, so I already knew that at least the writing would be great, but what I was not prepared for was just how fantastic of a director he would turn out to be. Even for a film that seems to be largely filmed through a hand-held camera, each scene is exceptionally staged, both in terms of its own geography, and the way DP Andrew Wehde chooses to move the camera. Burnham excels at making this film feel as though the audience is entering this last week of middle school with Kayla, and through this particular camerawork, captures the uncertainty and unease of being in her position. It’s a masterful turn from a great multi-talent that’s sure to (if not mark), greatly boost the start of a long and enormously promising spotlight inside the film industry, and the fact that this is only his first film as a director highlights that more than anything. This is a debut I would put directly alongside Robert Eggers’ The Witch or Alex Garland’s Ex Machina (fitting, considering both those films were also distributed by A24) in terms of how assured, how confident it is, both in the hands of its director and the quiet brilliance of its screenplay. Burnham has created a timeless story around an instantly lovable and iconic coming-of-age character.

But in order for any of this to work (the direction, the script, the character – any of it), the film needs a great talent at its center, and it has one in star Elsie Fisher. Fisher sells every note Burnham gives her to play, and every single line he’s written. There is no doubt, even at one small point, that she is this character. There is never a single moment where the viewer can see a performance happening; it’s all just right there in front, as you watch Kayla, forgetting that this is an actress playing a part, and not just a regular eighth grader experiencing life as it comes at her. She’s brutally authentic, awkward, uneasy, loveable, charming, wonderful, and everything in between. Fisher perfectly captures the essence of being human in Kayla’s “faults;” she’s a revelation in this film, more than worth of an Oscar nod for her unbelievable performance. Of course, it’s not just Fisher who steals your heart. Josh Hamilton (playing her father) also gets more than a few moments to share the spotlight, his earnest character getting some of the film’s funniest lines all to himself (though not so much in their essence as in their delivery – a fantastic showcase of Hamilton’s talent). In fact, every single performance in this film is great (but make no mistake – this is Fisher’s show).

As the summer movie season begins to wind down with the start of August, it can be easy to just sit back and go watch Mission: Impossible Fallout again if one wants to go watch some excellent cinema (I’ve already been to see that film 4 times), but please don’t let the blockbuster nature of that, or the popularity/nostalgia of Christopher Robin (also releasing this weekend) keep you from checking out this movie. Eighth Grade is one of the most wonderful, cringe-worthy, authentic, best films you’ll see all year, with a star-making turn from Elsie Fisher, and brilliant writing/direction from the insane talents of Bo Burnham. Simply put, it’s a coming-of-age masterpiece.

I’m giving “Eighth Grade” a 10/10.  

[hmratking]

Trial of the Seer - The Trial (Part II)

(Continued from HERE)

The journey would have been instant had the Flea been around to portal them, but since he was not, it took half the day to get back to the Kingdom. The old city of Strahnbrad was covered with merchants, slavers, traders, thieves, and prostitutes, as well as blood, bones, and fights. Off to the side, there was a brawl surrounded by men and women, screaming for either of the fighters to kill the other. The main house at the center of the small village was surrounded by pleading skeletal creatures who noticed Lilthessa arrive. They began to hiss and their hiss spread to other Ratz, who stopped what they were doing to stare at the newcomer. The only thing stopping them from getting close to her was that Sarinna, who had now removed her disguise, was walking alongside her.

Off to the side, the Flea stood, covered in dried feces and waste, and leaning against the outhouse. He had shut out the Kingdom, oblivious to anything happening. That is until the Ratz began to tap out a message that echoed throughout the village. It was then that the Flea opened his eyes and noticed Lilthessa walking closer to the main house. He didn’t want to move because of the waste on him, but he longed to see her, touch her, speak to her. His eyes shifted over to the main house, where he saw Evan place the King’s throne at the top of the steps. The crowds stopped what they were doing and turned their attention to Sarinna and the red haired woman.

The warlock felt their eyes, and she knew what they might be thinking. One could sense it easily, yet she kept her presence hooded and her gaze on the path below. So many stones, and so many uneven paths. It could be easy to trip and fall. Though she did look up once to see Flea, and her heart gave a leap forward. She spoke no words but relayed the message through their mental link.

“Oh my love! you are safe.. everything else doesn’t matter.. I love you. I’m so glad to see you.” It was a quick message, of course, she was still moving with Sarinna leading the way, but she still had to. The Rat King wouldn’t have known about their mental link anyway. It was safe. Perhaps the only way that was truly safe.

A soft smile spread across his solemn face and he looked at Lilthessa. “I love you too,” he said silently. Sarinna continued to walk until they reached the steps.

“You wait here.” The night elf walked up the steps and into the building and moments later, the King emerged with Mora, the Champions, and the night elf. The King walked down the steps and extended his arms out at Lilthessa.

“Welcome to my home,…what was it he keeps calling you? Friend? Friend of the Flea.” He looked her up and down, curious as to who this woman may be. He glanced away toward the Flea. “Is this true? Are you just a friend?”

Evan had moved the Flea from the outhouse closer to the steps. He was still crusted in waste and staring at Lilthessa. -Say whatever you wish, love. It’s okay.-

“Well?” the King asked.

Lil watched the man softly and took a deep breath. “I would say, that I am more than a friend.” She spoke softly, and Ratz had to lean forward to hear what she was saying. “Fate has decided that I am in love with him.” She was honest about it at least. Flea could say other things if he wanted, but Lil would never deny the fact she was in love with someone when she was. “Yeah, I know it’s strange, but that’s the truth of it.”

The Flea smiled brightly, but that smile slowly disappeared when the Rat King laughed. “You? In love with him?” he shouted aloud for all to hear. The King moved away and laughed again. “She is in love with the Flea!” The Ratz around them cackled madly and even some of the guests who had lingered to watch this trial laughed as well.

The King walked to face her and leaned into her. “You are in love with a monster who kills, tortures, eats others. A creature who serves only me.” He reached for her chin and forced her to turn toward the Flea. “Look at that thing you love.”

The Flea stared at Lilthessa. -I love you-.

Releasing her chin, the King walked away from her and toward the steps. “She loves him!” he said, addressing Mora by the throne.

The undead's nose wrinkled, a jealous undertone crossed her hollow gaze as the woman admitted to loving Flea, her Flea. Mora's dark claws glided over the brown throne as she stepped forward more and the imps crowed the rest of the steps. The demons hissed and booed the Seer, only to be assholes and stir up the crowd, Mora judged silently until her King became animated. He was her poison and when he was happy, so was she.

Mora giggled, the brim of her large hat tilting forward to hide her for a moment. Her king had described Mora's and his own relationship the same as the Flea's and she found it amusing. Her love walked up the steps to gather her attention again. Mora reached for his face and smiled as she fawned over him, "How could someone love a monster..absurd, my King." She grinned and let her hands rest away from his angelic face and as she beckoned him to take his place in the chair.

“Flea,” the King called out as he took a seat. The undead walked slowly to the bottom of the steps. He forced his body to drop to his knees and he bowed his head. “Flea, you told me she was just a friend. Did you lie to me again?” He tilted his head and stared at him.

“I wanted to protect her.” He didn’t know what else to say.

“Oh? And do you return this love she has for you?”

Turning back to look at Lilthessa, the Flea responded, “I do. I love her with all my heart.”

Lil kept her stance, knowing what was true in her heart and she would never back down. The Flea may have wanted her to seem weak, or such, but in love she was never weak. She took a deep breath and absorbed all the laughter and stares. She had seen it before, anyway. But now, the attention was away from her, back to the shit-covered man who had stolen her heart in an unexpected way.

Mora took her place next to King, sitting on the arm of the chair and leaning on his shoulders while her hands found their way back over his neck and shoulders, her doll face staring into the nothing, though her imps sneered and growled, taking on some her internal emotions, others simply stood and waited. Jhonathon made Mora's head turn some, his words were so sincere she couldn't bring herself to look at him in his state. “What's so great about her…?” she muttered.

The King rolled his eyes at the Flea’s confession, but then he heard Mora, and he smiled once more. “That’s right, my Doll, what is so great about her that you had to keep her safe…from me?” He sounded as if he were insulted, but he didn’t really care. “You lied to me, Flea. Several times now. Why are you lying to me? What is so great about her that you felt the need to lie?”

The Flea turned back to the King. “Nothing.” He knew he was going to be caught in another lie, so he had to speak the truth. “She’s…she’s a dark arts user.” The King seemed to smile. He had wanted another one aside from Mora and since the last one escaped his grips, his attention was now set on this one.

“Is she now?”

“But…I didn’t want to let you know because she’s weak. She’s not worth your time, my King,” the Flea said, hoping he could argue Lil’s “worthlessness.” “She’s not like the other one we witnessed or Dahlia. Her demons are weak and so are her spells.”

The Flea looked at Mora, almost pleading for her to say something.

“Unless you want things burned,” Lil said softly. “I’m really useless for anything else.” She lit up her fingers easily with a whispered spell, but it dimmed quickly at her command.” She took a deep breath, keeping hidden the other parts of her that may freak him out, if he even remembers about the time she gave him a reading.

Mora smirked again. “Useless," she whispered in the King’s ear. "Anyone can start a fire.” She nipped at his ears and slid more onto his lap.  "So burn something,” she called out and turned her attention back to the King, kissing over his neck. "Feed her to the Ratz, Kingy…" Mora knew Lilthessa could take them on. She knew that Lil was more than capable of taking out half of the ones standing right there, but what Mora wanted to know was could Lil survive without impressing. That was up to the seer.

The King smiled and raised his hand. “Get her, my pets.” The nearby Ratz grinned and about ten began to move toward Lilthessa. The Flea turned to glare at Mora and then back at Lil.

-If this is a test, it’s a stupid one,- the Flea muttered to Lil. He knew that the Ratz were starving. He knew that if Lilthessa protected herself, she would demonstrate her powers. He knew that if she didn’t, the hungry Ratz would devour her alive. He turned back to look at Mora, furious that she would allow such a thing to happen.

Lil took in a deep breath and let her hands come out, drawing a circle of fire around her. The flames grew higher around her, forming a sort of barrier between her and the rats. Still, anyone could make a circle of fire. Lil also tapped her bracelet and one of her imps came out, the weakest one she had. He sighed as he saw the rats coming towards him and stepped in front of the flames. His mistress had said she'd reward him for acting weak. Lil watched the Ratz pause as the flames grew stronger around her.

She took one of the closest Ratz and let the flame dance along his legs. The creatures of the dark were afraid of fire. He scurried off to douse himself. Still, she stood there, showing nothing else but imp mastery and some basic knowledge of fire magic, as any novice Mage could have. The imp tried to look imposing, but it was just a normal imp.

"Love makes me strong, it makes me weak. Love is stronger than any magic. Anyone in true love knows this, it will find a way, my darling." She quietly sent the message to Flea in their mental link, Though her expression was still neutral.

The crowds backed up, and many more had stopped to see what was taking place. The whores stood up on barrels and boxes to get a good look at the woman who claimed to love one of the Inner Circle, the merchants stopped hawking and selling long enough to see the woman defend herself, but even they started trying to get back to work when nothing spectacular started.

(Co-written: @loveherdekay & @lilthessa )

[thekoreanlass]

‘Miss Hammurabi‘ came as a really huge surprise to me this year, in a great way of course. I wasn’t Go Ah Ra’s biggest fan, so I almost skipped this. She just seems overrated when she and her character always don’t match up. She had great projects, but it always felt like something was amiss her acting. But then, putting INFINITE’s L (Kim Myung Soo) alongside her and the fact that this is a legal drama convinced me to try and I was not even a bit disappointed.

In fact, the drama delivers something more than just drama. It tells stories about the lives of ordinary people, their real life struggles and social issues in modern day Korea.

The Story:

To put it simply the series tells the story of the life of judges and the various disputes that they have to settle (from wikipedia).

Park Cha Oh Reum (Go Ah Ra) is a rookie judge that is very passionate with her job and firmly stands for her beliefs and fair justice especially for the powerless. As she enters the court office as an associate judge, she unknowingly reunites with a person from her past, Im Ba Reun (Infinite’s L or Kim Myung Soo), a young judge who is popular for his firm principles and adherence to the rules. The two of them will together work hand in hand with Presiding Judge Han Se Sang (Sung Dong Il) to solve the civil cases of their department while facing their own personal battles as judges and as individuals.

Review:

What sets ‘Miss Hammurabi’ apart and above other legal dramas is how it attacked its challenges. Instead of going the usual route of talking about criminality in the court and the mystery surrounding the lead characters, this drama has shown a more human side to these judges.

They are seen as the powerful omniscients in most legal dramas, sometimes influenced by connection and bribery but nonetheless capable of deciding which life the characters or their clients shall lead. But here, we see the struggles of these judges in and out of the courtroom. We are presented an inside look to their real thoughts and how their everyday life went in comparison to their glorious roles as respectable men of law.

We are also unabashedly presented with the flawed truths about societal norms like gender discrimination in the workplace, power struggle, the clash between the unconventional new and the old traditional, the problems about following the inflexible hierarchy in the organization, the unjust treatment towards the oppressed poor and the special treatment towards the rich and people they are connected to and many others that are much closer to the truth. That are real and which are recreated in a fictional sphere to deliver sad but inspiring lessons that are realistic and often practical while keeping a pinch of idealism.

‘Miss Hammurabi’ is so good in delivering such a kind of story that is able to straightforwardly and strategically start slow burning kind of subplots that are able to challenge our characters and mold them and their relationships to something even more. These subplots are equally gripping and simply gratifying as it touches you in the most humanistic way at the end of every episode. I have in fact cried during every episode. They are just sad, like really sad, but nonetheless a fruitful journey filled with practical lessons about the everyday man. This reminds me so much of how ‘Misaeng‘ attacked its plot in almost the similar way.

Perhaps these dramas became so popular because of how it thrived to be about ordinary people and not about some grand scheme about chaebols or lead characters being on the run because of mysterious killers and whatnot. We surely love the sometimes scarring melodramas and heart-pounding romances, but it’s good to also have stories with a slice of life in it every once in a while, because that’s super relatable. It makes us realize how easily touched we are by these dramas because of how close it is to reality. A true gem in the rough.

Additional to the line of praises I’ve already given to this drama is its superb cast. Let’s give it that the storytelling is really solid and that character development has been evident all throughout the series and that consistency is wonderfully and carefully executed for each character, but of course not all of that ain’t possible if it isn’t because of its capable cast.

I had the strongest doubt that again Go Ah Ra won’t be able to pull off her role in the drama and she’s going to be an accessory once more to the male lead, but I can say that she made the right decision to pick this drama. Finally. She chose something that would definitely suit her and will make her shine. I didn’t think it would take one legal drama for me to believe in her.

Nonetheless, she made a very fine job of transitioning from a shy and naive teen to a strong judge with a lot of spunk and upright morals and compassion for the powerless. I was not one bit annoyed at how she portrayed the very idealistic and passionate judge that Park Cha Oh Reum is, even if Oh Reum’s character often had to exaggerate at how she does things, especially when trying to make the people realize her point. Oh Reum may be sometimes over the top, but Ah Ra’s acting has never been displaced. I think this is so far Go Ah Ra’s best performance as of yet.

On the other hand, I think that Kim Myung Soo is the ultimate revelation to me in this drama. I know already  that Myung Soo has the potential in acting. He has proven he has graduated from the campus crush or boy next door roles through the drama ‘Emperor: The Owner of the Mask‘ and it indeed showed, but I think his best performance yet is with ‘Miss Hammurabi’ as the introverted associate judge Im Ba Reun who became even more distant from other people after he took it to himself to become an objective judge who unflinchingly follows what the law says. He is often seen as an arrogant young judge with overflowing pride. Well, he tries his best to be an honourable judge like he once dreamt off but somehow in the process of doing his job, it seems that Ba Reun forgot why he was a judge. The burnout made him hate what used to be his dream, but then Oh Reum came back into his life without notice and he is exposed to a world full of hope and positivity because of her.

The characterization of the two main characters complement so much that while Oh Reum acts through her feelings, Ba Reun is the levelheaded buffer to guide her out from overthinking too much. That’s also why I think their team up worked. Because of how their relationship grew from merely nothing but acquaintances, to colleagues, to friends until they realized how much each has affected their lives in a patient, slow burn romance, which albeit not the main point of the story, still made a great side story because of its solid foundation.

Alongside these two great young actors is one of my favorite seasoned actors, Sung Dong Il. This guy is often part of the dramas I typically end up liking, so there’s no doubt he has great contribution with its success. And just like in those dramas, Sung Dong Il made his character Han Se Sang very fun to watch. Se Sang is the type of judge who is rough on the edges–with anger issues in the courtroom–but is very compassionate towards his fellow judges. He’s independent in the sense that he doesn’t strive for power and unabashedly criticizes his organization that seemed unyielding for years while upholding its old , unbending norms.

Se Sang may often clash with Oh Reum for her unconventional, idealistic opinions and may get into a silent battle with Ba Reun for the pride he is upholding, that is never to bend to hierarchy, but their love-hate relationship has been the perfect ice breaker in between watching heavy scenes that are rather always heart-wrenching.

Other minor characters like Jung Bo Wang (Ryu Deok Hwan) and Lee Do Yeon (Lee Elijah) adds more life to the series as they make perfect distraction away from the more serious topics. Bo Wang is the absolute gossiper that loves to barge inside Department 44’s office because of the beautiful stenographer Do Yeon who is his complete opposite.

Whereas Bo Wang is often clumsy and unthinking, Do Yeon is quiet but precise and reliable. There’s so much mystery surrounding Do Yeon at first that many people pass down false rumors about her and she doesn’t like to correct them, because she believes that people will believe what they want to so she doesn’t have to explain herself. She believes she doesn’t have to be friends with everybody, an extraordinary trait from a brave woman hiding behind a sweet looking face.

I must emphasize that aside from the characters that I have listed above, all of the other minor characters took on very significant roles that added more spice to the drama. We have seen how each of them are different from each character and that if viewed from different perspectives we are definitely going to see different sides of them that doesn’t really just make them bad guys alone or good guys alone. Of course, in one way or another, the people around you and how you are nurtured also indirectly affect what kind of person you are now, just like with them.

‘Miss Hammurabi’ has deeply explored humanity and their conscious effort to attack every struggle in a positive manner made everything in it every single bit that I am looking for in a drama. It has the right balance of melodramatic moments, cute and funny moments, friendship and romance. I think that the courtroom dramas are far from what I normally see from past legal dramas, but unraveling the sad stories of each victims and accused are an interesting thesis while trying to guess what decision will they rule out. These civil issues also opens our eyes to what we have closed our ears to, because of the standard facts.

Oh Reum’s independent actions are like little eye openers that also make us realize it isn’t so bad to be different, to not conform to the norm like everyone else, because like the saying ‘one person can make a change’–which we have stopped believing–goes, we see that no matter how minuscule or insignificant the change was, it’s still definitely a change that can make something become better.

On an ending note, though the ending became a bit hasty, I think that ending it with Oh Reum and Ba Reun finding comfort with each other is one of the best ways to close their own separate romance. Bo Wang’s and Do Yeon’s crazy romance is as much appreciated how playfully it was told. It’s also good to see that Oh Reum reunites with her mom outside the hospital with her mom remembering her and the whole gang meeting in Oh Reum’s home like a real family. Not tied by blood but by how they truly care for each other.

The show could have possibly extended to more civil cases, but I think adding more of it could have made this drama really tiring. So, it’s perfect that it’s only 16 episodes.

Plus, I super love how they concluded the series by tying each character’s fate into that one fateful memory in the library. We all think, based from Oh Reum and Ba Reun’s perspective, that they were the only ones there in the library when Oh Reum was vouching for a seat that she had saved and yet was invaded by a hopeless law student who was reviewing for the bar exam, but at the ending we are shown a glimpse of a younger Do Yeon and Bo Wang’s first meeting in the same library and Han Se Sang coincidentally being the hopeless law student who Oh Reum ousted from her seat that day. Se Sang always failed his past exams, but that day he had a really good feeling about it and perhaps that’s where it really all started. Fate, which is really sweet and nostalgic after all that court drama.

Rating:

Over all performance of the cast is really great, story is well written, the character development is very progressive and the drama as a whole is really fun to watch. So, I’m giving it a 5 out of 5 grade.

A piece of advise, though, is to make sure not to binge watch it in one go and instead give it ample time to grow in your heart one episode at a time.

Completed: Review on ‘Miss Hammurabi’ 'Miss Hammurabi' came as a really huge surprise to me this year, in a great way of course.