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moriganstrongheart · 29 days ago

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Wicked: Part I – Review

Directed by Jon M. Chu

2024, Universal Pictures

160 minutes

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Good: Music, character interactions, spectacle

Bad: Narrative, worldbuilding, problematic elements

As the credits rolled on Wicked: Part I, my wife turned to me and asked what I thought. Surprised by the sudden question, my writer brain kicked into high gear and I answered: “It was alright.” She met the answer with slight disappointment, and I realized I had approached the question incorrectly. The question wasn’t: “Did you find the story of this film compelling and narratively satisfying?”, but “Was that a good musical?” The answer to that question is “Yes, definitely”, while my answer to my unasked, writer question remains unchanged.

“It was alright.” in the same way I would say an action blockbuster—like Edge of Tomorrow or Die Hard—is “alright”. It may be strange to compare the two genres, but they both rely on spectacle, an aspect of filmmaking which myself, and I think many other storytellers, find fun, but ultimately not worth deep analysis. Where action blockbusters blast eyeballs and eardrums with explosions, fast cars and sexy encounters, modern movie musicals overwhelm their audiences with impressive dance choreography, catchy tunes and sexy encounters.

I could discuss how action blockbusters are traditionally targeted towards masculine audiences, and movie musicals are largely targeted towards women and the queer community, but while that topic is important, I’m not going to take the time to discuss society’s obsession with gendered media beyond pointing out that I’m leveraging this same artificial gender divide for contrast.

No, my point here is that as a spectacle, Wicked: Part I is fantastic, in the same way that the spectacle of something like Avengers: Infinity War is fantastic, but is disappointing narratively, in the same way that Avengers: Infinity War is disappointing narratively. There are also some other issues with the movie beyond its spectacle and narrative, but I first want to lay out my credentials, since I believe my experience was affected by metatext more than I expected. I also want to discuss some of what I enjoyed before sharing my thoughts on the movie’s more problematic elements.

I have watched Victor Fleming’s The Wizard of Oz a few times, most recently within the last year or so. I have also watched Sam Raimi’s Oz the Great and Powerful at least once, but I can’t recall anything about it, except that it reinforced Oscar Diggs’ con artist persona—which The Wizard of Oz hints at, and Wicked: Part I restates through text and subtext. I have not read any of the books, nor watched the Wicked stage play—nor any of the stage plays—nor have I engaged with any metatext beyond what I’ve absorbed through Tumblr and cultural osmosis.

I think it’s important to point this out, because I think others may get more out of this movie than I did because they have engaged with the metatext, and the spectacle and recognition will more than make up for what the narrative lacks. I got the feeling going into Wicked: Part I that there’s an entire universe of lore and metatext boiling right below the surface, waiting to be discovered. It’s a similar feeling I get when I watch comic book movies—the major difference being that I have some familiarity with the source material, and so I get additional satisfaction from recognition that I don’t necessarily get from Oz media.

Is that fair? I can’t say. I just know I didn’t grow up with Oz, and never got into it as an adult. As speculative fiction, Oz occupies the same space in my mind as literary nonsense works, like Alice in Wonderland and Hitchhiker’s Guide to Galaxy—worth knowing, but not worth deep analysis. Wicked: Part I does little to change my mind on it, as I’m as unlikely now to get into Oz as I ever was.

But I do have some positive things to say about the movie. What Is This Feeling? is a great musical number, sung beautifully by Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, and made me excited to see where the movie would go from there, sensing an enemies-to-lovers storyline brewing below the surface. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t come to pass, and I’ll have to be satisfied with the #gelphie tag on Tumblr for the time being. But this was a highpoint of the film for me, so I can’t complain too much. Defying Gravity was also a bop, giving me chills and goosebumps despite the lackluster ending.

In terms of dance choreography, I found most of it competent, if shallow—though Dancing Through Life was seriously impressive. There’s just something about those rotating libraries and Jonathan Bailey’s bisexual book desecration that just did it for me. I also found Ariana Grande to be genuinely funny throughout. Her vacant stare and mean girl attitude, the physical comedy—I didn’t expect it, but I had a good time with it.

What I didn’t have a good time with are what I consider to be the film’s problematic elements, centered around its use of metaphor.

First, though, I want to discuss the choice to cast Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba. There’s a pervasive issue in Hollywood, where people of colour are often cast as aliens or fantasy creatures in science-fiction and fantasy, covering them in prosthetics and makeup so they become green or covered in tentacles. It’s not uncommon for most of the main cast be white, with one alien, robot or fantasy creature who happens to be played by a person of colour. Suffice it to say, I think this comes from a place of seeing people of colour as inherently “other”, and so they are cast more often as non-human by Hollywood.

I can’t help but feel like the choice to cast Cynthia as Elphaba may be informed by these racist ideologies. In a vacuum, I don’t think casting her as Elphaba would matter, and I think casting a black woman in a starring role is great representation. But we live in a society, a racist society, and her blackness is literally erased by covering her skin in green paint, allowing the movie to amplify her otherness, while also leaning on her racialized physical features to further mark her apart from her white co-star, Ariana.

However, her blackness is also metaphorically erased, to be replaced by a condition specific to her, rather than something she shares with others around her—except perhaps the animals.

Which means I must discuss the animals in Wicked: Part I earlier than I wanted to, because my problems with the animals are intricately tied to the film’s other problematic elements. Firstly, I think the movie’s use of animals as a metaphor for systemic oppression to be uninteresting. It could be the hyper-realistic, yet somehow uncanny CGI, or the fact that all of the characters except Elphaba involved with the animal oppression subplot seem emotionless and bored with the subject, from the human characters to the animals themselves. This could be intentional, but I don’t believe so, as I think the narrative sequesters the main plot from the animal subplot, placing them in two different genres of movies. It just doesn’t feel like I should care about these animals beyond the basic empathy I would otherwise have for animals, which is ruined by the CGI models and the lack of character development on these creatures.

Secondly, humanity has a long history of comparing racialized people to animals, most prominently when it comes to Black and Asian people. Making the only source of racism and oppression in your world a metaphor involving animals is a bad take, in my opinion, one which could and should have been caught during the film’s development. This may be something that has always been part of Wicked’s story; I don’t know enough about the book or musical to know if that’s the case. Regardless, I think it would have been something worth revisiting. I think even making the animals anthropomorphic may have been enough; it’s difficult to know for sure, as they may have suffered the same fate as Elphaba and be cast entirely by racialized actors. It’s also possible using animatronics or stylized animation would have worked. Again, difficult to know for sure.

I also think attaching such a serious topic to whimsical talking animals feels laughable, losing the gravitas they’re obviously going for. It could be that the film was hoping that same basic empathy for animals would be enough to bridge the gap, and it was also trying to advocate for the fair and ethical treatment of animals. But I don’t think the message comes across at all when placed next to the bombastic whimsy of Elphaba and Galinda.

To be clear, there are other Black people in the movie besides Elaphaba: her sister, her mother and some other background characters. There are also other people of colour, such as Michelle Yeoh as Madame Morrible and Bowen Yang as Pfannee. As far as I can tell, these people do not experience systemic racism in the film, and so we must conclude that racism doesn’t exist in the world of Oz. Speciesism definitely exists, because of the aforementioned oppression of animals, but racism itself doesn’t seem to exist.

The question of racism—or any kind of bigotry—is a common problem in speculative fiction. There are generally three approaches to how science-fiction and fantasy handle racism, each with their own pros and cons, their adherents and detractors.

The first and most common method of dealing with racism is to use metaphor—often as a way to circumvent censors or bigoted producers—in the hopes the message will come across and the audience will make connections to real world issues. The problem with this approach is that people who have not examined their racist biases, or who actively endorse racist ideals, will be ignorant of the metaphor, or willingly feign ignorance, if it serves their purposes. Metaphor racism also tends to ignore or supplant the real-world struggles of marginalized people, especially for stories set in something close to the modern day. Finally, this portrayal of racism often inadvertently justifies racism within the narrative, leading to a misunderstanding of how racism works in the real world.

I think Wicked: Part I was going for this approach with the animal oppression subplot, but I’d argue they failed in that regard, for the reasons I previously mentioned—namely, the fact that what Elphaba is experiencing is not systemic racism, and the animals are a poor metaphor for oppression.

Instead, what I think ends up happening is the erasure of racism altogether. This is something that science fiction and fantasy often do to present an idealized version of our current society: a world without racism, sexism or bigotry of any kind, a world in which black people have never faced slavery, where all genders are equal or homosexuality is as normal as breathing. In some cases, it can work, especially if the world is so far future as not to have ties to our current history, or is an alternate universe in which humans just happen to exist—as is the case with Oz, as far as I know.

The problem with this approach is when the fictional world is closely tied to our current reality, such as near future or modern speculative fiction, or the historical setting is somehow tied to our own past. With this approach, the author is trying to have it both ways; they want to include representation, but don't want to touch on why representation is necessary in the first place, effectively erasing the lived experiences of marginalized people.

The third and most difficult approach is including racism in your story, in a way that acknowledges the real world implications of systemic oppression without metaphor or erasure. I don’t know if this is always the best approach—if we’re speaking solely about crafting an interesting narrative—but it does feel like the most inclusive approach. Then again, it can backfire if the racism veers so far off from social commentary that it becomes fetishization. It can also be difficult to pull off, though I think it’s best to attempt it and take criticism, then to not do it at all.

If we accept that Wicked: Part I ultimately chooses to exclude racism from its narrative, then what Elphaba is experiencing ends up being morally reprehensible at a personal level, but morally ambiguous when viewed from afar.

Othering someone because of their appearance or capabilities is never justified. However, there is no evidence in the narrative—beyond the treatment of the animals—that someone with green skin would be immediately rejected as other. There may or may not have been green-skinned people before Elphaba; it’s never addressed in the film. So it doesn’t make sense they would outright reject Elphaba at birth. In actuality, I would expect the people of Oz to welcome her with curiosity and whimsy, if anything.

The fact that she’s so completely ostracized only makes sense if you associate her treatment with that of the animals, which, at best, is a wild connection to make, and at worst makes the narrative morally reprehensible and a racist insult when the movie is critically examined as a piece of art.

Her magical powers are an entirely different manner, as I’d argue that the denizens of Oz have reason to fear her for her magical powers. It’s heavily implied that magic once existed in Oz, but it has all but disappeared for some unknown reason. It’s possible that the slow erasure of magic is tied to the arrogance of humanity, but it’s unclear if that’s the case, and I’m unwilling to meet the movie halfway until it’s made explicit. While performative illusion and misdirection is used by Oscar Diggs and Madame Morrible to enamour and terrify Ozians, real magic is an oddity, a chaotic force which is unusual and dangerous.

Elphaba having magical powers, with no way to control that power, in a world which does not have real magic, is genuinely terrifying to think about. Do I think that justifies the complete ostracization she is subjected to? No. But I do think the fear is justified, even if the resulting actions are not. I think this is what makes Elphaba’s treatment by society morally ambiguous, though I wonder if it’s worth moralizing the actions of the Ozians at all. If I take a second to think about how magic is celebrated in Oz, and yet the only true example of magic is shunned based entirely on the colour of her skin—none of it makes any sense.

I share my opinions on this movie, both good and bad, because I genuinely enjoyed it as a musical. Most of what I discussed in this critical analysis used Wicked: Part I as a jumping off point to discuss topics which are problems across Hollywood, media and storytelling, not just this movie. The fact that I’m writing this at all—after years of not sharing my thoughts about a movie on paper—is evidence that this film sparked something in me and became a core memory of sorts. I can see myself revisiting it again in the future, when the second part comes out, or just whenever the mood strikes.

I say this because, by sharing my unsolicited thoughts on the movie, I am knowingly contributing to the over critique of media aimed at women and the queer community, while seemingly leaving male-centered media unexamined. I’d like to think that, for me, it comes from a place of love and a desire for things to be better, but I know I need to be aware of my own biases. I also want to make it clear that when I criticize media like this, I am directing that criticism at the producers and studio executives in charge, not the writers, directors or audience.

My hope is that by criticizing media that is already trying to be inclusive, diverse and equitable, we’ll get more of the same, with even more diversity and inclusion. As for those action blockbusters which don’t even try to be better, well—let’s just say, I don’t think there’s any hope for them at all.

As for the film’s narrative, the beginning was strong, the middle dragged, and the ending was unsatisfying. The story is stretched thin to cover the film’s over two hour runtime, satisfying the sense of unease I had felt upon seeing Part I in the movie’s title card after the introductory number, No One Mourns The Wicked. As mentioned, the animal subplot, divorced from its problematic issues, isn’t that interesting and doesn’t make much sense in terms of worldbuilding. The narrative also suffers from the problems which necessarily afflict all musicals, wherein the motivations and inner worlds of the characters are said out loud, even in between numbers.

In short: “It was alright.”

But also: “It was a fantastic musical.”

#my reviews #review #wicked #wicked: part i #wicked part 1 #wicked: part 1 #wicked part i #movie #movie reviews #musical #movie review #wicked review #wicked part 1 review #racism #gelphie

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taichissu · 2 years ago

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🌻💞🕯️?

answered under cut

🌻what makes you want to give up on writing? what makes you keep going?

> i'm a rare pair writer so it's a little hard to keep going when fics i post don't get much attention (naturally, bc the pairs aren't popular) even though i put my whole heart in them > but i love talking to my friends about those fics and as long as those few people support me i wanna keep doing it

💞what's the most important part of a story for you? the plot, the characters, the worldbuilding, the technical stuff (grammar etc), the figurative language

> i'm always there for the characters, well written characters can carry even the most boring plot after all, lately i've been working very hard to learn to pour as much personality into characters with as little as possible, i'm learning simplicity and directness in order to make the subtext hit harder when it does, sorry i started rambling i forgot what the question was

🕯️was there a fic that was really hard on you to write, or took you to a place you didn't think it would take you?

> i don't think there are any published fics like that (if something is hard on me, i just never finish it), so i wouldn't say hard on me to write but there are a few works that were very hard on me to post (not gonna name them bc i'm still feeling very personal with them but basically all of the very self-indulgent dark ones) > sorry this question is a little hard to understand so sorry if it doesn't make sense

#ask

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writingwithfolklore · 3 years ago

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Writing with Intention

In screenwriting we learn a lot about creating meaning in everything we write. If a producer is going to put several thousand dollars into every scene—you better bet they need to know that every scene is absolutely necessary. I find the same process we go through for writing with intention, or meaning, is useful in novel writing too because endless chapters that make me question their purpose is going to lose me as a reader. So today I’m going to go over the anatomy of a scene so that we can make sure that every one you write is written with intention, and adds to the work as a whole.

Firstly, scenes all fall under one of these main functions:

- To move the plot forward

- To develop characters (backstory, objective, desires, characteristics, relationships)

- To reveal something unknown about the world or past

In screenwriting this is all done through dialogue because film is a visual/audio medium, but in novel writing we have a lot more freedom. There are a number of ways you can convey these functions in a scene, whether through conflict, inner dialogue, action, etc. However, you still have to fulfill at least one (but better if more) of these functions in every scene.

Now that you know why the scene is there, we need to be able to actually write it.

The first thing you need to know is that every character wants something. They want something overall throughout the story—they also want something smaller within scenes that may aid them in getting to that ‘overall’.

As an example, Jenny wants to win the science fair contest, this is her goal throughout the story. In a scene where she runs into one of the judges, she might want to make a good impression, or even make another contestant look bad. This is what she wants/her goal in that specific scene, and so that ‘want’ drives that scene. This scene would probably function as characterization, and maybe—depending on if she succeeds in her goal or not—would move the plot forward.

In this specific example, Jenny is interacting with someone else, so likely you’ll be using dialogue and conflict to structure this scene. That’s where subtext comes in, dramatic writing’s best friend. We will talk in greater lengths about subtext in the future, but for now what you need to know is that characters never say what they mean.

So, Jenny would never go up to the judge and say, “I really want to win the contest so I’m going to make a good impression on you, oh and also that other person entering really sucks.” Yeah, it sounds clunky and ingenuine. However, if you know that’s what she wants out of the conversation, it’s going to make writing the scene a lot easier.

So with that in mind, maybe Jenny goes up to the judge and says something around the lines of, “I really respect your dedication to science.”

Here’s the last point I’ll make about dialogue and character intention, it’s something we do in directing. To make sure you keep on point with your subtext, it might be useful to write what the character is doing to get what they want.

In this case, Jenny is trying ‘to flatter’ in order to make the judge like her, and hopefully win her some points in the contest at the end. Characters say things to get something from the other character. For example: To convince, To praise, To reprimand, To prove wrong, To impress, To comfort, etc.

Every line of dialogue has an intention behind it. In real life, people say things all the time without really meaning anything of it, (or most the time: to make conversation), but in writing, especially screenwriting, characters never just say things. They always have intention, they’re always trying to get something. That’s what drives your scenes.

So to recap. Scenes have functions within the whole that contribute to the outline, (characterization, plot, worldbuilding), characters go into every scene with something they want (goal), and we know what they want through the subtext of what they’re saying (to: blank etc.)

With all these things working together we can create a very intentional scene—then another, then another, until you reach the end.

This is a pretty large topic and there’s still so much more about dialogue and subtext to get into, but for now that’s the very basics of writing with intention you’d need to know to get started. Good luck!

#writing #writers #writing tips #writing advice #creative writing #writing community #books #writing time #film #filmmaking #screenwriting #directing #writing dialogue #dialogue ideas #writing with intention

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gillianthecat · 2 years ago

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Any other bl that gave you the same vibes from hwang da seul stuff?

hmmm. nothing really comes to mind of the stuff I've seen so far. I guess the closest are the Korean BL's I've seen, so she is clearly working within that tradition (partially invented that tradition?). maybe i'm just influenced by @absolutebl's writing on the bubble worlds of Korean BL, but all of the one's I've seen have kind of this feeling of being their own complete world. (although Hwang Da Seul's feel less like inside a sealed bubble than the other ones I've seen, for reasons I don't have to brain power to expand on at the moment). And obviously the language and even things like fashion, architecture and landscape give them a more similar feel than say a Thai BL would have. Of the ones I've seen, I would say Cherry Blossoms After Winter give me the most similar feeling, something about its worldbuilding and use of subtext, I think. (Although the only other three I've seen so far are Semantic Error, Color Rush and My Tasty Florida, so I don't have a very big sample size yet.)

Outside of Korea? Nothing automatically makes me think "this is like Hwang Da Seul," but I can come up with some BLs with similarities if I think about it.

In Thailand? I Told Sunset About You has similarly gorgeous and thoughtful cinematography and... structure, I guess? The intentional way that the script/directing is selective about what information to share and what to leave as subtext. And I Promised You the Moon doesn't feel very Hwang Da Seul to me except that, like To My Star 2: Our Untold Stories, it's a non-BL sequel to a beloved BL, which many people hated because it wasn't the sequel they were looking for. Which I totally get! But I loved them both for their dive into the question of: now that they've fallen in love, how do they build a relationship?

Also Not Me, in a strange way, although they're very different. Again I loved the cinematography and look of the series, although its quite dissimilar from any of Hwang Da Seul's. But mostly it also gives me that feeling where the holes in it are just as fascinating as what works. And it also feels like it has a clear directorial point of view/purpose.

Despite similarly beautiful cinematography and (often) strong storytelling, all the Japanese BLs I've seen feel very different to me, in a way I can't define at the moment.

Thanks for this ask, anon! At first I was like oh no, i have no idea. But then it turned out I had more to say than I thought. If you want to write in again, I'd love to hear your answer to the same question.

edit 9/14: Please do barge in with any suggestions of BLs that remind you of her works. I'm not sure if anon was looking for recommendations or just wanted to hear me ramble, but I'd love to see what y'all think fit.

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tiffanylamps · 3 years ago

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Heya! Because i am awestruck by your outworldish writing so much, i really wanna know some secrets if you dont mind 👀

What inspires you to go and write out a fic? Like specifically, also these q's meant for jwds only. And how do you build the structure, think of the environment, and research?

Sorry if q's seem too vague

AHHHH! Hey!!

Thank you for your message- it's so nice to talk to you

Secrets, you say?? Hmm, I can share some secrets 👀

What inspires you to go and write out a fic?

When a piece of media consumes me (in the way Beyond Evil has), my mind becomes inundated with possibilities. I'm naturally an overthinker in all areas of my life, and that extends to things I am passionate about. I feel this visceral need to explore the text provided, but also, the subtext. So, the media itself is a massive inspo. I am not the kind of person that can just write whenever I want. For me, writing is an arduous and tiring endeavour that takes me a long time to get through. I cannot write unless I have the bug for it- which makes finishing projects very... interesting. (I'm terrible at finishing books, I'm terrible at finishing fics... it's a problem) I do not tend to plan fics in advance. There are only 3 that I can say were minorly "planned" (Indoctrination, By Desire, and one that isn't written/published yet). But that's because they're all interconnected. Most of the time, the words just present themselves and I have to type them down otherwise I'll forget them forever.

I'll give an example of a few recent inspirations:

Blessed Hands was inspired by some real-life sad shit that I guess my mind needed to process

Your Love's Whore was written because a few weeks ago, there was a scorchingly hot day and I wanted to imagine what a jwds hot girl summer might look like

An unwritten fic I thought of last night was inspired by a scene from One Spring Night (I have an outline and gave it the creative title of "hallway". But I have no intention of actually writing it thus far)

Indoctrination was directly inspired by a cafedecanela post that I can't find nor have the time rn to find (but I will look later and link it)

Another huge inspiration/aid is music!!! I'm like everyone else and absolutely live for music. So, I use it to help direct what I want from a story (the emotions, atmosphere, the "vibe"). A few examples are:

Indoctrination was written whilst I listened to sappy, sad Korean rock on repeat for about 3 weeks straight

Your Love's Whore was heavily inspired by five songs in particular: . Posing in Bondage - Japanese Breakfast . Bedroom Hymns - Florence and the Machine . New Ways - Daughter . Your Clothes - Can't Swim . Your Love's Whore - Wolf Alice . and I listened to the album Brasilian Skies - Masayoshi Takanaka on repeat whilst actually writing as I struggled to write if I can hear English words, my brain gets distracted (I hope that makes sense)

I have a whole long-ass jwds playlist on Spotify (which I made as soon as I finished watching the show back in Feb). I love it so very much because there are some absolute bangers in there that are 100% jwds.

And I'm going to keep adding to it until I grow tired.

And how do you build the structure, think of the environment, and research?

Ooookay, now I'm actually going to have to give this a think. The wonderful thing about fanfiction is that a lot of the worldbuilding and aesthetic has been done for you. (Thank you to the cast and crew of Beyond Evil). So, it's quite easy to impose your own impression onto a piece and explore what's already been established. For the fics I have released, I did do research in the sense that I didn't start my fics first. By that, I mean, when I finished watching BE for the first time, I started writing an essay (which required a lot of research, rewatching the show, dissecting scenes, researching film theory, using my useless art degree lol) exploring the show's queer coding. I wrote about 15K words (mostly were just ramblings) until I realised that I needed to explore these characters in a more artistic way. This really stems from the fact that I feel so connected to Joo Won; he and I share a few unhealthy coping mechanisms... (it's the yikes times). I've always liked Joo Won; I didn't have to adjust to him, I always saw his pov and understood where he was going from. I just felt like I got him (which doesn't mean to say, I didn't also openly laugh at him), so I think I wanted to write to work through some identity stuff I have going on. I've trying to learn Hangul in my spare time, I love Korean cuisines so I've been naturally researching that in my personal life, I also love me some snooping- so I use google maps a lot to just look at South Korea (and anywhere in the world really) and gain an impression of what different areas are like. I look up historical events, I research pop culture, etc... and I basically just try to dive in and ingest as much information as I can to make the characters and their world feel as real as possible. When it comes to writing Joo Won, I also use my own experiences (as an English person) to influence his use of language and mindset. When I first wrote Indoctrination, my partner read some of it and told me to change some of my language choices because I used English slang that isn't very universal. I listened to some of the suggestions but not all because Joo Won would totally call people a "pasty dipshit wanker"; or use words like "chuffed", "gutted", "plastered", "dodgy" (and so on) and use the c-word like it's going out of style (as does almost every English person his age).

In terms of structure, I don't write chronologically. I just write whatever comes to mind and then piece it together and edit like crazy. However, I DO LOVE MAKING NOTES AND WRITING OVERLY DETAILED OUTLINES. So... I guess it depends on the story. My three surprise/procrastination fics that I didn't plan at all (Drone Bomb Me, take my name, and your blessed hands) are some of my favourites. (I wrote DBM in a day- which I don't think I have ever done before lol) We can contrast that against a fic I can't even begin to write because the words refuse to come to me, is living as an 8,000+ word outline.

So..... There's not a lot of method to my madness, just spiteful determination.

(oooooooohhh some cheeky screenshots... now we're getting personal)

Yeah... I'm not sure what else to say. It's all just luck and stress to be honest with you. I haven't written fanfiction in years(!!!). Previously, I was writing an original piece that is currently taking a nap.

I think I have mentioned this to you previously but I'm so very grateful for your kind support and words of encouragement. They mean so, so much to me. I am just a wee insecure baby that is the poster child of dyslexia. I know very little about the proper use (grammar, etc) of my mother tongue because of an unconventional schooling experience, soooo to have you say such lovely things about my work, is just *chef's kiss and tears* perfection. Thank you thank you thank you thank you I hope this answers your questions. I'm not sure I have haha!!

(also, please, get some sleep and make you're eating your favourite foods)

Bye for now!

#answered #beyond evil fanfiction #look at me pretending that I know what I'm doing #what an actress #also I should add tumblr and the fellow creatives on here are a massive inspo #there's some SUPER disgustingly talented people in this fandom #it should be illegal

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your-brilliant-lady-m · 3 years ago

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Part 4 - Basic Concepts of Miraculous Ladybug: Glamour

You can call it however you want: kid's show logic, superhero disguise logic, magical girl show logic, cartoon laws, suspension of disbelief, etc. But the fact that nobody recognises Marinette, Adrien and others when they are suited up IS NOT BAD WRITING. It's one of the main laws of this genre. That's not because characters are stupid, okay? So, being frustrated that everyone in the show acts stupid about this "wearing a mask that covers only eyes" trope is strange. This criticism is not valid or fair.

But, this trope has to make sense in-universe as a worldbuilding and narrative element.

Miraculous doesn't give us much direct information on how glamour works. And in this case, I think we need both SHOW and TELL. Because if you don't establish the glamour rules clearly, you are going to run into problems and create unfortunate implications with your storytelling choices.

Appearance

Miraculous obviously gives our heroes magical glamour. In "Lady WiFi" we find out that masks can't be taken off. It's magic. No other explanation is needed.

Miraculous can slightly change the appearance of users (eyes, face shape, height and hairstyles). People can identify and notice the hairstyles of heroes (numerous Ladybug wigs, statue in Copycat). Jagged Stone points out the change of hair when he mistakes Chloe for Ladybug ("Antibug"). But it's just a costume. There is no magic that prevents Jagged from understanding that Chloe isn't Ladybug. So, how does it work? But it's forgivable because it's cartoon logic. Suspension of disbelief works here, I suppose. I won't judge this too harshly.

Glamour also obviously prevents people from making a connection that Marinette and Ladybug have identical hairstyles. So people know that Ladybug wears her hair in pigtails, but magic does not allow them to notice similarities.

Another important question. Does glamour work on Kwamis? Can they see who is behind the mask?

New York Special makes it clear that magic does not affect robots and they can see through glamour. Does that mean that Markov, AI built by Max, knows the identities of Ladybug and Chat Noir? And it's never addressed.

Plagg in "Frightningale" says that holders can subconsciously choose their superhero appearance. This is actually pretty interesting and I like this idea a lot. Except the show is not consistent with this. The transformation of Master Fu looks identical to Nathalie's. And we have seen how different from each other Ladybug and Black Cat holders looked in the past. At the same time, Master Fu and Nino have different takes on Turtle superhero suit.

Age Glamour

Does age glamour exist? Do people see Ladybug, Chat Noir and other heroes as adults even when they look like teenagers to the audience (their height and build are smaller even when they are transformed)? Is that why no one ever questions the fact that children nearly die on a daily basis?

I mentioned unfortunate implications earlier. Well, this is where they come into play. Let's talk about "Copycat". A lot of people discussed it before me, so I won't bore you with details.

When I watched "Copycat" for the first time Theo's crush on Ladybug didn't bother me, because I thought that he sees Ladybug as his peer, a girl who is about 20-23 years old. Theo is an artist, his character design is that of an adult. He has his own studio, its appearance indicates that he did serious commissions in the past. The guy has no idea that Ladybug is like 13.

But then we get "Heroes' Day" and "Ladybug". And Hawkmoth calls them "kids", which means that there is no age glamour. Others see Ladybug and Chat Noir as teenagers. Perhaps, other Miraculous users aren't affected by age glamour. Therefore regular people see all heroes as adults but other heroes are able to guess their age more or less correctly. But you must spell this thing out because the audience can interpret "Copycat" differently. If there is no age glamour, then Theo is crushing on a teenage girl and he is fully aware of this fact. And this doesn't look good for your show.

The "No Age Glamour" theory is further confirmed in "Sapotis" where Alya just straight up analyses voice recordings and says that Ladybug is a girl their age. If glamour exists then it should also cover technology. Kwami can't be photographed. Face and voice recognition software shouldn't be able to analyse transformed superheroes and detect their identities in any way.

Besides, after "Sapotis" Alya should definitely be sure that Ladybug is not 5000 years old (also not an adult), especially after she wore Miraculous herself and was one door away from detransformed Ladybug.

SEASON 4 UPDATE! There's no age glamour after all.

In "Furious Fu" Su Han calls Chat Noir a child without knowing his identity. It means that everyone knows their superheroes are teenagers. "Copycat" can't be saved from that, uh, subtext anymore. No one questions the danger of their job or the balance of their lives outside of the mask. No one doubts their competence after "Origins" ever again. No one becomes annoyed after being bossed around by two teenagers in spandex. You had many opportunities to drop these details into the narrative. Someone could have been akumatized over this (I will not be ordered around by some magical kids!).

I don't know why writers decided not to use at least this idea and slightly adjust "Copycat" if they got rid of the age glamour completely. It can be explained as kid's show logic, but unfortunately, I'm reluctant to do it. If many characters sympathise with akuma victims on-screen, why not with the teenage superheroes who must fight them?

New York Special had this weird focus on collateral damage out of nowhere (the damage done by sentimonster Robostus) and yet it has 0 effect on the main story. No one in Paris is pissed that their 2 teenage protectors weren't there.

Ironically, "Furious Fu" and that one remark made by Su Han also created unfortunate implications for other moments in the show. Just hear me out. Apparently, Jagged Stone wrote a "thank you" song for Ladybug knowing that she is 13-15 year old child back in "Pixelator". Fandom is more than happy to roast Lila for lying about saving Jagged Stone's cat and him writing her a "thank you" song. Fandom claims that Lila's tale could harm Jagged's reputation, when he wrote a song for teenage Ladybug several weeks prior. Meanwhile, in-universe this lie is 100% believable.

If we put on "realism glasses", then both this whole song situation and Theo's crush in "Copycat" have uncomfortable implications. However, the show's canon can't be viewed and criticised through "realism glasses". I admit that bits and pieces of my criticisms are affected by these "glasses", but, ultimately, I'm trying to be fair and concentrate only on things that can't be justified by "cartoon logic and worldbuilding".

Could the existence of age glamour solve this problem of unfortunate implications and other concerns mentioned above? YES. Is it better for the narrative? YES. Is essential for the story? NOT QUITE. Could the absence of age glamour be called an irredeemable storytelling flaw? NO.

Disclaimer: On a side note, only older audience can notice these implications. Children, the target audience, most likely won't understand this subtext simply because they don't have enough experience. So, perhaps, this criticism is unfair, because these moments only look weird to me as an adult. It's like an adult joke in a cartoon that you don't get until you reach a certain age.

There's nothing technically wrong with adult writing a "thank you" song for a teenager. It's just an expression of gratitude. However, unfortunately, we live in a world, where adults normally wouldn't write songs for teens to express gratitude only. In real life similar actions would imply pedophilia and would be actively scorned by the public. No one would risk their reputation like that even if their intentions were genuinely pure and sincere. But this show can't be viewed through "realism glasses", because it's a cartoon and in certain cases we as the audience must use suspension of disbelief and pretend that certain things are possible for plot to happen.

Su Han also wants to give Ladybug and Black Cat to adults. Why didn't Master Fu do this then? Writers don't give us any explanation. Throughout the show we never question this up until the moment it's revealed that adults don't have time-limited powers. Then comes "Furious Fu". Story suddenly becomes self-aware here. Because apparently nothing prevented Fu from giving the most powerful Miraculous to adults who won't have time limit and will be more effective against Hawkmoth (see part 3 for more details).

I have a very good example of Age Glamour done right. It works in the story. There is no confusion or unfortunate implications. There is like one plothole connected to the glamour (it's been years and I still can't forgive them for Cornelia and Caleb) but otherwise, it's a pretty solid example of both show and tell. Clearly, writers wanted to avoid uncomfortable implications which are present in "Copycat". I am talking about W.I.T.C.H. comic books and animated series.

If you are not familiar with it, I'll give you a brief explanation. The story follows 5 girls, the Guardians of Kandrakar who are chosen to protect their world and parallel ones from evil. They receive magical powers from the amulet known as the Heart of Kandrakar. Their powers are based on elements: fire, water, earth, air and energy. Our main characters are about 13-15 years old. In the animated series they are younger and they attend middle school, making them 12-14 years old. But the transformation makes them look 18-20. They look like young women to each other and to other people. At the same time, people can recognise them, their looks and voice don't change. Most people don't know that they are really teenagers when they are not transformed and these people don't know that magic can make them look older. That's why everyone treats Guardians like adults when they are transformed. Comics establish this fact in the very beginning. In first issues characters state that they look older, we are also shown this multiple times.

In fact, one of the first side plots revolves around the fact that Irma uses her powers to sneak into the disco club to meet up with her crush. Irma is 13 at the beginning of the series, she is a high school freshman. Her crush, Andrew Hornby is a senior guy 17-18 years old. Irma has liked him for a long time and wants to impress him, so she decides to be clever about this. She transforms into her Guardian form of the 18-year-old girl, hides her wings, sneaks out to the club after her parents are asleep without any problem, and meets Andrew, who obviously doesn't recognise Irma in this girl who looks about his age. Smitten Andrew offers her a ride and 13-year-old Irma doesn't understand the implication of that offer, so she accepts. And, obviously, he decides that she is interested in more than just a ride home, since she agreed, and the comic implies that he fully intended for them to have sex in the backseat of his car. But Irma understands the implication only when Andrew tries to kiss her. She panics and turns him into a frog. And she actually pulls this "I need to look mature" trick more than once over the course of the series.

It's not the only situation where this age difference is handled well and makes sense. People who know the main characters in everyday life remark on their older appearance during transformation. Sometimes people flirt with Guardians when they are transformed. In one of the side-novels centred around Cornelia, she is worried that the prince of the realm they helped to save from famine would try to marry her. That never happens, but Cornelia actually brainstorms with her friends about how to tell the prince that she is really 15.

There are many other plot points where this happens, but I think that you got the idea. I really like how "Age Glamour" was handled in W.I.T.C.H.

How do we fix this? Create the situations where people offhandedly mention "Age Glamour" in the presence of Marinette or Adrien, use Kwami for this.

"Don't worry, dear. Chat Noir and Ladybug are adults, who know what they are doing. I am sure that they will handle this. "

Theo could say: "Oh, I wonder which university Ladybug goes to?"

"So, does that mean that other people see us as grown-ups, Tikki?"

A few words and boom, problem solved. Then allow the "show don't tell" rule do the rest.

#miraculous ladybug #ml #miraculous analysis #miraculous meta #ml meta #ml analysis #miraculous transformations #miraculous critical #miraculous ladybug critical #miraculous glamour #superhero glamour #miraculoustalesofladybugandcatnoir

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batim-rewritten · 3 years ago

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hopefully this ends up actually being a love letter to the game and not solely existing to just drag it and its fans into the dirt

Well, I hope so, too. The way I've tackled it has been exploring the game to its full potential, combining some of the best and my favorite parts of the fandom as well as original ideas and making everything tie together better, both story-wise and thematic-wise.

My mission was to make the story more satisfying to myself and whoever decides to listen to this thing. I've accomplished half of that so far. So, even if others don't like it at the end, I'm satisfied with what we've made.

But I honestly think we're onto something here. I really do think people are going to like it. And if any of you know me on AO3, you know how I write. Plus, I had a couple friends helping me, too. We've been working on it for two months so far, and I'm really proud of it.

I know what you mean. I really don't think my story is gonna feel that way. I still love BATIM, even though after all this time I've noticed how many flaws the writing has. I love every other part of the game, it's just the writing I'm setting out to fix. Though I did have to kill some darlings here and there, I think it'll be worth it.

The characters all shine and have more time in the spotlight, which they all deserved and needed. The worldbuilding has more depth. There's more of the cult and the Lost Ones. We thought about implications and subtext.

The first part of the Rewrite IS just pointing out what BATIM did wrong (after summarizing what it did right and why people liked it), but the Rewrite itself is gonna be none of that. If you've seen The Closer Look's video/rewrite on the new Star Wars trilogy, that's kind of the direction I wanna go. It won't feel the same, but a similar structure.

If people don't like my Rewrite? I am okay with that. It's more satisfying to me personally and everyone who's helped me with the story so far, which was the whole point anyway. I'm simply sharing it because I honestly think people will like it. If I'm wrong? Worth a shot.

I guess we'll see, right?

-Mod Dimonds

#dimond speaks #batim #batim rewrite #dimonds456 batim rewrite #mod dimonds #anon #asks #cassie if you wanna add anything go ahead

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deadwalkerpedia · 4 years ago

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The Walking Dead, “Days Gone Bye” | Analysis

The final season of The Walking Dead comes in August, so I decided to rewatch the show from the beginning as the end is nigh. TWD has been a part of me since I started to watch TV series, and I’ve watched Days Gone Bye more than seven times, so this is certainly one of the pieces of audiovisual media that I’ve consumed the most. To add a new interesting layer in my rewatches, I’ve decided to see the episodes with a critical and analytical lens, seeing it more than just as a pastime, and write my thoughts here. This will be a great ride for me, and I can’t wait to see again some iconic moments from TWD throughout the seasons and write about them.

Part 1: The World Before

Before getting into the first act of the episode, let me talk about the teaser – the first five minutes of the episode – quickly. As this is our introduction to the world of TWD, Days Gone Bye couldn’t simply start with Rick and Shane having a chat. So it was necessary that the teaser served as a way to establish both the tone and setting of this story, and it certainly does. The teaser tells us that what we are watching is a gritty survival horror story that takes place in a post-apocalyptic world, and the teaser establishes this perfectly without no more than two lines of dialogue. It is established visually: Rick stops his car on a deserted road with no traces of civilization anywhere, then goes to an abandoned gas station where other cars are – and those cars have dead bodies inside. From there, we know right from the start that this isn’t the world we live in. When Rick sees the young girl that is in fact a walker, it is established that this is a world where the main threat are zombies. At least for some part, as in future episodes the series will show us something far more scarier than walking cannibal dead bodies is the real danger.

Now storytelling-wise, TWD already proved its value in the first five minutes. Frank Darabont directed the episode and wrote the script, and his work in the episode both as director and writter is fantastic and set the bar high if the series wanted to have a consistency of greatness in its episodes. After the perfect five minutes purely composed of visual storytelling, the first scene of the first act is dialogue-heavy and character-driven. One would think that it is to establish to us that Rick and Shane are friends, that Rick has a wife and son and that they are cop buddies, and one would be right, but it is also more than simply introduction and exposition, and that’s the beauty of the audiovisual medium as a whole.

Reading books about screenplay writing, I’ve come to know more about subtext and its applications in both movies and series. Despite this first scene doing great work in introducing us to the two main characters of the season – their mindset, persona and some backstory – it also adds so much worldbuilding-wise. Shane goes on his rant about women not switching off the lights in a house before leaving it, and Rick talks about a discussion he and Lori had earlier. See, the teaser showed us a decaying world with walking bodies. Now, the first minutes of act one show us a world where people worry about such trivialities: switching off the lights. In the tagline for the first volume of the comic book, it reads “The world we knew is gone. The world of commerce and frivolous necessity has been replaced by a world of survival and responsibility“. The scene I mentioned is basically the live-action adaptation of it. We see the world of commerce and frivolous necessity in this introduction so we can understand better and fear the world of survival and responsibility that will come later in the episode. TWD started geniously: it went from visually-driven to dialogue-driven, and after that to visually-driven storytelling, all without losing its verisimilitude and charm.

Now, something about the visuals I loved: the grainy aspect. Because this episode was shot on film – in fact, up until season ten all episodes were shot on film – the film grain is obviously visible. But instead of being just an aesthetic choice – shooting in film or digital – I think it’s also meant to have implications tone-wise. The comic books this series adapt is in black-and-white (something unusual in American comics), but it’s because the writer Robert Kirkman wanted the comic to feel like a classic George Romero zombie flick, and it worked completely. Commercially, a black-and-white TV series wouldn’t be much embraced by a large and mainstream public, but I think that Darabont solved that problem and succeeded in maintaining an aesthetic similar to the feel the comic book wanted to transmit. The excessive film grain – something that made me feel like watching a Panos Cosmatos’ movie but without the acid trips – works because it resembles the Romero zombie flicks in color, like Dawn of the Dead. It is a classical and archetypal zombie story �� even if it subverts some conventions various times throughout the series – and the visuals tell us that.

Not only that, but the episode has many moments that resembled The Mist in some ways: the camera being close to its characters to make the story feel grounded and experienced by real people, the back shots to make the audience feel like they are following the characters in their journeys, the handhold camera moments that gives a documentary feel, adding a realistic perspective. All that grants a grounded vibe to the episode, which works because this is a story about how people react and live in a lawless world which can kill them at any possible moment without any warnings. It’s where chaos and anarchy reigns and where death always lurks. A story like that works better when it’s experienced through the eyes of the characters. It’s also best represented in the moment where Rick leaves the hospital and sees the sun for the first time. In the shot, the Sun is blinding us with its shining light, but then there’s a cut, and in the next shot we see only Rick covering his eyes while the blinding sun rays don’t make it to the camera. It’s the switch of subjective to objective perspective, as in the first we see the world with Rick eyes – it’s a man getting out of the dark for the first time in months – and in the second we see the same moment but from outside lens, and it showed us that this a day like any other where the sun doesn’t blind you. Besides, this episode has a low budget sensitivity – not meaning that the quality is subpar, but that it has an authenticity that is extremely convincing. It is that low budget quality that makes the story feel real in a certain way. That is, of course, until the tank in the middle of a city is shown, but even with the realism, it is still tangible, and the story continues to feel realistic in its depiction of a zombie apocalypse in the “real world”.

The whole sequence of the car chase and the shooting between the cops and the criminals is beautifully conducted by Darabont, who knows his craft remarkably and executes it in a manner like no one else does. The memorable shots, shot by Darabont, immortalize the whole sequence and reach its climax – the gunshot Rick suffers – perfectly in a crescendo that works better here than in the comics, this being an easy task, but still, Darabont managed to do it in an impressive way, totally deserving a bravado status.

Also, something that I also appreciated, and I think it’s overlooked: when the police cruiser where Rick and Shane are passes through a road, we see a single crow eating a roadkill. What do this mean exactly? Animals can’t turn to zombies so one might think this is only a moment with no meaning behind it. But now I interprete it as a symbol. It is meant to represent that society has be decaying long before the dead came to eat the living. It remembers me the first Mad Max, where the world is not in the same level as it appears in Mad Max 2: Road Warrior – a full-on post-apocalyptic society – but it is in its final stages, leaning to barbarism and uncontrollable chaos. The producers of TWD announced an anthology spin-off series named Tales of the Walking Dead, and it certainly would be interesting to see more of the transition between our world and the post-apocalyptic zombie-ridden world, showing the process in-between of transformation and decay.

Part 2: Brave New World

The second act starts as Rick steps out of the hospital and faces the current reality of his world, and it’s an ugly one. Rick sees dead bodies everywhere and discarded military gear. Something dreadful happened when he was in a coma. The world undergone a change so great in his sleep that it’s impressive that Rick didn’t drown in total madness when he first saw what’s left of society. Most of act two is about Rick having to come to terms with his new life: one entirely ruled by survival. Now, another interesting element that is also a symbol in my interpretation: the bicycle girl. The bicycle girl (which is the zombie without its lower body) is the first walker Rick encounters. He is scared by her and runs away from her with the bicycle that was there next to him. The bicycle girl is nothing more than the remains of the past life of Rick and the world before. It is dead and alive at the same time – like the walkers – but in a pitiful state. It can’t be on its feet and is always trying to grasp and touch Rick, but, ultimately, it can’t. Rick fears it, and because of that he runs.

Most of the second act is focused on the interactions of Rick and Morgan Jones. Morgan, after encountering Rick and saving him from a nearby walker, takes him inside his house, but fearing that the gunshot wound was in fact a walker bite, Morgan rightly tied Rick to a bed and waited for him to wake up to ask some questions. Now, it’s incredible how this episode never misses a beat and is not made of only three truly great scenes, but all of the scenes are great. The whole dinamic of Morgan explaining to Rick what happened and what it takes to live in this new world felt so natural that no critic could say it was bad exposition. It was exposition done right, revealing more about Morgan’s character, showing him as a good man and a father to his son Duane. It’s easy to understand why Rick and Morgan liked each other one day after meeting for the first time. The chemistry is real, and it’s unbelievable how seasons later, when they see each other again, the chemistry is still there.

Andrew Lincoln and Lennie James are spectacular actors. Their acting in this episode is astonishingly extraordinary. I’m pissed that they didn’t won any awards for it, they certainly deserve it. Andrew’s acting was great all way through, but when he first arrives at his house and cries for Lori and Carl you could feel the man’s pain and suffering. One moment that is perfect and maybe one of the bests of all TV history is when Rick is having an existential crisis. “Is this real? Am I here?”, asks Rick while facing the ground. It’s such a powerful reaction to the absurdity he is experiencing and it feels so damn real because Andrew Lincoln can cry like a pro and give the gaze of a man that is lost. Rick is lost. And this scene can provide such a powerful punch to the audience that you can’t help but be already invested in Rick’s journey. He just wants his family, so he can put some sense in a mad world. Without them, Rick is lost.

The second act makes us empathize more with Rick and Morgan. They both have admirable goals. They just want to live and provide for their family. Their bond is developed exceptionally in their final moments together – before Rick travels to Atlanta – that you are left caring for them and wanting a reunion. The final scenes of act two were made to make you feel emotional without doubt, and I’m sure that it worked on some people and made them fall in love with the series instantly. It’s when Rick kills bicycle girl and Morgan fails to kill his dead wife, now a walker. The soundtrack by Bear McCreary is phenomenal and adds so much dramatic and emotional weight to the scenes, and it fits perfectly with the tone of pretty much the core of the series. It’s a haunting song, a sorrowful one full of melancholy, but it also has a spark of hope in it. It makes a statement: everything is sadly collapsing around us, but there’s still hope of rebuilding. The Mercy of the Living is TWD summarized in an orchestral piece, and I feel like crying every time I listen to it, just like the piece Alive Inside of Telltale’s game, that also does a masterful job in creating a sad but hopeful atmosphere in its melody. The bicycle girl – which is the past Rick and the world before – must be killed by Rick if he wants to continue his voyage, to which destination is his family. Rick is teary and heartbroken in killing bicycle girl because now he has to fully embrace a life ruled by survival. “I’m sorry this happened to you.” is Rick final message and requiem to the world and consequently to his past self – a quiet Rick that didn’t want to discuss with Lori in front of Carl –, both who had problems that they couldn’t resolve before the tragedy that hit them.

Part 3: The Beginning

The third and last act are in fact the beginning. We saw a peak of a world before the zombie apocalypse and Rick waking up in this desolated society in the first two acts, but the third one is to introduce and set up what the series is about and what will do to its end: show the characters in a battle for survival, and ultimately in a quest for the return of humanity and civilization. Both are depicted in the scenes where Rick is trying to save himself from a horde of walkers that attack him and his horse, and the other with Shane’s group listening and trying to talk in the radio with a mysterious survivor (Rick himself) who warns about his coming into the city, showing their efforts to help fellow survivors who might enter Atlanta without knowing its dangers, thus demonstrating that they are still human after all.

The episode show us a little about the relationship of Shane and Lori, as well as a glimpse to their group. It wasn’t exactly necessary, but it doesn’t hurt in any way the season’s progress and development. The third act is best represented by Rick entering Atlanta and having to escape a humongous horde of walkers. Rick manages to survive by hiding in the tank that was parked in a street. The scene also show us that zombies had some intelligence – they crawl and try to open things – and some of them look cartoonishly green or grey, instead of the realistic putrid rotting flesh look the marvelous make-up by Greg Nicotero can provide. And both of these things are common to the iconography Romero made for the zombies. It’s very clear that Darabont takes inspirations from his movies and respect their legacy by expanding it to a new range of people and an audience that is maybe not that familiar with Romero – I wasn’t when I first watched TWD and when I saw Romero’s movies I was impressed by how it influenced the series.

Days Gone Bye is a masterclass of how a pilot should be made. This quintessential pilot introduces a storyline that will be finished within the episode. while also setting up what’s coming next in the season, laying ground for all the future episodes in the best way possible. It introduces a protagonist that proves that he can sustain a show on his own – he is a caring father, loving husband, a good man and a kind of Western hero, we see him riding in his horse towards the imminent danger full of guns and determination searching only for his family. The Walking Dead may not be recognized as a TV series that revolutionized the medium, but it revolutionized its genre, and overall it is a great series that deserves recognition, and so does Days Gone Bye. It is simply the perfect pilot.

#the walking dead #days gone bye #rick grimes

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jcmorrigan · 4 years ago

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001 - Kingdom Hearts

Favorite character: On the villain side: VEXEN IS BEST ORGANIZATION XIII MEMBER. Shoulda stayed evil, though. I like it when he complains and screams about everything and hates everyone. He's one of my favorite villains, just, like...in general. So fun to write. Also attached to Demyx, but I actually liked him more in III than II because it reminded me of my rawr lolspeek weeb days when I f/o'd him without knowing what f/o'ing was and then transitioned this to shipping VexDem like heck. On the hero side: MY GIRL KAIRI! But honorable mentions go to Sora, Riku, Aqua, Ven, Terra, Xion, Roxas, Lea, Ienzo, any Disney character I loved beforehand (this is way too fuckin many to list), Merlin (OKAY I WILL SINGLE HIM OUT), Yen Sid (I'LL SINGLE HIM OUT TOO), you know what let's also single out the Mickey+Donald+Goofy power trio...just...any KH hero who isn't part of the Yozora stuff or the KHUX stuff. ...Except I also LOVE Strelitzia, and she is the only KHUX-exclusive kiddo I care about but I care about her MANY. (Oh, and there's a least fave I have who's a "hero" but that's a debatable label). I would go on about why I love all of them but...that's too many characters to elaborate on

Least Favorite character: See, I think the real answer is Yozora, but the thing is I just tend to forget about him or not care (unless I'm doing a weird AU where he's Noctis' bratty Nobody, don't ask). He kinda represents the Shark Jump and I don't like watching that scene where he literally petrifies Sora for not being strong enough. But again, I can just kinda forget about him if he's not fed to me through a social-media unit. The one I LOVE TO HATE is Master Eraqus. The man actually triggered me back in the day. He is purity culture. He is the overbearing parent who will not accept you unless you are perfect. He is by and large the reason VAT didn't communicate with each other properly. He was the one who taught Aqua to think in absolutes. He lied to Ventus for years and then insisted to kill him was the only option, and then, when Terra tried to defend his brother figure/friend without knowing WHY Eraqus was doing such a thing, Eraqus didn't offer an explanation and instead switched targets to Terra citing that the problem was Terra's lack of OBEDIENCE. Eraqus is just very "my way or the highway" and uses his moral high horse to justify doing things that utterly lack compassion in any regard, which is something that GETS to me on a deep level, and let me tell you, I hated him for so long until I realized he was actually a super fuckin fun guy to imagine as a Bigger Bad in AUs that either have the KH protags teaming up or have villain protags needing a "greater good lawful evil" figure. And I just have found too many good memes about him cheating at chess and killing children. I have to laugh. Making fun of him is fun. He's a ridiculous character. That said, this recent trend of "erase everything bad he ever did and paint him as the ultimate hero of the saga" makes me raise eyebrows for SEVERAL reasons

5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon): VexDem, SoRiku, Kairi x Jaune Arc (RWBY), Aqua x Rosalina (Super Mario Galaxy) x Bayonetta, IsaLea, Ventus x Papyrus (Undertale), that was six but they all needed to be mentioned

Character I find most attractive: Ienzo. HOO BABY he is adorable. I saw someone make a Valentine's Day gifset of KH and FF characters shortly after III dropped and seeing his smiling face paired with a romance quote made my heart FLUTTER

Character I would marry: Probably Ienzo, see above. He's also a very kind guy. Favorite redemption in the modern era.

Character I would be best friends with: I hope the Destiny Trio would adopt me into their friend circle the way they've tended to do with every other inter-world denizen they've come across. I would love to have them as my positivity squad. Or, y'know, two positivities and one "it's okay to screw up" guy. Just. I would love to hang out with them. I often worry that I'm unlikable to my faves, but even though I would usually prefer to hang with the villains, I can pretty much guarantee these three would be open-minded about me. (Do I kiiiiinda wanna be friends with Vexen though? Of course I do. He'd hate me but maaaayyyyybe he would see me as one of his pet idiots who makes him look smarter, and we could bond over our fragile egos?)

a random thought: You ever think about that one NPC lady in Traverse Town who refused to tell you where she was from because it was none of her business? You ever wonder where she WAS from? What her world was like? How she ended up being the survivor of the Ansem Apocalypse when it hit her? All I know is that when I read her lines out loud (I used to read KH speech balloons out loud all the time), I gave her a Southern accent for no discernible reason and I stand by it. That woman has a twang.

An unpopular opinion: I don't want KHUX to be canon because I feel it's smaller-scale and takes a lot of mystery out of the worldbuilding. I always assume that the KHverse just includes ALL worlds in fiction, and that includes their thousand-year histories, meaning the Age of Fairy Tales should've happened long long long LONG LONG LONG ago and not five generations. And whatever screwed up the world should've been more than just five people having a fight, and whatever saved it should've been more than just five people getting along, and Daybreak Town really suffers from having to stick to mobile-friendly graphics and therefore is the least aesthetically attractive KH town ever, and I don't like that Lauriam and Elrena used to be such selfless people. I do still love Strelitzia because she's shy and relatable and quirky (sitting on the roof) and she questions authority and if you go with shipping subtext she's probably bi (or pan?), but I don't like the "Lauriam's dead sister for his arc's drama" bit. I liked when Marluxia was angry because he wanted to run Organization XIII but it was in the hands of an idiot who wasn't him. And more than anything I just like imagining that the Age of Fairy Tales was something bigger, further in the past, and more mysterious than something designed for a mobile game. Scala ad Caelum, however, I like a lot better because there IS a lot of mystery there and also it's a very pretty town with an amazing design.

my canon OTP: I really only count the Disney couples as the "canon" ones, so this is a question of picking my favorite Disney couple that shows up onscreen. I hope I'm not forgetting an important one, but I think the title has to go to Aladdin/Jasmine, which is always perfect in everything. (This would be an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT STORY if KH had ever adapted Treasure Planet, and if it ever gets the mind to adapt Treasure Planet then even if I don't care about that game I will immediately declare that Amelia/Doppler takes the KH canon OTP crown. *taps watch* Get on it Squenix)

Non-canon OTP: SoRiku, which I counted as "basically canon" after DDD until III decided it wasn't sure. But I'm just a sucker for how DDD is the two of them all "HE'S GOT MY BACK AND I'VE GOT HIS AND I'D DO ANYTHING FOR HIM SO LONG AS HE'S HAPPY." It's just the best kind of Friends-to-Lovers, except when you take all canon into account it's Friends-to-Rivals-to-Enemies-to-Friends-to-Lovers and that's a very juicy dynamic. BUT ALSO: VexDem, which is a nostalgia ship SO STRONG I had to accept that it eclipsed my former Vexen ships by a mile and I wanted to go back to my roots. That one, I have a much longer essay about that I'll just have you refer to so I don't repeat myself for pages. To make a long story short, their scene in III was JUST DELICIOUS.

most badass character: OOF THEY'RE ALL BADASS but in the end it's between Sora and Aqua, because Sora gets the widest RANGE of abilities across the series that he masters while Aqua gets the most POWERFUL abilities due to her Mastery (Command Styles seem like they'd be the most OP things ever in-universe and I'm here for it because flashy battle moves make brain go brr).

pairing I am not a fan of: SOKAI, Xehaqus, RikuNami, Vanitas/anyone not evil

character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): OH BOY. KAIRI THE MOST. YOU ALL KNOW WHY: lack of screen time, Fridging for drama, forced romance to invite death flags (they really wanted to milk that death to get people talking didn't they?), giving Alyson Stoner ZERO direction to actually follow up on Hayden Panettiere's performance. But then I remember that they made Vexen redeem and lose his entire personality and I just...uuugghhhh. I can't believe he died twice in this series. And then Demyx is FUN but also I know he's flipped sides as well, which means he won't be fun much longer! Xehanort seems to switch motivations to whatever makes him the biggest threat (and several of Eraqus' old flaws seem to be mysteriously glued onto him), Sora isn't a motormouth anymore, Riku just doesn't get anyone who cares about him anymore because everyone's distracted by Sora and Kairi, IS ANYBODY GOING TO ADDRESS THE ACTUAL ISSUES THAT DROVE THE WAYFINDER TRIO APART, oh God Marluxia and Larxene you're good guys now what have they done to you

favourite friendship: I really like each of the trios. But you know what's even BETTER than the trios? If you put...all of the trios together...meaning Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, Aqua, Terra, Ven, Roxas, Xion, Lea, Hayner, Pence, Olette...and then you added Isa back in there...and you gave them Ienzo...and you brought back Naminé...and you say that Subject X is Strelitzia and you have her turn back up so she can have justice done...AND YOU HAVE AN ULTRA KEYBLADE GROUP OF FRIENDS. As for Vexen, any purely platonic relationship I have for him is a crossover but trust me I have many crossover pals for he

character I want to adopt or be adopted by: See everyone I listed above in the friendship question. They can either mentor me or let me be their big sis/mom. But also, I will GLADLY be Merlin or Yen Sid's daughter. (But also would I kiiiiinda wanna be a VexDem daughter? This is the worst idea. Still wanna try)

#kingdom hearts

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capsgirl19 · 4 years ago

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wait I wanna hear about the gay subtext and wasted potential of teen beach 2

Okay, strap in because I don’t do elevator pitches. Major spoilers for Teen Beach Movies 1&2. And a readmore because this is LONG!

SO. Idk if this is a common observation, but it seemed fairly obvious to me that Lela fell hard in love with Mack over the course of the first movie. She felt trapped by gender roles, obligated to pursue a relationship with a boy over and over again, never even considering that there might be something more until this girl unlike anyone she’s ever met crashes into her life saying that she can do anything men can do, that she doesn’t have to fit into a little box. I legit thought the scene in her bedroom might be her confessing to being gay, though I knew it wouldn’t be. And like... the necklace exchange? The extended hug at the end? Not to mention in the second one, she’s desperate to escape her own universe so she can be with Mack again, desperate to live in a world where she’s allowed to be her true self. The fact that Brady turns into a garbage fire in that one doesn’t help my opinions on the canon pairings, either. By all rights, Lela’s story in the second movie ought to be a tragedy. She escapes a world defined by rigid expectations that she be in a relationship with a man to get back to the girl who changed her life. And she makes it! And she’s happy! And then it turns out everyone she loves will die if she doesn’t go back to her own life. She makes this tremendous sacrifice to save her entire universe, and honestly a sad gay story is cliche, but imo better than doing what they actually did with that ending.

As a little aside, can we talk about the unbelievable amount of lip service in these movies that the second one undermines with its entire plot? In the first movie Brady was kinda dumb, but a seemingly good boyfriend. Mack was so about Girl Power that she was trying to bring third wave feminism to the early sixties. In the second one Brady is sulky, jealous for no reason, dumps his girlfriend because HIS TRASH ASS fucking forgot they had plans, and never even has to apologize for it. On the contrary, Mack apologizes to HIM! When she never did anything to so much as suggest she’d find his interests stupid! I digress, sorry, it pissed me off to no end.

That finished, let’s get into the meta. While I don’t think the writers realized it, they wrote a super interesting multiverse. We’ve got the prime universe, the one Mack and Brady are from, which is the one all the others spawn from. My theory is that literally anyone can create a universe by writing about one. The intricacy of the created universe is based on how much worldbuilding goes into it, and the better thought-out the universe, the stronger the fabric of reality surrounding it will be, and the harder it’ll be to change from its intended path. This isn’t a new concept, but there’s an interesting level of equity in the fact that secondary universes can rewrite the entire timeline of the primary one if they change enough. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Wet Side Story is a sleepy little universe, not much thought put into how it runs at all. The characters sing and dance their way through the same summer over and over again in a contented daze, like the lotus eaters of the Odyssey. And then along come Mack and Brady, to stretch at the delicate chiffon of this simple place. The characters closest to them begin to stir from their trances, and there’s no way to go back. No way to unknow. Only an endless summer, a stretching eternity of pretending, and Lela can’t stand it. With barely a few months between, she’s pulling that fabric in the opposite direction trying to get back to the girl who captured her mind and her heart, currently in a failing relationship. And then she has to go back. She doesn’t want to. Mack seems to wish she could stay, if only for Lela’s own sake. She and Tanner return to their own universe, but not before Mack tells her that she can control her own destiny and shape her universe to her whims. Lela takes this to heart, becoming the solo star of the film. It’s too much. The thin fabric separating her universe from the primary one tears as she severely alters its timeline, allowing her to throw Mack a leather jacket matching her own through a movie screen, and shoot her a sly wink as she dances along to the movie. This is the end of Teen Beach 2, and oh boy, do I have sequel ideas.

Here’s the setup: so. Lela goes home. Whoever wrote the movie she’s in has long since abandoned caring for the universe they never bothered to build a world for, and their grip is weak. It’s easy to wrest the pen from that loose hand, to bend her world around her until it suits her desires, and she writes a great story. But it still feels empty. Lela is the queen of the beach, but her friends still seem their happiest playing their new roles, over and over again. She ascends to godhood, taking the reins of her own universe, but it’s lonely at the top and she’s as high as a person can go. She is peerless. She has nothing but time to ponder the nature of everything, and to yearn for the only equal she ever had.

The final film doesn’t open with her, though, and this one’s a fuckin’ doozy. Think Infinity War (the comic, not the movie, and maybe a little bit of Marvel’s Illuminati plotline too) meets a lesbian pulp novel. It opens with Mack, a few years later, now in college studying oceanography. Things keep sort of... glitching out. The camera pans past a character or scene from Lela, Queen of the Beach, or maybe even Wet Side Story, but when Mack looks back at it it’s always normal again. She decides she’s being silly, and it’s just been awhile since she watched her favorite movie, so that night she makes some time and puts it on. Lela herself steps out of the screen after one of her numbers and restores Mack’s memories of the timeline that got dead-ended by Lela’s alteration of her own universe. Mack is thrilled to see her after so long, and they hug, Mack explaining what she’s been doing in the time they’ve been apart. For Lela, it’s only been a year, and she never aged to begin with. Lela tells Mack how she took her advice, she changed her movie, but things were still so unbearably lonely. She tells her that whoever created their multiverse is cruel, that they had no regard for the people within, but that it’s alright. Lela knows how to handle indifferent creators, after all. She’s going to merge it all into one universe, no hierarchies, that she personally will oversee. She’s come to ask Mack to rule at her side.

Mack is afraid of her power and afraid of her ideas. She tries to talk Lela out of it, but to no avail. Lela is deeply sad that Mack doesn’t see things her way, but out of love for the other girl and a genuine belief that she’s too powerful to be stopped, once again forging her own destiny, she folds the necklace into Mack’s palm and returns to her own universe to continue her work.

Mack and Brady went their separate ways after high school, not on bad terms, but because a long-distance relationship didn’t seem realistic. This is the first time they’ve spoken since she left for college, but Brady is her only hope for someone who might understand. She manages to jog his memory, and they have to work together to try and prevent Lela from remaking all of creation. There are posters throughout which serve as markers of how close she is to achieving her goals, shifting gradually closer to their final form: Lela in iconic pink jacket leaning against the side of a motorcycle on a black-sand beach, a galactic sky behind her. The title reads, “LELA: QUEEN OF THE MULTIVERSE.” This is also the working title of the third movie.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand that’s all I got! How does it end? I don’t know! Probably Lela doesn’t merge the multiverse into one place, because that’s never a great plan. Maybe she just gets to live in Mack’s universe and go to college and find a girlfriend and have a good life? And her movie’s about Tanner and Bucky now (bc holy god there’s not as much of a story there but Tanner is fucking gay as hell), but it has the same story as the original? That might be good. Could also be called “Mack and Brady Save the Multiverse” idk.

#listen I know there's.#Some Tropes in here.#but consider:#I'm gay and I like them.#teen beach movie #teen beach 2 #this is probably so much more than you wanted lmao

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friendofhayley · 5 years ago

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ship history meme

Embrace your past and get to know your friends’ fandom origins!

Rules: Post gifs of your fandoms / ships starting with your most current hyperfixation and work backwards. (Bonus points if you share any stories about how or when you got into that ship! But not necessary!!) Then tag anyone whose fandom history you’d like to learn about!

Tagged by the most gorgeous, smartest, sweetest, and kindest person in my life @sightetsound <3 Sorry y’all, I have a lot of hyperfixations and I’m on NyQuil!

1. Katsuki Bakugo and Eijiro Kirishima, My Hero Academia - I literally can’t watch Season 4 until it’s finished because my heart will Explode if I’m left on a cliffhanger involving these too!!! (Unbreakable T.T <3) I don’t usually like animes but I fell in love with his trash bastard and his soft rock boyfriend by the villain’s attack in S1. It all started when I got a TikTok because a Very Hot Bakugo cosplayer was on there. (Literally, their rendition of Bakugo is just, umph. They have appeared in my dream.). As she got more popular he started cosplaying more of Class 1-A of MHA, and I kept wondering?? What the fuck is this anime about?? Why is there an alien girl?? I soon gave in and watched the show to gain context to this thirst trap. I have so many feels for these boys, even though I don’t post on them much here, and T.T

2. Alec Lightwood and Magnus Bane, Shadowhunters - I literally almost wrote my thesis because of this ship. I got into Shadowhunters because I was depressed in a foreign, racist country where I couldn’t go outside alone because old white men would corner me on the street, and everyone was talking about how Mike from Glee was kissing a guy at a wedding? Instead of partying during my study abroad trip, I gobbled down Malec content. And like who wouldn’t?? Harry Shum Jr. was playing a bisexual warlock?? And he had lines and a main character role??? An interracial couple where the characters are both POC?? Sign me up! But then I quickly fell in love with awkward gayby Alec and immediately knew how it felt to be in his shoes. (Disclaimer: I still haven’t finished the show because I don’t want their story to end, but just seeing their wedding scene????? Tears!!!!!!!!!! Both wedding scenes! I-) I just love how soft they look at each as they realize how lucky they are to be able to fall in love against the odds. T.T They deserve the world and all the warlock and shadowhunter babies and T.T This is just going to devolve into me crying so-

3. Stiles Stilinski and Derek Hale, Teen Wolf - I got into Teen Wolf to escape the hellfire that had become the Glee fandom around S3-S4. (Tbh it might have been Dereklei’s constant Sterek content on my dash that led me to give in.) Stiles was bi (through subtext) and definitely turned on by an older werewolf. What more could a depressed Gleek ask for? And listen - now looking back, Sterek is definitely gay Twilight - if Bella was snarkier, had a mental illness, and also a personality. Sterek was the ship to get me back into writing fanfiction and where I could read paranormal characters working through PTSD, ADHD, and other mental illnesses while fighting monsters and having unrealistic sex! I also love those future fics where Beacon Hills isn’t a Hellmouth anymore, and everyone’s alive and just living as one big found family. Truly, Derek deserves the world and I love him so much, and Stiles definitely agrees.

4. Louis Tomlinson and Harry Styles, One Direction - If it’s a surprise that I’m a dark larrie, please read my bio. HL made me believe that love is real and exists and can last for years. I got into One Direction in 2011 through a Lilo fanfic, but as soon as I watched the Video Diaries,,,we knew. Louis has saved my life in ways I can’t describe and the songs that they’ve written for each other through their tough times are so inspiring to listen and dance to. Seeing how they’ve been dragged apart by management, Sony Entertainment, and the whole music industry as a whole even though they exist in glass closets is very disheartening to see. But their resilience that they show through their art (Only the Brave, Sweet Creature, If I Could Fly, and like so many others) is always there. If you want to fall in this rabbit hole, look at freddieismyqueen on YT and come inside lol. Larry is real.

5. Kurt Hummel and Blaine Anderson, Glee - the ship that got me on Tumblr! I didn’t start watching Glee until the summer before S2 came out. My whole choir was into it and I didn’t want to be “mainstream”, but Kurt was the first openly gay teen character that I saw on TV. When I heard a character played by Darren Criss, a musical theater YT legend from AVPM, I had to watch it. I ended up binging the first season with those Netflix DVDs during summer break (yeah remember when Netflix wasn’t streaming? lol). I watched every episode of that god-forsaken show the night of (or night after illegally, hidden from my parents) for that ship, and then me and my best friend would rant about it for the whole week: rinse and repeat. The episode they got together made me scream and I definitely put those Glee Rewind songs in my iPhone. (Fun fact: I used to cry at night because I wished someone like Kurt could love me like that because I heavily related to Blaine and his whole situation). I naturally stopped watching Glee the moment they broke them up and I’m still mad at their hasty attempt to marry them out of nowhere with no well-written getting together / make-up arc other than Jigsaw?? and a barn wedding?? As if Hummel would. What a trash fire. But dang, Glee fanfics have some of the dirtiest, kinkiest, forbidden fics out there. If you were ever on Glee_Kink_Meme on LJ, you know.

6. Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy, Harry Potter - the ship that started it all, the big kahuna, the ultimate enemies to lovers for 90s kids. Drarry got me into the fandom world in middle school, where I basically lived on FFN and LJ while pretending to do my homework. I used to get ready every day by watching the same playlist of “The best Harry Potter videos on Youtube!” (curated by Ariel333Lindt, who was the only queer person I knew but lived in Eastern Europe, where I could see two gay people kiss and fall in love in the safety of my room through badly photoshopped videos. Please check out that playlist). I just love how each fic is a microcosm where they have to construct how magical systems work, the backstories of pureblood families, creatures, or just wizarding culture for the end goal of having Drarry fuck and fall in love! I love redemption arcs that take 200k to achieve, I love dark!Harry takes, and every single different damn take on Narcissa, Pansy, and Millicent - because deep down that’s the writer trying to come to turns on whether or not Draco should be redeemed to get together with Harry. (I mean we all know they’re obsessed with each other, book 6 anyone?) I feel like Drarry fics have the best worldbuilding and characterizations of these characters, and I just love those moments when Draco and Harry take a moment to take a breath together and realize how far they’ve come. No one else can understand how it felt to be the pariah or the chosen one, they both interacted with Voldemort the most, and they have the most history together. They should have gotten together! But I mean the author’s dead, am I right?

So that was a lot! Those are all the ships that impacted me that I still participate with. They have shaped me for better or worse, and have made me learn more about who I am and what I want (or don’t want) in a relationship. This was the most fun essay I’ve ever written on NyQuil!

I’m tagging @homosociallyyours because I really want to know your fandom story! Also @stozierbrak because I love you and must hear you gush about your boys. I’m also tagging @iamaqualady because you’re literally the most intriguing person I know and I’m glad we’re friends even though we haven’t interacted that much? ish?

#tag #me #kiribaku #drarry #sterek

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feedbackest · 4 years ago

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list of everything adventure time does right and wrong. for fun

bad (comprehensive)

The King of Ooo - he’s just lame. he’s kinda supposed to be a goofball antagonist but the show has enough other characters who are much better at that, he gets outshone hard and he probably should’ve been confined to Apple Wedding

LSP as a central character - i think LSP makes a good supporting character, but i also think she struggles hard to move beyond that. the creators try a handful of times to give her a lead role and it almost always just makes for a bad experience. thankfully they figured out how to make her work with a more important role for Elements

S5E30 Frost & Fire - it’s just... bad. aside from this one episode Finn and Flame Princess are very well written together, but this feels like a temporary butchering of Finn’s character. he’d been the main character for 5 and a half season at this point, so it’s virtually impossible to write him making obviously incorrect and unsympathetic mistakes and still have it be engaging. this is just frustrating and hard to watch. the show has its moments of teaching pretty obvious moral platitudes as a result of being a kids’ show, and it has its moments of delving into much more mature emotional processes and relationship dynamics, this episode is like a weird uncanny valley melding of the two. both Finn and FP had very good character arcs as a direct result and the dynamic they had as exes was probably their best, so maybe it’s worth it, but that doesn’t make this episode itself any better

S7E13 Stakes, Part 8: The Dark Cloud - i do not like that Marceline was turned back into a vampire. otherwise Stakes, including this episode, is a very good series, especially for PB and Marcy, but Marcy being vamp’d again at the end felt like the only real instance of the show deciding the status quo is god over a major development. i get that the point of that Everything Stays song is that the change is still there, but getting her vampirism removed was a nice capstone to the rest of her character development to that point, and undoing that feels pretty :/

sometimes filler is boring - it feels weird to call anything “filler” in what was, at its foundation, a children’s anthological adventure-comedy, but sometimes the inconsequential one-off episodes are just kinda meh. most of them are good though

that's pretty much it. note that all of these are either rectified in the show in some way or are inconsequential

good (non-comprehensive)

worldbuilding - perhaps the most obvious thing the show does right, the world and history surrounding Ooo is rich in both concept and execution. the show strikes the perfect level of balance between explanation and mystery to achieve what it’s going for in the lore. compare the handling of the Great Mushroom War to one of its more obvious counterparts, the day the bombs dropped in Fallout, and i think AT does a better job at setting up a world-defining catastrophe that is relevant to the immediate plot without being over-centralizing in the tone or atmosphere. it’s just a very interesting and rewarding world to learn about as the show goes on all round

Finn - while i would call Finn probably the best character in the show overall, i’m not sure what all i can say about him. as the main character in a show which compromises something like 4 years of his teenage and is therefore pretty much running his own coming-of-age subplot throughout the entire series, i don’t think it’s any surprise that he has the most fulfilling character arc in the entire series. it’s great to watch him grow over 10 seasons and he’s a wonderfully enjoyable protagonist (aside from the one instance mentioned above)

Bonnibel Bubblegum - before Islands, i was very prepared to just call her the best character in the show. for about the first half of the show, she’s very good, and from go i think it’s hard to not make her one of the best characters just from her initial concept: a lowkey badass princess who obviously cares for her subjects and can find solution for pretty much anything? she’s impossible to not like. and then in season 6 the show stops taking how cool she is for granted. it hinted at some friction with her first interactions with Flame Princess in season 5, and then in The Cooler, FP, and broadly the whole show, opens up a critical question: is Princess Bubblegum actually a good guy? then the show launches a pretty deep investigation into her character and how the way she runs business affects others beyond her own perspective, for pretty much the rest of the show, and lands on the answer “she can be.” it not only gives Bubblegum an arc, but one of the best ones on the show, when, as mentioned before, she was already a really good character without one

Bubblegum and Marceline - in my opinion, the best written pair of characters in the show, although i could see arguments for some others. while Finn has the best singular character arc, the relationship arc between Peebs and Marcy is the best of its kind on the show. they were engaging as exes, great when they were starting to be friends again and then eventually rekindling, to the point where when the creators were finally able to bring everything out of subtext in the finale, it was quite possibly the best single moment of the show. the dynamic between these two is so great throughout the show that, again, i’m just not even quite sure what all i can really say about it beyond that

Simon Petrikov - the most tragic character on the show. i don’t think anyone else on the show is as liable to bring me close to crying, basically and flashback involving Simon and Marceline, or Simon and Betty, or any frustrated, one-sided interaction between either pair can and will make my eyes water. maybe i’m just a sucker for the losing-someone-to-mental-degredation type grief stories

Marceline - i’m putting her this late because i’ve kinda already talked about most of what makes her great. she’s a good enough character in her own right, but most of what makes her really come together is a direct result of her history and dynamics with other characters

exes - i’ve alluded to it twice already, but the show writes ex dynamics between its primary and secondary characters, and whenever it does it handles them in a way that is both mature and gives both characters involved very rewarding character arcs. it’s sort of emblematic of the sorts of stuff the creators would write into the show that would go almost completely over the original primary audience’s heads but lends the show a real sense of depth that pushes it over the edge

everything else - like everything else i haven’t discussed here is good to great. the stuff i remembered from when the show was first airing back when i was in middle school holds up better than i would have expected and the material beyond that goes similarly well above my expectations. it’s pretty dang good

#op #sorry for the long post i wanted to talk about i thing i liked i haven't really done so in a little bit

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centrally-unplanned · 5 years ago

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The Phantom of the Opera Movie: How (not) to Adapt Your Fanfic to Stage & Screen

I recently watched the infamously-maligned trainwreck that is the 2004 Phantom of the Opera film adaptation of the stage musical, which lived up to its reputation! Rehashing the atrocious casting of literally-sang-for-the-first-time-two-weeks-before-filming-Music-of-the-Night Gerard Butler as the Phantom is well-trod territory, but I don't think that is the real crux of the film's failings. Instead, I think it serves as a quintessential example of the failure to transition from stage to screen - and how lucky the stage adaptation was.

For the "PotO" uninitiated, despite the endless shipping the titular Phantom and the female deuteragonist Christine do not have a romantic relationship. Oh the Phantom is trying to get down with that, for sure, but she sees him as either a ghost, an angel, or a terrorist at various points, never a credible love interest. In the original novel this is extremely explicit, and it is actually preserved in the stage adaptation - though as you realize with this film not intentionally.

In a stage musical, audiences don't really "suspend disbelief" the way they do for something like movies. There is one or more human beings, right in front of them, being real people in a wooden box with minimalist decour - the artifice is inescapable. Which is fine, actually! Instead of being immersed in the worldbuilding the audience can appreciate the craft of it all, the acting chops of the leads and the high notes they hit and the cool set designs around them. As such strong plots for musicals aren't really required; details are skipped over in exchange for focusing on other aesthetic elements. More importantly for our purposes, in a musical like Phantom of the Opera the audience isn't set up to expect a tight directorial vision, with instead the characters being the a product of the choices of the actors themselves - people even look out for the different interpretations different leads will bring to the same script. Each performance is itself an adaptation.

This lack of verisimilitude does wonders for the musical version of Phantom of the Opera. Honestly, plot-wise and arc-wise? Phantom of the Opera isn’t that great. Christine, one of the supposed leads, has no motivation for like 90% of run-time, instead being buffeted about by the whims of other, more powerful characters (just like early 20th century France ooooh, eat it Leroux), and Raoul, her earnest, wealthy suitor-cum-fiance, is the dried cement of love interests with no arc to speak of. Lots of plot elements are covered quickly and left vague as to their meaning. But really, who cares? You get to watch a tortured, corrupted genius offer a panoply of shadowed delights to a beautiful ingenue in a rock-opera baritone, and Rage Against The System so hard when spurned they drop a God-damn chandelier on the stage - that’s really all you need!

In the stage musical there is often - lets be honest very often - sexual subtext between the Phantom and Christine. But that is the choice of the actors, it's not in the script, it stays subtext. You are there to watch those actors put their spin on it and take it to the limit - let them have fun with the material! On stage it serves a great metaphorical function; to be tempted by music, by the mystery of darkness, has been metaphorical sex for so long it needs no more explication.

Now, however, we loop back to the movie adaption, with two key points to establish. First, movies do not work like musicals. There is no live person in front of you, every shot is the product of a dozen takes and as many hours of editing choices, and as a viewer you are dragged along lockstep seeing the results of these choices. All of this is in the service of building a cohesive vision that allows the audience to fully suspend disbelief. The price for this immersion is that now every moment of the film is imbued with intent. Everything has to be there for a reason, the way things in reality are - or more accurately the way we want reality to be. To quote Best Girl Mizusaki:

(Just when you thought I was going to write a media essay without being a huge weeb for once, huh?)

What's true for animation is almost as true for film, all of which means that how characters act is no longer an actor on stage doing their spin but the cohesive narrative of a story.

Second, the movie takes all of that fanshipping sexual subtext and cranks it all the way up the nosebleed seats, while changing none of the relevant plot points. In fact, it adds plot details to strip away the musical’s ambiguity! One of Christine's opening scenes, only briefly touched on in the stage musical, explains cleanly that she considers the Phantom the angel of her dead father come down to protect and guide her. Later in the show, as the Phantom's villainy becomes more apparent, when propositioned by Raoul her only objection is to how the Phantom might hurt her if he found out. Well after all of his temptations, rage, and villainy, near the climax of the film, she still sings in a graveyard about her uncertainty over whether or not he is a literal ghost or spirit of her father. So the plot structure is preserved and explicit - Christine is drawn to him due to his musical talent and offerings of instruction, is unsure if he is even human, but realizes his corporeality, villainy, and fundamental pitiable humanity at the end. Raoul throughout is her explicit, engaged-to-be-married romantic partner.

So then why are her and the Phantom fucking??

Seriously, I cannot undersell how sexual their scenes are.They are all over each other, fingers gliding over skin, and the next scene after this one is her in his bed with sex-hair all over the place! This subtext is continued in every scene they have together, long after he has been revealed as a murderer. At one point he confronts her in public, with her fiance watching, and it's still played like he is the Tuxedo Mask to her Sailor Moon. Even the scene where she takes off his mask is shot like it was foreplay-gone-wrong, and the Phantom just forgets to say his safeword in time (This is why you pre-negotiate about your kinks, all!).

Any movie-goer understands what the intent of scenes like these are, why a director would choose these actions & shots; they want us to know that they are getting busy off camera, even if only by implication. We know they don't actually do that because there is a book to refer back to but damn does this movie want us to forget that...in these scenes. Which is the problem, of course - the rest of the movie operates as normal! In the above scene Christine thinks the Phantom is, again I must emphasize this, the ghost of her father; apparently she is going for the reverse-Oedipus achievement but no one told the rest of the script. Is she lying to Raoul about her love and her reasons? Is she actually tempted? Stop telling me you are unlovable via haunted monologues Gerard Butler, you look like testosterone on a stick and y'all boned literally five minutes ago, I am not buying it!

The subtext and the text are at war with each other - and given that, as we established, the dynamic between the Phantom & Christine is really the only interesting part about this story, strip that down to a muddled mess and you really have nothing left. And in a movie, subtext like this is just another form of text - the director chose these shots, it's intended. Beyond the terrible vocal performances and sometimes baffling shot direction, the movie's biggest failing is this schizophrenic mismatch between the script and the actions on screen which is a problem the stage musical honestly didn't have to worry about. These scenes are not set up like this, and the ability to add subtext by the actors is just fundamentally limited by the medium; it cannot touch the story itself, which isn't even the focus of the audiences. Even if these contradictions did exist more in the stage musical, they wouldn't doom it due to the nature of said medium.

Which is very, very fortunate, because there is one final point to make - Andrew Lloyd Weber, the creator of the stage musical, wholeheartedly approved of this direction for the movie. He produced the film, wrote the screenplay, chose the director, the works - this is his film. And, as is apparently from interviews and a...not fondly remembered stage sequel to the musical that he wrote, he ships the Phantom and Christine hard. Not in the "oh I love their dynamic on screen way", but in the Ao3 sort-by-fetish-tags "they are my Trash'' way. And I would never begrudge a man his ships, but apparently he was not content to keep it away from the canon. He absolutely reads the stage musical this way as well! It's just one of those interesting ironies of life - one of the most successful adaptations of a book to a stage musical was made by someone who, in my opinion, did not grasp the fundamentals of the story he was adapting. We just didn't notice because the medium didn't care, and also damn can he write a score that slaps.

I would not be the first person to say that this movie for Andrew Lloyd Weber is something of a George Lucas moment for him, a creator completely missing the appeal of his own work; but after seeing it the comparison rang deeply true. The Phantom of the Opera movie is truly the Phantom Menace of musicals.

No, I don't feel bad for that last line, why do you ask?

#I had to edit the Eizouken screenshot because the subtitles appeared at an awkward moment #So I just took a adjoining frame that looked much cleaner and had a better pose and re-inserted the subtitles #I def went way too far for a random Eizouken reference - anything for the Brand I guess!#poto #phantom of the opera #media essays

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antimatterpod · 5 years ago

Text

Transcript - 47. Pride And Prejudice In the Original Romulan

If you found the audio on this ep a little painful (and I don’t blame you at all, so did I!), here is the transcript!

Liz: Welcome to Antimatter Pod, a Star Trek podcast where we discuss fashion, feminism, subtext and subspace, hosted by Anika and Liz. Today we're going to TRY to talk about the TOS novel My Enemy, My Ally -- but it's raining at both of our houses, and we both have internet that drops out in the rain. So…

Anika: [laughs]

Liz: This is our second go at recording the opening. [laughs] And it's really bucketing down out there!

Anika: We bring the drama.

Liz: We do! We do. Anyway, I am so glad that I finally read this classic tie-in novel, because I had such a good time.

Anika: It's a lot of fun. I have long loved these books. I have a great deal of affection for the Rihannsu novels, and the characters within them. I don't think I've ever actually sat down and read the whole book in a really long time. So I noticed a lot of things that I don't remember when I'm thinking about the book. These aren't the things that I remember, or think on fondly when I go back and read my favourite passages and things. Those, I know practically by heart, but there was a lot that I just sort of glossed over.

Liz: I have been hearing or reading about these books for almost as long as I've been in Star Trek fandom. And I never read them before, because I knew that Duane's worldbuilding for the Romulans was so different from what we ultimately got.

And yes, there's a lot of stuff that's really outdated, and no longer current, and I laughed out loud at the bit where the Starfleet intelligence report is like, "There have been a lot of assassinations happening in the Romulan Senate!" And everyone's like, "That's not like the Romulans! That's so weird!" Guys, it's Tuesday, there's an assassination.

But I was so impressed by how well it still fits with -- and I think Picard actually has a lot to do with that, because it's added so many layers of nuance and details to Romulan culture that Duane's ideas can just slip neatly in.

Anika: Right. Yes. especially when -- whenever Ael talked or thought about the Klingons, she is so anti-Klingon, and it was sort of hilarious, because everything that she said about the Klingons was sort of what the TNG Romulans do.

Liz: Yeah!

Anika: And everything that she believes in about the Romulans is pretty much TNG Klingons.

Liz: Right!

Anika: And so it was this weird, you know -- and so this book came out in 1984, and the movie, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, which was really the first time we saw modern Klingons. -- was in Star Trek III.

Liz: And they were not particularly honourable.

Anika: But they did have -- like, Valkris? Something like that. She has a V-kris name. At the very beginning of Star Trek III, she does the whole little, "I have to die, now, for honour" Klingon thing. That was new.

Liz: Oh, you're right! It's been so long since I saw that.

Anika: So I feel like [Duane] was writing about these Romulans while they were writing about those Klingons, and they decided to move in that direction. Because, you know, like, five years later, I guess? Maybe three years later, Next Generation came out. I'm sure they were already writing Next Generation. So--

Liz: They actually weren't! Planning for Next Gen was going on really, really late in 1986.

Anika: Really!

Liz: Yeah, listening to the podcast The Trek Files, they go through a lot of the early Next Gen planning documents, and it's actually a little scary how close to the release for "Encounter at Farpoint" they're still working out things like, "Should there be a doctor?" and "Maybe we should cast someone as the android?"

Anika: Maybe.

Liz: It gives me a lot of secondhand stress. [laughs]

Anika: That's funny. Although, looking at the beginnings of Next Generation, I believe it.

Liz: Oh yeah, absolutely. It explains a lot. But yeah, it's interesting that Duane kept going with these books -- and was allowed to keep going with these books -- even after Next Gen started up and basically -- I think the term in fandom is still "jossed"? For Joss Whedon? Jossed all of her ideas about Romulans. And I just think it's really wonderful that Star Trek: Picard has started restoring some of these ideas.

And some of them are quite different, you know, Romulans have three names (including a secret name), not four. But the seeds are there. And I believe I read somewhere that Chabon actually considered using the Rihannsu language that Duane created, but it was decided that it was too different from everything else we've seen of Romulan language on screen.

Anika: Interesting.

Liz: I just wanna point out, species can have more than one language. Just putting that out there.

Anika: What? Are you sure?

Liz: I know. I know. I've heard it's possible.

Anika: I don't think that's true.

Liz: I hear there are people on Earth right now who don't speak English.

Anika: [laughing] I'm sorry, just the idea that that would be shocking to anyone? Is a little scary.

Liz: I know.

Anika: But we can say that they were dialects, even. It doesn't even have to be a different language. But one of the things I really love about these books is that at least five percent of the book is in Romulan, and she puts in no effort of translating it. She just expects you to be able to understand what's going on based on the rest of it. I've always appreciated that.

Liz: See, that kind of annoyed me. Because, like, I have no problem with subtitles, and I'm not one of those people who was complaining about all the subtitled Klingon in early Discovery. But here, I'm like, IT'S A BOOK! I DON'T NEED TO READ THESE FAKE WORDS! But when they start talking about, um, mmmmnesssahiiii… [Transcriber's note: the word is "mnhei’sahe". Good luck.]

Anika: Yeah, I know. My second point is, I can't pronounce any of it.

Liz: No!

Anika: I read The Romulan Way first.

Liz: Oh, I think you've said that before, yes. That's the one set on Romulus, with the spy?

Anika: Yes. I was not reading Star Trek novels in 1984. But I read The Romulan Way, and then I went backwards for My Enemy, My Ally, because Ael is in The Romulan Way, and she's amazing. And she's, like, a superhero that shows up at the end, so I was like, I need to know the story of that. So I went back to it. But at the back of The Romulan Way, there's a glossary of Romulan words. It's only three pages long. It's nothing like the Klingon-English dictionary. And I am still, to this day, angry that I can't learn Romulan the way I could learn Klingon. Like, you can learn Klingon in Duolingo.

Liz: You can! It's outrageous.

Anika: But no one's ever taken the time to do that for Romulan, and I'm just annoyed, because that's the -- since I was a small child, that's the language I've wanted to speak.

Liz: It sounds like they have put in the work of creating a conlang for Romulan now, with Picard, so maybe you can learn that? But it won't be Duane's Rihannsu.

Anika: But it'll be at least something. I would love for someone to take the time and translate a novel into Romulan, or something. Like Jane Austen. If the Klingons get Shakespear--

Liz: The Romulans get Austen.

Anika: Yeah.

Liz: I feel like the Romulans would rather have John LeCarre. But no, they're getting Austen and they're going to like it.

Anika: Pride And Prejudice in the original Romulan is something I desperately want to read.

Liz: "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a subcommander in possession of a great fortune must be in want of a…" yeah. Anyway. I'm gonna have to take some time to think about how this translates.

I wasn't so keen on the passages of Romulan, but I liked the Romulan words and concepts that we were introduced to, and I like that now we have -- like, Duane gives us names of Romulan animals? And the significance that they attach to names, names of ships and names of people, I really groove on that sort of thing. And Ael's idea that the name of the Enterprise is very unlucky because it's such a big, powerful concept.

Anika: Sounds accurate. And it also makes me think about the Enterprise. Like, obviously -- when I was a kid, watching Next Generation, watching The Original Series, watching the one with the whales -- you know, it's exciting that they get the Enterprise back in the end, right? It's a big deal, and the Enterprise is obviously the best ship in the fleet. Because it's the Enterprise, and these are the stories of the people who are on it!

But, if I think about the name, I hate it! It's so capitalist. It's so military. It's so American, and I just -- I hate it!

Liz: It really is. I say this with all due love and respect. And I know it was a British Navy ship first, but come on.

Anika: So, yeah, that's how I feel about it. So I appreciate that she makes me think about these things.

Liz: Yeah, I really love her take on it. And it makes me like the name of the Enterprise, too. I think, you know, Discovery and Voyager are much more positive and less iconic names, and even Defiant -- you know, that's a big concept, and it's not so positive as "discovery" or "voyaging", but it's necessary to what the Defiant was built for.

Anika: And I like that, in Discovery and in Picard, they have actually named some ships with non-English words and concepts and people. They're taking those tiny baby steps towards making it a little less--

Liz: I know! For all that I've dunked on Chabon throughout our podcast, he made a deliberate choice to name starships after non-western explorers, and I really, really love that. Still all men, but, you know, we'll get there.

Anika: Baby steps!

Liz: My thing in fic is that I always name starships after women of science or science fiction. So when I am in charge of Star Trek, it will be a much better show. I promise.

I just wanna say how much I love Ael as a character.

Anika: Absolutely.

Liz: She's basically the perfect character for me -- she's not quite cranky enough, although she puts on a good facade of it early in the book, when she's deceiving the crew she's about to sacrifice. But she's -- I like characters who are old enough to have a past, and young enough to have a future. And she's perfect [for me]! She has her ship, she has her crew, she has her adult son, who serves underneath her as her first office. It's really wonderful. And I read that Duane created her as a woman who could sort of match Kirk at his own game, but in doing so, she created a wonderful character in her own right.

Anika: I had to write this one sentence down. It's on page 93, when Ael beams onto the ship, onto the Enterprise, and so our Enterprise crew first see her. I underlined the sentence that I'm going to read, and then I wrote in the margins, "So that's why I fell so hard and so immediately for Admiral Kat."

Liz: [laughs] Yes?

Anika: And this is the sentence: "She carried herself like a banner or a weapon, like something proud and dangerous, but momentarily at rest."

Liz: Yes! And I think she and Kat have a lot in common, because Ael is so pragmatic, and so ruthless in how she abandons the crew of the Cuirass to their own destruction -- which she has set up for them! And these were not particularly good people, they intended to betray her, but she still feels that twinge of regret, because this is her honour that she is destroying. And then she does it anyway. And I love that in a character. I love characters who are -- particularly women -- who are capable of terrible things, but know what they have done.

Anika: Right. And, as you said, that she's old enough to have a past, and young enough to have a future. I think that that has that same -- and so I was like -- again, I read these books young. And so I really looked up to Ael as a role model, you know? I really was drawn to that. The character in The Romulan Way, the main character, is the character that I would want to be, and then she looked up to Ael. So it was like this whole thing.

So, going back and, again, reading it -- and really reading it, this time, not just skimming and skipping to my favourite parts, but really taking the time to read each passage -- there was just so much of things that I love about Star Trek and other mediums, and other fandoms, that were in this book. And it's like, oh, it formed -- it informed the future me, when I was reading it as a small girl. Because I was inspired by those things, and then I went looking for more of that.

Liz: It's just the most wonderful piece of space opera, with empires attempting to push and shift the balance of power, and individuals working for the betterment of the community, the galactic community as a whole. I love that! And at one point, I was like, the worldbuilding in this story is so rich, and the plot itself is so interesting, this didn't need to be a tie-in. This could be an original piece of work. But, at the same time, would we still be talking about it if this "original novel" had been published in 1984? Like, there is a lot of great science fiction written by women in the '80s, which is just straight forgotten.

Anika: Right. I agree.

Liz: That's not to say that's okay, you know, I think there's a lot of joy to be had in rediscovering that stuff, like Vonda McIntyre's original work, but--

Anika: And I also don't think it cheapens her worldbuilding and the effort that she clearly put in to make fifty original characters for this book--

Liz: Fifty! Did you count?

Anika: I didn't count them.

Liz: Okay.

Anika: I'm just saying, I started naming them, and there are people that are just -- and they reoccur in all of her other novels. Which is great. I looked up -- because Lia Burke, the nurse, I was like, is Lia Burke a "real character", quote-unquote, or is she only in these books? Because I couldn't tell. I really, firmly believed that she was a member of the Enterprise [crew] in The Original Series, or my guess was that she was introduced in the animated series. And since I'm never going to watch the animated series, I wouldn't know. So I looked it up, and no, she was introduced in The Wounded Sky, Duane's first book.

Liz: Huh!

Anika: But she appears in all of them, and is such a rich character, even with her two scenes and her four lines. But I know exactly who she is.

Liz: She is such a rich character that I almost looked at her -- and you know I really hate the concept of the Mary Sue, but I looked at her and went, "Are you maybe TOO RICH to be a supporting character? You need to have your own series, love, you need to step out of the Star Trek universe and into your own thing. Because you are taking over."

And I think that's a really difficult line to walk with tie-in fiction, because you need to deepen the universe with original characters, and they need to be GOOD original characters, they need to be complicated and interesting. But at the same time, they're not what the audience is there for.

Anika: Right. But I think she's amazing, and the way that [Duane] makes this rich supporting cast, and I firmly believe that they're a part of the Enterprise.

Liz: Yes. Even the Horta officer, Ensign Naraht--

Anika: I love him!

Liz: He's so great! Kirk keeps comparing him to a pan pizza, and I'm like, (a) he is clearly a deep dish; (b) that's pretty racist, mate.

Anika: [laughs] PRETTY racist? He's saying that he looks edible!

Liz: Yes!

Anika: That's a problem!

Liz: And then TrekCore, yesterday, posted the stills from Discovery showing the Horta in the background of Lorca's chamber of horrors, and I'm like, was Lorca going to eat the Horta???

Anika: But speaking of racism--

Liz: I just want to say, like Duane's original characters always encompass non-humanoid Starfleet officers. And it's so great. I find it really distracting because, like, I've seen what the ship looks like, and I know that it doesn't accommodate these people? But at the same time, what she is doing is really good, and that I personally find it distracting is not actually a point of failure on Duane's part.

Anika: I get confused trying to imagine -- like, she describes them, and I just cannot. I need someone to draw me fan art, or something, so I get it.

Liz: I agree. Because, like, the three Denebian races, and one of them has tentacles -- I lost track of all of them, but I love them. What were you going to say about racism?

Anika: I was just going to say, I find it interesting that there are a few times where our human characters, Kirk, Uhura, etc -- even Spock, I think -- will start saying something anti-Romulan, and then stop themselves and apologise to whichever Romulan they were interacting with. And the Romulan's like, "No, no, no, it's okay." And in -- I don't think Ael ever does it, but in her inner monologue, she sometimes will think about -- she has a whole couple of paragraphs about how she thought the Vulcans were one thing, but it turns out they're not. So it's like there's this whole, interesting "confronting racism" part.

Liz: Yeah, there's a bit where she enters the rec room, and looks around at the relatively diverse Enterprise crew and goes, "This should be horrifying me maybe more than it is? Am I … a bad Romulan?"

Anika: But then -- and I only wrote this one down, and, again, it's an old book, and we are all still grappling with racism and cultural appropriation and PC language, or whatever. But on page 135, it says, "What would you call Shanghaiing the Intrepid?" And again, I wrote in my margins, "I would call it racism!" Because, what the hell are you doing in saying that in the 22nd century -- whatever century it's supposed to be.

Liz: Years and years ago, I used the term "shanghai" to mean, you know, kidnap someone and press them into service. And my friend Stephanie, who is Chinese-Malaysian, was like, "Um, Elizabeth?" She has this particular tone. And I apologised, but internally, I was really defensive about it, you know, [Well Actually voice] "That was a BRITISH term, and it was referring to stealing English people and taking them to serve in Shanghai, and blah, blah, blah, blah." But then it just dropped out of my vocabulary, and I haven't really felt the loss, to be honest. Like, you can say "pressed into service" if you need it. And so, yeah, that jumped out at me, too, it's such an archaic term, and something which has taken on a meaning that it did not originally have.

Anika: Right. And that's the thing, language is constantly changing.

Liz: And I noticed Duane uses the archaic M-Z spelling for "Mz" for Uhura and the other female officers.

Anika: Yes!

Liz: Which is great! Like, I love that artefact of 1984.

Anika: There's a lot in this book. There's a lot more than we could possibly talk about. There's the part where she's thinking, you know, "The Federation doesn't understand that they have so much more than we do, and so we're hostile because we want what they have -- but they're so rich, and that's just the way they've always been, so they don't know." And I was like, oh, look at that.

There are so many of these things that we're talking about now, you know, in Picard and in Discovery. And I love that it was in this novel, that it was -- "I'm going to bring this up, and the Romulans aren't going to be just cookie cutter 'other' who we have to fight, but there are reasons for the ways that they are."

Liz: It made me think, this is not incompatible with what we see of Romulans in the Next Gen era. Not wholly. Because Ael is very much a character who looks to a glorious and honourable past, and is sort of only dimly aware of how corrupt the present is. And that makes me think of the Klingons, who are also always talking about their great, honourable, glorious past, and, the Klingon Empire, make it great again! And, really, they also have this terrible cultural rot that's destroying them from the inside out.

Whereas the Federation -- particularly humanity -- we look at our past and go, "Wow, that is messed up. Oh God, we have failed so badly, we need to do so much better!" And I feel like these different attitudes are why the Federation -- part of why the Federation is more flexible and more dynamic than the Romulans and the Klingons. It's not looking towards this imaginary nostalgic past.

And that got me thinking about, you know, make America great again, and contemporary politics, and conservative nostalgia for the 1950s.

Anika: That never actually existed! I did a paper on this!

Liz: Right! And I'm sure that Ael's great, honourable empire never really existed either. But she herself is an honourable person. Mnhei’sahe…

Anika: Meh-nehs-eye. That's how I say it.

Liz: Mnhei’sahe! Mnhei’sahe. That makes it sound like a real word.

Anika: I don't know if that's right.

Liz: This complicated concept that is not quite honour, and not quite loyalty, and it's not quite brotherhood -- there's a whole vaguely sexist conversation about 'brotherhood'. But it's that sense of owing something to your family and to your people and to your culture, and they, in turn, owe you the same.

I think, because Ael believes in mnhei’sahe so firmly, she has a bit of a rosy-eyed view of the past. But we've met other Romulans in TNG who had mnhei’sahe.

Anika: Yeah. "The Defector".

Liz: Not just that, but the guy that Geordi meets down on the planet…

Anika: "The Enemy".

Liz: Yeah! They have very different values, but they come to respect each other, and that particular Romulan comes to recognise that Geordie has mnhei’sahe. Aside from treating assassination as an aberration rather than a hobby, I really do think that this is consistent with Romulan culture as we know it.

Anika: Yes, I think it is, too. Especially because Ael is a very -- she has a very strong point of view. So she's saying, "This is wrong, and this is the way it should be, and our new Romulans are doing this." So if you imagine that the 'new Romulans' win, then they're the ones who are doing all the shenanigans and nonsense in The Next Generation, as opposed to the ones who are still clinging to that idea of honour.

Liz: I have this fairly elaborate headcanon about the Romulans, and how they sort of almost withdraw into their own space -- aside from bombing the Khitomer outpost -- after the Federation makes peace with the Klingons. And then they emerge at the end of season 1 of Next Gen.

And when they emerge, they're a lot more physically uniform, they're a lot more -- you know, they all have the bowl cut, they all have the shoulder pads. Their society has changed. And they're less diverse in their personal presentation than they were in the previous century. And I think we can argue -- especially after Picard, and the great diversity that's exploded in the wake of the destruction of Romulus -- that this was a deliberate thing, that their culture became more oppressive than it had been in the past.

Anika: I can absolutely believe that. And it became an authoritarian version of their empire.

Liz: Yeah, I'm sure that it was never a democracy, but it seems like most Romulans maybe had more personal freedom in the 23rd century.

Anika: Okay, at one point the chief linguists officer starts randomly reciting a Roman poem in the middle of the briefing?

Liz: Right!

Anika: [laughs] Which is hilarious, and I was like, okay, this is a little too on the nose for me.

Liz: So on the nose.

Anika: You know, like, wink, wink, not really into it. But--

Liz: Especially when Duane has been separating the Rihannsu from the Roman-inspired Romulans.

Anika: Right. But, obviously, the fact that they have their praetor and their senate -- they are very based on Rome. And the Roman Empire.

Liz: There was a concept in Rome called 'romanitas', and it's basically mnhei’sahe. It's loyalty to the state, and it's personal honour, and it's being a responsible member of your family, and what you owe to your patron, or what you owe to your clients if you are the patron. Or the paterfamilias. It's all of that. It's mnhei’sahe.

Anika: Okay, so we are in the year 2020, right?

Liz: Allegedly. Time has no meaning where I am, but yes.

Anika: Well, I'm just saying that that means that within -- 2000 years ago, the Roman Empire still existed. Right?

Liz: Yes.

Anika: Here on good old Earth. But we have moved -- we still have politics, and we still learn algebra, and we still look at philosophy in a very Graeco-Roman way. Okay?

Liz: We still post, "Today I baked bread", we just post it on Instagram instead of carving it into a wall.

Anika: But we also have changed. We've evolved from Roman times. Right? Would you say that we've evolved from Roman times?

Liz: Yeah, absolutely.

Anika: All right. According to this book--

Liz: [laughs]

Anika: --the Romulan Empire has stayed the same as ancient Rome for more than 5000 years. And, like, the Vulcans were also ancient Romans 5000 years ago.

Liz: Yes.

Anika: And I'm just, like, no.

Liz: It's like this thing in a lot of fantasy and science fiction where the timescales are just massively inflated. George R R Martin does it all the time, and it drives me crazy!

Anika: [laughing] That is not how that works!

Liz: No.

Anika: No way.

Liz: It is absolutely not, but it's one of those things where I look at it and go, you're a trope. You annoy me. But fine, we'll live with it.

Anika: See, it really bothers me. Because I can't just handwave that. I can't just be, like, sure. Because it's like, no. The whole plot is based on this whole, we're gonna steal Vulcan brain matter, and we're gonna graft it into Romulan brains, and then the Romulans are gonna have Vulcan powers. Right? That's the whole plot.

Liz: But also, there's going to be this massive super brain that can control and paralyse Vulcans.

Anika: That's one of the things that I skim over. I just even go to the massive brain part.

Liz: [laughs] It was just so gross that I really liked it! It made me think of the brain room in Harry Potter?

Anika: Ew. But yes, okay, I see that.

Liz: Also not a highlight of that series.

Anika: Vulcans and Romulans had space travel 5000 years ago. And then they split up. And the Romulans decided to not evolve from that point on. Meanwhile, the Vulcans grew brain powers. Like -- no! Just no.

Liz: I always assumed that there was some sort of genetic drift, and maybe the genetic predisposition in the people who left and became Romulans meant that those genes just fell dormant and were eventually bred out. Because 5000 years is a really long time.

Anika: Is a really long time! I can believe the dormancy of the Romulans. I cannot believe that the Vulcans -- that part doesn't happen.

Liz: Yeah, I don't believe that they developed that -- no. No.

Anika: I think it's more likely that all of them had the brain powers 5000 years ago, in Roman times, when they had space travel. And they split off, and what happened is that all the Romulans who were, like, the best brain powered Romulans were all murdered by the other Romulans, because that's what Spock says would happen.

Liz: Right.

Anika: So, sure.

Liz: Also, I wonder, if they left and found their own home planet before they had faster than light technology, if the -- the limitations of a very long journey under those circumstances are part of what made Romulan culture so pragmatic and ruthless in its treatment of the disabled, for example. Because I know, in "The Enemy", the Romulan with all the mnhei’sahe is like, "Oh, if a baby was born blind on Romulus, we'd just kill it!" And Geordie's like--

Anika: "Yikes."

Liz: --"What the hell, man, that's not cool."

Anika: "Super yikes!"

Liz: Yeah. Mate. But, from a worldbuilding perspective, it would make sense if they developed that attitude in space.

Anika: I agree. While we're on this subject, in that part where Spock says, you know, "Oh my gosh, if Romulans had Vulcan mind powers, it would be armageddon." Which is also, like, okay. But--

Liz: I feel like his biases are showing.

Anika: But that paragraph is very interesting to me from, you know -- my note here is, "Not to make everything about the Jedi, but…"

Liz: [laughs]

Anika: Spock basically describes Jedi mind tricks in that paragraph, and says that they're evil. And I would just like to put that out there into the ether.

Liz: See, this makes me want to hit Diane up on Tumblr and go, "So, do you have any particular opinions about Star Wars? Did you have any particular opinions about Star Wars in 1984 that you would like to share with the class?

Anika: It was just really funny to me.

Liz: I really do like the idea of Romulans attempting to graft and weaponise Vulcan telepathy. I think that's brilliant.

Anika: It is brilliant! It's great. And I have to appreciate that Kirk has the thought that, if the Federation got its hands on that, it would absolutely be the same problem. Like, he is self-aware enough to realise that it would be just as bad in the Federation as it would be for the Romulans or the Klingons to have it. Yes, the Vulcans are the only ones we can trust with this, which -- I don't trust all the Vulcans, but--

Liz: We know from Next Gen and "Gambit" that even Vulcans can't always be trusted with psychic weapons. But, okay, go off. Yep.

Anika: So what did you think of the characterisation of our main crew?

Liz: I really enjoyed Duane's take on McCoy. He felt so McCoy-like, but also, he's, like, secretly -- not a chess champion, but a highly ranked player? He just likes watching the game, it's a spectator sport. I really liked that, and I really liked the bit where he starts ranting at Ael, and everyone's like, oh yeah, this means he likes you, this means you're one of his people now.

Anika: Yes. McCoy, I think, is the strongest.

Liz: I quite liked her Kirk? We were saying in Discord, you know, no drawing of Kirk ever looks the same, and no drawing of Kirk ever looks like William Shatner? He's basically a cryptid. And that's sort of how I feel about his characterisation -- well, everywhere. Because he fits so many archetypes, and some of them are mutually exclusive. But I liked the direction that Duane took him in here. I felt like he was a very likable character, and he was a great foil for Ael … or maybe the other way around, apparently he's the main character, I don't know.

Anika: No.

Liz: But a fundamentally decent man, who respects and enjoys getting to know one of his most honourable enemies. That's great!

Anika: I like that they have a pre-rivalry. They know who each other is before this book, before they meet in person. And respect each other.

Liz: Yes. Yes. They know that they're equals, and they like that, but in certain situations they would not hesitate to kill each other. And I love the bit where Ael is listing the ships that have been sent into the Neutral Zone. And there's the Intrepid, and the other one, and the other one -- and then, "worst of all, the Enterprise." Just great.

And Spock … I don't think it was a bad characterisation of Spock, but, as much as I liked the mindmeld scene where he enters Ael's mind and sees that she is telling the truth, or at least, what she believes to be the truth -- I felt like, giving his connection with her niece, the Romulan Commander of "The Enterprise Incident", there should have been some more discussion of that?

Anika: Especially because it's eventually an important plot point.

Liz: Right! And that sort of came out of nowhere, and it wasn't clear to me whether he even knew that she had this connection to the unnamed Commander. But I loved that she was the Commander's aunt, and the Commander had been her heir, and that her son, Tafv, ultimately betrays her because he is so angry that the Romulan Commander was stripped of her identity and made an unperson and exiled.

Anika: Yes. You can imagine that I love everything about that relationship.

Liz: Yes?

Anika: I am so -- like, I can't be angry with Tafv, because I'm like--

Liz: Oh, I can!

Anika: --that is a really good motivation, and I am 100% on board with it, and I just want all of -- like, I want to see them as young Narek and Narissa types. In their version of Romulus.

Liz: We'll get to that.

Anika: I love it.

Liz: I have something to say about that. I loved that he wanted to take the Enterprise, and that he wanted to get revenge on Kirk and Spock for what they did to his cousin. But I was furious that he was also betraying his mother, and that he also wanted to see her executed. Like, you little shit! She did her best!

Anika: [laughs] Yes, but it was all the same feeling, where he chose his cousin over his mother. He chose one family over the other. And it was -- but before we move off of -- because I want to go into all of that, but before we move off of characterisation, I just want to say that I've never really liked Duane's version of Spock. I don't dislike it, like, I'm not saying it's bad, it's just that her Spock is not my Spock.

Liz: No, and I think that's fair.

Anika: And that's okay.

Liz: I don't think it's bad, but he's clearly not her favourite. And that's fine.

Anika: And it's true in -- again, across all of her novels. They're barely in The Romulan Way. It's mostly -- McCoy is the only one. And he's her best.

Liz: And McCoy is clearly her favourite.

Anika: Yes. but then, Spock's World is obviously -- it's like the version -- they go into all of the Vulcan mythology, and they have a whole court-senate-crazy thing on Vulcan, and all of our crew get to make speeches to all of Vulcan. Because not only are there thousands in the stadium, but also, it's, you know, live streaming to all of Vulcan. And they're all making their speech, and it's just -- it's interesting to me that 96% percent of Vulcans are into politics and pay attention and vote, and stuff. Like. That's crazy, because here on Earth, it's, like, in the 30s or 40s. So that's always interesting to me.

Liz: Right, even in Australia, we have compulsory voting, and I think it comes out at about 86%.

Anika: But her characterisation of Spock, and particularly Sarek, in Spock's World, is really -- it's like, I appreciate it, but it's not where I would go. It's not how I see them. And also T'Pring.

Liz: It's not that it's bad, it's just that her headcanons are not your headcanons.

Anika: Yeah, it's just different. Exactly. And so I really appreciate the writing, but it's an AU version of those characters for me. And this one, also -- like, he kept joking, and he kept -- I don't know. It was just a little bit off. At one point he says -- he asks the doctor how you would hold hands with a mother hen?

Liz: Yes!

Anika: And I was like, no. Spock would never. I just couldn't see it. I had troubles.

Liz: No, and I really liked that scene. It's a scene where Kirk tells McCoy and Spock, you know, "You don't need to hold my hand and protect me," and McCoy is like, "Yeah, the way rumours spread on this ship, you're not holding hands with Spock, ever." And I was like, I see what you did there, Duane, and I love it!

Anika: Wink, wink.

Liz: But we didn't need to overegg the pudding with the mother hen/how do you hold hands bit.

I was going to say, with regards to Narek and Narissa, I'm so delighted and fascinated that Duane posits that inheritances are passed down to nieces and nephews, and the concept of the sister-daughter. And then we have Ramdha raising her niece and nephew, and it's like -- again, is that an intentional reference?

Anika: Because I knew -- I remembered that Ael was her aunt, was the Romulan Commander's (who still doesn't have a name) aunt. But I didn't -- like, I thought it was just an offhand -- but it goes into, like you say, this whole inheritance thing, and there's this whole -- and the whole Tafv -- "the cousins were as close as anyone could be" kind of thing. And I was like, oh, that is so -- it IS transferred over into Ramdha and Narek and Narissa, and I love it, and I'm -- yes.

Liz: And, as a concept, it's just such a nice bit where the worldbuilding is not default western … white people culture. And it raises questions, like, do they practice first cousin marriage, or is that as taboo as a sibling marriage? And what happens if your sibling doesn't have children? And what happens if -- you know, there are so many questions!

Anika: Right, exactly.

Liz: Romulan inheritance law is suddenly really interesting to me!

Anika: [laughs] I love them. I love my Romulans, I love my Romulan families, it's all I want from the world.

Liz: You know, I only decided to read this because Picard had sort of revived some of its ideas. And I'm so glad that I did, and I would really like to pitch a loose adaptation of this novel as season 2 of Star Trek: Picard.

Anika: So have Ael, or a version of Ael, who comes to Picard?

Liz: Yeah! Who has survived the destruction of Romulus, and is attempting to serve the Romulan Free State with honour, with mnhei’sahe. And who has learned that either the Free State or the Romulan Rebirthers are doing this terrible thing with Vulcan mind powers, and -- you know, it's awful, it's horrifying. So she seeks out the man who went to toe to toe with Commander Tomalak, and who commanded the evacuation. And then, along the way, she discovers with horror that her lost sister is alive and well and living on a vineyard--

Anika: [laughs] Because she's Laris's sister????

Liz: Look -- you know, from the beginning, I have decided that Laris is linked to the original Romulan Commander, Joanne Linville.

Anika: Yes.

Liz: And Ael is canonically linked to that character. And the loss of a family member is really important to Ael's arc, so to find that her sister is alive, and has almost abandoned mnhei’sahe -- abandoned her people, not only in choosing to go into this exile, but in joining the Tal Shiar, which is the sort of organisation Ael would loathe and detest -- I think it's a really interesting way to adapt the internal conflict within Ael's family from the novel to the present canon.

Anika: I really like it. I really like it. I have one question, that is a very me question, and that listeners are probably gonna get angry at me for.

Liz: Go!

Anika: Does it involve getting Narek out of Federation prison, Tom Paris style?

Liz: [deep breath] This wasn't in my head, but yes, I think it does.

Anika: Okay. That's all I want.

Liz: No, it would be sort of great, because if Ael has to kill her son after he betrays them and all that, and maybe chooses to save Laris over Tafv, then she can adopt Narek and introduce him to the radical concept of mnhei’sahe.

Anika: Yes! See?

Liz: Yes.

Anika: Call us!

Liz: I actually think one great thing about the whole Covid disaster -- and this is really insensitive to say, given the scale of death -- but at least the Star Trek writers have a lot more time to work on their seasons before filming starts? [Transcriber's note: this was said in a deliberately facetious and self-mocking tone; obviously a shitty season and no pandemic would be better.]

Anika: [laughs] Oh dear.

Liz: But yes, that's my pitch for an adaptation. And I gave a lot of thought to who would play Ael, and because their first thought on meeting her is that she's so small, I was like, who is a very small, powerful older woman? And my first thought was Nana Visitor.

Anika: Ooops. That's not gonna work out.

Liz: Yeah, there's a problem there.

Anika: That's not gonna work. I have--

Liz: No, so then I went -- go.

Anika: No, go ahead, if you want to say yours first.

Liz: Oh, well, I have two. I sort of went in a different direction and went, okay, who could plausibly be Orla Brady's sister? Who is dark, and has great cheekbones and nice eyebrows, and has that sort of power? And so my first thought was Oscar-winner Olivia Colman.

Anika: Okay.

Liz: And then, as a back-up, because she might be busy doing other stuff, was Helen McCrory.

Anika: Helen McCrory! Oh my gosh! Sorry. My brain had to catch up with what you were actually saying.

Liz: [laughs]

Anika: That is brilliant, I love it, I would cast her in anything, and I love the idea of her as Orla Brady -- Laris's sister. Make it happen. I went in a completely different direction, but I really, really love it.

Liz: Oh! Go!

Anika: So I decided -- I was sort of, like, I need somebody at least in their forties, and as you said, tiny but powerful. So I decided on Archie Panjabi.

Liz: Ooooohhhhhhh!

Anika: You know, olive-skinned-ish.

Liz: Yeah, yeah! Obviously this breaks my Orla Brady's sister bit--

Anika: Yeah, sorry, I didn't know that she was supposed to be Orla Brady's sister when you said we were fancasting.

Liz: I wanted to surprise you with that twist! I wanted to give you a nice surprise! But no, I think she'd be quite good in the role!

Anika: Yes, I think that, at least as written on the page in this book, I can imagine her even saying some of the things. And definitely I can imagine her going toe to toe with Kirk.

Liz: Definitely.

Anika: And also sort of having that flirtation happening.

Liz: Absolutely. No, I think she would be really good. I didn't really look at, like, size once I moved on from Nana Visitor, because, you know, on TV everyone is sort of the same size? But yeah, I really like your take. Apparently Gene Roddenberry did not care for this series. Which only makes me like it more.

Anika: [laughs] I mean, good on [Duane] for getting it done anyway, is all I can say to that. Like, I'll believe it. I haven't actually read your thing, and I'm gonna let you get to it in a minute, that you have linked here.

But I absolutely believe that -- given that, like I said, she creates so many different characters, she creates new departments on the Enterprise and then people to be in them. And entire other ships, and they're friends with Kirk, and they go back so-and-so time, and there's just so much that she creates for Star Trek. But it's her version of Star Trek. That I can absolutely imagine him being annoyed at the idea that she's going to create -- she's gonna give the Romulans culture? No? That's his job, and just because he never cared to doesn't mean that someone else should.

So it's sort of, like, great men do great things, but they also have great egos. And get annoyed. It's like they -- to pull something contemporary, the fact that Rose Tico is not in The Rise of Skywalker at all seems to me--

Liz: Oh, I'm still mad.

Anika: --solely because JJ Abrams didn't create that character, and so he was going to create two or three new characters to take over her part, because he was annoyed. And I don't think he -- and I don't know JJ Abrams.

Liz: He is not a close personal friend of yours?

Anika: I don't think he would necessarily even consciously -- you know, I don't think he would even consciously do it. But I can imagine that he would subconsciously do it.

Liz: The preponderance of original characters was at the heart of Roddenberry's objections, particularly to The Romulan Way. Apparently he tried to block publication because he felt it was an original novel that used the Romulan names and had McCoy in it just to get it published as a Star Trek novel.

Anika: I mean, that's true, but it's also really good.

Liz: I know, I'm like, you're saying this like it's a bad thing? My source for this is vintage 1994 wank on Usenet. There's a link to the archive which I will share, but basically, Roddenberry's former assistant, Richard Arnold, spent -- seems like a good portion of the early '90s fighting with tie-in authors on the internet?

And it's not even that he's wrong, he's saying, you know, if you wrote a Star Trek novel, that doesn't mean you wrote for Star Trek, that means you wrote for hire tie-in fiction. It's not that this is untrue, it's just that … I don't like him? And I don't like the way he says it? Anyway there are all sorts of spurious allegations of defamation, and libel, and "I don't know what Duane Duane's husband has to do with this," he only co-wrote The Romulan Way, "so I'm not going to answer that."

But I had a lot of fun going through rec.arts.startrek.fandom fights from the early '90s. Especially the bit where I stumbled into a thread where they were looking at the premise of Deep Space 9 and going, "Oh my gosh, these people don't care about Star Trek, this is a blatant money grab, this is going to destroy Star Trek forever, look at all this political correctness with a black man in charge and a female first officer. I mean, God, Star Trek, it's just not going to survive."

Anika: Oooh, that was one thing I wanted to bring up, too. Very early in this novel, here, on page 27, in fact, Uhura basically says that Starfleet is the worst. And then, two pages later, Kirk straight-up says that his and the Enterprise's priorities are usually different from Starfleet's. And I was just, like, you know what? She didn't pull that out of nowhere, that was in TOS. So everybody who's complaining that, in Picard, suddenly Starfleet is on the other side, and we're against them, has not been watching Star Trek.

Liz: There's people who think that Star Trek is wholly utopian and perfect, and then there's people who agree with us.

Anika: I just loved it. I was like, you go. And also, while I'm on the subject of Uhura, nearly every time she was in this book, she was described as beautiful, gorgeous, handsome. And I'm not complaining about this, but I love it. I love that she could not not describe Uhura as amazing and stunning.

Liz: And it didn't feel objectifying. It wasn't, like, the male gaze. Yeah. I also enjoyed the Sulu POV when Tafv's people have attacked the ship, and he's climbing through the Jeffries tubes, and he's like, "I think I'm becoming claustrophobic. Maybe I should talk to the doctor about that. Eh, that's a future Sulu problem."

Anika: And I love Khiy, the young Romulan who's hanging out with them, and fighting back because HIS honour has also been besmirched. It's so heartwarming! I just love them all.

Liz: That was one of the things -- the conflict between mnhei’sahe, where one owes honour to different and competing parties, and this is not a flaw on your part, it's a problem to be solved -- I really liked that as a piece of cultural worldbuilding.

Anika: Oh, and -- okay, so at one point she's saying, "Okay, here are the three ships that have been sent to meet up with us." And Nniol says, "My sister's on that ship, my sister's on Javelin, I don't know if I can fight my sister." Which is perfectly fair. And he says, "I have to go back to the other ship, I can't be trusted to be in battle against her." I loved that. I loved that it set up the whole "We're gonna punch each other and then start flirting" scene -- that was great -- between Kirk and Ael. That was awesome.

Liz: Right?

Anika: But then Javelin is destroyed! And I am so upset that Nniol's sister got blown up! I'm really, really heartbroken for Nniol, because he loved his sister. And she wasn't the captain, she wasn't one of the bad guys, she just happened to be on that ship. She was probably -- he was a really low-level person, she was probably a really low-level person, too, who just happened to be assigned to a tyrant. Like, the worst one. Javelin was the one where the captain took his own little shuttlecraft away to get back-up, and he's the captain who refuses to go down with his ship, and in fact, allows his ship to be sacrificed in order to allow him to escape. He's the worst.

Liz: The mirror!Lorca of Romulans.

Anika: So, of course, she's not -- I think that Nniol's sister probably had mnhei’sahe for her brother, and she would have been happy to join up with Ael and Bloodwing, and I'm really sad that she's dead.

Liz: I found the TV Tropes page for this subseries of novels. And apparently Nniol's family come back in the later ones, and most of them have cast him -- except for one cousin, who's like, "Yeah, I think you did the right thing. I'm sorry. I love you, bro."

Anika: Hugs.

Liz: The later Rihannsu books were published in the early 21st century, and I have to admit that I'm less enthusiastic about reading them.

Anika: They're not great. I will say, they're not great. I like that Arrhae -- she has to go be a junior politician, like, a junior senator for the Romulan Empire. And they're negotiating with the Federation, or whatever, and she has to go do this, she has to do politics, which I'm totally always into. And she is asked to be a spy. And she's already a spy, as we recall--

Liz: I was gonna say!

Anika: --she's a human who's spying on the Romulans, but she--

Liz: I haven't read The Romulan Way yet, but I remember you telling me about it.

Anika: [laughing] But she's asked by the Romulans to spy on the humans. So it's great, right? So she's, like, double-spying. And she's spying for the humans, she's spying for the rebels -- they're like the good Romulans. She's spying for the good Romulans and the humans, and she's trying to be a politician. All sorts of people already hate her because she was, like, a housekeeper who became a senator, and they're totally against that because they're super into, you know, pure blood and descent, and you should have 800 houses before you get to be a senator.

Liz: Right. Nothing like the real world.

Anika: And so I really like her plot, or the idea of her plot, because she doesn't really get to do much of it -- and she has this little sort-of romance that I'm into, as well, with the rebel. But it goes nowhere, and it becomes this whole treatise on Ael's honour, and -- it stops being about anything, and it starts being, "I'm going to preach about what I think things should be"?

I don't know, there stops being a plot, and it becomes entirely inner monologues. And I'm just, like, I'm over this, we're done, the people I care about are no longer here, so I'm going to move on. And there's no -- if I recall correctly, there are zero Star Trek characters in these books! I do not remember a single -- like, I'm pretty sure the Enterprise is involved in some way, but they're not a part of the plot at all.

Liz: According to TV Tropes, the series ends with Ael becoming empress of the Romulan Empire, and she and Kirk exchange a kiss before he leaves and they never see each other again. And IN THEORY, I'm really into it, but -- like, I was googling around to see what people said about this series, and the thing that kept coming is, "Is Ael a Mary Sue?" And I'm like, mate, I don't care!

Anika: [laughs]

Liz: But I feel like making her empress is maybe a step too far. I love space politics, but I like the stories to be about the people functioning within that system rather than leading it.

Anika: I think I've read the -- I read the third one, and that's the one where we get Arrhae's plot, and there's stuff happening. And it's, like, a cliffhanger where she -- something happens, and it's bad. And then there's two more books, and nothing happens in them! And they're really long, too, they're like, fourth Harry Potter novel long.

Liz: Oh my God!

Anika: And it's, like, I can't with this, I can't. And I don't remember Ael being empress, that's how -- you know how I said that I skim eventually? When they start talking about tentacles, I'm like, I don't need to know this. So my brain just shuts off, I have to try to read at some point, when the plot gets away from me, or I'm not following it. I read very quickly, and sometimes I'll read too quickly, where it's like, I decide that's unimportant--

Liz: And miss things.

Anika: --and I just say, that goes away. So, okay, at the end of the third Hunger Games novel, her sister is killed? I had to read that four times before I realised that her sister was killed.

Liz: [laughs]

Anika: I could not follow what was going on!

Liz: No, I have the same problem. I read the Murderbot novel last night, and I really enjoyed it, it was so good, but I kept having to stop and go back because I was inhaling it so fast that I was missing things.

Anika: So I don't remember them kissing! Are you serious? This has been an OTP of mine since I was nine! What? How is that possible?

Liz: I'm just going with what TV Tropes says! Maybe it's a lie!

Anika: No, I'm sure it's right, but all I remember of the last two books is being angry at them. So I completely believe that halfway through the fifth one, I was like, "Nah," and didn't even finish it. Very possible.

Liz: It's a bit like season 7 of Next Gen, where things happen that you really, really wanted, like Picard and Crusher talk about their relationship? And then the outcome is so disappointing that you're, like, ummmmmm, I dunno. It's the seventh season of [these novels].

Anika: Yes. But The Romulan Way is always going to be one of my favourite books, ever, in the world, and I really like My Enemy, My Ally.

Liz: And, at a future time, probably when the international postal system is working again, and I can order a copy -- because I don't really like the ebook versions of the old Star Trek tie-ins, they tend to be really poorly formatted -- I will buy it, and read it, and we can talk about it on this very podcast.

Anika: Excellent!

Liz: But what are we talking about next week?

[outro music]

Anika: Sorry, I had to move over into my --

Liz: Yeah.

Anika: Thank you for listening to Antimatter Pod. You can find our show notes at antimatterpod.tumblr.com, including links to our social media and credits for our theme music.

You can also follow us on Twitter at @antimatterpod. Sometimes we post cat pictures, and questions for our audience.

If you like us, leave a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you consume your podcasts -- the more reviews, the easier it is for new listeners to find us.

And join us in two weeks when we’ll be discussing medicine and medical practitioners in the Star Trek universe.

Liz: You said you were going to talk about ER, right?

Anika: Yes.

Liz: Does this mean that I need to watch some Chicago Hope, so I can talk about that?

Anika: Yes!

Liz: Awesome!

Anika: We can have duelling Chicago hospitals in spaaaaaace!

Liz: Yay!

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