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salvatoreschool · 4 years ago

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Vampire Diaries Universe: The 25 Best Characters, Ranked

For the first time since 2009, we’re entering a fall season devoid of any new offerings from the Vampire Diaries universe. And like Stefan Salvatore without his daily diet of forest friends, we’re insatiable.

Like so many longtime TVD enthusiasts (those of us to whom the word “thesmatos” really means something!), we’ve spent much of quarantine revisiting the weird, wonderful universe — from Mystic Falls to New Orleans and back again. We’re suddenly spending a lot of time with characters we haven’t seen in years. And we’re having a lot of feelings about them.

In celebration of the franchise’s 11th anniversary, TVLine has assembled another totally non-controversial ranking, this time of the 25 best characters from the Vampire Diaries universe — a category that also includes familiar faces from The Originals and Legacies. (In Legacies‘ defense, the franchise’s latest offshoot hasn’t been around as long to endear itself to us, but that didn’t stop four Salvatore School students from making their way onto our list.)

In lieu of new content from the TVD universe this fall, TVLine is looking back at our 25 favorite characters from the entire franchise, including stand-out favorites from its two spinoffs.

SPOILER ALERT: This ranking discusses major plot points from all three shows. If you haven’t finished The Vampire Diaries (Season 1-8), The Originals (Season 1-5) or Legacies (Season 1-2), proceed at your own risk. Don’t say we didn’t warn you!

25. VINCENT GRIFFITH

Thanks to the magic of body swapping, the Mikaelson siblings have inhabited multiple physical vessels throughout the years, but none have remained in the family’s orbit quite like this Southern gentleman. Powerful, thoughtful and downright Shakespearean in his delivery (Yusuf Gatewood, ladies and gentlemen!), Vincent always has the greater good in mind. And as we learned in The Originals’ series finale, he helped Freya and Keelan pass that good along to the next generation.

24. LANDON KIRBY

Even though we’re still getting to know him, there’s already so much to like about this pure-hearted Mystic Falls townie. Not only is he the franchise’s first-ever phoenix, but he also looks like he could pass for Damon and Elena’s offspring — and that’s never a bad thing. We could tell he had a long future in this universe the moment he danced with Hope in The Originals’ final season. (So far, so good!)

23. JENNA SOMMERS

Like so many paved paradises, we didn’t fully appreciate what we had with Jenna until she was gone. Her death marked the end of Elena’s innocence — which is saying a lot, considering she was still mourning her own parents when The Vampire Diaries began. And if we’re being honest, Jenna was the ghost we were most excited to see again in the series finale. (For the record, Joseph Morgan has apologized on Klaus’ behalf for killing Jenna several times.)

22. TYLER LOCKWOOD

The First Son of Mystic Falls was kind of a jerk when we met him in The Vampire Diaries‘ first season. He was arrogant, aggressive and reckless — so it actually made perfect sense when he was revealed to be a werewolf. Fortunately, Michael Trevino’s character developed a little more nuance from that point on, especially via his Romeo and Juliet romance with Caroline. (After everything that’s happened since 2013, can you believe that they were once in a love triangle with Klaus?)

21. JEREMY GILBERT

Elena’s little brother (er, cousin?) went through a number of different, wonderful phases during his tenure in Mystic Falls. We loved him in The Vampire Diaries’ earlier seasons as the human embodiment of all things emo (he literally dated a ghost!), and we… um… appreciated his unexpected evolution into a shirt-ripping, wood-chopping vampire hunter.

20. CAMILLE ‘CAMI’ O’CONNELL

The Clarice Starling to Klaus’ Hannibal Lecter, this brave bartender was able to tap into the show’s darkest, most complicated character’s psyche in ways that no one named Mikaelson (or even Forbes) ever could. She helped him conquer a number of his demons in the few short years they spent together on The Originals, and like most people who play a significant role in Klaus’ life, she suffered the consequences. (Side note: Are we the only ones who really dug Cami as a vampire? Justice for that short-lived story arc.)

19. SHERIFF ELIZABETH FORBES

Of The Vampire Diaries’ many maternal figures, none put us through the emotional ringer quite like Caroline’s mother. We weren’t her biggest fans in the show’s early seasons, given her penchant for hunting the undead (including her own daughter), but hey, what was this show if not an endless series of redemption arcs? Also, if you don’t get a little choked up when Caroline felt her mom’s presence in the series finale, you don’t have a soul.

18. FREYA MIKAELSON

The long-lost fifth Mikaelson sibling was a little rough around the edges when we first encountered her on The Originals, but the poor woman was in the midst of escaping a centuries-long imprisonment, so we cut her a little slack. And we’re glad we did, because Freya has since become one of the strongest, most inspiring and all-around likable characters in the Vampire Diaries canon. #FreelinForever

17. MARCEL GERARD

While it’s easy to get swept up in Marcel’s charm and swagger (we were robbed of a second karaoke number, by the way!), it’s important to remember just how far back his time with the Mikaelson family goes. When you consider that Klaus literally freed Marcel from slavery and raised him to lead New Orleans as his right-hand vampire, it adds a whole other layer of tension to their passionate power struggle on The Originals. Though he’s treated like an unofficial Mikaelson sibling, Marcel often feels like more of a Mikaelson than Kol — and definitely more than Finn.

16. REBEKAH MIKAELSON

Arguably the funniest (and most glamorous) member of the Mikaelson family, the woman Damon once referred to as “Barbie Klaus” never fai to tell it exactly like it was, beginning with her thoughts on then-lovebirds Stefan and Elena. (“Honestly, I don’t get you two as a couple.”) And Bex only became more complex as the years went on, from her desperate desire for humanity to her undeniable love for Marcel. Just don’t call her insane — she prefers “spontaneous.”

15. ALARIC SALTZMAN

In hindsight, Alaric’s journey from hot history teacher to hot headmaster of a supernatural school makes perfect sense. Still, it was impossible to predict back in The Vampire Diaries’ first season just how much of an impact the man formerly known as Warner Huntington III would have on this franchise. A drinking buddy to some, a father figure to others and a literal father to a lucky pair, Alaric has truly woven himself into the fabric of this universe like few others. (That said, we still wouldn’t recommend dating him if you value your life.)

14. SHERIFF MATT DONOVAN

Only one full-blooded human survived all eight seasons of The Vampire Diaries, and you’re looking at him. The pinnacle of mortal goodness, this blue-eyed patriot hasn’t always been on the same page as his vampire brethren, but that’s only because he didn’t want to see any more his friends and family get eaten. And we can sympathize with that!

12-13. LIZZIE AND JOSIE SALTZMAN

Asking us to choose between Jo (by way of Caroline) and Alaric’s daughters is an impossible task, which is ironic, considering the Gemini twins are literally destined for a fight to the death on their 22nd birthday. Besides, these sisters have always felt like a package deal, from the moment we witnessed their birth on The Vampire Diaries to the day we reunited with them as teenagers on Legacies. (They also popped up in The Originals’ penultimate episode, putting them in the prestigious category of characters who have appeared in all three series.) Despite their inherent connection, Lizzie and Josie really have grown into two very different people, a journey we hope will continue for years (and shows) to come.

11. MALACHAI ‘KAI’ PARKER

The fact that this remorseless, pork rind-loving psychopath ranks so high on our list speaks volumes about actor Chris Wood, who brought a refreshingly sassy vibe to The Vampire Diaries’ sixth season. The guy was so likable, fans were even ‘shipping him with Bonnie… as if that poor girl hadn’t been through enough already! You also have to give Kai points for longevity — even after his head got knocked off, he managed to make two encore appearances on TVD (Season 8) and Legacies (Season 2).

10. HOPE MIKAELSON

As we mentioned with Lizzie and Josie earlier, we feel like we’ve watched Hope grow up before our eyes… because we have. Given the epic circumstances surrounding her conception, birth and upbringing, an adult version of this character had a lot of hype to live up to, and Danielle Rose Russell has proven herself more than up to the challenge. Imbued with her parents’ best qualities, Hope’s power and passion make her both a formidable foe and an invaluable ally. Besides, Legacies showed us what the world would be like without Hope, and it was not a good place.

9. HAYLEY MARSHALL

We can’t even think about this fierce, fearless mama wolf without shedding a single tear. Hayley’s story was basically one long tragedy, from her complicated marriage with Jackson to her tumultuous relationship with Elijah. And then there was her untimely demise in The Originals’ final season, which… actually, let’s not talk about that. From the moment she gave birth, Hayley’s heart belonged to Hope, and it was in her most extreme maternal moments that Hayley’s true strength was on display. That’s how we’ll remember her.

8. ELIJAH MIKAELSON

Suits? Pressed. Hair? Immaculate. Vocabulary? Thicc. With his smooth moves and cunning intellect, Klaus’ extremely respectful brother could do it all — well, except keep the people he loved from meeting horrific ends. (Seriously, this guy’s track record for dead lovers is right up there with Alaric’s.)

7. BONNIE BENNETT

Simply put, this is the witch you want in your corner when things go south. Endlessly powerful and selfless to a fault, Kat Graham’s character spent eight agonizing seasons sacrificing herself — often literally, hence her multiple deaths — in order to keep her friends and family safe. No amount of bloody noses or dead boyfriends could stop this badass from crushing her enemies.

6. CAROLINE FORBES

Getting smothered to death was honestly the best thing that could have happened to Caroline, who evolved from a basic, boy-crazy cheerleader into a bad-ass vampire overnight. And that was just the first phase of her franchise-long evolution into the empowered, globe-trotting mother of two she is today. She’s also responsible for all of The Vampire Diaries’ memorable musical moments, from her sweet song for Matt to her devastating performance at Sheriff Forbes’ funeral. (Now if only she’d pay her old pals at Legacies a visit…)

5. ELENA SALVATORE

She may not have Katherine’s chaotic flare, but Elena deserves credit for carrying much of The Vampire Diaries’ dramatic and romantic weight for six years. And for that pink hair she experimented with in Season 4. On top of that, Elena also rolled with the punches better than almost anyone. (You’re vampires? I’m a doppelgänger? Now I’m a vampire? Now I’m human again? Now I’m in a coma? Sure, let’s do this.)

3-4. DAMON AND STEFAN SALVATORE

Two sides of the same brooding coin, these brothers were as proficient at breaking hearts as they were at breaking necks. And while their love triangle with Elena will remain the stuff of TV legend, their relationship as brothers was revealed to be the real heart of The Vampire Diaries in its final two seasons. Honestly, it’s too hard to choose between them, so we’re not going to.

2. KATHERINE PIERCE

Come on, when were you not excited to see this leather-clad lunatic on your screen? Deliciously twisted and infinitely more interesting than her human doppelgänger, Katherine was behind many of The Vampire Diaries’ most jaw-dropping twists, from her iconic encounter with John(’s bloody fingers) to her long-awaited return in the series finale. Honestly, putting Katherine on hell’s throne in Season 8 was merely a formality — she was always a queen.

1. KLAUS MIKAELSON

The man, the myth, the legend. To think that the monster who slaughtered poor, defenseless Aunt Jenna on The Vampire Diaries is the same person who gave it all up to save his daughter on The Originals… well, there isn’t a clap slow enough to commend that kind of growth. (Again, Joseph Morgan is very sorry about the whole Jenna thing!) By the time Klaus evaporated on the streets of New Orleans, it felt like we had explored every conceivable nook and cranny of his existence, from his traumatic childhood to his fatal romances — and we relished every second of it.

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ofravensandgenesis · 4 years ago

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I'd love to ask about '03 Rachel/Faith notes, backstory, past Faiths, Bliss Mechanics, Tracey, etc' and 'Redshift Collision', if that's okay! 👀

Oo, fun choices! :D Thank you for asking!! ♥ Putting it below the cut, also trigger warnings for mentions of child abuse, drug use, dark backstories, in line with or inspired by Far Cry 5 canonical content. Trigger warnings for Redshift Collision include mentioned fantasy religious content, topic of euthanasia mentioned, magical diseases, etc. Long post is long, I hope the read is enjoyable though!! :0

————— 03 Rachel/Faith notes, backstory, past Faiths, Bliss Mechanics, Tracey, etc ————— So this folder breaks down into a dozen docs with split up notes, we’ll touch briefly on a bit from most of if not all of them, but the list is as follows:

01 Faith Character Notes, NPC Followers

02 Rachel Jessop’s Backstory for ACABH

03 Deaths of the Former Faiths Prior to Rachel, Some Bliss Mechanics

04 Tracey Lader Backstory Notes for ACABH

05 Types of Bliss Drug

06 Bliss Dart Mechanic Notes

07 Faith NPC compilation links

08 Overarching Bliss Realm Mechanics

09 Priestess pictures for Athalia - refs, tattoos, etc

10 Jacob’s Men talking about Bliss Shipment Amounts for Various REgions, Bliss Barrel capacity

11 Faith’s character arc, [Redacted for spoilers] - Major Plot Developments for All Main Characters

12 Angels versus Lost Souls

So, fun tidbits from these various docs! Some are implicitly dark because Faith is a Seed and Seeds don’t get to have happy, fun backgrounds in cult-centric AUs like ACABH, poor souls. The first Angel that Faith ever made, and the first ever Angel of the Project, was a woman named Abigail. It was an accident. Researched the first and last (and alternate) names for both Rachel Jessop, Faith, and Tracey Lader. Fun stuff honestly, Tracey’s is very fitting in that one definition of the name is taken from the Irish word "treasach" meaning "war-like" or "fighter." Lader is from Old English and Middle English words meaning to load; draw up (water specifically.) Rachel is as far as biblical names go, the name of the favorite wife of Jacob, and means “ewe” as in a female sheep. Fitting in a metaphorical sacrificial lamb way, if one chooses to look at it like that, among other sheep-like metaphors such as following the herd, etc. Rachel’s father was a doctor who researched the biochemistry of various plant based compounds that he extracted from specimens he grew at home in controlled conditions. Her mother ran a florist shop and delivery chain, and grew orchids in the green house as a past time. Rachel was passionate about the sciences when she was young, but neither parent looked upon this favorably for various (toxic and abusive) reasons, leading Rachel to become far more withdrawn and reclusive about her passions and activities—in as much as she could manage, beneath her parents’ ironclad rule. Rachel in the present day still is passionate about biology (specifically botany) and biochemistry, but keeps that to herself unless she really happens to trust the other person. There was a brief time when she was a more rebellious and spirited young girl—but her parents quickly stamped that out through any means necessary, including force. It is a major reason as to why Rachel is so conflict avoidant: she remembers how badly it can go, how quickly it can escalate, and she is so very aware of the inherent fragility of both life and limb. There are quite a few conflicting points-of-view regarding the deaths of Rachel’s predecessors, and a great deal of misinformation. Rachel believes that the Seeds aren’t being entirely forthcoming with her about how their own abilities work and the limits of said abilities, and that there’s a lot of secrets not being told regarding the details of how the two former Faiths died. Selena was the first Faith, chosen while the Project was still in its infancy, long before they had made it to Hope County, and Joseph was so sure she’d be the prophesied fourth Herald to help shepherd the faithful through the Collapse. Lana was the second, stepping up to fill the role when Selena died—but Lana died two months later, with both Faiths’ deaths serving as markers of the dangers of the then proto-Bliss-realm. Rachel had been at the Project for half a year at that point, and was the one who took up the mantle of Faith and has served ever since for the past seven years. She was eighteen when she took up the name Faith, but despite her young age had marked accomplishments to her name that had put her forward as a candidate, namely her works with the geneticist Peter on developing the first strains of the drug that would later come to be called the Bliss. This lead to huge leaps and bounds of development with regards to the psychic network that would become the Bliss Realm, and without Rachel’s work, it would be safe to say the Bliss both in drug and psychic plane form, would likely not exist. Jessop as a name is potentially from a root name of Joseph in the form of Yosef, meaning “may God increase, or add (another son)” which ties into Rachel’s family’s thwarted desire for a son rather than a daughter very well in this AU. Thematically, Rachel does arguably share ideology from both Jacob and Joseph, so in a way that is also extremely apropos for her. Ah, Tracey. She did not come from a happy home life either—but that doesn’t surprise anyone in the slightest I think. Her father left her mother the moment he found out she was pregnant, and that’s all Tracey knows and wants to know of him. Her mother worked hard to support them but was absent most of the time, leaving Tracey with relatives to keep an eye on her. Said relatives were very shitty in their treatment of her, leading to a whole host of problems for Tracey to deal with growing up, ranging from neglect to verbal and emotional abuse. This is a cluster of reasons among others that lead to Tracey learning to look out for herself—and to stick up for those who couldn’t look after themselves. She and Rachel met in high school, and they were each other’s first real meaningful friend. It was when they were together that they first thought of the possibility of a better life than all the horror and terribleness they had to live through so far in their very young lives. They were so sure they’d be friends forever...until they weren’t. As of writing this, there are currently six major strains of the drug bliss in ACABH, including Regular Bliss, Sleeper’s Bliss, The Chosen’s Sacrement, The Angels’ Bliss, Cleanser Bliss, and Red Bliss. Variant strains within those major categories also exist as it’s an on-going series of projects for Faith and her followers, with varying levels of involvement from other Heralds, regions, etc. Red Bliss is specific to Jacob’s region and is used in both the Judgification process and the Trials. The others are all largely self explanatory for the most part, or explained or will be explained in the fic. Bliss darts! These are what John’s hunters use, same substrain of Sleeper Bliss that Jacob’s hunters and Faith’s followers use in the form of Bliss arrows and Bliss grenades (think like smoke grenades) to capture non-Project-members too, alongside their attempts to capture the Deputy. Joshua still has a nice stash of them at this point, so the whole family’s in on this. Commonly used even in the Project’s rank and file to subdue kidnapped targets. People can die permanently if they suffer sufficient psychic injury or psychic death in the Bliss in general, but that’s not a guarantee. If some form of psychic death is induced while the person is in the Bliss, it’s possible with immediate medical response to potentially resuscitate said person. Some people can “die” in the Bliss without problem though, aside from likely waking up in a panic as if from a very stressful nightmare. Most people can’t without being connected to the private Bliss network in Jacob’s region—Jacob’s is specifically split off from the rest of the Bliss Realm through the exclusive use of Red Bliss, though Faith and her priestesses could in theory cross over and connect to Jacob’s network, they generally do not. It is easier for Jacob’s people to cross over to the main Bliss network than it is for other rank and file or even Chosen that belong to other Heralds to enter the Red Bliss network if they are not induced into it through drug use. The Heralds have a much easier time of it, but it’s still difficult—Faith and Joseph have abilities that allow easier passage for it among other things, whereas John would struggle more with it sans other additional factors to help said effort along. Athalia was originally one of John’s people before she transferred to help support the previous Faiths, and Rachel retained her as Head Priestess from early on, striking up something like a friendship over time. Some of Athalia’s loyalties may still lie with her old Herald though moreso than her chosen Herald, certainly some of her outlook mirrors John’s dogma moreso than Faith’s, though Athalia keeps that underwraps more often than not. They have a SHIT TON of bliss being shipped around to the different regions. They have to have one hell of an industry for making the stuff to keep up with that scale, depending on what the chemical makeup and ratios are. The doc regarding the plotting of Faith’s arc is all spoilers, so we’re skipping any mention of it here. Angels are different from what the Project calls Lost Souls due to the fact that Angels aren’t 100% disconnected from their bodies and lost in the Bliss Realm, they’re still distantly connected to their corporeal forms in reality, just busy enjoying the Bliss high trip and for the most part uninterested in returning to the real world...for the most part. A minor part of the job for Faith’s people is to ensure that the Angels don’t wander too far in the Bliss realm, or else they’ll become Lost Souls and if gone too far for too long (average length of time spent too far required to become a Lost Soul is a little over a week), this separation can induce major multiple organ failure, including cardiac arrest. It is possible to revive a Lost Soul, much like with reviving someone who died a Bliss-plane death, but it requires that the person’s soul in the Bliss Realm be found and brought back immediately, to sustain the body without extensive external life support systems. Even then, brain death has been known to happen. What counts as “too far” varies from person to person, but the general rule of thumb is within shouting distance—namely, having the Angel’s psychic form in the Bliss Realm’s counterpart of the real world being within shouting distance of where the Angel’s physical body is in the waking world. Brief bouts of separation have not been noted to cause harm to Angels, so it’s fairly lax as duties go to shepherd their souls about and is often tasked to lower ranking Priestesses on the day to day basis. ————— Redshift Collision ————— Redshift Collision is a fun idea that spawned from a crossover fanfic idea I was considering a while ago before letting it evolve into its own original fantasy setting with sci-fi elements instead. It centers on a character named Edgar Loom, short for Loomis, which is his family name. A bit of cultural trivia about the name: The reason he’s called Loom instead of Loomis is because only the heads of a house may use the full family name, everyone else is introduced with a derivative surname. As Loom is next in line to be the head of their household, he is typically the one people refer to when using the name “Loom”, though casual use of the derivative name happens for applicable family members here and there as the situation calls for. First names are typically a much more private affair, and people typically have “use” names that they give when introducing themselves to others including but not limited to prospective business partners, strangers, distant family members, etc. Telling someone your given first name is seen as a huge sign of trust, the equivalent of saying that the other person is part of your inner circle. It is generally expected that first names not be given out prior to knowing someone for a socially acceptable amount of time (length of time not given because I’m not done working out the calendar yet.) Typically, the head(s) of house can use just the family name as their use name if desired, or if there are multiple heads of house then their own use name can be used either as a stand alone or combined with the famiy name. In Loom’s case, since he’s next in line, his use name is typically Loom by default, thus why he’s called that in the ensuing paragraphs. Loom is the only child of his parents, much beloved and happy with his lot in life, having spent his time apprenticed in order to learn how to take up his father and mother’s trade, namely overlooking the production of luxury textiles in the guild of weavers (you can imagine where their ancestors got the surname Loomis from.) Tragedy however has befallen their world in the last two decades, an unknown cataclysmic event has shorn the very fabric of reality in such alien angles, even the gods are left scrambling as they try to figure out what has happened—and what is happening. Despite the new dangers and unforeseen changes that continue to twist the fabric of their world however, life goes on. People still survive, and flourish, adapting as they can to the strangeness that has taken root upon their planet. However, one of the new shifts brought about in their world includes new diseases—plagues. One such disease is called Wraith Fade, so named for what a person becomes as the disease progresses, and how. It is unknown how Wraith Fade is transmitted, but it is widely suspected to be magical in some form, due to lack of evidence for it being transmitted through the more common corporeal means. Loom contracts Wraith Fade, and he and his family all know that it’s a death sentence—sufferers of Wraith Fade are typically observed to have a year or for the more robust two before succumbing to the disease. Typically, the course of treatment is for the afflicted persons to make good of their last days, and then to call for a doctor to help with euthanasia—most countries if not all sponsor covering costs for this procedure to varying degrees, due to the dangers that wraiths pose if left unchecked. And wraiths are very dangerous, and very hard to kill. One of the early to mid stage symptoms is what appears to be a magically-induced loss of voice—both medical professionals and thaumaturgical researchers are at a loss for the mechanics of it, as studies do not register readings of magical structures either natural or artificial that would induce a silence effect. Various treatments have been attempted, but no direct results have been observed thus far in the trials. Another symptom is what has been referred to as “greying”—specifically, a gradual fading into total translucency and loss of most forms of color in the afflicted person’s physical appearance. The silencing and greying that sufferers of Wraith Fade endure eventually comes to encompass most if not all sounds that they make towards the end of the disease’s incubation period, and coupled with the greying effect this translates into a near silent and visually obscured entity when the person loses themselves fully to wraithood. Older wraiths have been observed as occasionally being able to silence entire areas seemingly at will for brief periods of time, and some of the more markedly dangerous individual wraiths have even learned to disappear from sight completely in what appears to be true invisibility. Their hardiness and resistance to what would constitute mortal injury to many living beings also seems to be supernatural in origin, though it is yet one more area that eludes researchers and experts to a vexing degree. What makes wraiths so dangerous however is their penchant for hunting in sporadic and irregular patterns, and the predominant pattern of many wraiths taking to heavily populated areas as a preference. Why they hunt people is a mystery, as sufferers of Wraith Fade are noted as slowly losing sensations of hunger and thirst, and late stage sufferers going without either food or drink without succumbing to starvation or thirst beyond noted secondary effects. The individual modus operandi of a given wraith develops over time, to terrifying results. It is not unusual or imprudent for the public to break into mass hysteria should a murder occur in a city, with people fearing that a new wraith has taken up residence. It is for this reason that sufferers of Wraith Fade are at times persecuted and sometimes killed on sight by unruly mobs, so-called vigilantes, and at times even government-sanctioned organizations in some countries. It is dangerous to travel for both the afflicted and for others, should the afflicted’s health take a turn for the worse and their condition deteriorates faster into wraithood. There is no known cure for Wraith’s Fade—but there are rumors of one, in the strange and distant city-state of Wyrrawyr. Loom is however a soul defined by hope, in that moment of definition. He chooses to try and seek out this rumored cure, and he and his family and friends have a tearful goodbye, knowing this full well could be the last time they see each other in this life. Wyrrawyr is a strange place. It is the city of stained glass, the gateway to the Snowfeld Sea, the broken circle which once sat as the crown jewel of the mighty Hederan Empire, the land of a thousand sieges—and a land of the old ways. Wyrrawyr has been conquered many times, but no conqueror has ever met with good fortune when trying to rule that place. Ill fortune plagues any power that tries to rule that city for long, and Wyrrawyr has garnered a reputation as a place to avoid...not that everyone listens to such tales. It is known as a cursed place to many, but those brave souls who dare to call it home say otherwise. The local gods of Wyrrawyr in particular are strange in their antics when seen through the eyes of the more northern countries, but not so strange as the people—some of whom say the city itself is a divine being in its own right. It is for that reason first and foremost that the Northern Alliance calls it the city of heretics, proud and unyielding in their strange ways. But age-old feuds are reduced to mere distractions as the entire world shudders as the shifts seemingly grow more aggressive where once they were placid. The landscape of their home world seems to shift more drastically in a short span of time than ever it has before, and many are driven to terror at the thought that reality may be collapsing into an unrecognizable form of chaos as they watch the mechanics of their world come apart at the seams. Loom arrives to a sundered Wyrrawyr, as parted and torn with unknown magical phenomena as if a slip-strike earthquake had cracked the earth’s crust open. It is in a sundered Wyrrawyr that Loom meets Death. Specifically, the local Wyrrawyran incarnation of Death, who offers Loom a deal: stand as Death’s champion and agent to investigate the phenomenons, and to enact Death’s will in restoring a form of natural order back to their world—among Loom’s tasks should he accept is to find those souls spirited away by forces unknown. Gods unknown, perhaps, is Death’s suspicion. In exchange for Loom’s services, Death offers him an out that will spare him from dying from Wraith Fade—and this is the only way to avoid that fate and all the sinister after effects that come with it. But both their deal and the “cure,”—in so much as it can be called that—requires Loom to leave their home world, never to return again. Loom must go where Death cannot: into the new world that is slowly colliding with their own, the two ripping each other apart like the collision of galaxies into a new, singular galaxy. A world where magic is a foreign idea, and technology is the watchword of nearly all who live there. A world that is out of place. This collision shouldn’t have happened. These two worlds were not on a collision course—far from it, they had been moving away from each other in their shared planes of existence. That is why the gods of Loom’s world have taken to calling the matter the Redshift Collision. It is the possibility of survival and a world full of the unknown that Death offers, should Loom agree—or, as a mercy, the option of a swift, safe, and painless passing into death and the afterlife, if Loom would prefer to die in his home world while he is still himself. Loom accepts. And that’s the starting point for Redshift Collision’s story!

#chyrstis #tw: child abuse mention #tw: abuse mention #tw: drug use #tw: euthanasia mention #tw: religious themes #ACABH #FC 5 #Far Cry 5 #Far Cry 5 AU #FC 5 AU #Faith Seed #Rachel Jessop #Tracey Lader #long post #original fic talk #Redshift Collision

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jamestaylorswift · 5 years ago

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Love’s a game, wanna play? A meta-analysis of the game of love and Taylor’s love of games

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Before actually getting into this, I’m obligated to make the disclaimer that this is just my interpretation of some songs. I’m not claiming to be “right” about anything. I have no way of knowing whether my observations will hold true if/when Taylor releases more music. It doesn’t really matter. There are many ways to interpret music.

Games are not the only extended metaphor in her discography; if you understand one, you don’t necessarily understand them all. This essay is an exploration of how one particular metaphor could be so effective.

In addition, I am often the first person to say that “not everything is that deep.” Yet here I am, making something deep. I was only mildly curious about this metaphor at first. In the process of documenting my understanding, I surprised even myself as I realized how rich this metaphor is.

A warning…this essay is very long. (It’s either mildly interesting or completely ridiculous and nothing in between. Likely the second.)

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The notion of a ‘game’ is often conflated with the notion of adversarial conflict. This misunderstanding is largely due to Western structural/cultural forces. Mathematicians and economists have a passion for framing most predicaments as zero-sum, or strictly competitive, where one player’s advantageous move by definition disadvantages their opponent. But collaborative and otherwise not strictly competitive games exist too.

Taylor’s fascination with games spans her entire discography. Artistic preoccupation is reason alone to analyze her work from such an acute angle. But pleasantly, Taylor also does not share the academics’ favorite pastime. She strays away from the zero-sum bias in very unpredictable ways. In fact, she has no bias. She prefers to mix and match her language to each situation as she sees fit. Her convolution of love and games is expressive, divorced from the logical framework by which games are defined. I think examining this facet of her work with a fine-toothed comb may be especially illuminating.

It seems counterintuitive to argue that games could (or should) be anything more than Taylor’s favorite metaphorical manifestation of logos. Yet revisiting a metaphor is itself communication, conscious or not. Advancing an understanding of this extended metaphor, in my opinion, substantiates what is usually intangible about Taylor’s songwriting brilliance.

On Games

Precocious and perceptive, Taylor has, for as long as she’s been writing, placed competition, strategy, and collaboration alongside conflict. Therefore, for the sake of coherence and relative brevity, analysis is scoped only to songs with significant mentions of games, puzzles, or game-related imagery. ‘Games’ are not conflated with general fighting, trickery, toying, revenge, mention of rules/strategizing, or winning/losing. ‘Puzzles’ are not conflated with disorder; puzzle pieces must be pieces of a larger, vivid picture.

Consider football. Imagery of high school football makes “Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince” fair territory. Someone shouting over a football game in a bar does not qualify “Mean.” The football helmet worn in “Stay Stay Stay” is an absurd and compelling detail in context, as likely to be fictitious as it is true, and hence more significant than a televised sporting event; “Stay Stay Stay” qualifies. In essence, games are interesting as a device rather than a simple detail.

Below is a list of the songs with significant game reference(s), categorized by implied type. Note that a song can belong to multiple categories if it contains multiple references.

Generic/unspecified games: “Come in With the Rain”, “Dear John”, “State of Grace”, “Blank Space”, “Wonderland”, “…Ready For It?”, “End Game”, “Look What You Made Me Do”

Card games: “New Romantics”, “End Game”, “Cornelia Street”, “It’s Nice To Have A Friend”

Dice games: “Cruel Summer”, “Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince”

Board games: “Dear John”

Sports/contests: “The Story Of Us”, “Long Live”, “Stay Stay Stay”, “End Game”, “Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince”

Puzzles: “Red”, “All Too Well”, “So It Goes…”

Other: “It’s Nice To Have A Friend”

Like many people, Taylor habitually seeks structure to manage unpredictability. (Games provide structure for situational volatility, hence her artistic love affair with this metaphor.) The stylistic choices she makes to entertain this habit, however, are anything but consistent.

The games have a variety of different players, such as in “Dear John” and “Look What You Made Me Do.”

She does not establish strict parity between characters’ emotional affiliation and the competitiveness of a game. “Dear John” features an adversarial game. Conversely, her partner in “Blank Space” is a co-conspirator/collaborator. “All Too Well” analogizes autumn leaves as puzzle pieces; puzzles are collaborative games.

Taylor famously claims that love is a game in “Blank Space.” This song is colloquially understood to be about the love story we see play out in the media. Games can thus include all parts of her ‘love life.’ Arguably, she foreshadows this in “Long Live” by intertwining parts of her ‘America’s sweetheart’ image with professional success, which is derived from writing about love.

Taylor is not always a player in a game, such as in “Cruel Summer.” Her partner may not be either; see the crossword in “Red.”

In short, humans are unpredictable, as is love. It is clear that Taylor uses games as an incredibly powerful metaphorical device. They are a genuine reflection of her feelings about love.

Musical analysis usually begins with careful consideration of each track. Given a disparate and lengthy list of songs, it is probably more fruitful to go up a layer of abstraction. Of particular intrigue for this set of songs is the relationship between time and Taylor’s willingness to divulge more information about a metaphorical game.

We revisit the set of songs to list them in chronological order. The purely ‘generic’ songs are now bolded: “Come in With the Rain”, “Dear John”, “The Story Of Us”, “Long Live”, “State of Grace”, “Red”, “All Too Well”, “Stay Stay Stay”, “Blank Space”, “Wonderland”, “New Romantics”, ��…Ready For It?”, “End Game”, “Look What You Made Me Do”, “So It Goes…”, “Cruel Summer”, “Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince”, “Cornelia Street”, “It’s Nice To Have A Friend”

Specificity about a game seems to decrease with proximity to the 1989 era.

Lyrical imprecision in “Come in With the Rain,” a true outlier, probably boils down to youth.

“State of Grace” is a preamble about the themes of Red. “Begin Again,” though much later on that album, shares the same inspiration as “State of Grace.” Red is constructed as a sandwich between these two songs which present the album’s thesis. The album considered as a whole is thus a buffer for 1989.

reputation is a buffer for 1989 because the ‘generic’ game songs are heavily and intentionally front-loaded.

“New Romantics” is a coda for 1989, and its poker game reference is slightly ambiguous. What, exactly, is poker; what is all in the timing? The thematic material of “New Romantics” is most similar to that of “Blank Space.” ‘It’ is the same crude game played in the earlier track, the affair of collecting men. Perhaps this close relation subsumes “New Romantics” under the ‘generic’ game category. (Though this is a loose explanation.)

There exists an undeniable chronological pattern to game characterization. If you graphed the amount of game-related lyrical obscurity versus time, it would look like a shallow sand dune with the tip at the 1989 era. (Or a hill. Or a big pile of leaves. You get the picture.)

Armed with a basic understanding of Taylor’s career, one might say that her desire for personal privacy manifests as reticence to define metaphorical games. The 1989 era was the height of media attention on her. This caused more than a few issues. The art created around this time would have naturally reflected how she felt about the public eye. (See: the entire reputation era.)

But isn’t Taylor almost as famous as ever today? Sure, her name is not as saturated in the zeitgeist as it was in 2014. She’s still one of the world’s mega-stars. And does she not have a very private relationship today? Taylor’s work reflects her hardened personal boundaries, but boundaries alone do not explain the pattern of how she writes about games. Otherwise Lover would be filled to the brim with songs about ‘generic’ games.

To summarize, Taylor uses games as a perennial favorite metaphor to frame her experiences of love. Increased public scrutiny undoubtedly changed the way that Taylor approached songwriting; even so, fame was not a factor that changed how she wrote about games. The connection between time and types of games suggests that we cannot consider game metaphors in isolation.

On Love

The next piece of the puzzle (no pun intended) is what she shares about love. Which 1989 songs are most revealing? Technically…most of them, if you think hard enough. I’d like to draw special attention to “Wonderland” and “You Are in Love.”

Ah, “You Are in Love.” The musical gift that keeps on giving! Fitting, because true love should be too.

In “Wonderland,” Taylor says:

It’s all fun and games ’til somebody loses their mind

Shortly thereafter in the “You Are in Love” bridge, she proclaims:

You understand now why they lost their mind and fought the wars

And why I’ve spent my whole life trying to put it into words

Taylor reverses her opinion about the prospect of losing her mind for love. (The abruptness here is a consequence of a real-life relationship change, plus the fact that both of these songs are bonus tracks.) Of course, she also tells us an important connection between love and games.

I’ll pause here to say that I’m not going to turn this into a (frankly uninteresting) relationship timeline/proof post. But may the profound significance of “You Are in Love” and its subject never escape us.

“You Are in Love” is written in the second person. Taylor is the intensely guarded ‘you.’ We witness her emotional walls get broken down by her lover, the ‘he.’ Fascinatingly, Taylor departs from the second person point of view in the bridge. Suddenly, she alerts us to the presence of an ‘I.’ The bridge says that ‘you’ Taylor, whole and normal-person-in-a-relationship Taylor, finally understands true love. In the same breath, ‘I,’ writer Taylor, admits that she’s had it all wrong for years. (This is not to say that her writing pursuits before this moment were pointless.) Therefore, breaking the second person point of view to include the ‘I’ line shows that Taylor distills the nature of true love in that ‘eureka’ moment.

Yet she exposes the schism of writer Taylor and whole, normal person Taylor in a moment where, in theory, those two roles could not overlap more. Taylor has every reason to faithfully represent her feelings. Her sentiment is always sincere even though she may falsify details of a story. “You Are in Love” is (as far as I’m aware) the only song in which Taylor ever blatantly admits to writer-person misalignment. The schism must run extremely deep.

Taylor was—and surely still is—drawn to songwriting as a means to explore love. She tries to to capture its enigmatic essence with the written word. How fascinating it is that, at the very moment she communicates her deepest understanding of love, she says that the part of her that puts it into words is inherently disconnected from her spirit which feels it.

On Games And Love

We must briefly table the meta-implications of “You Are in Love” to return to the topic of games.

Love probably would have stopped feeling like a game after finding a real gem of a person who doesn’t mess with your head. (Love also probably would have stopped feeling like a game after dialing down on brazen PR tomfoolery.) Taylor has written several albums about her true love. It’s easier now to trace the arc of her feelings: it is a positive path, as anyone would predict.

Why would she continue to write about games after 1989? The obvious answer is that she likes doing it. It remains a useful metaphor.

But recall that chronology discourages us from considering metaphorical games in isolation. To clarify the principal function of the game metaphor in her discography, we must consider the writer-person dichotomy.

First, note that Taylor exposes the writer-person dichotomy in an honest, vulnerable moment. She confirms it as a human phenomenon. The phenomenon thus must extend beyond a singular moment during 1989. Distance between writer Taylor and whole, normal person Taylor—a measure henceforth called writer-person distance—is necessarily a function of time. Coincidentally, so is the measure of game-related lyrical obscurity.

Writer-person distance can grow or shrink. It was small in her youth; this is what pushed her into songwriting. It is small now, as she has told us in the albums since 1989 that true love has stitched her back together. Again, because writer-person distance is a human phenomenon, it changes slowly, smoothly. (“You Are in Love” simply marks the biggest distance.) Does this sound familiar? If you graphed writer-person distance versus time, the graph would look like a shallow sand dune with the tip at the 1989 era. (Or a hill. Or a big pile of leaves. Once again, you get the picture.)

To summarize, game-related lyrical obscurity and writer-person distance are smooth functions. “You Are in Love” is the inflection point of both measures.

With “Wonderland” and “You Are in Love,” Taylor tells us that games are linked to how she conceptualizes love. But not just any love. 🎶 True love. 🎶

At the same time, Taylor presents “You Are in Love” as a dividing line between ‘that which is a best attempt to understand something that inherently cannot be captured’ and ‘that which refines the thing that, against all odds, was captured.’ Our interpretation of games must synthesize an abrupt ‘eureka’ moment with both the measures’ gradual changes.

If we are to talk about metaphorical games, we also must talk about true love. But we know that if we are to talk about games, we also must talk about time. Vital to uniting these ideas is the revelation that Taylor conceptualizes the nature of true love as the nature of time. For doesn’t time define what is gradual and abrupt?

The most important line in “You Are in Love” is when Taylor finds it—‘it’ being love. A literal ‘eureka’ moment. This isn’t just a one-time coincidence.

Writer-person bifurcation clarifies why the game metaphor is surprisingly effective. As Taylor revisits the convolution of love and games, the metaphor morphs in tandem with her innate understanding of love.

Some Good Old-fashioned Song Analysis

Observing how games, love, and time are intertwined requires that we reject purely literal interpretations of game-related lyrics after “You Are in Love.” Of course, literal interpretations are still generally useful, even correct. Games are literal, so references to them should be interpreted as such. Also, lyrics about games are probably Not This Deep in reality. We didn’t have to do all this work to realize what songs might belong in conversation with each other; identifying lyrical callbacks would have been sufficient. Treating game lyrics as purely literal limits how we might decipher a recurring metaphor. Without the notions of game specificity or writer-person distance, we would lack a framework with which to fully interrogate how these songs are are connected (i.e. through time). And, after all, the ultimate goal is to understand why the game metaphor is so successful. But, I digress.

(We’ve also made it this far and we might as well keep going. Another couple thousand words…don’t threaten me with a good time, amirite?)

To observe how games, love, and time are intertwined, I propose the following rule of thumb: A game reference before “You Are in Love” is Taylor’s description of love, whereas a game reference afterwards is a pointer to past instances of that game. Such a reference is metaphysical, or more appropriately, meta-lyrical. If she’s referenced a game already, she knows how to use that reference again. If she introduces a new reference, she’s planting it for future use.

We can group the songs after “You Are in Love” by game type:

Generic/unspecified games: “…Ready For It?”, “End Game”, “Look What You Made Me Do”

Dice games: “Cruel Summer”, “Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince”

Card games: “New Romantics”, “End Game”, “Cornelia Street”, “It’s Nice To Have A Friend”

Sports/contests: “End Game”, “Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince”

Puzzles: “So It Goes…”

Other: “It’s Nice To Have A Friend"

Analysis requires precision. We should pare down the duplicates, if possible.

“It’s Nice To Have A Friend” is tricky because it’s naturally sparse. “Video games,” for example, are more than a simple detail: they are an essential part of creating a childhood vignette. “Twenty questions” and the card game “bluff” function analogously in the later verses. The brilliance of this song lies in how Taylor illustrates the development of companionship and intimacy. The verse about marriage is the most significant verse because it reveals the meaning of the whole song. Thus, we may take the bluff to be more important than twenty questions, which is more important than video games. “It’s Nice To Have A Friend” ultimately belongs in the card game category.

Central to the pathos of “Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince” is the “stupid” dice game lyric. Of equal importance is the portrait of Americana, painted with lyrics about Friday night lights. This song truly belongs in two categories.

At the end of “…Ready For It?” Taylor fires a starting pistol, letting ‘generic’ games begin. “End Game” follows and we assume it must pertain to the same game. So Taylor intentionally places this song in the first category. The hook has lyrics about a varsity “A-team,” though this is probably just a nod to Ed Sheeran. The other truly interesting game-related lyric is the one about bluffing. Thus, “End Game” also belongs in the card game category.

Here’s the new list:

Generic/unspecified games: “…Ready For It?”, “End Game”, “Look What You Made Me Do”

Dice games: “Cruel Summer”, “Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince”

Card games: “New Romantics”, “End Game”, “Cornelia Street”, “It’s Nice To Have A Friend”

Sports/contests: “Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince”

Puzzles: “So It Goes…”

Each of the four obvious groups of songs illustrate a different way Taylor weaves the natures of true love and time together:

Déjà vu: “So It Goes…”

Hindsight/wisdom: “…Ready For It?”, “End Game”, “Look What You Made Me Do”

Fate: “Cruel Summer”, “Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince”

Progress: “New Romantics”, “End Game”, “Cornelia Street”, “It’s Nice To Have A Friend”

Déjà vu

The puzzles category only contains one song, making it easiest to analyze. The namesake of “So It Goes…” is Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, famously constructed like a mosaic. Puzzles are central to the meaning of this song.

“All Too Well” contains the first instance of a puzzle metaphor in her discography:

Autumn leaves falling down like pieces into place

Taylor calls back to “All Too Well” in the chorus of “So It Goes…”

And our pieces fall

Right into place

Get caught up in the moment

Lipstick on your face

By referencing a previous song using identical phrasing, Taylor creates the illusion of a sudden ‘déjà vu’ moment. The effect is similar to “You Are in Love,” where she reaches sudden enlightenment.

Sonically and lyrically, the “moment” she gets caught up in is implied to be the one in which she gets lost in passionate sex. The déjà vu moment could be this moment, but it doesn’t have to be. Déjà vu is agnostic to the present in the sense that the feeling can be triggered in the strangest of times. The déjà vu moment is whatever prompted her to write this song.

This game lyric connection clearly shows how a moment of love is defined by a moment of time.

Hindsight/Wisdom

The bombastic group of singles, “…Ready For It?”, “End Game,” and “Look What You Made Me Do,” sets the tone for all of reputation. The ‘generic’ games in these songs are the same as those in 1989, particularly the crude (and, in Taylor’s case, often interchangeable) games of celebrity and dating. In “Blank Space,” Taylor spells out in gory detail what she does as an agent in the celebrity dating game. She does not explicitly define the rules of that game, though. It remains sufficient for her to prove that she knows how to play by them. (Musically, this is far more interesting.)

We know that the reputation singles’ literal proximity to 1989 indicates Taylor’s direct emotional response the previous era. The consequences of a ‘fall from grace’ underpin the entire reputation era. Therefore, Taylor uses lyrical connections from reputation back to 1989 to illustrate hindsight. She tells us what she learned from her mistakes and what she wished she would have done differently.

But first, she gets to be salty about it. In “Look What You Made Me Do,” Taylor laments the fact that she participates in public games to appease others. (Because, really, withdrawing from the celebrity circus would immediately solve a lot of her problems. Alas, megastardom is a Venus flytrap.)

I don't like your little games

Don't like your tilted stage

The role you made me play

Of the fool, no, I don't like you

Let’s return to “Blank Space” for a moment. Taylor’s boyfriend in “Blank Space” is considered a co-conspirator/collaborator with her in the celebrity dating game. Central to our understanding of that song, however, is the unequal power dynamic. Taylor is the strategic mastermind, whereas her boyfriend is just along for the ride. The two are on the same team, but they are not equals.

Taylor actually leans further into the games of the 1989 era in “…Ready For It?”

Baby, let the games begin

Unlike in 1989, her partner is an equal on her team:

Me, I was a robber first time that he saw me

Stealing hearts and running off and never saying sorry

But if I'm a thief, then he can join the heist

And we'll move to an island

She then connects “…Ready For It?” to “End Game”

Baby, let the games begin

Are you ready for it?

I wanna be your end game

Both Taylor and her partner are forced to play the same game and they share share the same goal. Her partner’s “end game” is Taylor; thus, Taylor keeps her true love by beating the celebrity dating game. They have to work together to achieve this difficult task.

Though the celebrity dating game is not true love, it impacts Taylor’s relationship with anyone who could be her true love. In hindsight, Taylor realizes how media games blew up in her face. It is wisdom—to keep her relationship private, to dial down on PR tomfoolery, to prioritize her happiness—that helps her pre-empt these problems for the reputation era. And indeed we understand the love story of reputation as the lovers’ prolonged attempt to hide from the public eye.

Hindsight comes with the natural passage of time. One only accrues wisdom, however, when they apply the lessons of hindsight to make better judgements about the future. Games again unite the ideas of love and time; they elucidate how Taylor uses wisdom to protect someone she loves.

Fate

“Cruel Summer” and “Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince” highlight the elegance of the meta-rule of thumb.

The dice game in “Cruel Summer” is a unique incarnation of the game metaphor because Taylor doesn’t confirm whether she is directly involved in this game:

Devils roll the dice

Angels roll their eyes

What doesn’t kill me makes me want you more // And if I bleed you’ll be the last to know

The song doesn’t reveal much about the nature of the dice game other than the fact that it is competitive. It could be a fitting description of what is going on in Taylor’s personal life. It may not be. What is more important is that Taylor positions herself as collateral damage of the outcome of the game.

This is also the dice game’s first appearance. By our rule of thumb, this lyric exists only to be a link to “Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince.”

“Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince” belongs to two different game categories, sports/contests and dice games.

First, dice games. We get a few more answers about the nature of the “Cruel Summer” competition:

It's you and me

That's my whole world

They whisper in the hallway, "she's a bad, bad girl"

The whole school is rolling fake dice

You play stupid games, you win stupid prizes

It's you and me

There's nothing like this

Miss Americana and The Heartbreak Prince

We're so sad, we paint the town blue

Voted most likely to run away with you

Both Taylor and her partner are forced to play the dice game by virtue of being metaphorical students. As a disgraced and about-to-be-vagrant prom queen, Taylor has finally realized that winning the school’s dice game is not worth the price of a ‘fall from grace.’

Next, sports/contests. With the understanding of these lyrics as pointers to her previous songs, sports/contests harkens back to “The Story of Us,” “Long Live,” and “Stay Stay Stay.”

“The Story Of Us” suggests that a shared quality of sports/contest metaphors is that conflict is nuanced, even hidden to outsiders:

This is looking like a contest

Of who can act like they care less

In “Stay Stay Stay,” football is connected to (for lack of a better word) violence, conflict that could result in emotional and physical harm:

I'm pretty sure we almost broke up last night

I threw my phone across the room at you

I was expecting some dramatic turn away

But you stayed

This morning I said we should talk about it

'Cause I read you should never leave a fight unresolved

That's when you came in wearing a football helmet

And said, "Okay, let's talk"

Finally, “Long Live” blends the ideas of small town Americana with Taylor’s personal and professional life:

I said remember this moment

In the back of my mind

The time we stood with our shaking hands

The crowds in stands went wild

I said remember this feeling

I passed the pictures around

Of all the years that we stood there on the sidelines

Wishing for right now

We are the kings and the queens

You traded your baseball cap for a crown

When they gave us our trophies

And we held them up for our town

And the cynics were outraged

Screaming, "this is absurd"

'Cause for a moment a band of thieves in ripped up jeans

Got to rule the world

The backdrop of “Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince” is not just any part of America. The juxtaposition of idyllic parts of American life with frictional, violent, yet sometimes subtle forces tells us that the song’s backdrop is an American culture war. It is conflict which unsettles everyone, but by nature hurts only some.

In totality, the function of the dice game metaphor is to position Taylor as collateral damage of an American culture war. (Chew on that one for a bit.)

Again, we probably could have surmised this by examining the lyrics closely. The song lends itself to being a signpost in the Lover chronology. It seems too autobiographical to be anything different. We all remember 2016.

However, “Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince” sticks out like a sore thumb from the album’s theme of “a love letter to love itself.” Revisiting games as a glue between love and time expands on the purpose of “Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince” in Lover.

The “Cruel Summer” bridge contains this lyric understood to be about her true love:

And I snuck in through the garden gate

Every night that summer just to seal my fate

Taylor identifies “that summer” in the 1989 era as the moment which she sealed her fate. Implicit in this confirmation is her perspective from the future. She is looking back on 1989 from the time when her terrible fate has just been realized.

The moment of realization is—you guessed it—the chorus of “Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince.” The chorus depicts post-prom queen defamation. Taylor is aware of every single action (many, probably deliberate) that helped her achieve royalty. She never divulges them. The song is scoped only to the time when she lives her fate.

We usually take observations about fate and love to describe how two souls are bound to each other. Taylor does not tell us much about her lover in “Cruel Summer” sans the fact that the shape of their body is new. Paying special attention to games reframes “Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince” within the Lover theme as a commentary on fate. However, the emphasis of fate should not be on her lover. The dice game connection tells us that Taylor views “that summer” in the 1989 era as the time when she sealed her fate as collateral damage in the American culture war. From the “love letter to love itself” perspective, the moral is that passion and excitement can make lovers forget the immutability of individual destiny. If you are fated to be with someone, both of you are at the mercy of whatever the world has in store for the partnership and you as individuals.

Progress

An eclectic group of songs shares a reference to bluffing in a card game. The game metaphor beautifully stitches these songs together into parts of the same story.

The first and most detailed description of the card game is in “New Romantics”

We're all here

the lights and boys are blinding

We hang back

It's all in the timing

It's poker

He can't see it in my face

But I'm about to play my ace

A bluff in poker is an attempt to trick one’s opponent into thinking one has a better hand than they do in reality. The opponent may call their bluff and challenge them to prove their hand is as good as they advertise.

Bluffing requires deception, often telegraphed by facial expressions. Here, Taylor says that she is good at bluffing because she doesn’t let her façade crack. She is not truly bluffing, though, because she possesses an ace, presumably part of her even better hand. Her opponent has called her perceived bluff to prompt to her to reveal the ace.

The opponent, “he,” behaves as though Taylor is bluffing. Taylor, strategic as ever, is prepared to counter by revealing the most powerful card. We should thus interpret this metaphor as the ‘bluffer’ exceeding expectations. (Remember that the first instance of a metaphor is a base case, so we must take its meaning more literally.)

Likewise, in “End Game” and “It’s Nice To Have A Friend”, Taylor is the bluffer:

You've been calling my bluff on all my usual tricks

Call my bluff, call you "babe"

However, “Cornelia Street” allows room for the interpretation that both Taylor and her lover are bluffers:

Back when we were card sharks, playing games

I thought you were leading me on

I packed my bags, left Cornelia Street

Before you even knew I was gone

But then you called, showed your hand

I turned around before I hit the tunnel

Sat on the roof, you and I

Taylor may have also been a trickster: “then you called” could refer to the lover calling Taylor’s bluff.

The recurring bluff metaphor coincides with progress or forward momentum in a relationship.

Recall a previous discussion of “New Romantics.” We defined the “it” which is “all in the timing” as a reference to finding romance. “New Romantics” is set in a club with a dance floor, boys, and blinding lights. It’s the kind of setting conducive only to landing one-night stands. Taylor plays games with someone in the club, but exceeds expectations for the outcome of that game. What was flirting or courting becomes something more serious than a one night stand (i.e. an actual relationship). The act of calling a bluff in a card game engenders (relationship) progress. Yet again, what is intrinsic to time is intrinsic to love.

This observation fits with each song.

reputation charts the development of Taylor’s relationship, but the card game bluff in “End Game” is at the beginning of the album. That’s exactly why this lyric works so well. Her relationship is still new, nonetheless significant, after 1989. Her verse mixes these ideas:

I hit you like bang

We tried to forget it, but we just couldn't

And I bury hatchets but I keep maps of where I put 'em

And I can't let you go, your hand print's on my soul

The “End Game” bluff represents how Taylor goes from wanting a steady relationship to wanting everything.

You might be able to see where this is going. “It’s Nice To Have A Friend” is the ‘discographical endpoint’ of the bluff metaphor. The verse about marriage delivers the song’s emotional punch:

Church bells ring, carry me home

Rice on the ground looks like snow

Call my bluff, call you "babe"

Have my back, yeah, everyday

Feels like home, stay in bed

The whole weekend

Notice, however, that the bluff metaphor occurs after the implied wedding. This is actually a beautiful sentiment. Intimacy, trust, and commitment are ongoing; growth doesn’t stop with a ring on a finger. The bluff, which represents delivering on promises and exceeding expectations for love, powers the relationship forward.

All signs point to the “Cornelia Street” bluff as the one that may have led to marriage.

Back when we were card sharks, playing games

I thought you were leading me on

I packed my bags, left Cornelia Street

Before you even knew I was gone

But then you called, showed your hand

I turned around before I hit the tunnel

Sat on the roof, you and I

So emotionally charged is this scene that we have to wonder what, exactly, Taylor’s steady partner could do to make her (1) walk out if she were being led on and (2) come back so quickly.

The most intriguing detail about this card game is that both parties may have been bluffing. The lover is leading Taylor on, but Taylor does not stay to call the bluff. She leaves. Usually in poker, one would not want their opponent to be able to prove the bluff with a good hand. (Think back to the ace in “New Romantics”.) But what if both players are on the same team at the end of the day? Calling a bluff is now setting oneself up for potential disappointment. Taylor walks out because she is frightened by the mere possibility of being let down.

Taylor is also bluffing, but her lover doesn’t let her walk away so easily. They pull out all the stops and concede their hand in a desperate attempt to get Taylor to turn around from the tunnel. It works. By our understanding of the bluff metaphor, the lover exceeds all of Taylor’s expectations. The events that transpire on the roof presumably are when Taylor reveals her own cards.

The topic of marriage fits with this emotionally charged scene. Of course both lovers would tiptoe around the topic and be scared to reveal their true feelings.

So following the bluff metaphor helps us follow the course of true love. Calling and revealing a bluff is the catalyst for Taylor’s relationship. However, it also is the nature of time which underpins progress.

I concede that interpreting the bluff metaphor as the catalyst of a story makes it vulnerable to any truth-fuzzing. Perhaps Taylor hasn’t ever written about a real-life engagement or marriage. We have no way of knowing. We instead should take comfort in the fact that her lyrics are beautiful and music is open to interpretation.

On Writing

Our beliefs about love are bound to change over time. As a writer, Taylor is in a unique position to capture this change by revisiting a metaphor.

Take “It’s Nice To Have A Friend.” The song is written as a series of vignettes to define the qualities of love that remain consistent while relationships change over time. The middle vignette, with its reference to “twenty questions,” could very well point back to the same day as the “Cornelia Street” card game. Feelings reoccur in certain moments—déjà vu. The first vignette is a picture of childhood. The last vignette is a picture of adulthood. Therefore, it seems just as natural to interpret the middle vignette as a picture of adolescence or young adulthood. Light pink skies, back-and-forth conversations, and brave, soft moments of intimacy illustrate a coming-of-age experience. The same moment that pulls Taylor forward in her relationship is the one that also pulls her back to a different time.

Then the coming-of-age experience is reminiscent of the portrait of Americana, the Friday night lights, marching band, and high school prom. During adolescence, we only have an inkling of our futures. We are less aware of all the ways we are connected to others and our world. Young and impressionable, our only job is to live, to change, to make memories and mistakes. Memories and mistakes define what was, and experience creates wisdom that shapes what will be. So Taylor captures this duality in fate. The moment a fate is realized is a moment that is equally a fossil of the past and a forecast for the future. The moment it all makes sense…eureka!

As an artist, Taylor’s job is to communicate her human experience. Listeners decide whether or not she successfully telegraphs what is universal about it. However, Taylor is no more of a spokesperson for the universal human experience than anyone else. She simply possesses the talent, work ethic, and privilege to make a career of it.

Consider Taylor’s own summary of the past decade:

I once believed love would be burnin' red

But it's golden

She consciously and elegantly edits her previous beliefs about love. (Obviously, she may plant callbacks to previous songs purely for fun. This one is certainly sincere.) These lines illustrate the craft she has worked hard to develop.

Manifested in her craft is the need to revisit her ideas. It seems as though certain recurring metaphors have become the only way for her to accurately capture some parts of love. They become self-perpetuating. Unforced yet expressive subconscious consistency constitutes artistry. It is artistry which compels us to believe in the universality of music.

The self-perpetuating love/games metaphor is especially fascinating. It is one of the purest examples, though perhaps also one of the strangest, of how writing about love engenders new experiences of it. Taylor translates love into game language. Games illustrate duality. Duality is love.

Perhaps this conclusion is something others already know about Taylor’s talent. I’ve never quite been able to put my finger on it until now.

To me, it seems like the songs are writing themselves.

#taylor swift #kaylor #gaylor swift #music analysis #my post

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sifeng · 5 years ago

Text

Chinese Drama Villains

Villains are just as essential to a story as a hero. If you have a weak villain that has no personality beyond evil, and no reasoning behind their actions besides “because they’re evil”, then no matter how good your hero is, the story still won’t be compelling.

Today, I will compare 7 different villains from four different kinds of dramas - wuxia, xianxia, harem and revolutionary era. The eight villains can also be grouped into three different categories based on why they do what they do - for love, for power, and a struggle internally.

The eight villains I will be analyzing are as follows:

Sui He (穗禾) played by Wang Yifei (王一菲) from Ashes of Love (香蜜沉沉烬如霜) - Xianxia

Xian Fei (娴妃) played by She Shiman (佘诗曼) from The Story of Yanxi Palace (延禧攻略) - Harem

An Lingrong (安陵容) played by Tao Xinran (陶昕然) from Empresses in the Palace (甄嬛传) - Harem

Hua Fei (华妃) played by Jiang Xin (蒋欣) from Empresses in the Palace (甄嬛传) - Harem

Yang Kang (杨康) played by so many different people but from the most recent one its Chen Xingxu (陈星旭) from The Legend of the Condor Heroes (射雕英雄传) - Wuxia

Zhou Zhiruo (周芷若) played by so many different people but from the most recent one its Zhu Xudan (祝绪丹) from Heavenly Sword and Dragon Sabre (倚天屠龙记) - Wuxia

Feng Manna (冯曼娜) played by Tao Xinran (陶昕然) from Rookie Agent Rouge (胭脂) - Revolutionary Era

They can be grouped into the three categories I mentioned before in this order:

For Love - Sui He, Hua Fei, Zhou Zhiruo (kind of)

For Power - Xian Fei, An Lingrong

Internal Struggle - Yang Kang, Zhou Zhiruo (kind of), Feng Manna

Let’s analyze each category separately. Also sorry Yang Kang is the only guy villain here, but lets be real, in recent dramas haven’t the villains always been ladies?

For Love

This group is the easiest to determine what their motivation is: love. For all three, they are the second female leads (arguably) and cannot get the leading man because he obviously belongs to the female lead.

Sui He (穗禾) played by Wang Yifei (王一菲) - Ashes of Love (香蜜沉沉烬如霜)

For Sui He, love is one of two factors that causes her to do the things she does. The other factor is because she wants to please the Heavenly Empress to keep her position as the leader of the Bird Tribe. But evidently, it seems that love is her primary motive, as the scene in which she completely breaks down is when Xu Feng (male lead) reveals he never loved Sui He and only wanted to see if she really killed Jin Mi (female lead)’s parents. When she looses leadership of the Bird Tribe, yeah, she’s sad, but not as sad as the aforementioned scene.

Hua Fei/Nian Shilan (华妃/年世兰) played by Jiang Xin (蒋欣) - Empresses in the Palace (甄嬛传) - the one in hot pink

Hua Fei’s motive is just love. She already has power within the harem (she’s tied with the Empress), and her family is super important and powerful as well. The only thing she wants is the Emperor (male lead)’s love. When the emperor is more interested in the new concubines, Shen Meizhuang and Zhen Huan (female lead), Hua Fei is ready to destroy them. She gets Shen Meizhuang out of favor by tricking her into thinking she was pregnant, and while she tries, on many occasions, to get Zhen Huan out of favor as well, it seems her ideas don’t work.

Zhu Xudan (祝绪丹) as Zhou Zhiruo (周芷若) in Heavenly Sword and Dragon-Slaying Sabre (倚天屠龙记)

Zhou Zhiruo could technically be in two categories here, but let’s just talk about how her love for Zhang Wuji (male lead) affects her decisions. After Zhang Wuji leaves her at the altar after Zhao Min (female lead) intrudes on their ceremony and offers to help Zhang Wuji find his godfather only if he leaves with her, Zhou Zhiruo sheds the mask of innocence that she wears. She uses her unorthodox Nine White Bone Claws to try to kill Zhao Min, and this isn’t her first attempt to kill Zhao Min. She tried once to stab her in the stomach while she was sleeping, but got caught by Yin Li, who she had to kill instead. She then tried to make Zhang Wuji kill Zhao Min by pretending that Zhao Min had killed Yin Li and stolen the swords. The reason for her attempted assassinations is she is jealous that Zhang Wuji likes Zhao Min (though some of her other evil actions are for a different reason).

So What Do These Three Have in Common?

Love leads these three female villains into killing at least one person. For Sui He, she kills the Water and Wind Immortal, for Hua Fei she succeeds in giving Zhen Huan a miscarriage, and for Zhou Zhiruo, she is forced to kill Yin Li to silence her. Love drives these three into a frenzy, and they are willing to do anything or kill anyone to get the love of their respective male leads.

Some Others in this Category:

Zhao Sese (赵瑟瑟) - Goodbye My Princess (东宫)

Su Jin (素锦) - Eternal Love (三生三世十里桃花)

Chun Fei (纯妃) - Story of Yanxi Palace (延禧攻略) - kind of an exception though since she loves the second male lead

For Power

This type of villain is seen commonly in harem dramas, and some heroines even have this as their motive (Zhen Huan, Wei Yingluo). Their basis for their horrible actions is primarily so they can gain power, usually so they can be above those who had previously stepped all over them.

Xian Fei/Hui Fa Na La Shu Shen (娴妃/辉发那拉·淑慎) played by She Shiman (佘诗曼) - Story of Yanxi Palace (延禧攻略)

Xian Fei had once been a kind and unfavored concubine who didn't bother to play in court politics (but then again, in the beginning only Gao Guifei cared at all). But after her family’s fall from power (of which she cannot do anything for), she changes dramatically. She starts by killing Jia Pin, and making all sorts of ploys to bring Wei Yingluo’s downfall. While she doesn’t hate the emperor, her motives for getting higher in the court have nothing to do with him. Her ending, while not as bad as some of the other ones, is rather tragic, as she becomes an empress that is isolated and given no real power, similar to how she started out.

An Lingrong (安陵容) played by Tao Xinran (陶昕然) - Empress in the Palace (甄嬛传)

Like Xian Fei, An Lingrong starts out weak, unfavored but still good-hearted. She is grateful for the friendship of her two friends, Zhen Huan and Shen Meizhuang, even though the emperor could care less about her. She actually starts out at the lowest title possible for a concubine and stays there for like eighteen episodes. As her power grows a little stronger, she begins to develop an inferiority complex, and she believes Zhen Huan is trying to sabotage her (even though she’s not). She ends up betraying her two good friends in the beginning and going to the empress to become her minion. Throughout this development, her title grows and grows as does her father’s importance in the court. As her power grows, her personality shifts from kind and innocent to jealous and eager to gain more power.

Some Others in this Category:

Hong Shiguang (洪世光) - My Amazing Boyfriend (我的奇妙男友)

So What Do These Two Have in Common?

They both start out weak and unfavored, though Xian Fei’s rank is considerably higher than An Lingrong’s. While An Lingrong doesn’t need a tragedy to get her power hungry quest started, she does require assistance at first from Zhen Huan. The two ladies both use subtle plots and schemes to bring down their competitors, and both kill somebody. Xian Fei straight up chokes Jia Pin (though not with her own hands of course) and An Lingrong causes Zhen Huan’s miscarriage by giving her an ointment whose scent causes miscarriages. Both rise considerably in power, and loose their old personalities, replacing them with a desire for power and revenge.

Internal Struggle

This is my favorite type of villain, and also the most complex. This group of characters have some sort of struggle internally, usually on whether to do what others say, or do what seems to be easiest. They are the most emotional of these villains because even though they seem to be tough and strong on the outside, inside they have no clue what to do.

Yang Kang (杨康) played by Chen Xingxu (陈星旭) - Legend of the Condor Heroes (射雕英雄传)

Honestly, while watching the 2003 and 2017 versions and reading the novel, I felt really bad for Yang Kang, but he definitely does do things we as watchers cannot forgive. His struggle is between whether he should accept his fate as a normal Song peasant or continue being the Jurchen Prince he once was. His real father, Yang Tiexin was a Song peasant, as was his mom, Bao Xiruo. After Yang Tiexin was supposedly “killed”, Bao Xiruo married Wanyan Honglie, a Jurchen Prince, so Yang Kang could have a good life. When Yang Tiexin was revealed not to be dead, Bao Xiruo and Mu Nianci (Yang Kang’s love interest) both convinced him to accept his father was Yang Tiexin, and escape the city to live a peasant life with his real family. He refused, and Wanyan Honglie decided to run after the reunited family, this led to the deaths of Yang Tiexin and Bao Xiruo. Their deaths, as well as Yang Kang’s new struggle of “who am I?” leads him to Mu Nianci, and he finally accepts he is Yang Tiexin’s son, and a normal Song peasant. But, life as a Song peasant obviously is not as comfortable as life as a Jurchen Prince, and he constantly switches and back and forth from Song peasant to Jurchen Prince. When he discovers the reason Bao Xiruo and Yang Tiexin were separated in the first place was Wanyan Honglie; Mu Nianci, Guo Jing and Huang Rong all tell him to kill Wanyan Honglie. He is about to, but cannot do so, because well, duh, this dude raised him. For eighteen (something) years, he thought he was Wanyan Kang, and not Yang Kang.

This brings me to why he’s a villain - the things I said before, that doesn’t make him a villain, it makes him a human. But what does make him a villain is when he is willing to betray his true country (Song) for Jin, and when he then lies to Mu Nianci.

Is he allowed to not be willing to leave the comfort of the palace? Yes. Is he allowed to not have the guts to kill Wanyan Honglie? Yes. Is he allowed to help Wanyan Honglie once in exchange for Wanyan Honglie raising him? Yes, even twice. But, is he allowed to betray his country and the person who loves him the most just for some title and some riches? No. Sure, he can stay in the palace as a Jurchen prince, but the fact that he used Mu Nianci’s connections to get information about Song army advancements and then TOLD THEM TO WANYAN HONGLIE is unacceptable.

But I do think it ought to be said - Guo Jing, Huang Rong and Mu Nianci were being way too cruel when they asked Yang Kang to kill Wanyan Honglie. That’s like asking you to kill this man who did nothing but be nice to you and raise you as a parent should for your entire childhood. Who is cruel enough to do that?

Feng Manna (冯曼娜) played by Tao Xinran (陶昕然) - Rookie Agent Rouge (胭脂)

I also felt really bad for Manna, especially in the beginning. In the beginning, her best friend is Lan Yanzhi, and they’re really close - that is until Yanzhi decides to betray Manna. Yanzhi decides to help the Nationalist Party by infiltrating Manna’s house and revealing how Manna’s parents are Japanese spies. Yanzhi does make the Nationalists promise that in her infiltrating the house, these actions will not hurt Manna (but of course they do). Yanzhi’s spying causes the death of Manna’s parents and the destruction of the friendship the two girls had.

So, doesn’t Yanzhi seem like the villain here? Well, two reasons she isn’t, what Manna does after these first few episodes, and because Yanzhi was helping her country (ooooh, I should do an antihero analysis too! Yanzhi would fit so perfectly). After the death of her parents, Manna can only rely on San Ge, the person she loves the most. And eventually, she is forced to go and help the Japanese, something she does with joy, and she really (really really really) wants to capture Yanzhi and torture her too. She ends up being a huge spy for the Japanese, and when she does capture Yanzhi, she unleashes all sorts of torture on her (mental, physical, all the sorts). Her willingness to betray her country just because of a broken friendship does paint her as a traitor, but you do have to consider the fact that she has no where else to go. Her parents were traitors, and so who will believe that she’s a hero? Another factor that makes her a villain is the fact that she believes her parents were correct, she believes that they’ll go to heaven, even though they were evil and wicked. While of course, we, as children (usually), see our parents as good people no matter what they do, Manna should have seen this situation in context.

But now that I write this, Manna is a very pitiful character, and if this story was told from her point of view, Yanzhi would 100% be the villain. Out of the people on this list, Manna has the most reason to do what she does, and while its not correct (what she does), she really had no other option.

Zhou Zhiruo (周芷若) played by Zhu Xudan (祝绪丹) - Heavenly Sword and Dragon Slaying Sabre (倚天屠龙记)

We’ve already seen how love impacts Zhou Zhiruo’s decisions and her evil, but another factor that causes her transformation is the pressure her master, Miejue put on her before her death. Miejue made Zhou Zhiruo promise not to ever love Zhang Wuji, and even to kill him. She made her the new leader of Emei, but also said that if Zhiruo disobeyed her, then Miejue would never get to experience peace in the afterlife. Zhiruo, who loves Zhang Wuji, but also Miejue doesn't know what to do.

On the Island, she steals the two swords, and while she tries to kill Zhao Min, her master had told her to kill Wuji. She cannot bring herself to do that (meaning she has disobeyed her master and that Miejue will not find peace in the afterlife). She then gets the Nine Yin Manual, and practices the Nine White Bone Claw skill, though she only learns the inferior unorthodox version. Zhiruo kills Yin Li, and pushes all the responsibility onto Zhao Min, continuing to pretend she too is a victim. After being left at the altar, she decides to follow through with Miejue’s orders and becomes the true leader of Emei. She shuts up one of the Emei students who used to talk trash about her by continuously hitting her with her blows until the student finally accepts Zhiruo is truly the leader.

So What Do These Three Have in Common?

They’re being told to do one thing, but they cannot. Yang Kang is told to be a Song peasant, since he’s supposed to be one, but he would rather be a prince. Manna is told she should be sincere to her country, but the only people who will accept her are the Japanese. Zhiruo is told to forget her love for Zhang Wuji, but she loves him too much. This kind of struggle leads them to do cruel things out of confusion or anger. These are the most complex villains, with motives that go beyond just one thing. They do bad things because they cannot live up society’s expectations of a good person, and go the opposite way instead.

So What Makes a Good Villain?

The ones I’ve included as analysis are all good villains, but my favorite, in terms of how complex he is, is Yang Kang. He are real, human, and his motives go beyond just one reason. Manna was also really complex, and also she had just a great transformation. She is kind of forced into the role of a villain because there’s no where else to go. Honestly, though she does some bad things, people in that show (Rookie Agent Rouge) all do bad things, even good guys, so she’s a great reflection of how cruel society can be. She’s a victim, and because no one was willing to help her, or because she wasn’t wiling to accept the truth, she turned into the villain. My least favorite type of villains is the “do it for love” type, since, realistically, few people would go to the point of murder for love.

One of the reasons I feel like Manna is such a good villain, is because Tao Xinran played her role so well. Jiang Xin’s Hua Fei was also SO GOOD! You can see that behind that mask of power and sass, she’s just a little girl who wants to be loved by the one she loves. So, while writing is very important, I think acting is very important as well. You have to create a good character, with human traits and realistic motives, and also an actor or actress has to be able to play out these traits.

#cdrama #villains #cdrama analysis #ashes of love #heavenly sword and dragon saber #rookie agent rouge #legend of the condor heroes #story of yanxi palace #empresses in the palace

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actuallylorelaigilmore · 5 years ago

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i would love to hear a s3 rant tbh

i started writing this a few months after s3 came out, because i needed that long to sort of soak up all the feelings and changes that came along with it. now i’m used to it enough that i don’t find myself thinking too hard about s3 when i get to it in rewatches–it’s a shift, but one i’m adjusted to. and now it’s premiere day for s4! so i’m finally done writing the rest of it.

it is a shift, though, and i think that’s why so many of us in the fandom had mixed feelings about it–we still loved it, but we didn’t come away from s3 with the same lingering mood that we did after s2. for me, s3 was the first season that ended on a truly happy note. there was no heartbroken elena at her quinces, there was no distraught family hoping lydia would wake up.

s3 left pretty much all the characters in a good, hopeful place, so why did we find ourselves more inclined to pick it apart? why did it feel different, when all the individual character arcs and plot points were in the same world we love, and clearly handled with the same amount of effort and care as we expect?

the following giant analysis is my attempt to articulate an answer to that, as a fan who has watched the whole show….so many times. so many times, guys. just so much. i don’t even have a number anymore.

to give you an idea of what you’re in for, here’s the categories you’ll find behind the cut:

each season’s focus was different

brothers and other strangers

dr. b’s inclusion minimizing other relationships

schneider being more isolated from the family

schneider’s sobriety

schneider & avery

avery + other characters

penelope & mateo

misc other gripes

feel free to reply to this and/or send me asks, i spent way too long on it. :)

each season’s focus was different:

obviously, odaat is an ensemble show. every character gets moments of their own, and most have larger arcs. but because the show needs a focus, each season arguably belongs more to some of the characters than others.

the stars of s1 are penelope and elena.

penelope is our anchor to the family and the story, the one that everything else orbits around. we’re watching her live through the end of her marriage and become more settled in her new role as the primary parent to her kids. elena is figuring out who she is, then dealing with the fallout from sharing her truth with the people who matter to her. her quinces is the topic of debate in 1.01 and closes out the season in 1.13.

lydia steals scenes a lot, but she doesn’t really have a larger arc in s1. at the end of the season, she’s the same person she was at the beginning, just changed by her involvement in elena and penelope’s stories. same goes for alex–he has stories, but they’re a lot smaller and more contained. and schneider and leslie are only involved in the season because of their friendships with lydia and penelope, then in schneider’s case, his dynamic with alex later on.

the stars of s2 are penelope and lydia.

penelope goes back to school, has her first serious relationship post-divorce, and finally deals more seriously with her mental health struggles. lydia decides to become a u.s. citizen, struggles with her feelings toward leslie, and ends the season triumphant after a major health scare.

elena plays a major role in s2, but a lot of her story is a continuation from s1, with the return of victor and her first romantic relationship, and developments like her new job as a handyma’am are awesome but not the central focus of the season. alex gets to be the star of a few episodes, more than in s1, but they’re not really tied in to an overarching arc. his first job, his anti-immigrant bullying, and his time at the movies with penelope are all standalone plots.

schneider has a larger, more serious role in s2, going from ‘you guys are like family’ during quinces in s1 to ‘now, you’re my family’ to lydia in not yet. but he’s still on the outside, looking in. and leslie’s role remains one that supports penelope at work and lydia in friendship, rather than giving him his own plot.

the stars of s3 are alex and schneider.

in s3, penelope’s story is more settled, because so is she. her job is secure, her schoolwork is coming to a close, and her kids are growing up. she has a romance, but mateo is less important to her than max was, and the plot reflects that, with mateo barely around until penelope’s neglect of him becomes part of the joke. pen’s reacting to what’s going on around her more, whether that’s alex’s drug use or elena’s anxiety and secret hotel room or schneider’s sobriety.

that’s not a bad thing! justina kills it in every episode, penelope’s still funny and a tearjerker and strong as hell while flawed…but s3 is the first season that doesn’t completely revolve around her, storywise.

elena’s story is also more settled, on some levels. victor’s return gives her a much-deserved coda, evidence that her life couldn’t be neatly tied up in a bow after a year and that emotional scars do real damage. but even that plot, like her first time with syd and her driving lessons, are part of larger episodes involving other stories rather than the main focus of all of them. victor’s wedding, the finale episode, tries to move forward five of our six main characters, compared to elena’s quinces, which was almost exclusively her show.

lydia’s s3 plot includes her fabulous bouquet list, ideas about aging and motherhood and family. but she’s back to being a scene-stealer–even her bouquet list exists as a subplot in other people’s episodes.

having focused the most on the alvarez women in s1 and s2, the show finally gives alex more room to shine in s3, a development that surprised me but pleasantly so because it turns out that the more they give him to do, the better marcel is at it. s3 shows us an alex growing up, making dumb choices and learning from them, but also being there for his family in bigger and more mature ways, schneider included.

and schneider…gosh. schneider’s arc in s3 is so important that it’s the one they foreshadowed ominously before the season was even on netflix:

he did step into the spotlight as promised, and by the end of the season, he was a full-fledged canon member of the family. not that we needed them to tell us that, even if schneider did. :)

to start with, though, that’s part of why s3 feels different: because it is. the focus widens to different characters, and the ones we’re used to following more closely have more contained arcs.

brothers and other strangers

s3 also decided to introduce new family members. a LOT of new family members. and while they all added to the story, some fit in better than others. the funeral did this well, finally giving lydia’s estranged sister a face to go with the name, and giving us more of a glimpse at the big family penelope grew up around before the military and parenting narrowed her everyday focus.

but the show’s decision to anchor an episode on brothers gave us what felt like a lot of consistency issues. they explained pen’s sudden s3 brother, tito, by making his absence during lydia’s coma a topic of discussion. they couldn’t actually include a never before mentioned sibling for penelope without creating bigger confusion, though. it just wasn’t possible.

tito is apparently the older brother that lydia idolizes, but until 3.04 she’s never mentioned him in conversation once? when she’s in a coma reflecting on her family and how they’ll go on without her, her beloved son isn’t worth a mention? i can forgive the show for deciding to give pen a brother three years in, but i can’t pretend it wasn’t jarring when odaat treated her like an only child before that.

and this is a much smaller issue, but also in s3 suddenly syd has a younger brother? who is homeschooled too? when they were telling elena their only classmate was their chinchilla the year before? like i said, a relatively small thing but it still bugs me because it’s so random.

schneider now has sibling(s) too, apparently, but his comment about not being his father’s favorite child was the first time that came up, in three years of him talking about his parents and household staff and childhood stressors. i have so many questions. hopefully future seasons will clarify some things.

anyway, hermanos was a deeply confusing episode for me because tito came out of nowhere and schneider’s conversation with leslie, while lovely, was the first time we heard schneider (or anyone actually) label his relationship with penelope a sibling-ish one. it was clear during lydia’s coma that he considered lydia a friend who was also somewhat a maternal figure in his life, but it wasn’t until s3 that the show extended that dynamic, from ‘lydia is like his mom’ to ‘therefore he and pen are both her kids.’

i’ll get into this later, but i honestly think that was meant more to tie into the episode’s theme than because it was supposed to shift his friendship with penelope into new territory. we’re watching penelope deal with tito, and elena deal with alex, and schneider makes the one comment during an important scene with leslie. it’s still jarring though.

the very fact that schneider wasn’t with the family during their vacation felt like an inconsistency to a lot of us, whose two-seasons-worth of headcanons about schneider make ‘he secretly books the room next to theirs and crashes their vacation’ more believable than him staying home alone.

it was done in service to the season’s goals of adding tito to the mix and folding leslie in more, and both goals were accomplished…it just felt a little strange.

dr b’s greater inclusion minimizing other relationships

speaking of leslie, s3 for him was what s2 gave schneider–more ties to more characters, and the first real subplots we’ve seen him have about serious subjects. for good or bad, a lot of what stood out to me in s3 as different was related to the show making more room for leslie.

schneider not being with the alvarezes on their vacation, even though he’s at every family event including funerals now? penelope made it happen by ‘entrusting’ schneider with the care of her house(plant), but really it played out that way so we could see schneider and leslie bond.

elena’s driving lessons being handled by leslie? it’s fair enough that penelope isn’t the one doing it, since she’s busy and it stresses her out, but if you want me to believe that schneider wouldn’t have jumped at the opportunity, even with avery in his life now, you’re crazy. there’s no believable canon reason in s1 or s2 why leslie would be the one doing that, but it played out that way so we could see elena and leslie bond.

even alex gets to know leslie better because he’s more involved with elena, meaning that after s3 leslie finally has connections to the whole family (which schneider accomplished in s2 once he was mentoring elena in building repairs).

by the season finale, leslie is attending victor’s wedding, mistakenly butting in on elena’s time with her dad, and finally traveling to cuba with lydia while he shares his practice with penelope.

however you feel about s3 in general, the show had to change its usual dynamic in order to include leslie more in situations like driving lessons and weddings. it just wouldn’t have worked otherwise. for example, the funeral at the beginning of s3 doesn’t involve him at all, because why would it? unlike schneider, he hasn’t spent a ton of time bonding with the extended alvarez family prior to s3. he’s involved in big moments because he’s close to lydia or penelope.

s3 is the first time we really see him get involved in the story just on his own merits. and that required less schneider in family moments, which paired nicely with the season’s other visible difference.

schneider being more isolated from the family

the schneider we know and love from s2 would have offered to take over elena’s driving lessons as soon as he realized they were stressing pen out. he would have found an excuse to join them on vacation, and he would have been present when penelope realized elena was sneaking off to a hotel room with syd.

schneider prior to s3 was always around that way, witnessing threesome porn on alex’s laptop and picking up strangers at the airport for the quinces, making it easier for penelope to go to him when she needed advice or a hug. in s1, she may have started out getting his help as a last resort, but by late s2, she was often turning to him instead of her own family, or her support group. pen was reluctantly aware of his many hookups because she was at his apartment so much.

once avery’s in the picture, though, we see less of schneider in the family orbit, and it’s really not explained. penelope pulls him (literally) into alex’s drug storyline, but after that he’s mainly in other people’s storylines, like lydia wanting to teach penelope to cook, or alex spending too much on shoes.

even in anxiety, schneider’s status as penelope’s most trusted person is one scene in an episode that shows how she interacts with everyone in her life, rather than the climax of it–the way his time with her is in hello penelope.

beyond individual episodes, it’s the relationships that matter, and we just see a lot less of that with schneider and the family in s3. in s1 we saw him bonding with alex all the time, and in s2 schneider became more important to elena. but in s3…where is he?

alex goes to his apartment because penelope ordered him to, to get a lecture about reckless spending, and that’s the only one-on-one time we see them have before the laundry room in drinking and driving. are they still close? i’m assuming they are, because alex clearly still cares about him and vice versa, but whether it’s because alex is growing up or because schneider’s busier with his first real girlfriend, they’ve stopped hanging out.

i feel the same way about schneider and elena. her support of him when he relapses (how amazing is it that elena is the first alvarez to use the word ‘love’ with schneider, when he’s been closer to lydia and penelope longer? i adore one gay cuban teenager) makes it clear that he’s still important to her, but even her building maintenance seems to be done alone now. the only solo conversations they even have are at the funeral, in the very beginning of the season.

and while schneider and penelope remain friends in s3, the nature of their friendship has changed in a lot of ways. she’s at his apartment less, he’s at hers mostly when the whole family is around, and until his father’s visit they’re less close physically along with everything else.

schneider’s absence in big moments like elena learning to drive or smaller ones like a rare family vacation can be explained as storytelling choices, but they also make it easier to understand how he started drinking again, and how it was possible for him to keep it hidden (along with his avery breakup) before victor noticed.

when penelope went off her meds, schneider was the first person to confront her about her unusual behavior, but penelope doesn’t see the change in him until she’s looking for it. some of that is the show arguing that alcoholics are really good at covering their secrets up, but it also only works because though schneider is making appearances at meals and still involved with family, he’s around a lot less than he used to be.

schneider’s sobriety

deciding to dive into schneider’s sobriety was the defining choice of s3, in my opinion, that made it feel so different. if i had to pick just one, that would be it, because so much else spiderwebs out from it.

finally seeing more of the world schneider comes from, in the arrival of his father? a major relapse trigger for him.

penelope telling him that choosing his father over his tenants means he’s not part of their family? seemingly the last thing she said to him before he drank.

his inclusion in the alvarez family museum? a way to show how his sobriety is the most impressive work he’s done in his whole life.

penelope (and the rest of the family, but especially penelope, once they’re alone) doing whatever they can to support him and convince him to keep fighting? the clearest sign we’ve had in three season of how important schneider really is to them.

it’s an amazing story arc for him, and as much as it hurts to watch, i love it.

but boy does it make season three a change from the first two.

after first setting up how proud of him dr b. and lydia are (the closest thing he has to loving parents) for his years of sobriety, we then see him tempted to drink thanks to his father’s actions and just general presence.

but because of how the show handles the reveal, we actually don’t know for sure that he’s drinking again until penelope and lydia confirm it. we can be rightly suspicious–i saw that the dangling tag was no longer on the bottle when he placed it on his coffee table, and assumed then that he’d already opened it–but we can’t know.

which means that for the first time, just like penelope, we don’t know if we can trust schneider. schneider! who has wanted nothing more than to earn and keep the family’s trust this whole time.

it’s so unsettling. as is his visible unraveling once he realizes he’s been caught.

and the thing is, that we’ve seen this before, just like penelope has lived it before–the worst of her fights and fear with victor happened offscreen, but when he comes back we see him lie to her, try to convince her he can handle his own problems and she should leave it alone.

but that…that was season one. that was victor, who moved in and out of the picture often in really hurtful ways, and who we weren’t encouraged to get attached to.

schneider is lovable, and loving, and present. and yet in season three, he also becomes a version of himself who is reactive, and dishonest, and will do whatever it takes to avoid being confronted about his relapse. including trying to hurt and push away the people he loves most.

i think part of why his relapse is so effective as an arc is because it’s as hard for the viewers to expect such a sharp turn from the sweet, laid-back guy we met in s1 as it is for penelope and her family. but that’s also why s3 leaves us shaken.

schneider & avery

oh gosh, schneider and avery. i’ve talked about them a lot before, so i’ll just say here that they brought her in with great potential, then let her stay so far on the sidelines of the show after the valentine’s day episode that it became impossible to know who she was anymore, what role she played in his life, and what their future could possibly look like now that they were reunited at the wedding.

is she the gorgeous nerdy artist who has just enough in common with him to be a good fit long-term? is she rich and more suited to the world he comes from? is she uninterested in his life outside of what they do for fun together, so that she’ll never get to know his chosen family at all?

it seemed to change each time we saw her, and by the end of her involvement in schneider’s s3 storyline, we didn’t even know what had broken them up before we were supposed to be rooting for them to get back together.

my theory continues to be that the people making the show were blinded by the impossible cuteness of real life marrieds todd and india, and forgot to make sure their plot threads on the show made sense.

because avery was never going to get a ton of screen time, she was a minor character–but revolving any part of his story around her kind of gave the show a duty to at least give us a clue of what the heck was going on.

avery + other characters

my other major complaint about avery (who i genuinely adored, at least for her first couple of episodes! my liveblog of her existence in s3 is just a lot of flailing about her being so freaking cute) is that the show keeps her in a totally unprecedented bubble.

penelope’s love interests? always interact with her family. whether it’s ben getting a text from lydia, because he wasn’t around long enough for more, mateo joining an unexpected party, or max spending whatever time he could at her house…we always got to know how her guys related to her family, and that helped us understand them and the relationships better.

syd of course spends a ton of time around elena’s family, and we’re going to see alex’s girlfriend meet the family this season. you could argue that those comparisons are different because schneider’s not one of them, his storylines are less central than say, penelope’s are–and that’s true. but even dr. b’s girlfriend got a long bathroom scene with lydia and we see/know much less about leslie than we do schneider.

mostly though, this bugs me because avery clearly spends time in their home! she’s there for valentine’s day, and penelope also tells schneider to invite her during ‘the man.’ and she works at the kids’ school, so she’s in their orbit on another level. penelope is able to get in touch with her and find out they broke up.

and yet, the first real love interest for schneider that could be a healthy and serious relationship…and onscreen, lydia never meets her. doesn’t try to figure out if she’s good enough for the adopted son lydia has been encouraging to find love for three years. they never interact.

elena, who developed a serious interest in alex’s love life and a taste for gossip in season one, appears to have no interest in the woman schneider’s seeing. alex, i could understand not caring, because he’s generally happier caring about what directly affects him and what he can do to help others…if schneider’s happy, i get why he might stay out of it.

but it just sort of grates on me that none of the women in schneider’s family have a conversation with avery onscreen, beyond the moment when penelope is trying to kick her and schneider out and she pushes back. if avery is in a scene, she’s talking to and focused on schneider, or nikki, or schneider’s father. none of the family. is that because she doesn’t feel like she has to make an effort to know them? or because the show just wasn’t thinking about that? even though we see it with every other love interest brought into the house?

i mean, when you pay attention to that, then of course we don’t have a clear sense of who she is! how can we when there’s no reason to believe that anyone who cares about schneider does either?

penelope & mateo

penelope’s relationship with mateo puzzles me almost as much as schneider and avery–and in some ways, even more. we see their friendship first, we watch them deny interest in more than that with each other. then penelope pushes the issue and they do decide to date, but just like with avery, the show doesn’t have a lot of screentime to offer him.

so what we know about her new boyfriend is that they have some things in common that she really values but maybe too much in common to avoid fighting about it–and then we barely see him again, learning mainly through his absence that she’s just not that into him, until eventually they break up because it turns out he was more into his ex than her anyway.

there’s a karmic sort of humor in that for penelope, but for me it left mateo feeling like a waste of a love interest. we really didn’t get to enjoy their relationship much, especially if they wanted us to miss it when it was gone…so was it worth the time they spent setting it up in the first place?

for me the answer to that was no. especially since as her ‘longtime’ school volunteer buddy, we’d never seen him before. and i feel like it’s not likely we’ll see him again.

penelope & schneider

this is a frustrating one for me because while i have complaints about these two and their relationship in s3 it was also AMAZING and i LOVED it. both are true.

the confusing part is that their dynamic is inconsistent in s3. think some of that is because the show is trying to do so much at once. fully bring schneider into the family, focus their romantic lives on other people, deepen their bond, deny the possibility of a romance between them, keep them each other’s person.

in s1 they’re landlord and tenant but also becoming real friends. in s2 they’re best friends and he’s a honorary part of the family now (though still an outsider).

but in s3 he’s established clearly as her best friend and most trusted person, a guy who’s become deeply important to her and her whole family–so much so that after his relapse, they come together to support him much like they all did lydia in s2.

but penelope treats him dramatically differently from moment to moment and episode to episode in s3. like an annoying brother when he’s getting cooking lessons from her mom, like a life partner when alex’s behavior has her angry and scared, like a bff when she’s considering dating mateo, and even a little like a flirting companion at the wedding.

it’s not completely unprecedented for their dynamic to have multiple layers. his relationship with lydia is complicated too. in past seasons, he flirted with both penelope and her mom–while they also laughed at victor calling them a couple and he told comatose lydia how important her mothering was to him.

but they lean harder into it during lydia’s cooking lessons, while still hitting the beats hard of ‘are you sure you’re not dating?’ during penelope’s support group and schneider’s dad’s visit. the contrasting takes on their friendship is just a lot of whiplash in a single season.

another thing about s3 that’s different is the kinds of physical contact between penelope and schneider. you might not notice unless you’re looking for it, but penelope actually touches schneider more than he does her. lightly, casually, briefly. she makes contact in a friendly, familiar way all the time. schneider is more likely to touch her when it’s important, in big moments, as though he knows that she trusts him and welcomes him in her space but he doesn’t want to abuse the privilege.

i studied it for making gifsets, and she touches him more every season. and while he touches her a lot more in s2 than in s1, s3 is actually about the same amount. penelope grew visibly closer to him this season, but he held himself back from getting any more familiar. he was also the only one of the two of them who compared her to blood family. for now,it’s really up to interpretation if there’s a deeper reasoning behind that.

for both of them, though, more than half of the physical contact they make in s3 happens in just two episodes, both towards the end of the season. not only does schneider’s father’s visit and his relapse bring them closer together, literally and physically, but the season up until that point has them further apart.

they spend time together stalking alex, or with schneider talking her down from her panic, but the casual dinners are less, and she’s going to him less for advice–which means there are less small touches, less moments where schneider sits her down on his couch or she nudges him affectionately.

that makes it all the more intense when they do connect, with penelope holding his hand and them hugging twice all within the same few minutes. and then after his relapse, their conversation alone in the apartment is so tense and so much more separate than they usually are.

the last time she touched him was in the man, the most open and complimentary she’s ever been, and look what happened. this isn’t the man she knows and loves, she needs to reach her best friend who’s still in there somewhere under all the pain and self-loathing, but she tries to do so with honesty first, with bluntness, with tough love, with listening kindly but not without pushing back, and finally with his place in her family–as a role model for the kids.

only once he’s agreeing with her about the course of action and just doubting his ability to survive it does she reach out. once he’s himself again. and then she’s more there for him physically than she ever has been before. this is a new level of intimacy between them, schneider letting her in rather than excusing himself during tough times, her giving rather than just taking support, her being his silent rock the way he always is hers.

it’s just different than the previous seasons, between them. the problem is that while you’re watching it, it’s hard to pin down what message about their relationship the show is trying to send, since they touch less but more deliberately, and they’re family but not in a way that has well-defined boundaries.

misc other gripes

elena’s world shrinking

as of s3, what exactly is elena’s life outside of syd and anxiety? don’t get me wrong, i love her relationship with syd, and the anxiety plot was good–driving lessons too, which were tied to the anxiety somewhat.

but if we’re pulling back to look at the bigger picture, elena in season one was a lonely club leader, figuring out her identity, and navigating disagreements with her family.

elena in season two was experiencing her first relationship, finding her first group of geeky friends to hang out with irl, confronting the fallout of victor’s behavior in s1, and continuing her academic hard work while also adding lots of political engagement.

in comparison, elena in season three exchanges ‘i love yous’ and has sex for the first time, as well as makes up with syd after their first fight. she learns she has anxiety and gets her driver’s license and continues to heal her relationship with victor, but…she has no friends anymore? no mention of josh or carmen or any of the echo park gamers? and she’s studying for testing, it seemed like, but she’s not in clubs anymore or volunteering or protesting? her whole world outside her family isn’t really syd, is it?? because i know first love is amazing, but that’s not healthy.

i said up there that less of the story belongs to elena after s1, and this is a large part of why i feel that way. the show treats her like some of her bigger arcs are settling down, rather than expanding, giving her subplots instead and making room for the other characters. it’s weird to watch though when just a quick comment here and there would have implied that she still spends time with friends or fellow social justice warriors.

lydia’s humor goes dark

when it comes to lydia, season one includes some jokes about her ending up in a home–or to be more specific, the fact that she never will. her comedy in season two revolves a lot around her identity, with her decision to become a citizen.

and then, we go into season three after her coma. though she appears to be in good health, the family is still worried, and elena especially tries to protect her from herself.

whether it’s specifically related to her near-death experience or not, season three involves way more death jokes. things like lydia looking up, and inviting god to reunite her with her husband ‘berto, i am ready,’ she says, then sort of shrugs when death doesn’t arrive.

it’s not unfunny…but it’s a different kind of humor. i can’t say i enjoyed the edge to it, probably because i was elena’s age when my grandmother died, and she was also a deeply religious woman who was awaiting her invitation to heaven.

alex also has no friends anymore? does he still play baseball?

the way that s3 gives alex so much more to do, storywise, is awesome. but just like elena, his world seems to have gotten smaller in terms of socializing. we hear about his girlfriend but don’t meet her, and we never see him interact with friends, either–besides things like instagram.

this one’s really a minor complaint because he has whole important storylines in s3 and at least the show does imply he still has friends…but it’s a little odd for the most popular alvarez teen to spend more time chatting with dr. berkowitz than any friends his own age. especially when he used to be so involved in baseball that we at least saw his teammates.

it’s not clear to me if season three just didn’t overlap with sports season for him this time around, or if he gave baseball up–but if it were the latter, you’d think they would mention that.

scott came back but not lori

i honestly don’t know which of the show’s casting choices are influenced by availability and which are choices they make for plots they want–other than carmen leaving, because i know ariela went to another show.

but while lori hasn’t been around since season one, scott went missing after the second episode of season two…and then appeared in the second episode of season three before never showing up in the rest of the season.

there’s no continuity problem with this or anything–i just don’t like scott and wish that if they were only going to keep one of pen’s coworkers, it would’ve been lori. i know that wouldn’t have let him do what they were able to with scott. but still.

max came back why?

i like max, for the record. he’s been my favorite of all penelope’s love interests so far, and i felt bad for them both when they broke up. but in terms of the finale, it felt really jarring the way they included his little appearance.

in that one scene, the show managed to remind us that they truly loved each other, genuinely supported and cared for each other, had common background and went back a long time as friends–and that out of all the men penelope had been with, he was the one she was still hurting over.

and then he left, as easily as he appeared.

besides reminding us that her major relationship in s2 was with max, what did that scene accomplish? it didn’t feel like closure, because it didn’t add anything to their original breakup. but it also didn’t change anything about how they ended–he remained someone she wasn’t going to be with, even though they loved each other a lot.

the only explanation i can think of is that the show wanted to work with the actor again. because if their goal was to confirm that yes, she and max really were great together even though she wasn’t going to be with him…we didn’t need more confirmation of that. we got the message in s2. ed quinn is great though.

#i'm not going to reread this one last time because my brain is just very tired of it...it's so long lol #so yknow..forgive any typos or tell me about them so i can fix them #also writing half of this almost a year ago means it might not be entirely coherent? idk #one day at a time #odaat #schneider #penelope alvarez #elena alvarez #alex alvarez #lydia riera #leslie berkowitz #avery #max ferraro #lori and scott and mateo are also in this a little but i don't think i have tags for them #replies #anons are love #meta #mine #odaat meta

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neuxue · 5 years ago

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Who are some of your favorite villains?

Oh man, that is a question, anon. This is not a comprehensive list, because if I started listing every morally corrupt character who owns my soul, we’d be here all night. I’ve also taken a somewhat flexible definition of villainy at times, because…it’s complicated.

Also, spoilers for uh…most of the things listed; I’ve tried to keep it vague where possible, but the nature of villainous arcs means sometimes that doesn’t work. I’ve listed the work before the commentary, so if you don’t want spoilers for the thing, skip that section.

In no particular order…

Lord Asriel and Marisa Coulter (His Dark Materials): okay, so arguably they’re not villains, per se, but they each serve as antagonists at various points, they’re ambitious and proud beyond belief, and their morality is…well. Complicated. (Did I lose my mind at the ‘corruption and envy and lust for power. Cruelty and coldness. A vicious probing curiosity. Pure, poisonous toxic malice […] you are a cesspit of moral filth’ speech, from a corrupt angel to the one deceiving him? Abso-fucking-lutely. Also ‘I wanted you to come and join me. And I thought you would prefer a lie’). They’re also on this list because they were my Formative Villain Faves from the age of 7, which probably tells you something about who I was as a child and who I am as a person.

Nirai Kujen (Machineries of Empire). You really…could not write a villain more My Type if you tried. I’m not sure I could write a villain more My Type if I tried. Immortal, immoral mathematician who traded empathy for the ability to act on it, reconfigured a universe, and has lost most of his humanity but not his sense of beauty? I am but a simple woman. It helps that there is one hell of an enemies/allies/lovers dynamic going on between him and another character who is a different sort of my type, and it’s precisely my kind of Fucked Up Power Dynamics.

Moridin (Wheel of Time): ’Your logic destroyed you, didn’t it?’ I have a whole…thing about villains who see themselves as a kind of anti-Chosen One. I’ve written about it slightly more coherently elsewhere, but it comes down to a particular kind of despair and perception of inevitability, that they have no choice but to fight and that their role is always to lose, and that they will be cast and remembered as the monster, and so there is not reason not to be monstrous, but that doesn’t help with the self-hatred.

Semirhage (Wheel of Time): I could pick a lot of the Forsaken, and one or two other characters from WoT but I’ll stick to two here. Semirhage is all about pain without emotion, and I’m into it.

Malkar (Doctrine of Labyrinths): okay, he’s sort of in the category of scenery-chewing villain you love to hate, but I do love to hate him. And he causes so much delicious pain for the major characters; it’s almost like he’s running a charity service for those of us who like watching our favourite characters hurt.

Aaravos (The Dragon Prince): Listen. Listen. Trapped in a mirror, lost and alone and yet only letting that show in glimpses, possibly a Prometheus figure, graceful and beautiful and terrible, and that voice. Also the entire aesthetic. He is awful, and he is a delight, and he has that kind of cruelty that you can almost forget about - it’s as though he’s so into the villain aesthetic that you almost think it’s just an aesthetic, almost forget how capable he truly is of horrors, and so when he commits them it’s all the more thrilling.

Astrid & Athos Dane (Shades of Magic): The Dane twins deserved better. And by better I mean more screen time. They were criminally underused as villains and they had such potential. Vicious and cruel in a world where to be otherwise is to die, holding power by blood and pain, and chaining another …well, if not villain then certainly antagonist to their will, forcing him to serve the world he wants to save? Which brings us to…

Holland (Shades of Magic): Holland is…arguably not a villain but as an antagonist he is absolutely my type: powerful and ruthless and broken, and yet somehow still fighting; a character whose defining trait is his extraordinary will (and also self-hatred); a character who, literally in canon on the goddamn page, is told ‘no one suffers as beautifully as you’. (Plus he gets a redemption arc! That lets him remain complicated and doesn’t undermine his competence! And while it falls into redemption-equals-death, his death doesn’t come at the turning point in his arc the way it does for so many villains - he gets a whole road-trip first!)

Melisande Shahrizai (Kushiel): oh man. She’s such an interesting character, and the narrative does an excellent job of creating that link between her and Phedre - a really, really compelling and beautiful form of 'you know it’s a terrible idea but you can’t help yourself’. Also, she and Marisa Coulter should never be allowed to meet (by which I mean, I would read that fic). I’m also always here for a female villain who gets to be complicated, who has depth beyond just the typical 'femme fatale’ (though Melisande could certainly claim that title), and who is truly central to the story rather than there to look pretty.

Azula (Avatar: The Last Airbender): For all that I love Zuko, he doesn’t belong on this list, flexible as my definition of 'villain’ here is. Azula, on the other hand…sharp and vicious and a void of anger and fear inside, and if she has to feel that, then the world should too.

Zhao (Avatar: The Last Airbender): It’s at least 85% the voice, and the other 15% is the way he looks at Zuko (I know, I know, I’m sorry).

Rhaegar (A Song of Ice and Fire): Rhaegar’s villainy is…complicated, but he gets a spot here anyway. I have a niche subtype that can be defined as Sad Harpists (Rhaegar, Maglor, Deth, Morgon, Asmodean), so that’s part of it, as is the way he sets that aside out of what he perceives as necessity. But also most of his draw is how he’s this shadow hanging over the entire narrative and yet is himself a void in it; we see so little of him, know so little of him in truth, catch only glimpses and will never know what’s behind them, and every character sees him differently, and he has defined all their lives but we know almost nothing of his. I’m all about identity and choices, and the fact that his are so thoroughly obfuscated but have such a lasting impact on the entire world really does it for me.

Baru Cormorant (The Masquerade): Does she count as a villain? I suppose it depends entirely on whose point of view you’re watching from, which is kind of the point. Regardless, she is so much of what I want from a character, from an author who doesn’t do things halfway. Intelligent and ambitious and utterly ruthless, to both herself and the world she wants to burn down around her.

Delilah Briarwood (Critical Role Campaign 1): any character whose cry of agony and despair takes the form of 'I broke the world for us!’ is a character I’m going to like.

The Lone Power (Young Wizards): mostly because the traditional greeting, upon encountering them, is ’fairest and fallen, greetings and defiance’, and I am a simple woman. But also because they’re the Lucifer figure, in all senses - evil, perhaps, but mostly a necessary embodiment of entropy, one who must exist and must struggle and must always lose, beautiful and bright and terrible, and oh so proud.

Judas (Christian Mythology): He betrayed a guy with a kiss. What more do you want from me?

Rin (the Poppy War): By the end, she makes a very compelling case for herself as a Villain Protagonist and I, for one, am into it. Also, 'genocidal’ gets tossed around a lot when villains are discussed, often without cause, so uh…points to Rin for actually deserving it? (This book is strongly in the category of Not For Everyone, but if it’s your thing…weaponising gods.)

Loki (Marvel franchise & Norse Mythology): so, I have a complicated relationship with 'trickster’ figures and characters, in that I like the idea of them, but tend only to actually enjoy the ones who fall on the darker side of that line they all dance around. Loki, in pretty much all his incarnations, fits that mould.

Achilles (Greek Mythology): Is Achilles a villain? Depends who you ask. But he’s powerful and proud and doomed, and knows it. I just…heroes who go out in a blaze of glory are all well and good, but villains who step up to the flames of their own damnation?

Ruin (Mistborn): It’s funny; I really enjoy a lot of Sanderson’s stories, but by and large he tends not to write my type of villain (which I will forgive him because he gave me Kelsier). But Ruin…starts off like just another godlike semicorporeal villain with absurd power, as you do, and then gets significantly more interesting – and tragic – when you learn the full story. I have a thing for villains who chose their villainy out of necessity (with a side helping of hubris) and become that which they most hated or feared. The ones who look at a razor’s edge and think 'I can walk that’. Who look at power that will consume them and think 'I can control it’. It’s a very specific kind of… arrogant sacrifice, I suppose, and it never ends well and I’m into it every time.

#i feel like i should apologise #but i'm really not sorry for any of these #anyway you asked for it #so now you get to witness my shame #asks #anon #book recs #recommendations #i need a better villains tag

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cat-with-a-tie · 5 years ago

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A DenNor analysis of sorts

Hello, sweet chirping crickets! I’ve been shipping this ship for literal years now but have never plucked up the courage to actually interact with anyone or anything, so I’ve no idea why I’m doing it now, in the year of our Lord 2019, but hey, it’s never too late to get dragged back into aph hell.

I plan on posting a series of long ass rants that absolutely no one asked for in which I attempt to discuss the dynamics of DenNor and the Nordic characters in general, drawing mainly on Himaruya’s portrayal, historical facts, and my own headcanons, so welcome to the first installation of Stuff Nobody Really Cares About that I Wrote in a Fit of Boredom and Self-indulgence!

Before we start, if anyone’s reading this at all then please bear in mind that this is mostly just IMHO. And since there’s no correct way to ship a pairing (this cannot be stressed enough), my interpretation is just that—my personal interpretation, and it is by no means impartial because there’s definitely a healthy dose of my own preferences in there. Actually, I haven’t got any mutuals to talk to at the moment, so if my interpretation’s terrible, by all means go on and yell at me, I will love you to death for it.

In this post I’m going to rant about Norway’s personality (or his lack of it, thereof; don’t worry I’ll get to it later), with just a tiny segment on Denmark thrown in the mix, because hey, I do need to sleep.

“Anko” and its implications for Norway’s character

So, as most people probably already know, in the Japanese version Norway calls Denmark “anko”. In the Northeastern dialect he speaks, this is something like a diminutive form of “big brother” or “boss” (yes, Norway calls Denmark big brother!). In East Asian cultures, it is commonplace for younger men to address older ones (related or not) by honorifics ranging from super courteous to super casual, such as “aniki” in Japanese, “hyung” in Korean, and “da-ge” or “ge” in Mandarin. “Anko” also falls under this category, although it is still more casual than the more ubiquitous “aniki”. I struggle to convey its exact denotations in English, but all you need to know is that this is an affectionate way of addressing a man older than you.

But here’s a funny thing: Himaruya once stated that Denmark and Norway are “like classmates” （同級生）. Now, the Japanese term actually has a somewhat different meaning from the English one; “doukyuusei” does not strictly refer to people who are/were in the same class, but to people who belong in the same school year and therefore, in most cases, share the same age. This actually makes sense, because if we consider history, up until the 14th century or so the three Scandinavian kingdoms developed at much the same pace, so it would be reasonable to assume (despite Himaruya’s being abominably vague on nation mechanism) that the characters are of similar ages as well.

Why, then, does Himaruya have Norway refer to Denmark, who should be about the same age as he is, as “anko”? The thing is, aside from denoting age difference, this sort of honorific can also denote a difference in status. Even if someone is not significantly older than you, you may still refer to them with an honorific if you feel their status is above you or wish to pay them respect in an affectionate way.

So, consider this: Norway does not disrespect or look down on Denmark at all, in fact, he respects him enough to call him something akin to “boss” or “older brother”. Bear in mind that this is Norway we’re talking about, Norway of the onii-chan obsession! There’s no doubt that he sees a great deal of significance in this sort of thing, otherwise he wouldn’t be so bent on having Iceland address him as such. And he calls Denmark “big brother”. Just… just take a minute to let that sink in, will ya.

So this brings us to the main subject of my essay, and that is that Norway, for all his sass, is a bit of a doormat.

Now, before anyone starts yelling at me about how his people are perhaps the most fiercely patriotic out of all the Nordic countries, please let me finish my theory. You don’t get independence after centuries of being a glorified trophy bride and not feel the need to vent all that pent up frustration, after all.

First, if you look at strips such as the Denmark vs. Sweden frozen lake fiasco, you’ll see that Norway basically goes along with anything Denmark does, even when he’s actions are outright harebrained (and, to be fair, they often were). He might nag, and he might throw in a word or two of complaints, but at the end of the day Denmark calls the shots, and Norway seems pretty content to let him do so, even when sometime it’s him who has to bear the consequences of Denmark’s brashness (historically, during the many conflicts between Denmark and Sweden, many of which Denmark initiated, Sweden would often bypass Denmark and invade Norway instead, since its lack of military prowess meant that Norway could be used as leverage to force Denmark into accepting all sorts of outrageous conditions; meanwhile, any sort of military action Denmark engaged in was exceptionally taxing—no pun intended—on Norway due to its small population and frequent food shortages).

Also keep in mind that compared to the strips set in modern times, Norway’s treatment of Denmark was considerably milder in the medieval era. My theory is that his attitude towards Denmark only soured after the chain of events that eventually lead to his independence in the 19th century, buuut that’s an essay for another time! Right now I’d like to discuss a personality trait of Norway’s that fascinates me a lot and directly ties into his tendency to be pushed around: his standoffishness.

This is a character inclined to keep on the sidelines and just watch things unfold, even when said events concern his very own person. He doesn’t seem to give a fig when Denmark and Sweden are fighting to the death—hell, not even when they are fighting over him, something that happened a lot in history.

Now, I can think of two main reasons for this passiveness, the first being that Norway, unlike Denmark, probably knows his own limitations to a degree that I believe must have been painful for him at times (not that he shows it, anyway). Although of course being able to see and communicate with magical creatures could result in one being a little less interested in the mortal realm, I find it unlikely that he was always this disengaged. He was once a Viking, after all, and up until the 13th century his kingdom was arguably the most powerful and expansive in all of Scandinavia.

But then, of course, came the Black Death. Norway’s decline in the late Middle Ages was in fact facilitated by a myriad of factors including civil war, incompetent politicians, and either a shortage or a surplus of kings, but having three quarters of its population decimated by the plague was perhaps the heaviest blow of all, and by the time the Kalmar Union took place the prospects of competing with Denmark or Sweden were pretty bleak.

From there on was what 19th century Norwegian nationalist poet Wergeland dubbed the “four hundred years of night”. Although most modern historians agree that Norway was far from destitute under Danish rule and may even have benefitted considerably from it, in terms of Norway’s development as a character, I reckon it could be said that he was, in fact, shrouded in night. The night in question, however, as opposed to being a symbol of Danish tyranny as Wergeland probably intended it to be, would be more of a metaphor for Norway’s own willingness to “fall asleep”, thereby shutting out a world in which he knew he has no say. In this way, he turned a blind eye on Denmark’s ill-fated endeavors, on Sweden’s budding ambition, on the animosity brewing between his two friends, and probably even on Denmark’s mistreatment of him.

During the Kalmar Union, he must have known that he was the weakest of the three kingdoms, and that it was better to just let things take their course instead of joining the fight for hegemony along with Sweden and Denmark. During the union with Denmark, he knew too that life would be far easier if he just went along with things; after all, he knew Denmark, he knew he was stubborn and that he would stop at nothing to get what he wanted. He also knew that Denmark meant well and that, despite everything, he cared a great deal for his family, as shown in the tax raise strip where Norway tells Denmark that “[it’s OK] because you’re trying your best”.

It’s possible that Norway also derived some degree of consolation from Denmark’s affection, in that even though as nations they stood on uneven ground, as friends and as people he could still trust Denmark to have his best interests at heart. Also, by telling himself that he and Denmark were “in this boat together”, Norway could avoid the sense of relative deprivation that arose from being a nation in an unequal union, and subsequently avoid feeling resentment towards Denmark, whom he’s always cared for and perhaps even looked up to despite everything. His referring to Denmark as “anko” despite being roughly the same age as him can perhaps be interpreted as a sign of this (arguably unwarranted) trust.

So in short, a prolonged sense of powerlessness led Norway to become emotionally detached as a form of defense mechanism, while affection for his childhood friend made him reluctant to put his foot down when Denmark’s arrogance and blind optimism threatened to get out of hand. All this serves to expedite the standoffishness I mentioned earlier that is typical of his character.

Thus, if we accept the theory (note the italics) of Denmark once upon a time being abusive, I personally find it plenty believable that Norway would just, well, lie back and take it. In part because he cares deeply for Denmark and is dependent on him in a bit of an unhealthy way (there’s already a wonderfully insightful post right here on tumblr addressing Norway’s shyness and how his trust in Denmark sometimes manifests as crassness, so I’m not gonna go into that here), and in part because he knows being submissive is the path of least resistance. Taking whatever Denmark the person inflicts on him would still be far more ideal than going to war with or losing the support of Denmark the nation. So yeah, lie back and think of yourself, I guess.

In this regard Norway’s mentality is drastically different from that of Denmark and Sweden’s, which is that one should always fight a losing battle if the alternative is being trod on. He acts more according to strategy, while the other two act more according to pride and passion. The upside is that, being more pragmatic and knowing his limits, he knows better where and how to deploy his strengths; the downside is that he can at times come off as a bit of a pushover.

Incidentally, this is why I find WWII history to be so damn interesting in terms of the Nordic’s characterisations, because we get to see the Viking Trio seemingly go against everything that had until then defined their personalities. To be fair, this is way after all that fucked up shit with the treaties of Fredrikshamn and Kiel, which I consider a major turning point (or mental growth spur, if you will) for all five Nordics, so I reckon it all still kind of makes sense because of the wonderful mechanics of character development? But then again, that’s an essay for another time!

A bit on Denmark

I like to think of Denmark’s behaviour during his youth as the result of a misguided desire to “play house”—out of love for his family (arguably for Norway in particular) he wishes to keep them safe, and what better way to do that than keeping them all under his wing? Sure, I’m ready to believe at least some part of him was fueled by bloodlust and a thirst for power, as is often the case with nations, but in general he simply didn’t know better.

In the mean time, Norway’s docile compliance did nothing to curb this misconception; worst case scenario, it only served to fuel it, make Denmark feel like he really was the leader and that it was his obligation to be in charge for the sake of them both. I consider their relationship in this time period to be quite toxic, even though related strips show them to be closer than ever.

For me, a significant part of Denmark’s character development is him realising that the happiness of his loved ones should not have to depend on him, and that one can be loved without being needed (in terms of DenNor, it’s him learning to love Norway as an equal and not just someone to be protected/coddled).

For Norway it’s the opposite—he learns to regain control over his own life, to stand up for himself and to love Denmark without taking any bullshit from him.

#dennor #aph #hetalia #aph nordics #aph norway #aph denmark #rant

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singularname · 5 years ago

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ooc: First anyone can comment on this post or like it. If you want to ask me questions my ask box is open. I am more than willing to answer questions you may have.

A more cohesive list of my comments and thoughts on cats 2019, let it be known it is still hot garbage and still does not belong in the jellicle junkyard. Before I go on, I want to say, Cat’s is my favorite musical. I RP Munkustrap. To critique any version (and their are lots) you have to love The Musical. Any other critique is objectively a person who will rate it badly. Cats was never going to do well, it never has despite its run length through tours and different countries. Cats has never been viewed well by critiques, and is hugely hated in the theater community which is why when you see and read those reviews you have to know they have a preconceived notion of what cats is, and that is that its weird and therefore they cannot like it.

The three biggest critiques I see of the movie (and the show for the first one) is their is no plot, which I will discuss in this review how their in fact is one, how its horny and if you thought the movie was horny well John Partridge is knocking at your door asking if you’ve had your sexual awakening yet, and that the CGI is bad, which yes it is. My goal is to show why some of these are a bit unfounded but also let you see why a person who likes the musical is so disappointed that this movie only perpetuates that this musical is a joke.

Now onto the review. It is around 10k words, so negatives are under the cut.

Positives:

Robbie tried really hard, but sadly he wasn’t enough. He had a few off beats such as his initial intro, and his smile at the end that was weird. But he was good, and he made the shit show of gumbie cat and tugger’s song slightly better by joking with jenny any dots which was one of the best jokes in the whole movie.

Jennifer was a good Grizabella. Anyone making fun of her snot has forgotten Anne Hathaway singing I Dreamed a Dream, and should rightfully shut up.

The rewritten plot was bad, but the song that fit the best with the adaptions made for this horrid movie, besides Skimble’s song which I will talk about in a second, was Bustopher Jones. In the original his number is all about how well respected he is, but people remember his song is a story to make him seem better, we should not be surprised he is dumpster diving for food at all, sorry of a reality hit for old busty but its the truth.

Ian was a good choice for Gus, it was very similar to John Mills’ portrayal with only a bit more backstory. What was missing was a back and forth between someone, such as Jellylorum. Monologues are great but having a scene partner is better because that energy helps momentum and you feel things. Gus is arguably the slowest song, and it needs some livelness and no Misto’s little magic trick was not enough.

Mungo and Rumple were good. I hate the debut version of the song and they made me like it. For those wondering why we didn’t get the fun jazz number and got this slow moving one its because it came from the Debut on West End. The issue with the slow moving one is it falls in the middle where the pacing is already slow packed with more slow songs so it can seem a bit boring. I also wish Rumple kept her accent up.

The idea of the rundown theater/ballroom was really good. It allowed for a very similar feel that the junkyard presents with props and such for the cats to use. The issue is it was not our set the entire time and we are constantly taken out of it.

Skimble’s number was probably the best in the entire movie. It had the feel of the original with freshness from the tap which was genius. The tap dancing added the sounds of the railway in the same way the cats original make the train whistle noise. And the guy tapping was one of the originators of the Mad hatter in The Royal Opera House’s Alice in Wonderland so he was good. The issue with Skimble is the cut to the train and rail station which I will get to.

Negatives:

Three categories

Plot ( songs, characters, dance ), Technical ( movie stuff, CGI, proportions ), Anything I forgot.

Plot

Lets start generally. People say their is no plot even though Hooper attempted to “give” it a plot he failed. Their was no reason because all Hooper did was not only drop his plot halfway through, but he didn’t adhere to his own rules, nor did he need to add a plot at all. The dialogue was clunky at best, and not funny.

So the plot that Cats has always had is said almost immediately after the opening numbers. It is said by a grey cat that unless you know the musical you don’t know the name of but considering his prominence in the musical you know he’s important. He has solos in most songs, and even more in the movie. In the stage show this plot is seen through with a few interuptions. But here is he plot of the stage show for you. The jellicles come together for a ball where a cat will be chosen to be reborn. At times you get this threat, a cat by the name of macavity who you never seen he’s just scary. The cats ask who will it be, and the reason the songs are sung is because the cats are suggesting names of who it could be hence “i have a gumbie cat in mind...” This goes on for a bit their are two songs that don’t seem to fit in this formula, technically three, Grizabella’s songs (not memory), Peeks and Pollicles, and Growltiger’s Last Stand. Grizabella’s songs are to point out who she is and how she is distinctively not a jellicle, or no longer one. Peeks and Pollicles is entertainment they got a whole night to waste before dawn. The same can be said of Growltiger, but it is also paired with being Gus reprising a role more or less. The last two are for entertainment, just like the Jellicle Ball song where jellicles literally describe what kinds of cats they are, its also a bit of a mating dance but hey they are supposed to be cats. So we get to Macavaty he has threatened to appear quite a few times, he is scary, that is all we know. His song is sung as a cautionary tale to the audience and the kittens, he then finally appears and fights and hurts the protector among a few others and takes The Leader Old Deuteronomy. The cats are a bit distraught, then elvis cat struts in and is like what about Misto the magic guy. He then proceeds to say what Misto can do before Misto officially appears as Misto, he has been their all along though using his powers subtly to help the show progress he’s confident if their is something he is unsure about its where his powers come from. Misto brings Old Deuts back, and then Grizabella makes one last plea to the cats IN FRONT OF THEM explaining what happened and such. She gets the touch she craves and Deuts chooses her no words needed. Her plea isn’t part of a competition, it is one to be accepted being chosen is a secondary thing to that. Then we the audience get addressed formally like we did at the beginning a la “are you blind when your born” but this time its like “so you’re not a cat, so now you get us a bit more.” Then it ends.

The movie takes this fairly simple plot of party, guessing who could be chosen, we have to wait a bit before the choice can be made, threat appears, leader who makes the choice disappears then comes back, makes the choice, and turns it into a farce. Something that TS Eliot would hate. TS Eliot didn’t want his cats to be pussy cats, he wanted Hot Gossip. He didn’t want something cartoonish, which is why Andrew was given the rights in the first place. The thing is poetry should not ever be spelled out for you, is up to you to interpret, and these songs and plot is pieced together straight from Poetry. Hooper fucked with that vision, I mean Macavity falling at the end shows this perfectly, that was something you see in a damn cartoon.

The plot Hooper added didn’t work because he dropped it like halfway through. It was no consistent and because their were so many breakaways to the barge letting you see the barge instead of just thinking these cats are in perilous danger it ruins the steaks of not having them there. The plot was bad.

Additionally, and I’ll speak more on this a little later, when the cats are taken away you lose chorus cats. The only cats that are not in the entirety of the show are Bustopher Jones and Growltiger who are generally played by the same actor as the true range for them is that of an opera singer which you would never know looking at this movie.

Songs

Overture: It was weird. I thought the throwing a cat out of a car was a bit harsh and unnecessary. Also the choreography didn’t work. The camera did not know what to do. Additionally, their was some very bad CGI with opening said back. The individual cats did not get their little moments like they do in the stage show which only made them all blend together.

Prologue: Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats: It was drastically cut. Not all the cats get their correct solos, or solos. Some were duets which takes away from the individuality of certain cats. It again like the overture was messy with choreography with the camera not knowing where to go or who to look at. The beauty of the cinematography of the 98 production is you got to see the full stage when dancing happened so your eye could find a focus, you could focus on what you want. We are robbed of that with the choppy cutting and the camera telling us who to focus on. Its poor film choice. Cats a musical that is more music based than les mis you can’t just cut back and forth in a duet or in a song to who is singing like you can with les mis ( which hooper also fucked up ). Also what was with only like five cats singing the solos. I’m sorry this is when we are supposed to meat the chorus, this was like a bad choir rehearsal.

The Naming of Cats: Blink and you’ll fucking miss it. They make such a big deal about a second name but then ITS CUT! They don’t name any second names, only boring first names. Like why even include the fucking song if you aren’t going to tell us character’s names or second names. This would have been a perfect moment with the sloppy cutting to at least let us put names to faces. Everyone walked out of that theater not having a clue that the silver dad cat was Munkustrap cause as important as he is his name is said once in a song, that isn’t about him. This song was pointless in the movie because they cut so much of it.

Invitation to the Jellicle Ball: So much is cut. So much. We don’t get solos from more than Munk. Its such a sad song with how much is cut and how important it is. It gives us Victoria’s solo which is also cut in favor of a Pas De Deux, which I get you got two great ballet dancers as your leads, but like let her have her damn moment since your so focused on making sure she is the focus of the movie.

Also my second fault to Munk, aside from him having no confidence or the write key in his first line “Are you blind when you’re born.” His solo here is weirdly paced and he doesn’t speak with confidence like he is telling a story, it sounds like he is speaking fast, and just not caring what he is delivering. If your audience conduit is confused the whole time, like this chick is, then don’t rush the deliverance of what the plot is.

This song also tells us the point of the musical and invokes the question “who will it be” which traditionally leads to the cats singing songs about different cats who may or may not appear suggesting who they think could be chosen. The competition which is completetely stupid, having each cat sing their song does not work. Most of the songs are songs sung by other cats about cats. Hence the opening line of the next number.

Gumbie Cat: Rebel Wilson cannot sing well. She has decent pitch. But she cannot sing well, nor does she understand the character. She calls Jenny lazy and fat. The stage version she’s essentially the opposite. Jenny is not a fat joke. She is busy cat who doesn’t get out much, but she does alot of good.

The cockroaches and mice. Besides bad CGI aside, this concept was poorly executed. It was a good concept, a good theory but the execution made it bad. In the stage production the cats in the junkyard portray the mice and cockroaches because its an act its like a play within a play. Here we get badly CGIed kids in mice costumes that ever version of the damn Nutcracker has done better. We get tap dancing cockroaches. However unlike with Skimbleshanks’ number, we do not get to focus on the tap or the clarity of the tap because of the poor filmography which I’ll talk about later.

This number was pretty much ruined by Rebel making a joke out of the whole. Additionally, she zips off her fur. Like its not a coat, or a bigger bit of fur its her literal fur. Its just wrong and it looks cartoonish which again TS Eliot did not want for his cats poems.

Rum Tum Tugger: Jason was a smart choice, but he also did not care about the number. He wasn’t giving it all he had. He has the vocals for it, but he wasn’t giving it. The dancing in this number suffered, none of the kittens or cats in general seem to be loosing their shits over him. They seem more happy about the damn milk.

Many critics say the movie is horny, let me tell you this number has nothing on John Partridge or any person who has ever played Tugger. I mention John because he is the only one who really went their with the hip thrusts and the kittens were the only ones willing to get up in there. Their was no fear the in 98 version, here they all seemed scared to show anything more than emotion. In a song that helps define some of the chorus cats we don’t get any definition from them.

Alot of people hate some of Rebel’s jokes, but the one that Robbie teased her about was well timed and much better than the rest of the jokes in the movie. It seemed natural and not forced. It also kind of goes with the traditional relationship of Jenny and Munk, and how they view Tugger.

This is the only time we see Tugger til the very end with Munk’s song. Because he sings a song, and its not for the competition it already fucks with the plot that Hooper set forth and thus doesn’t really fit into the narrative that Hooper is trying to weave. He should have left it. Originally the song is a mix of the adult cats and the kittens talking about Tugger and having Tugger more or less clarify for them. Its a waste of his character to be honest, and a waste of Jason’s actual talents.

Grizabella the Glamor Cat: Why do we need to know her specific backstory. Her costuming and song should be enough to tell the audience what we need to know. This is classic example of telling not showing, which is a big no no in writing.

Also because of how the beginning of this movie has gone we have no connection to the damn cats singing this song. Two of them typically have had parts in two other songs by now, and one of the cats is a “psychopath” as t-swiftizzle has said and doesn’t appear til much later in the movie. Like why do these cats care. The apprehension from the stage show is not there.

Kudos to Robbie for keeping the strange relationship up where he is hairs standing on end, but still admonishing the rudeness. However it didn’t seem to have an effect. These actors are so scared to touch each other, why would they make fun of and scratch at a cat they aren’t supposed to like. The song had very little agency because of how it was performed and who performed it because we had no connection to those cats prior. Jennifer tried but damn its hard to carry a whole shit show on your back even if Robbie is trying to help.

Bustopher Jones: I said it above and I’ll say it again, this was probably the best integrated song into the plot, while the shit plot still existed. However James Cordon’s jokes did not land. He didn’t carry himself as a distinguished cat in those deliveries which would have helped the character. I didn’t mind the junk and garbage surfing because it gives you a bit of a realistic look on what he probably does at the clubs and such. Think of him like a bit of a dirtier version of lady and the Tramp.

Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer: Again I said it above, this number objectively wasn’t bad. They took a song that I found grating and made it fun to watch and sung pretty well. However again it doesn’t fit into the contrived plot that Hooper was trying to form. Having Victoria there seemed very stupid, I will say more about how she is a poor choice for an Audience insert later. But she did not need to be there. The glory of Mungo and Rumple’s song is that no one is there, and they are taking a mick out of everyone who thinks they are Macavity. Whether it is the West End debut version, or the faster brassier verseion of the 98 show, they are alone making fun of the fact that they fooled everyone, and explain why they can do it through their song.

Old Deuteronomy: It was fine, decent. Until Judi Dench opened her mouth. I am bitter that Tugger didn’t sing the song with Munk but considering how much of the song was fucking cut what would he have sung? That is another issue this musical had, they cut so many songs, and left in songs that weren’t needed or added songs not written by TS Eliot originally at all. You miss the softer side to Tugger by not having him sing or even be here.

Judi Dench, she’s a great actress, she was not a great Old Deuteronomy. This has nothing to do with the fact that she was a woman. I would have been happy if it was Julie Andrews or Maggie Smith ANYONE, but Judi Dench. Judi can’t sing, the talk singing she did was pitchy at best. And the issue is Old Deuteronomy is one of the more powerful singers in the show. Not only that, Judi just did not command any presence. It wasn’t that she was small, it was just that she didn’t draw you to her, the camera had to do that. She molded into the background and none of the cats aside from Munk interacted with her, which made her seem like a stranger and not a cat that these other cats love and trust.

Jellicle Ball: I am crying for Gillian Lynne. This in the stage show is what many call the orgy number. It is more or less a mating dance and where we get the lovely victoria having her second big solo, followed by a lovely pas de deux with Plato who later becomes Macavity which I find intriguing.

In the movie we get Jason asking if its okay to party then they try to bring up the tempo by cutting the music awkwardly. This song just does not work with the choreography given to it. I am sure the Les Twins are great dancers, but first why couldn’t their cat names have been Coricopat and Tantomile they seemed to serve a similar purpose. Second why were they in this. The shoes ugh, but the hip hop does not match the song at all. The stick out and are just awkward.

Instead of this being a beautiful dance, with amazing choreography we get a very strange dance circle after the choreographer attempted to have the dancers dance on the softer notes and down beats, which does not work in a song with very hard up beats, and that isn’t a ballet number. The choreography over all just didn’t fit and seemed ill timed at best.

Also all of the damn lyrics were cut. The Jellicle Ball essentially explains what a jellicle is, which is what Victoria wants to be yet its not fucking explained to her, its poorly explained through dialogue and even then she doesn’t know. Like why take out the lyrics of this number. It made no sense.

Grizabella’s Reprise: Unlike the first song being in front of people, this song isn’t. But if I recall cats are watching. This is where we get the first inklings of memory. This is her plight. Its ruined by Victoria.

Beautiful Ghosts: I will say straight up I am not a fan of T-Swiftie her songs are petty at best, and this one is no different. This song was not needed. We did not need this blatant reason for Victoria to connect with Grizabella, we didn’t need it forced. The beautiful thing about the stage show is the touch and connection between Victoria and Griz is that it happens at the end of the show, and ITS NATURAL and is in combination with Jemima/Silabaub.

The song’s words are written by Taylor, and everyone is saying it fits so well with the musical and it doesn’t. We have no reason to feel bad for Victoria, yes she was dumped out of a car, but we know nothing about her past, and the song doesn’t do anything but allude to what happened. It is the epitome of “I had bad shit happen to me my whole life, but at least your life was good.” It is a song that completely lacks empathy. Sympathy is when you say “well it could be worse” and the last thing Grizabella wants is fucking sympathy. She needs someone to feel with her, not say it could be worse. This song is horrible with a horrible message and sung by a person who can sing well. BUT, its sung by the wrong character, and with the contrived plot that is being forced down our throats, it does not fit into the plot because we don’t know anything about Victoria at all.

Also it greatly irks me that everyone was okay with adding a song that wasn’t based of Eliot’s poems. Every single song in the stage production is a variation of one of Eliot’s poems whether published or not. It is a butchering of his work in a whole new way saying “here we’ll make it better” which is a huge insult to a poet.

The Moments of Happiness: Is it even in the movie? IDK, if it is its probably pitchy and sing talked all the way through, and does nothing for the story or anything. I think it might be when Deuts is looking out the window. But like the song is an addressing to the cats, kind of like an introduction or a toast for the Ball.

Magical Gus/Gus the Theater Cat: Ian was a smart choice, like John Mills he was a smart choice. BUT, the number felt long. John Mills’ number ran long and we didn’t get all of Mungo and Rumple’s song and Growltiger’s last stand was cut. Gus’ song is the slowest in the show. What helps the song have life in the stage version is Jellylorum singing with him. Actors in my opinion do better with a scene partner, and boy did this song need. It was slow and boring.

Growltiger’s Last Stand: We were robbed a good song. And what we did get, the one line we got was contrived and Growltiger’s song was reduced to a shitty villain song, on a shitty barge, to help this shitty plot. The worst thing is that this whole barge plot WASN’T NEEDED. We do not need to see people in danger to know they are in danger. It is better to not know than to know. This is the whole issue with upping Macavity’s role in the whole musical. A villain is better when they are unknown that’s why scary movies work.

I understand the original Growltiger song is racist, but they already cut songs, and they have shown no issues in changing lyrics, so they could have done. Growltiger originally is supposed to be a reenactment of a play that Gus did. The cats all help. This is another example of ruining the relationships the chorus cats have with each other, and robs them of characterization for us to see. Because remember in the stage show every cat is on stage 90 percent of the time, minus Bustopher, who I believe doubles as Growltiger because of the ranges and such needed. When we lose the cats we are introduced to the chorus becomes nameless faces and it makes me wonder why they are even there because they have nothing that makes them stand out.

Also because so much of Growltiger was cut we loose Griddlebone which is a fucking shame. We loose that tragedy of a tail. We loose a glorious opratic number. All for the sake of a shitty villain plot that had no real steaks at all because it all seemed so contrived and fake.

Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat: Possibly the best number in the show as it stayed the truest to its original form. It didn’t have much cut song wise. My issue with the song lies in the cinematography of it. This song I say rings the truest to the stage show because at the beginning we clearly see a formed railway track of beams. We get the lovely tapping to simulate the train which adds onto the other train sounds that are made in the number.

The issue is the fact that they take us out of the ballroom. There was no need for that. I will talk more about it later. But this number shows us the real issue with scale in this movie and how they have no clue how to address it at all. The cats at one point look like they are two inches tall, and at another point look like the scaling is correct. Their are many many bad bad jump cuts when they are on the actual railroad tracks. One was so bad you couldn’t even see the cast anymore. The scale is very off because it makes you question are they the correct portions when standing, or are they they correct portions when on their hands and feet.

The stage show manages to show everything this song showed within the confines of the junkyard, and it was completely feasible to do in the fucking ballroom but Hooper didn’t do that. When you have a big budget do not add unnecessary shots. That is what made the 98 version so great. They had a huge budget but didn’t over complicate the base show. The emphasized the dancing and singing and let those shine, and let the actors tell the story instead of letting the camera work and new shots tell the story.

Also the actor that played Skimble was Scottish I wish he let that come through. It would have made certain words and inflections just that much better.

Macavity: The Mystery Cat: In this stage show this song is a duet. In the movie is sung by T-Swizzle in order to get money from all her little fans. Taylor is an okay singer, i have heard better, and I have heard better for Bombalurina, both in seeing the musical live, and in the 98 version. They framed the song to be the one Macavity sings to show why he should be chosen but their are not cats to be chosen, remember that was the plot. Yeah its easy to forget.

Here’s the issue with how this song and its subsequent fight is worked out. The song’s lyrics are not changed so they talk about how bad Macavity is which in the frame of a competition to show your best qualities and why you should be chosen it does not fit. We know he was not going to get chosen, we knew from the beginning because it was shoved in our faces. Cats 2019 is a great example of a poorly written villain.

The song in the stage production is a cautionary tale told by two people who have likely had relations with Macavity. They are not only warning us the audience about him, but also the kittens who wonder who he is, who have never seen him. When you keep the context of the lyrics in with this new plot frame it doesn’t fit and only explains why he wouldn’t be chosen.

Additionally because its not a duet, and its sung by a cat we have never seen before, nor have any frame of reference for it doesn’t mesh well. Like why should we care?

Also the catnip. That is so pointless. Macavity is a magical cat, his powers to deceive and hypnotize are seen through his choreography in the fight seen with Munkustrap and Alonzo. But no we have to have magical cat nip spread by Bomby, Mungo, Rumple, and Griddlebone. Why even mention Griddlebone like this with the inclusion of Rumple if we do not get the song where we actually see just why she is an agent other than some lacky. Like this diminishes her character so much. ( And yes her inclsuion in the stage shows that don’t do growltiger like the 98 movie does also bug me this is not just a movie gripe, but the movie takes the stance to show us to her, but she is not the glorious white cat that is also so very evil, she is a wimpy little black cat who is scared that she is called out ).

Macavity’s fight seen mainly with Munk is taken away from us and given to the dumb barge cats fighting Growltiger. Again we have no real steaks in this fight. However we don’t see the barge cats again so why did it matter that we saw them off Growltiger? In the stage show, we actually see Munk, our silver tabby dad fight Macavity. It is a show of raw power that both he and Macavity have. It shows how dangerous Macavity is. It shows what cats do. They fight. We do not get this. We do not get see why all these other cats defer to Munk because his role as the protector is diminished to “I am dad cat hear me roar.” Losing this fight we loose alot of the connections we see between the main cats and the chorus cats. They all help each other, and want to fight. We see them care for a hurt Munk in the stage show. All that is gone and diminished to poor jokes, and twirling chains on a barge that looks about as real as a toy bathtub boat.

In the stage show, Macavity is scared away in this number. Which means he is still a threat but not for now. Not for the rest of the fight. Additionally this number we get the fake out of Deuteronomy coming back because that is how the fight happens. Macavity stole Deuteronomy just moments ago and to see Deut’s come back, we get a false sense of hope and a true feeling of Macavity’s madness. We don’t get that in the movie.

The movie boils him down to a bad villain in a cartoon. Which is the exact opposite of Eliot’s wishes. It is exactly the opposite of what Eliot wanted and why he was so scared to actually give away the rights to his poems.

Mr Mistoffelees: A song traditionally sung by the most confident cat in the musical Tugger, is sung by a character assassination in progress. This version of Mr. Mistoffelees tries to fit into the contrived plot of competing for a Jellicle Life and it fails miserably. A number that is traditionally loved by so many is utterly ruined by the lack of confidence in the entire delivery of the song. I will talk more about Mistoffelees’ character later.

But this song is riddled with so many starts and stops that we don’t actually get a climax to the song. And look Jason is back as Tugger, but his part is taken by Victoria, and the number just doesn’t work. I do not care what you ship. The number does not work the way it was sung or staged. Also Tugger shows back up in this number and when you think he is going to sing the a part its sung by Victoria, it cuts to her, and I was disappointed.

When Tugger sings the song, he tells you of a cat with powers. Powers that we see used throughout the show in subtle ways. Its not shoved in our damn faces. its used in helpful ways. In stage productions he opens the car for Jenny, He lights the stage lights for Peeks and Pollicles. Its all these subtle things, but he knows he is good at magic. Tugger knows this. Tugger sings it.

Victoria and Mistoffelees singing the song rips that all away. Mistoffelees has no confidence in himself though he used magic through the show, it was shoved in our faces. Victoria suggesting he can bring Old Deut’s back is completely pointless because the only magic she has ever seen Misto do is bad magic that only half worked. Now granted she has this insane ability to see the best in everyone and see them ALONE so like who knows.

But the number is ruined because their is no continuation or build up. And no conjuring turn come on. Also Robbie tried, but he is no Tugger. It feels weird coming from him. Like yes he encourages the cats, but like we also never see the other side of being parent, because they cut Peeks and Pollicles which I will discuss at the very end of the song section.

Beautiful Ghosts Reprise: I have no clue if this is before or after Memory. But Victoria’s agency in this number is so stupid. All her interactions with Grizabella were in private where no one saw. Her touching Grizabella means absolutely nothing to us as an audience for many reasons which I will go into later. But here it means nothing because Victoria means nothing to the Jellicles as she isn’t one.

Memory: If you have an issue with the snot go watch Anne Hathaway sing I dreamed a dream and come back to me okay. Tom Hooper has a fetish about that kind of stuff or something.

But snot aside IT FITS THE SONG! Grizabella is supposed to be sad. This is her moment, her chance to cry out for someone to touch her her. Her chance to be accepted again.

We get back to the contrived plot cause she sings a song for a chance to win. But the song does not fit into the contrived plot because even if we are following the shit plot, because of Beautiful Ghosts it seems more like she wants to belong again rather than a chance to go to the Heavy Side Layer hence why Beautiful Ghosts is a pointless song even more than it already was.

In the stage show, Jemima sings with Grizabella. She is a chorus cat mostly but this is her moment to shine. Victoria gets it which fine, but also takes away from the Jellicles accepting Griz because Victoria is not a Jellicle herself. Why on earth should these cats listen to her? They have no reason to. Also because not only was the initial touch done in private, because all these characters don’t interact with each other the touch is rendered meaningless which almost renders the song meaningless. Which is a shame cause Jennifer killed it.

Journey to the Heavyside Layer: It was fine. I could have done without the Macavity bit at the end that was literally pulled from a Tom and Jerry Cartoon, which again Eliot would have hated. Yes its acted by a real person, but its cartoon like in nature ( just like jenny zipper her fur off ) which is the antithesis of what Eliot wanted to become of his poems.

The Ad-dressing of Cats: Why was this song kept in? Out of all the songs this one more or less directly addresses the audience. They had Judi Dench break the fourth wall and stare directly into the camera which was uncomfortable, and not done well. I have seen staring straight into the camera done well in exactly one piece of film and that is Mr. Robot. Here it was weird and uncomfortable. No one seemed to know what to do. The chorus was stronger than Judi so her words were overpowered. She was pitchy at best, and just downright awful in this song.

Then she tells Victoria she is a Jellicle which... like yeah finish out your contrived plot Hooper, but all if it was pointless. And it ruins the “Victoria is the Audience stand in” because the song actually addressed directly to the audience was not addressed to our stand in. It does not match the opening at all which is also addressed to the audience in the stage show. The book ends don’t match and its weird.

When I say book ends, at the beginning the number asks questions about cats can you do this can you do that. At the end it asks you “so you get what a cat is now right?” Its a pretty clever way to begin and end a show. But the movie got lost and forget what it was doing so here it seems weird and out of place.

Peeks and Pollicles: A number that was cut. This number is one of my favorites in the musical because it helps waste time til the end. It allows the cats to interact with each other and Old Deuteronomy. It is one of the best numbers to see the interpersonal relationships between our chorus of cats and our main cats.

This number not being in takes all that away and does not let us see personality in any of the chorus cats. Even Mungo and Rumple fall flat because we do not get to see them not be evil or talk about being mischievous.

This number also provides context for what a Peek is. In Macavity the word Peek is said but if you have only ever seen the movie you have no idea what that word is. In the stage show we learn that it is a term for a type of dog. Additionally, when we take this song out, we also lose some plot context of the cats and the junkyard putting plays to help act out the songs of who they think it will be. And in this case what looks like to be a rehearsed play that the cats are determined to mess up and make our silver tabby go from silver to grey.

Dance

There was so much sacrificed for the sake of cinematography. A musical based in dance had barely any dancing shown because of quick cuts. And what was shown was often clunky and didn’t actually look feline. Nor did it match the music because the choreographer tried to hard to be like the greats who choreographed the nut cracker and other ballets. He also ruined Gillian Lynne’s choreography.

They looked like trained dancers when they danced. Which yeah is good, but they didn’t look like cats. Their hands were often turned up, when to make them slightly more catlike they should be turned down. None of them got comfortable with being on the ground. They all seemed so very very stiff which is the exact opposite of how a cat should be.

None of them understood how to dance like a cat.

The tap dancing in Gumbie Cat as opposed to Skimbleshanks is astonishing. The tap dancing in Gumbie Cat is messy and hardly focused on, when its the star of the stage show. It looks contrived and like they were trying to hard to recreate a scene from a famous black and white film. Also this is a CGI comment but if you look hard enough you can tell that the cockroaches are like the same three dancers copied and pasted over and over.

Contrast that to Skimble with his clear taps. Now the actor who played Skimble is known for tapping. He is a member of the Royal Opera House, which is a ballet company in England. His tapping was made famous when he originated the role of the Mad Hatter, with some brilliant choreography that he was given. His tapping hear shines. It is just a really good example of tap. And its a shame it had to share the stage with the cockroach crap.

The opening numbers was not given what it deserved by the cats jumping everywhere. The opening is a highly for the choreography of the show. Its supposed to show you what you can expect. In the movie it was just alot of jump cuts, and Misto fucking it all up, sorry not sorry. I did not fall for the cute factor. Additionally the choral portion was not choral. They did not line up thus when they line up at the end at Trafalgar Square, we have no reference to them doing this before. Its a shame.

Tugger did not dance sexually enough. I know I know I shouldn’t say this. But most actors who play Tugger try to do some variation of John Partridge’s version, with less hip thrusts. Jason didn’t even try, and thus none of the kittens were enthralled with him. It made the point of his song pointless. Additionally Tugger is one of the strongest dancers in the show in my opinion. He dances in every number and adds his flare. Because Jason is in the movie all of 5 minutes we don’t see this.

I am sure the Les Twins are great dancers. But none of that was showcased. They were pigeon holed into this and tried to fit and failed.

So much choreography was cut because so much of the songs were cut. Jellicle Ball has so many lyrics that are danced and they are cut. So much dancing was cut in favor of showing us Grizabella running away. In the musical that is subtle and you know WHY? its supposed to be it is not supposed to completely take our attention of of the magic that is happening with the dance. That is why Griz is chased away because she draws your attention to her. We didn’t need the camera doing that, and thus ruining the flow of the number.

Characters:

Munkustrap: Not much bad about him. He had a few off beats. He tried. Thought their are times where he looked bored, and his face was not good at hiding it.

Victoria: One face wonder, she is like the Maddie from dance mom’s of this movie. She’s got a Maddie face, and it made it hard to think she had any emotion at all because she didn’t emote. Also white cats are more often than not deaf which the musical often shows as mute because Victoria has no solos. For her to speak was jarring. The speaking was jarring in general but most of the lines coming from her was off putting.

Her not being a jellicle outright ruined any agency she had in the movie. She had more say in things like Misto and Griz than she should have had. The solo she was given was petty and very very condescending to Griz.

She was a bad audience stand in because in trying to keep her original stage role they tried to mix it with this new plot role and it just did not work. And made you forget what they were doing with the plot because the plot was so contrived.

I don’t get why she had to have stripes and spots. She’s a solid white house cat, not some fucking snow leopard.

Misto: He was ruined. He has forced us to see his magic, then doubts himself when asked to use it. He is not confident in himself and a bumbling fool. In the stage production he is confident. The only thing he doesn’t understand is where his powers come from. This is seen wonderfully in the 1998 version where he looks at his hands as he is shooting sparks from them. His character was ruined.

Skimble: Like Munk nothing wrong. But we don’t see him interact with the regular chorus cats so it begs to wonder why is he even trying to show them anything. They don’t seem to know him. Their is no connection between the cats with songs named after them and the chorus aside from maybe Misto.

Tugger: He was not John Partridge. Just watch 98 cats and you will see what you are missing when it comes to who Tugger is.

Jenny-any-Dots: She was mischaracterized by Rebel as being fat, lazy, and old. Her character of being a respectable busy cat who seems lazy to her owners is assassinated. Like their is a reason Munk likes her but that reason is gone in the movie.

Old Deuteronomy: Judy Dench was bad. She couldn’t sing, and commanded no real authority or presence. Robbie could only do so much to give that to her. But she did nothing to earn it.

Admetus/Rumpus Cat: Sadly gone from this movie, though probably because Rumpus would have been more cartoonish than Macavity was and they were already hurting Eliot’s legacy enough. Also I’m not sure we could have handled the camp superhero of Rumpus Cat in this shit CGI.

Alonzo: Was he there? I don’t know. The chorus cats were all a singular blob that did not stand out and had not individuality and personality. He interacts with Munk alot but we didn’t see that.

Asparagus: Not present, granted he wouldn’t have been present anyways because Gus was only present for his number (and that awful barge seen) but in the 98 version and most stage versions he is the chorus version of Gus the Theater Cat. In 98 he is argued to be a son of Gus, or just a younger version of Gus. Because remember what I said in the stage production every cat is on stage for about 90% of the time.

Bombalurina: She’s apparently psychotic in this version. Which she’s not, but also in the stage version she’s not either. Instead of being someone who survived the influence of a less than pleasing purpose she is henchman number one. The Smee ( but more coordinated ) to Macavity’s Hook.

Bustopher Jones: Was decent. James was good, but he also missed the mark with his jokes and they didn’t land well. We saw a more realistic version of him instead of the show’s idealized version which I was fine with. But his lines were wooden and not good. Hence why this show should not have spoken lines.

Cassandra: Was apparently there? She looked purplish I think or maybe that was Demeter. I don’t know but she was rude, and more catty than show Cassandra. But we don’t really know who she is because beyond the Glamor Cat song she along with Demeter disappear into the background with cats that don’t matter.

Coricopat and Tantomile: Replaced with Plato and whatever the other philosopher was played by the Les Twins. They didn’t fit in. Shoving hip hop into cats has been proven to not work, hip hop tugger anyone? So why they tried again here, I don’t know. But they failed. We loose these lovely mystical twins, and get stuck with twins in converse? Like why? What brought on that costume choice, why did that slip through?

Demeter: Could be Cassandra. We don’t know. She’s just a mean girl and not a traumatized cat who is the first to think a sign of danger is Macavity. She was robbed of her duet cause t-swizzle needs all the fame. Munk doesn’t get his moments with her cause VICTORIA! Ugh.

Electra, Etcetera, Exotica: Were any of them there? The world may never know. The movie didn’t show us faces to put with names like the 98 version did. So if they were there who knows. You probably would have no seen or heard them since most solos they had were covered by like four other cats only. And the rest of the chorus cats was a brown grey blob because those are the only cat colors apparently.

Grizabella: We did not need to be told her back story. The song alludes to enough. Jennifer did great though. I just wish her moments were not in so much seclusion. It ruins her final song. We are robbed of young Griz in the opening number.

Gus: Ian did great. He was the right choice, the went a John Mills route. But his number dragged. Ian also didn’t have any connection to anyone in the cast. Like when Misto talks to him his reactions make it seem like he does not care who these cats are now. It makes him seem stuck up rather than reminiscent.

Jellylorum: Apparently was a kitten? Sigh. She is supposed to give Gus as a suggest and sing his song with him as a duet to kind of play off of each other. It gives the number some action and liveliness. Even with all the cuts, the number still dragged.

Jemima/Silabaub: First her name varies depending on where you are watching the stage show. Whatever she had was given to Victoria. Apparently this is because that cat was based of ALW’s wife. Which like fine, but like Hooper can you at least be more cohesive with your plot if you are going to cut a character out?

Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer: We see no real personality from them. Sorry but we don’t. We just see them scheming with each other because they are “evil.” We don’t get the story that the show or the 98 musical gives us. A moment i love from the 98 version is when Macavity does come Mungo ducks and covers his head with hands. It just shows that even Macavity’s own guys, cause Mungo is mentioned in the song not Rumple ( which leads me to think she came later or pulled him out of that ), but it shows just how scary Macavity is. And we don’t get that in the movie. In the movie we get them not knowing Macavity’s plan, which like what use are you then?

Plato: Commandeered by the Les Twins he is ruined. In the show he has a pas de deux with victoria and its a bit sexy and still gorgeous with the gorgeous famous overhead lift that the show is known for. He also doubles as Macavity cause again all the cats are on stage for about 90% of the musical save for a few.

Pouncival: Not there as far as I can tell. Which is a shame Pouncival is a cutie pie in the 98 version.

Tumblebrutus/Carbuckety: His name varies depending on what stage show you are watching. He is the one who tumbles alot. He may have been there, but because of the crappy cinematography whatever tumbling there was, we didn’t see.

Growltiger: Ruined to a poor attempt at a pirate on a toy boat barge.

Griddlebone: Ruined, and demeaned to a low lackey instead of a lavish cat who does with movie Macavity wishes he could.

Macavity: He became a cartoon villain as opposed to an actual threat. He wasn’t ginger, and his eyes were weird he was the only one with weird eyes. He wasn’t scary, any agency he had as a threat was ruined by shoving his badness in our face. They could have just had the cats disappear. Its like Tom Hooper saw a scary movie saw what made it scary, the unknown, and decided I’m not going to do that. Also any thing that would have shown his strenght is gone because hsi fight was taken away.

Any cat in the chorus is just a blob, or not CGIed. LOL. Part of this is because the cast does not interact with each other. In the stage production touch is important. Interpersonal relationships are important. We don’t get any of that. We are not used to touching and nuzzling thus when we see it is awkward. Not to mention the awkard rubbing noise we get when it does happen, it doesn’t help. The cast aside from the named cats, and munk have no personality, they fade into the back and its such a shame because each cat is so unique and different. Granted we wouldn’t know that since when they explain that in the stage show, they cut it out in the movie.

Technical Stuff

The first four songs are pretty much ruined because it takes just about that long to get accustomed to the strange CGI. The CGI is bad, I have seen better CGI cats in video games. Honestly I know makeup is time consuming, but it is cheaper than CGI. Better cats make up that isn’t just the theater makeup can be seen in Doctor Who. What made this CGI so jarring is the lack of noses and lips that looked like cats. We know via BTS pics that the actors wore make up. So why they couldn’t put noses on, or the line straught down to the mouth then curled up the ends of the mouth to give us a muzzle is beyond me. It looks like bad photoshop. I will never understand that decision.

I don’t care that dicks were CGIed out. That is not what made cats “sexy” in the first place. The dancing made it sexy. The CGI was equal to that of movies in the 90s and poorly made video games from the early 2000s.

From a film standpoint it was poorly shot. Tom Hooper does not know how to shoot dance. And it shows. He does so many swift cuts and pans that we don’t get a good view of what the choreography is.

We are too often forced to see things that are already obvious because of other tactics like shadows and voices. We do not need to see a cat disappearing via Macavity. We do not need to see so much yet our focus is taken from the group ruining whatever connection the group had to eachother and us the audience in order to show us bad dialogue and special effects to show capturing. I said it earlier its like Tom Hooper saw scary movies and said I wont do that I’m gonna do it like Tom and Jerry do, but that’s an insult to Tom and Jerry. Or he has never seen a horror movie in his life.

Their are far to many unnecessary scenes paired with jump cuts. We never get a sense of the group of cats as a whole because not only are they seperated from the only cats we know the names of, but we have to see where those cats are since we have to know they are in danger. No one knows of the thread, except like once, which is when Griz arrives. Its like the chorus doesn’t care, even though Hooper does his damndest to make sure we the audience care, but we don’t even our audience stand in doesn’t. These scenes are mainly Growltiger’s barge, and taking us out of the ballroom for Skimble’s number.

Now onto proportions. They are all over the place. A watch would strangle a cat, a ring would not fit around their wrist. They at some points can just reach a door knob, while at other parts barely reach a foot off the ground. The cockroaches and mice did not size down well. Skimble’s number had so many issues with size and cinematography which is a shame cause it was one of the best of the movie. The cats can walk on the tracks like with 3 feet on either side of their own. Yet we all know that is not correct. They look two inchest tall in comparison to the tracks. Yet we see them inside the train and they are like child sized. Then we have weird cuts to wide shots of the bridge which doesn’t help with proportion as one wide shot is so wide the cats nearly disappear. Another proportion issue was the stage in the ballroom it was a normal stage and they measured to it like a normal stage. The moon looked like something out of 1920s black and white film so was proportioned for a normal human, but the chandelier was big and felt oddly proportioned in the ballroom. Like it should not have been able to fit through the whole in the roof.

Tom Hooper did not know what he was doing with this movie. It is very clear he had no vision and did no know what the show was about hence why he had to push his new plot in while keeping everything the same so it seemed like hot garbage which is exactly what it was.

Tom does not know how to film dancing, and he has been notorious for cutting songs and such with Les Mis and he did it again. He cut songs, and then added a song which he did with Les Mis too. He messed up guys.

Back to the CGI for a minute besides the overall choice being bad because all the did could be done with practical makeup and would have looked better. It was poorly done. Their ar emoments when their is just color on the actor’s hands, when their is no color, when their is fur. Judi’s main is curled under her chin so it looks like a really bad fake beird. If you are in the background you may not be CGIed at all. There wer emoments where the connections did work such as feet on the ground, and Munkustrap helping Victoria off the car looked weird cause Victoria’s fur slid around but not with her body. And that is just a few things I noticed. The tails were good but like, it took away from the dancing.

Their was real awkward sound design. First of all the butchering of Andrews music to fit certain aspects like Tugger asking for the party to be turnt up. It was weird and didn’t fit. Additionally any moment where nuzzles or touches happened were awkwardly silent with a sound that sounds like the rubbing of a plasticky material together. None of which is helped by they never actually touch eachother because their is somoene blocking the camera. A show that has a character essentially scream “touch me” lacks touch one of the most basic cat interactions.

Breaking the fourth wall was jarring because it didn’t happen throughout. The 98 version gets away with it because they do it from the beginning. But this was weird. It was a poor choice, and an example of wanting to keep the original but it not coming across because of choices made prior.

Other Stuff and Random Thoughts

The movie was really confused at what it wanted to be. It wanted to have the original plot, but also this new plot which was forotten half way through and remembered again. Continuity was a huge issue with this movie. Victoria as audience stand in doesn’t work because the audience is addressed at the end. The jokes didn’t land. And the subtle jokes in the stage version are all but erased.

Cats would have never done well, even with an extended timeline and good CGI. If it was a perfect movie it would not have done well because it is Cats. Cats has never done well with critics. Its biggest fans are often children because they get the story because it is such a simple story. This movie forgot that, but also tried to make it easier to follow, but they failed cause it was confused.

This movie is a huge disservice to TS Eliot. Eliot did not want pussy cats, that is why he didn’t give the rights to Disney. It wasn’t that he didn’t want animated cats like in Aristocats. He didn’t want his cats to be like Tom from Tom and Jerry, which Macavity became more or less. Their were cartoon moments in the movie, and its a disservice to the Poet. Adding to his works with a new song is a disservice. Making the choreography so contrived because the new choreographer wants to show he has subtlties like Balanchine of Nutcracker fame was a disservice to Gillian Lynne.

The movie lost the vision of what cats is and was. It lost the vision of what a cat is because the cats did not act like cats. We never saw a true cat fight, or the cats interact with each other in ways that weren’t awkward. We never saw them being cats yet we are told that they are cause Judi told us so. They never acted like cats or moved like cats. Simple hand turning downwards instead of upwards, or bending of the legs, holding yourself a little differently that makes all the difference.

The move wasn’t aboslutely terrible, but it was pretty bad. I still think its garbage, and I don’t think its worthy of the title Cats because it was hardly that. A bigger budget does not mean cool CGI, and more shots, it means improve the basics to the very best. The Corridor Crew on Youtube say it best, if you can do it practically do it because it will always look better. This movie missed so many marks.

I say all this out of love because Cats is my favorite musical. But this movie failed. I wish it could be chosen to be reborn, but I’m afraid what we’d get. So I’ll stick with the stage production, if you can see a tour or any of the productions around the world do it. If not watch the 98 version, get the DVD because the one on youtube cuts out some good parts like Tugger playing bagpipes.

I wanted this movie to be good. I wanted to be proud to say I like Cats and I can’t unless I specify the stage version, because this version is not deserving of a like from me.

So I’ll repeat what I said at the beginning of this review, Cats 2019 is garbage that does not belong in the jellicle junkyard. Granted, no one from the 2019 movie or who has seen it would get that reference, but that’s okay. Us real fans know. We’re the true fans we get it. We will love this musical, but I say we cannot love this movie for so many reasons, and I hope I have laid out a few of my own.

#ooc: out of cats #cats 2019 #cats 2019 review #cats the musical

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sepedarodatiga · 5 years ago

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I’m a reylo shipper but I never made a post about reylo or Star Wars before. I don’t usually do post anything unless there’s something that is bugging me so and I felt hasn’t been talk about.

Correct me if I’m wrong but from what I’ve seen most reylos is somewhat okay with the film, but very heartbroken about the ending. I personally fall into the category of people who are more disturbed with the overall direction they take with the film rather than just the ending. Most of the things that disturbed me are already talked about such as Rey as Palpatine which completely killed the message in TLJ that the Force does not belong to elitist bloodlines and how it seems that every characters’ arc is completely rebooted in this film. Kylo, for example has shown progression symbolically shown through the destruction of his mask. In TRoS the mask is reforged again, showing a regression, only for him to progress again opening his mask and throwing away his saber. And I feel that his importance and POV is sidelined and therefore I didn’t feel too heartbroken when he died. And then Rey, whom in TLJ has to confront the fact that her parents were nobodies, now has to go through a whole new identity crisis. It is clear to me that they are trying to “fix” things up after the backlash towards TLJ. They took a shortcut by bringing back old stuff that they think people loved; the Sith and Emperor Palpatine (a whole new plot coming from nowhere), Luke Skywalker and his X-Wings, Lando Calrissian (but Anakin Skywalker, Darth Vader himself apparently was not worth to be brought back. Don’t judge me, I wanted Hayden). It annoys me, but what really really annoys me is one thing that they brought back which they should have known better not to since is 2019: Orientalism.

Rian Johnson is not being credited enough for significantly reduced and avoided Orientalism in TLJ. Doing that to the Star Wars franchise which relies so heavily in Orientalism, I think he did an amazing job. For those who don’t know what I mean here is a good place to start, but in summary, Tatooine and Jakku is based on the image of Middle East (Arab) environment, people and culture, seen through the lens of westerners, whom considers them to be less civilized (i.e. savage).

Look, I’m Javanese, an ethnicity from Java island, and Java in our language is “Jawa”. So forgive me if I took a bit of personal offence over Star Wars’s racism. Just so you know, Javanese people tends to be short and dark skinned just like how the Jawas were portrayed in the original. I know that the Jawas is somewhat more based on (Orientalist perception of) Arabians, but the name and the physical characteristic matched my people. Westerners tend to lump us “the Other” in one simplified category anyways. I think there’s no denying that Star Wars uses “alien” kind to portray us “the Other”.

In TLJ, there was so much less of these. There were more spaceship settings. The planet setting is mostly inhabited (Crait) though arguably Ahch-To is potentially offensive.The lively planet is Canto Bight which is a casino and showing class differences rather than racial. Furthermore, Rian Johnson create important characters who were Asians. But then in TRoS, what the hell happened to FinnRose?

And worse...

My heart sank when I saw Pasanna and its “festival”. Then shot after shot it keeps on sinking. The close shot of the alien kids sitting cross legged. The alien girl who gave Rey the white woman a wooden bead necklace. Don’t try to tell me that it is not an Orientalist view of South Asia. Why am I still seeing this kind of image in 2019?

Who am I kidding. Accompanying my son watching Disney Jr channel is a torture. Almost all of their cartoon characters has white saviour complex. Why did I expect Star Wars to be different? Well, I didn’t. But when I saw it, I just can’t help to feel sad.

#star wars #reylo #the rise of skywalker #the last jedi #orientalism

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laisai · 3 years ago

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i love the original works tag! there's examples like...

there's one that's been officially published now which had space husbands and hurt/comfort and many other themes and tropes that you'd get with like, some subsets of AUs, or was aimed very much at the sort of audience AO3 attracts, only the characters and setting and plot were original. but arguably if the original work tag wasn't there you could've been easily mistaken in thinking that that fic was a space opera AU for some fandom you're not in; and sometimes people do read fics for fandoms they're not in, because fanfic has many nebulous qualities to it that don't often show up in original published fiction (but that line is blurring a bit these days; the fic I'm talking about is now officially published by Orbit books!)

the monsterfucker (exophilia/teratophilia) fandom is also very big in the original fandom tag since it's like... yes it's original and not *exactly* tied to a media fandom but it's largely written by people on tumblr also in other fandoms and is written in such a way that you wouldn't often see in, say, published fiction featuring "monstrous" love interests. also most are one-shots and that's a format you don't see as often (short stories pub'd traditionally seem to have much longer word counts?). the community and vibe of the works are in-line with other fandoms that have their own canon media so it feels like it belongs as well.

I've seen D&D OC stories under original works too; they're often also tagged with the d&d fandom tag but arguably, a lot of the plot elements and character traits are things that represent many fans on AO3, and many fans on AO3 are also players of TTRPGs. But it isn't exactly "official" content based off official characters -- it might not even use any pre-existing setting or plot or anything, really, so it makes sense to file it under original work.

original work also includes things like, ao3/pan-fandom meta. people who gather data on fan opinions or write essays about fandom history or even short tutorials for ways to skin your AO3 work. those are all original works in that they aren't specific to any fandom, but are also definitely the kind of thing that would fit as being archived somewhere like AO3.

it's intentionally left vague though so a lot of it is up to the author to decide if they want to post to AO3, because there are many, many things fans produce that may not technically fall under established categories like fanfic, podfic, fanart, filks, amvs, etc. (and ao3 is mostly geared towards archiving fic, with some people linking to podfics and fanart).

it's a really interesting category but by browsing it, it becomes very clear why it's so hard to define. i think it's one of those things that really do require you to lurk and observe a bit to get a "feel" for what seems to be allowed or meant to be in the original work fandom tag, but i hope my examples helped give an idea of the range of things that show up.

I see more and more nonsense with “Just ignore” on it, and it tells me that people don’t understand how AO3 works.

AO3 is not Wattpad where unpopular stuff sinks out of sight and isn’t bothering anyone: your non-fanwork cruft clogs up everyone’s search results.

Nobody should be posting non-fanworks in the first place, but if you’re going to post some crap you don’t want others looking at, you should find an unrevealed collection and stick it in there. That way, it stays out of search results.

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essenceoffilm · 7 years ago

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The Bodily Discontinuity of Reality in Makavejev’s Love Affair

Fifty years ago, in the prominent year of 1967, some French directors were declaring the end of cinema, while others were just getting started. In the Eastern part of Europe, where cinema had begun to find new freedom during the cultural thaw in the late 50′s, directors were not as keen on making apocalyptic declarations regarding their artistic trade because the tide of the new wave was arriving there later. The Yugoslavian cult director, Dusan Makavejev is no exception. After making a great number of short documentaries from the mid-50′s to the early 60′s, Makavejev made his feature debut, Man Is Not a Bird (1965, Covek nije tica) when the new wave was already slowing down in France. Primarily, the film opened the door to Makavejev’s best film two years later, Love Affair, or the Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator (1967, Ljubavni slucaj ili tragedija sluzbenice P.T.T.). Made nearly a decade after the monumental breakthroughs of the new wave in France, Makavejev’s magnum opus still radiates the fresh cinematic thought characteristic of those films filled with both young playfulness and artistic rigor. Despite being late bloomers of the wave, Makavejev’s Love Affair does not really fall into the category with Eric Rohmer’s belated The Collector (1967, La collectionneuse), though they share an intriguing affinity. Rohmer’s treatise on sexuality and the human body is characterized by tranquility and aesthetic serenity, whereas such features are replaced by a ferocious yet ironic analysis of man’s bodily being in Makavejev’s satire.

Love Affair is both a typical film for its time and an untypical film of timeless nature. Makavejev’s peculiar narrative basically carries two story lines side by side which coalesce in the end. In the first, a girl, working as a switchboard operator, named Izabel falls in love with Ahmed, a boy working at the sanitation department. In the second, the police find Izabel’s corpse in a cesspool and take it to the morgue. In addition to these diegetic lines of the two-fold story, there are separate levels of discourse. Most notably, there is a sex researcher talking directly to the camera about sex. He kicks the film off by asking the audience whether they are really interested in sex, knowing the predictably positive answer himself, of course, and adding that he too is interested in sex, though obviously as a mere object of research. The presence of a scientist presenting data to comment on the diegetic events anticipates the more well-known use of such narrative methodology in prominent French New Wave auteur, Alain Resnais’ My American Uncle (1980, Mon oncle d’Amérique). Makavejev does not, however, distinguish the scientist’s commentary into as a clearly separated level of discourse from the diegetic events as Resnais does which is why the scientist’s relation to the rest of the film remains more implicit. For one, Makavejev’s scientist does not directly comment on the characters and their behavior, whereas Resnais’ precisely explains what is witnessed on the screen. As a result, Makavejev’s approach feels more essayistic, more “new-wavy,” and less clearly delineated. In fact, it seems that the other additional modes of discourse in Love Affair join this level of discourse where the sex researcher belongs to: these include erotic images and a silent Yugoslavian porno called “Adam and Eve.” There is also a brief passage of prose as an inter-text which directly comments on the diegetic events in the characters’ life, seemingly separate from both levels of discourse: the diegetic world and the sex researcher’s world.

This short sketch should give an impression of the aesthetic principle that dominates Makavejev’s cinematic style. It is the principle of irregularity and imbalance. Mainly due to a major influence from Godard, montage became a dominant feature in new wave cinema. It meant a wish of the new filmmakers to distance themselves from what has been called “quality cinema” and to emphasize the cinematic (or, to some, “artificial”) nature of their work. They wanted to make films which were films -- not visual illustrations of novels or plays. Makavejev essentially continues Godard’s cinematic thinking in cutting between different levels of discourse, constantly interrupting the narrative flow, and using sound (and music) as counterpoint to the image. In line with aesthetic irregularity, Makavejev combines static shots with free handheld camerawork, and his mise-en-scène has a naturalist sensuality to it.

In terms of content rather than form, Makavejev’s Love Affair also shares an affinity with the basics of the new wave. First, there is the theme of young love. Although the spectator knows that it will end in tragedy (and finds that it ends in even deeper tragedy), it has the freshness, the sensuality, and the eccentric seriousness of the lovers’ complicated relationships created by Godard, Truffaut, and Resnais. Second, there is the theme of freedom which is -- as one might expect -- dealt with both individually and socially. To many, one might assume, Love Affair is a feminist film about the liberation of women or a political film about the budding liberation of the individual in the socialist regime but it is also (par Godard et al) an existentialist film. This brings us to yet another new wave theme, that is, the existentialist theme of being. While crafting a multi-layered story in the socialist system, Makavejev focuses on the individual and their private being, their bodily being toward death.

All of the film’s three levels (that is, the criminal investigation of the missing switchboard operator, the more or less educational comments by the sex researcher, and the love story of Izabel and Ahmed) concern the human body. The perspective of the first is objective and its object of research is what the German phenomenologists of the 20th century called Körper, the physical body. The perspective of the second is also objective but its object of research is not only Körper but also what those thinkers called Leib, or the lived body as distinguished by the French (le corps véçu). Both Körper and Leib are studied from the frame of sexuality. The perspective of the third, however, is subjective or, dare I say, phenomenological, and its object of research is purely Leib. It takes bodily being in its entirety. Makavejev, like phenomenological thinkers such as Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, one might continue, never makes a three-fold distinction like this. In Makavejev’s multi-layered vision, these perspectives coalesce and the lines between them become obfuscated. When Ahmed describes Izabel’s skin as silky while lying in bed, Makavejev makes a straight cut to the morgue where the same skin is being categorized by less sentimental terms. There is a transition from the third perspective to the first, which is indeed merely a change in perspective, but Makavejev’s cut seems to emphasize the phenomenological vagueness underlying the distinction between Körper and Leib; the latter seems to always entail the former. That is to say, in life, one always seems to be dying.

In fact, the most famous shot of Makavejev’s Love Affair, that being the full shot of the nude Izabel lying on bed while a black cat has curled up on her thighs right by her bottom, encapsulates this vagueness. Arguably, the shot calls for symbolic interpretations, but Makavejev might be doing something else rather than triggering the neural areas in the spectator’s brain hard-wired for psychoanalytic-feminist interpretations. He might be drawing our attention to the limitations in the first and the second perspectives: we are brought before inexplicable images. If this is not the purpose of cinema, I do not know what is. From this iconic shot, Makavejev cuts to a close-up of Izabel’s buttocks making them appear as twin peaks from which Makavejev further cuts to a brief montage sequence of Izabel baking, an innocent act which starts to look disturbingly (though also intriguingly) erotic. Given that these shots are preceded by the scene at Ahmed’s narrow apartment where there is not enough space and where Ahmed orders the nude Izabel to put some clothes on, Izabel’s nudity and her fiery baking inevitably manifest as expressions of freedom. The iconic shot itself, however, despite this contextualization, appears as utterly inexplicable, as an image of a mundane moment of bodily being. In it, one might observe the female body as a mere Körper, a physical body in a renaissance painting, but, due to the power of cinema, enhancing the power of human presence, one is almost coerced into observing the body as a complex, consisting of both Körper and Leib.

The vagueness in bodily being is articulated cinematically by combining separate levels of discourse and cutting unexpectedly between them. This, in turn, seems to bring the vagueness in bodily being into the structure of reality. Reality becomes vague as well. It, like the body, manifests as discontinuous. There is no continuous linkage from the first perspective to the second and third; rather they form a bundle of discourses which both struggle and support. The reality which Makavejev’s film discloses is discontinuous and ambiguous, a reality where there are no clear boundaries -- just like in the films of Godard.

Makavejev’s cinematic thought is, in fact, very close to Godard who always emphasized his connections not only to Merleau-Ponty but to Hegel as well. At its heart, Makavejev’s dialectical thought never excludes opposites but considers them as mutually belonging and enriching. The spectator cannot help but notice this in the film’s tone, effortlessly varying between the tragic and the comic, the satirical and the elegiac, the romantic and the grotesque, the documentary and the playful. At the core of it all, there seems to lie the human heart which remains inexplicable, a mystery. The film’s title has two parts: there is the “love affair” and “the case of the missing switchboard operator.” Both perspectives are there. Both Körper and Leib are in play. When Makavejev makes us listen to apparently non-diegetic German propaganda music chanting “heart, renovate,” we become more and more convinced that historicist projects of creating a new man cannot work. There are affairs which just belong to the heart.

#Ljubavni slucaj ili tragedija sluzbenice P.T.T.#Love Affair or the Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator #Dusan Makavejev #1960's #Yugoslavian

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smilefromtheheartalways · 8 years ago

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Zero and Yuuki: Why they are the very definition of Star-Crossed and why it’s such an important element to VK

Hi guys,

So it’s come to my attention that @imaginarylights has received a bit of flak from the tag line she chose for her recent edit here. I find this hilarious because when she came to me to show me her edit she asked what to tag it under and I was like “Well, star-crossed lovers of course!”

Why did I tell her to use ‘Star-Crossed Lovers’? Well, because it is the most explicit character trope that accurately details both Zero and Yuuki’s love in VK and is the trope that Hino has used since the beginning of Arc 2 and is continuing to flesh out and explore even now in VKM. This trope is so important to her story that she is using it as a means of exploring the concept of coexistence which is one of the most reoccurring themes in the manga and if we are to be honest it is the theme that really needs to be focused on and resolved in this new series as she did not give it the closure it needed nor deserved.

I’m also going to hide this under a cut because man this is going to be super long and I have been working on this for God knows how long.

Preview:

To sum up Yume was the love that was ‘meant to be’ but couldn’t because their love was not true or requited. Conversely Zero and Yuuki were the ‘ill-fated’, ‘star-crossed’ lovers that were never meant to be, but was, because their love was so pure and strong. It is Zero and Yuuki’s love that paves the way for coexistence to be achieved in order to create a new world where their love is accepted, and vampires and humans can live peacefully together.

Before I get started I would like to link you to @zerolover66 who already made a post recently about this topic which you can find here. I would also like to link you to a page that goes through the notion of ‘Star-Crossed Lovers’ as a character trope here and the definition of ‘Star-Crossed’ here. Both which will be referenced throughout this post.

To begin with let’s actually look at what it means to be ‘Star-Crossed’.

To be Star-Crossed is to generally be ‘ill-fated’. It is something that is not destined to be, or if it is, it is destined to see many trials and tribulations.

Looking back on VK it is important to note that Hino has described Vampire Knight as a ‘tragic love story’. It was never a ‘tragedy’. The reality is that both ships are undoubtedly based on a tragic albeit one a twisted love. However only one of the ships finds tragic hardships in the form of being ‘Star-Crossed’, the other finds tragedy in being the ‘Destined Love’ that failed.

The definition for tragic is stated as:

tragicˈtradʒɪk/

adjective

Causing or characterized by extreme distress or sorrow.

tragedyˈtradʒɪdi/

noun

An event causing great suffering, destruction, and distress, such as a serious accident, crime, or natural catastrophe.

A play dealing with tragic events and having an unhappy ending, especially one concerning the downfall of the main character.

Vampire Knight is not a tragedy. As pointed out in a similar post by Yume, Yuuki and Zero were happy. Yuuki found her happy ending. VK did not end at her downfall but at her overcoming the sorrow and distress that followed her her whole life and finally finding happiness.

Using the word ‘tragic’, in front of the main identifier (‘love story’) indicates that Hino noted that Vampire Knight is a love story above all else. The use of the word ‘tragic’ indicates that it is also a story that encompasses a love that involves ‘extreme distress and sorrow’.

The distress and sorrow that followed Zeki’s love is that of being a ‘Star-Crossed love’; the love that was ‘not allowed’ based on their station and the expectations placed on them by their expected societies. The title ‘Vampire Knight’ should be a key indicator in this as it emphasises the difference in station between the Vampire Knight and the Vampire Princess Queen.

Not only that but as a general rule of thumb, Star-crossed lovers are often forced by society to show their love in other 'more acceptable' ways such as dedication, service, loyalty and protection I mean doesn't that just scream Zero Kiryuu to you? I mean not only that but that's exactly what is expected from a 'Knight'. Now to be fair, Yume also follows a tragic love story in the sense that their love story is canonically based on a ‘twisted love’ that also canonically ended in tragedy because the Vampire King could not have the Vampire Queen because she was in love with someone else.

The reason Kaname and Yuuki cannot possibly fall under the ‘Star-Crossed’ category is because they were ‘destined’ to meet and eventually fail. Even though their ship is a tragedy, their tragedy came from the fact that their relationship was not satisfying and not because it was ‘ill fated’ or ‘not meant to be’. For all intents and purposes it was meant to be except neither person could find happiness with the other because the love given by Yuuki was not reciprocated to the full extent Kaname wanted. She loved him on a level that did not transcend her love for Zero. It did not make her smile from the heart. It did not move past pride and adoration. It stayed stagnant and remained as a love a girl had for a man she admired and looked up to as a brother. It was Zero and Yuuki who ‘defied the stars’.

‘Star-Crossed Lovers’ generally focus on the effects of social status impacting on the two love-birds pun intended being together as social expectations shape how the love is viewed and received. Following the course of the original manga it is Yuuki and Kaname that would originally be perceived as ‘Star-Crossed’. Kaname is a pureblood. Yuuki is a human. Vampires and humans are not meant to share any connections. Zero however is seen as a possibility. He and Yuuki start Vampire Knight on the same side on the chessboard as it were. They are both perceived to have the same status as a human. This is crucial to the overarching storyline and the main plot device Hino uses to drive the story and show progress. However, we soon realise that Zero is a vampire, and Yuuki does everything in her power to save him. Their relationship however ultimately remains balanced, while Kaname’s and Yuuki’s does not.

At this stage Zero and Yuuki do not follow the ‘Star-Crossed’ Trope, but Yume arguably does, as both Hunter’s think Yagori and Vampires think Aidou and Ruka show disdain for it. A Pureblood vampire and a human can not exist together in this world. Something echoed by Shizuka and her lover.

All that changes, however the moment Yuuki returns to being a pureblood and she realises that ‘everything she ever wanted’, ie, Kaname, was ‘already hers’. She realises she’s betrothed to Kaname. She is the same species as him. She’s expected to live all eternity by his side. They are no longer ill-fated and this is depicted through the change in the characters opinions of the ‘romance’. Ruka stops sulking and claims she understands and that she even pities Yuuki for the fate she now has. Aidou starts calling Yuuki, Yuuki-Sama, and tries supporting her relationship with Kaname even though he is at this point a hard core zeki shipper and has been since he caught Zero and Yuuki in the act of that sexy wrist bite.

Zero and Yuuki however have the adverse effect. They go from being on ‘mutual’ ground to having their stations cited as the reason they can no longer stay together. Zero is a hunter. Yuuki is a pureblood. Therefore she must go with the ‘man who can walk the same path of time’ as her.

They can no longer be ‘on each other’s side’, despite Yuuki’s promise to Zero, which is later revisited multiple times in the manga, because it is important. We also see how this causes both Zero and Yuuki immense suffering in the form of their thirst in the six month and one year time skip. The fact that they are different ‘species’ is cited multiple times in the manga to show how ‘ill-fated’ they would be as a couple.

The most notable times that deserve a reference include, but are not limited to:

When Yuuki first drinks from Zero. Zero hides his feelings for Yuuki and they both redefine their roles as hunters and vampires who need to work together in order to achieve their own interests.

The next moment of relevance is when Kaito reminds Zero that Yuuki is incompatible to him when the two of them leave after the events of Sara and the Association. This in turn forces Yuuki to remind Zero that she ‘belongs’ to Kaname. Again, another point that indicates that Yume is not ‘Star-Crossed’ but the love that is expected to be.

Followed by the Masquerade ball, in which that whole scene does nothing but follow a scene straight out of Romeo and Juliet. In which Yuuki is depicted as explaining how Hunters and Vampires don’t dance together, AKA don’t get along, AKA don’t be together, to both Isaya and Zero himself.

The most notable however would be when Yuuki indulges in her fantasy where the social restrictions of her being a vampire and Zero a hunter are removed and both are returned to their role as ‘humans’ and given the opportunity to pursue their relationship without the expectations that are keeping them apart. This also further highlights how these barriers are causing both Yuuki and Zero immense pain and suffering. Suffering which is symbolised through their thirst.

This is once again elaborated on in VKM, where despite Kaname’s blessing, Zero and Yuuki are once again forced to keep their relationship a secret, as the Purebloods have targeted Zero and the hunters have questioned Zero’s authenticity to their cause. Coexistence has not been achieved yet, but both Yuuki and Zero are the bridge to reaching that, which leads me to my next point.

Zero and Yuuki were given their time as humans to develop their relationship and their feelings for each other so that when they were forced apart and revealed as the true ‘star-crossed’ pairing, they had a strong foundation that made not being together extremely difficult, but also showcased how perfect for each other they really are. Thus, by them finding a way to be together, despite the pressure of social expectations, they are paving the way for coexistence. Think about it. The Queen of Vampires and her Hunter Knight, coming together and sharing the same path gives reason for coexistence to be achieved and for them to create a world that allows them to be together. BANG COEXISTENCE.

Essentially, to sum up Yume was the love that was ‘meant to be’ but couldn’t because their love was not true or requited.

Yume were both:

Pureblood Vampires.

Expected to be together by their society and thus betrothed at a young age.

Shared the same immortality.

Started off the series with what was perceived as the same feelings for each other.

Both deemed the King and Queen of Vampires.

Conversely Zero and Yuuki were the ‘ill-fated’, ‘star-crossed’ love that were never meant to be, but was because their love was so pure and strong.

The factors that acted to keep the two apart included:

Being a vampire and a hunter and thus expected to distrust and dislike each other

Yuuki being betrothed to someone else.

Their lifespans not matching up.

Neither one of them feeling like they deserved the other because of who and what they were (Zero in Arc one, Yuuki in Arc 2)

Moreover, it is Zero and Yuuki’s love that paves the way for coexistence to be achieved in order to create a new world where their love is accepted, and vampires and humans can live peacefully together. They started together on the same side of the board and they finished together on the same side of the board.

Also, for added emphasis, I just want to highlight a few elements that Hino has borrowed stole from a well known story depicting ‘Star-Crossed’ lovers: Romeo and Juliet.

When you compare Zeki to the foundations of Romeo and Juliet you can see that Hino has taken elements of the trope underpinning the pairing and fleshed it out in her characters in a way that allows them to work it out and be happy.

Here are some relevant elements from Romeo and Juliet that Hino has drawn inspiration from:

In Romeo and Juliet, you have two warring factions consisting of the Montagues and the Capulets. This creates a never ending level of hate and distrust between both parties.

In Vampire Knight, the world consists of humans, vampires and hunters. After a war a long time ago, hunters were entrusted to protect humans from vampires. Thus two opposing factions exist without the knowledge of humans. Because of the events of the past there is a level of hatred between both factions and a distrust between Hunters and Vampires.

In Romeo and Juliet, Juliet is betrothed to Paris. Paris, while royalty and considered to be a desirable subject is not the object of her hearts true desire. However prior to meeting Romeo she is happy to be betrothed to him and seek only her parents approval. This changes upon her meeting Romeo.

In Vampire Knight, Yuuki is betrothed to Kaname, who, like Paris, is originally seen as desirable, and is, naturally royalty and holds the mantel of ‘Vampire King’. However, it is revealed that he is not the object of Yuuki’s truest desire, shown through his inability to quench her thirst. Kaname is also the focus of Yuuki’s adoration however this changes somewhat as Zero enters her life.

In Romeo and Juliet, Juliet meets Romeo at a party in the House of Capulet, without any knowledge of who is, or his link to his noble, but adversary, family name. Romeo sneaks into the the soirée wearing a mask so that his true identity is hidden. Therefore when they meet they are free to be who they are. They dance, kiss and later confess their love for each other on a balcony.

In Vampire Knight, Yuuki and Zero attend a soiree and hide their true identities as a Hunter and a Vampire behind masks. This allows the two of them to speak openly and freely. As they dance on a balcony they share a kiss and Yuuki confesses to herself that she loves Zero and that her feelings are real.

In Romeo and Juliet, the secret love between the two creates a civil brawl that ends in a blood bath as tensions between the Montagues and the Capulets erupt following the death of Mercutio and Juliet’s cousin, Tybalt. Romeo is banished and forced to stay away from Juliet.

In Vampire Knight tensions increase between Vampires and Hunters following the death of Yuuki’s perceived brother Kaname. Thus both sides show their disdain for Zero and Yuuki’s love and they are forced to ‘keep it a secret’ and not be seen together.

In Romeo and Juliet, Romeo dies after what he believes is Juliet’s untimely death. However, it is revealed that Juliet is not dead, but in an induced coma-like state. Upon waking up to Romeo’s death she takes her own like.

In Vampire Knight Zero dies an untimely death saving a child and ‘a short while after’ Yuuki gives up her life to turn Kaname human and end her eternal life.

Ironically Juliet and Yuuki have surrogate parents (Juliet’s nurse and Kaien and Yuuki) that also ship and support them being with their ‘Star-Crossed’ love despite both knowing their true identities. But that’s just me having a bit of fun with it haha

And if that wasn’t enough for you, take one look at this image and tell me that Hino was not channelling the balcony seen in Romeo and Juliet here.

(Once again cleaned and edited by the lovely @imaginarylights thanks Sophi!)

#Vampire Knight #Vampire Knight Memories #Eternal Zeki #Radiant Zeki #Zeki #Vampire Knight Analysis

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