#FWIW despite the Aeneid being what it is

[randomnameless]

Plz bring piss to Poor Momo's soul :'(

More seriously,

It's less "trauma olympics" but more than... some complains sound ridiculous, or pretty privileged as in Karen complaining that her mom sucks because she only bought strawberry flavoured poptarts instead of buying vanilla flavored to the point she'd rather have no parents at all, to her BFF who happens to be an orphan who lost her parents and had been living in an orphanage since age 9.

(shit, isn't it basically what happened in the early chapters of a certain manga, to explain how two male characters have a bond while making the female one look like an insensitive jerk?)

FWIW, Hilda's "why should I work I have so many expectations to meet I'm afraid of disappointing people can't I let the slaves do the work I am supposed to do instead?" nonsense isn't related to Crust, but the biggest offenders of the "wah-wah crust system :(" are... "wah-wahs" that can/could be tied to the "traditional" woes of nobility, aka finding a suitable spouse to protect/nurture/strengthen the family and/or being seen as "entry gates" in the world of nobility, or as ways to climb a social ladder.

Remember Sylvain* blaming crusts because they made him the heir of House Gautier and now apparently women only want to sleep with him to become "Lady Gautier"?

UO's Alain had a similar reflection in one of his rapport conversations, wondering if people saved and cared for him because he was him, or because he was the Prince, but Alain doesn't suddenly blame the Unicorn or the Maiden for blessing his family!

Ingrid's woes are less about her crust, and more about her desire to be a knight, apparently clashing with her perceived duties as the heir of House Galatea - sure she's picked heir over her bros because she has a crust (iirc?), but can we say her bros wouldn't, if they had a crust, feel the same? It's the same Ephraim dilemna (swap mercenary by knight though), they want to do something, but have a responsability to their people, and in their endings the accept their responsabilities, because they can't condemn thousands (or even just hundred or dozens) of people due to their (perceived?) selfishness. Ingrid can even have her cake and eat it in some endings, especially the ones in the routes where she can talk to her dad, who supports her all the way.

Mary-Ann's story would be the closest to the Nabs... save that by this game's design, she can never know who was Blutgang and what crime Momo committed to become "cursed", so praying for his soul and/or salvation comes off as really upsetting (especially since Flayn'n'Seteth can be deployed in the same paralogue, and Worst Mom is still chillaxing in Billy's head).

Fodlan tried to scapegoat crusts for, well, classicism, nepotism, sexism (especially the Adrestian brand of sexism, remembers crusts bad bcs getting a bby with a crust was so important that Hanneman's sister died, but he and his "crust potent" sperm can leave Adrestia and still be a bachelor at his age without any issues coming from his family!)

But after realising "crust" is "nabatean blood" and, well, living Nabateans are targets for Supreme ideologies or Agarthans, it sure feels like Sylvain is complaining about poptarts when Flayn is sure that no one would ever want to befriend her because her ears are pointy, or how her Father and Aunt (?) hide their nature and try to protect themselves from people who will pull out the race card to explain why they're "BaD" and "cannot rule over humans", or why their race needs to be erased to "change the shape of the world".

We could have had Flayn pull a Ninian (aka building a relationship with a partner, but then freaking out at the last moment and saying it's impossible because of "reasons" and feeling like dirt for not telling everything/the truth to said partner) with something similar with Seteth (not revealing everything about him, and being distant/pretending to be obtuse because he cannot trust humans)...

But that'd imply giving more spotlight to those green-haired creatures masquerading as humans, and erasing them means HuMaNiTy would finally be free, so we can't develop them much, or develop on their "otherness" because, you know, everyone needs a nice, warm cup of tea.

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*Sure Sylvain isn't his dad, and I'm glad this part of him was erased in Nopes, but man, imagine him having those kinds of thoughts when his mother is still pretty much around and became Matthia's second wife after the first one died to a Sreng invasion? Also, it's exposed that Matthias loved his first wife pretty much, so where the "wah wah women don't love me they just want the crust" comes from? Is he insulting his mother, or his step-mother ?

The more I think about the nabateans... the less I give a fuck about the crested students problems.

[jeparlelibremente]

In defense of Michael Bay and action movie aesthetics

I never thought I would be in the position of writing a critical piece defending Michael Bay, of all people. Didn't this guy direct "Pearl Harbour?" Isn't he the same Michael Bay responsible for creepily objectifying women by casting Victoria's Secret models almost exclusively, and then having lengthy steadicam shots that seem to just float over their posteriors?

Unfortunately, yes. That Michael Bay. You might want to continue reading this essay next to a bottle of vodka (I like the vanilla flavoured variety). Here’s a link, Australia only, sorry offshore peeps.

Let's back up a little bit here though; it's been in vogue - let me check - forever in Hollywood critical circles to deride the overwhelming majority of action movies and summer blockbusters ever since the invention of the air-conditioner. Granted, there are exceptions; but for every James Cameron making T2 there are about ten even poorer approximations of the Michael Bay aesthetic. I'll get to why they are objectively poorer further along in the essay, for now I wanted to make one crucial point: this hatred of action movies and Hollywood summer blockbusters in general is often more cultural phenomenon than genuine artistic sensibilities or aesthetic critique at play; last I checked, The Fast and the Furious was up to numero eight (nine?); someone is paying to see these films, and presumably they're deriving at least some entertainment from seeing Ludacris slide across a frozen lake in a bright orange Aventador.

Question: have you ever met these people? I live in Melbourne, Australia, and I have (and please believe me when I say this without shame) paid actual money to sit in a cinema and watch each and every one of these films. Yes, even Tokyo Drift. Besides, Tokyo Drift was the best one. And if you avert your gaze from chauvinistic, ultra-fetishised, so-far-jammed-up-the-backside of the hyper material culture of the West, i.e. the target audience, then you will witness thralls of young men and their girlfriends; baseball caps in reverse (indoor cinema) sleeveless shirts revealing badly inked Chinese characters suggesting unique depth and experience, brightly coloured sneakers, glimmering logos, and postures just a little too straight, backs a little too upright, feet spread and full-tilt swagger just a little too performative to disguise the Grand Canyon of inferiority complexes.

Your thoughts on what it's like to be confined to a room brimming with Lynx Africa and fake Burberry aside, do these people deserve entertainment less than anyone else? Doubtful they're fascists, equally doubtful they're going to head home and start slamming The Aeneid

Other side of the coin: if you're a movie studio, you're a business. So why not a make money? After all, capitalism ftw.

The point here is that people reading A.O. Scott, previous readers of Roger Ebert, and so on, form a particular social class. Aspirational 14%. Middle class status anxiety. If you can't have a bigger house than your neighbour, you can out-culture him with some bushido like manoeuvres of art criticism. And all you need to do is subscribe to The New York Times/The Guardian/The New Yorker and all of a sudden you've moved up a social notch. Here we go again: Narcissism of small differences - Freud This is why The Phantom Thread has so many Oscar nominations despite the fact it's a really, really average film. Just give the damn Oscar to Call me by your name or Blade Runner 2049; the latter hits so many home-runs it's the Babe Ruth of the entertainment/aesthetics 2 by 2. It actually had something to say, some great acting (not just over bloated, meandering portrait shots of DD Lewis and Co.) "But PT Anderson shoots in 35mm! Shut up, I hate you. Quentin Tarantino can get away with shooting in 35mm because he is a genius and PT Anderson only gets there part of the time. There Will Be Blood was great; what the hell was this?

Returning from my diversion: Michael Bay has an overlooked quality about his directing, and it is this: staging, choreographing, and then subsequently shooting technically complex action sequences, and then editing them together to make something enjoyable to watch, is really difficult.

Another quick diversion: ever been to the ballet? I hate it, I find it almost intolerably boring most of the time. But every time I've been, sure enough: packed audiences. And make no mistake, the effort involved in planning the choreography of these sequences of dancers is immense. See this metaphor yet? The pro-ballet crowd is probably not the pro-Mark Wahlberg and giant robots crowd, but hey, it's a free country. And capitalism ftw, just in case I wasn't clear enough about that already.

I probably should have structured this essay a little better with some, you know, actual planning, but whisky and planning are poor bedfellows, so let me backtrack a little further again to some directors who nailed action sequences: The Wachowski sisters (brothers at the time). At this point it's safe to say that the entire population of the planet Earth has seen The Matrix so let's contrast a fight scene from this, with an atrociously directed fight scene, by which I mean, every movie Steven Segal has ever made, ever.

Notice the camera work; the Wachowski's keep the camera pulled back, we have a spatial awareness of the environment, and we can see both actors, full body, performing their jujitsu or whatever in all its testosterone promoting glory. The camera changes angle sparingly, only to make some particular point about the exertion of one character. NB: you don't have to like physical violence perpetrated on one human by another, in the same way you don't have to like ballet. My point here is to illustrate good action versus bad. And this takes effort, because you need highly trained stunt people/actors, and a choreographer willing to work out the whole sequence with the director, and then communicate all this to the actors. Then you need to shoot it, and inevitably, someone will screw it up. Imagine the opening sequence to Touch of Evil (100% recommended fwiw - Orson Welles is one of those guys like Hitchcock) except the number of variables to screw up jumps exponentially.

But that's how these scenes should be shot; the focus is how two human beings interact to gain physical dominance over one another; cutting between angles every 400ms/someone throws a punch might be intended to "convey" the sensation of being in a fight scene but the reality is that you can't tell for jack what's actually going on. If your protagonist is supposed to be some badass, how could you tell? You never actually get to see how he parries, blocks, counter-attacks, dodges, and uses the environment to gain the upper hand over his opponent. You don't have a badass, you have a rapid fire sequence of jarring angle changes; nothing is seen, your character is lost. A warrior trope isn't a trope if you can't see the fight.

Antoin Fuqua also does this well in Olympus Has Fallen, yes I know, ridiculous film. But some great hand-to-hand combat sequences featuring Gerard Butler and some jingoistic North Koreans.

So, finally we return to Michael Bay. I won't bother defending the Transformers franchise; if you liked it, you're probably not reading this, and if you did, I'm not trying to take away your happiness or air some kind of superiority over you. Trust me, I like all kinds of "lowbrow" art. All that really matters is what you get out of it. You wanted edification? Go read History of Madness - Foucault is waiting for you.

Watch this:

I don't care who you are, taken in isolation, that shot is - let me check my thesaurus - totally badass. And so we arrive at the crux of the argument, the primary thesis: action movies work when action sequences are given room to breathe, when we, the audience, have spatial context. It lets us almost *empathise* with the pain; when you see a broken arm your instinct is to recoil and "ouch!" because that's how humans are wired. But if you constantly keep cutting between angles, all you do is generate confusion, detract from the agency of the characters, and create a jumbled, visual mess. Altered Carbon on Netflix straddles this line and often gets it right. Of course Tarantino gets it right with Kill Bill; just watch the fight scene at the end of part one. And Bay (admittedly, some rapid cuts and deliberately jerky 'over the shoulder' camera movements) *also* actually manages to get this right. Ditto for Bad Boys. The Rock might have the single greatest line of dialogue recorded, ever.

It's really easy to hate Michael Bay, I'm not even saying your reasons are unwarranted. But reflect on why you liked, or didn't like about film. A.O. Scott and company are no substitute for your own faculties, but if you don't use them, you'll never separate your own opinions from those of others. And that is dangerous.