#I usually don’t like posting behind-the-scenes commentary or explanations before a story has been posted in its entirety because

[corellianhounds]

Toro Calican Lives AU — Behind-the-Scenes Character Analysis

Words: 2k

Antiheroes like Madmartigan from Willow and Han Solo and Toro Calican in Star Wars face hardships and problems because of their choices. We like them because they’re fun and funny and dynamic and interesting to follow, but they’re underdogs specifically because their flaws lead to the mistakes and choices that land them in hot water, and the narrative doesn’t reward them for the problems they get themselves into. Madmartigan is stuck in a cage and left to rot because he was a criminal, and the rest of his problems before he chooses to do the right/heroic thing come from his own bad choices and abrasive personality. Han Solo was frozen in carbonite and hung up as a decoration indefinitely because he was a drug smuggler who dumped his supplier’s shipment in the lake when the cops showed up and had bounty hunters sent after him, and his absurdly good luck just happened to run out out when that criminal history caught up to him at the most inopportune time. Toro Calican, in canon, gets killed because he chose to double cross a master hunter in the pursuit of fame and glory, despite the fact he was young, inexperienced, alone, and because he arrogantly— incorrectly— thought he had the upper hand.

Though I’ve tweaked his character enough to make him more of a good guy in the Toro Lives AU, I was never going to erase his flaws and I never wanted for Toro and Mando’s dynamic to come across as every movie with a young and cocky rookie apprentice accompanying a stoic and taciturn supervisor as he learns the ropes, but the rookie doesn’t actually have the skills he boasts and is more of an immature comic relief who has to mature and learn his lesson from the father-figure type mentor (who leaves the narrative in some way) in the end. I think that’s overdone and runs the risk of falling into clichés that we’ve seen a thousand times already, and it does these characters a disservice by not showing more complex depth to their characters and histories. Mando already HAS a kid, so to split that focus by having the same character relationship with Toro takes too much away from the main characters of the story, and frankly I just don’t find entirely immature adult characters funny or interesting in the first place. I want for all of these characters to feel like people, not a pile of stock character clichés anybody could have written

If Toro’s going to be funny, it has to be because he or the situation is genuinely funny, and he can’t be the butt of the joke every time or he’ll either become a pushover if he lets it happen, or he’d logically become contentious after a while if he doesn’t. Things people get teased for have to be partly rooted in truth, or it’s just pointless antagonism that doesn’t work as humor anyway because there’s no joke to be had, it’s just an untrue statement at their expense, and for him to keep up with other people’s teasing (or genuine mockery, as will be the case when we get to The Prisoner), he has to be just as quick-witted or clever right back.

That dynamic is true of any interaction he has in this universe because he IS sort of characterized as the underdog and antihero type, so there are going to be things a lot of people have or can do that put them at an advantage over him in some way (age, experience, resources, authority, skills, physical strength or prowess, people on their side), and to balance the cast out and make him interesting and not just along for the ride, he needs to have resources or skills or qualities they don’t (youth, energy, money, connections, skills, daring capabilities and a better chance of recovery should he fail) to keep from the disparity being too great and taking too much focus away from the adventure

So really he’s closer to Jay in the first Men In Black movie, in that he’s already coming to the table with some skills and know-how, but he’s being introduced to a setting foreign to him where he now has to use those skills in different ways and figure out how to apply them based on new information. In the one episode we have of Toro, he IS able to recall Fennec’s last known location by memory, his observation skills have potential but just need more experience and polishing (not noticing the Tuskens right behind him vs remembering the briefest moment he saw the kid and making the connection while Fennec talked), he’s a quick-thinker and has good reflexes, he’s capable of finding/acquiring resources and knows how to handle them, he’s got a decent poker face, and he does actually hold up against Fennec for a little while in a hand-to-hand fight AND proves to be quick on the draw against her at the end. He’s honestly not entirely dissimilar to Han Solo in a lot of ways (the biggest difference being their class background and the influence those had on them)

Giving him some depth and history isn’t hard, and it makes him more interesting for Mando’s character to interact with and bounce off of because if Toro DIDN’T have any skills, knowledge, or potential, Mando logically wouldn’t have agreed to bring him along. He shouldn’t have to babysit a capable adult guy if Toro was just a whiny kid with zero life experience, and there’s no reason he would agree to give this kid room and board (and training) if Toro is ALSO annoying on top of that

Jay in MIB is as much an active participant moving the plot along as Kay is, and he’s interesting to watch and listen to because he has a different perspective than Kay and Kay genuinely likes him. He specifically chose Jay to train him not just to be his partner but to be his replacement. They’ve got different backgrounds and abilities that complement each other’s and allow the story to focus on the bigger adventure, their dynamic being the background/interpersonal character development part of the story that makes us care about the bigger picture. Jay’s own jokes, teasing, protests, and arguments, humorous or otherwise, are always grounded in something true and come from understandable motivations behind why he says or does them in the first place. Jay’s funny but more importantly he’s smart, and he’s able to justify everything he says or does. There’s never a moment where he’s annoying just because the writers wanted some comic relief and didn’t know how else to get that across. There is also humor that comes at his expense, but he’s not there for everybody else to dogpile on him. None of the teasing or treatment he gets from others feels mean-spirited or puts him at an unfair disadvantage in the scene— He can dish it out as much as he can take it, and the narrative allows him the freedom to do so without punishing his character for it (ex: Being called nicknames he said he didn’t want, but getting away with calling the other characters by nicknames too, pushing back against or reproaching authority when they’re out of line and frequently being objectively right or justified, his instincts or hunches or initiative being rewarded with the desired result, etc.)

Toro’s still more of a rookie in this universe, he’s not the exact same character as Jay (because Jay is already a seasoned cop), but giving him more depth based on what we DO see of him and grounding him and his background in something still understandably human hopefully sets him up to be dynamic and interesting, driving some of that forward momentum in the story. Stories are always more interesting when the characters are the ones driving it based on internal motivations and choices, not just being moved around by the plot. The circumstances Toro will end up in will almost always be because he made decisions that got him there, even if that decision is to go with what Mando decides. It’s only interesting to watch their dynamic develop if both of them are still making those choices.

What further differentiates Toro from Jay’s character is that I do give him more of the antihero qualities like I mentioned above. Right now he’s in it for his own self-interest. The areas where Toro’s character is immature are rooted in selfishness (a quality responsible and mature adults work to manage because being an adult usually means having other people relying on you); my own headcanons and background I’ve come up with have him established as a rich kid who set out on his own to make a name for himself, but who is still young and privileged without the boots-on-the-ground life experience of having to be self-sufficient and know his way around the galaxy.

The rich kid background means he’s got the money he left with and some connections he can pull later, but a life of privilege also means he’s been afforded an education, has had opportunities to diversify his skills in specialized areas other people don’t even have access to, has resources or knows where to gain said resources other people don’t, and most importantly, he’s had a lot of leisure time at his disposal growing up where he could just choose to go do or learn something whenever he wanted. (In Toro’s case, that meant doing the equivalent of drag-racing, stunt-riding motorcycles, learning how to shoot and familiarizing himself with firearms, and general mischievous/daredevil antics one can get away with when you both have the money to afford it and aren’t paying your own health insurance).

But this means that what he lacks is in not quite knowing how to relate to working class people, not being accustomed to being unable to just BUY stuff whenever he needs it, not having the kinds of wilderness or survival skills born from necessity, and not having had to refine his interpersonal skills so he doesn’t come across as rash, arrogant, impatient, rude, and annoying. Regular people don’t have as much money or resources and are more likely to rely on one another, which means learning how to navigate personal relationships and conflict so they don’t lose those connections and the resources/knowledge those people provide. Disposable income and a life free from the stress of simply surviving allows you the freedom of choice and the freedom to leave at any time, which means you may have less legitimate problems in your life but you’re also less likely to have deeper long term connections or patience with people/circumstances in general.

Toro’s used to instant gratification, but because of his particular upbringing (backstory for later) he was ALSO pushed to develop the sharper skills he does have; however, that means he’s more likely to be impatient and individualist by nature, and since his whole objective was striking out on his own to make a name for himself because bounty hunting seemed like a cool choice of profession, he’s selfish and stubborn almost by default because he doesn’t have the life experience that would have curbed that impulse sooner. He wants to do his thing, his way, and he wants to do it now.

That being said, I wanted Toro to be smart. He’s not a spoiled prince to the point of Kuzco in Emperor’s New Groove (because he wouldn’t have left a life of luxury otherwise)— Mando wouldn’t have the patience to tolerate him if that were the case. Part of Toro’s intelligence is in being able to see reason when it’s provided. He’s willing to listen to other options or explanations provided they’re good enough to justify why something has to happen how or why or when it does. He’s not so arrogant as to think he already has all the skills he needs to do this job— If he were, he wouldn’t have asked Mando for help in the beginning or admitted to the job with Fennec being the very first he’d ever taken with the Guild. Sure he’s prideful and wants to save face, but what 25 year old guy doesn’t?

The interpersonal conflict comes in because his flaws and traits collide with Mando’s less talkative, less sociable nature, meaning Mando’s not always going to tell Toro every detail of a plan at first, which sometimes causes Toro to protest or ask more questions than Mando may have patience for himself. He wants Toro to follow instructions when they’re given and stop questioning everything (partly because Toro DOES just need to learn to listen and not insist on his way all the time, and partly because a lot of what Mando does is second nature to him by now and he doesn’t always have a gauge for what other people may or may not know). Their conflict isn’t necessarily because they dislike each other, it’s because they’re just different. That's what makes them interesting and compelling to watch.

[silent-silver-slip]

For the behind the scenes asks: 1, 4, 16, 18?

Me? Buzzing with excitement to respond to an ask? Always! Thank you for asking lovely. ♥️♥️♥️ I am somewhat sorry for such a long post, but I am incapable of writing small things it appears. 

1. What was the first fandom and/or pairing that you wrote fic for?

Oh god, I think it was Harry Potter? I started out with original works before branching into fanfiction, so I’m not certain though.

4. Do you outline before you start writing? If so, how far do you stray from that outline?

This one’s a bit up in the air to be honest! Sometimes I outline and sometimes I don’t. Almost always, I never outline anything under like 5k, which is normally written with a basic idea that keeps growing. There are also a number of longer things that I’ve done before that didn’t really have an outline either (some of my novellas happened this way). However, a number of my longer works do get an outline - either beginning with one or I hit a roadblock and begin to sketch an outline out and then it ends up being massive and more than I expected.

Parts of my outline go into depth and parts don’t, so as a result I usually keep pretty close to it. Occasionally an extra scene or a side character will take over a bit, but usually it’s very very close which is nice and helpful.

16. What is your most underrated fic?

Oh no, decisions. [I then leave this question blank, and forget to come back to it...] Okay, so I went back and started going through my fics and I was in struggle town, let me tell you.

In the end, I picked up two main ones that I think are my most underrated ones?

There’s the broken bones of our childhood which is an HP fic and actually sparked a piece of writing that got published online in the AZE which is neat. And the other is Everybody Knows (the deal is rotten) which is a Naruto fic that’s based on Orpheus and Eurydice and their legend, but is about family instead. One of these I appreciate because of the meaning behind it and it’s writing style, and the other was a lot of fun to write and I’m pretty proud of it.

18. What is a line/scene you’re really proud of? Give us the DVD commentary for that scene.

Firstly, this assumes I remember anything I write and it doesn’t just vanish from my brain straight away. I barely know what I did yesterday, let alone an actual scene or line I wrote.

I’ve been staring at a few passages for a while, and this is awful I cannot make decisions. However! I figured I’d go with one that I haven’t mentioned in an ask response before and also isn’t too tricky to explain and comes with a good explanation? And fit my current mood I guess.

This scene comes from tonight’s our time which is a Naruto fic. It was a short fun piece to write and definitely related to something I felt back in summer. My comments are in italics.

And she reaches out, offering her hand, and Minato grips it, tight. Their hands are sweaty and gross, because of the weather and how it’s somehow still humid even as the sun sets, streaking the sky with pale purples and pinks and oranges. (Fuck yeah, I love the sunset! And the sunrise! The sky just looks so pretty almost all the time okay. But also - just the idea of people reaching out to each other even when it’s uncomfortable because they want to and they love each other regardless?)

The sky, however, is not what Kushina or Minato pay attention to. Rather, then launch forward, uncoordinated and laughing, towards where the sprinklers send water over the grass and pavement, turning it dark. (The idea of not paying attention to the sky because someone else is there and more important, more beautiful, definitely strikes a cord with me. And launching forward, laughing and unbalanced and just complete chaos? I can imagine it and it feels so good? Just letting go and- and I don’t even know, living, I suppose.)

They don’t go through the edges of the sprinkler, where the water’s a mist and light, they run through the worst of it, laughing and holding hands. Immediately, they’re soaked, clothes plastered to their skin as droplets of water run down their arms and faces and necks. Minato’s hair falls over his eyes whilst Kushina has flyaway strands finally pinned down, and she rubs a hand across her forehead, shoving them to the side so they stop irritating her. (Not gonna lie, this was partially me just working on descriptions, but hey. If it’s hot and humid and gross even at like 8.30pm, hell yeah I’m gonna run through the worst bit of the sprinkler if my friend wants too as well. That weather is gross and you’re dying, okay? Trust me on that one, it’s not fun. But, well, to meet up with a friend after so long, there’s not much I won’t do.)

Now out of the sprinkler, they turn. The weather no longer feels so hot and muggy. It’s cool and warm and the perfect temperature, even though their clothes have darkened with water and their hair will definitely turn fuzzy. (More description stuff.)

Looking at each other, they laugh, loud and wild and happy. This is, undoubtedly, what life is all about. Laughing and living, looking at each other and grinning. They’re adults but that doesn’t mean they have to leave childish acts behind them. (They’re just so happy!! They’re in their like twenties and they’re “adults” but they’re having such a fine time and they’re loving and happy and it’s just glorious. This is what we all deserve, okay? Around work and uni and life in general - we deserve to be happy and loving and loved in return, laughing and glorious and far frome alone.)

Because of the challenges I had figuring it out, there are a few of the ones I was tossing up beneath the line.

My favourite bits are in bold.

Scene from i don’t believe that love was made to break:

“Hey look,” Reggie says, “the sun’s rising.” And it is, painting the sky with colour. The sun itself is a circle of orange and the lake is fractured by every golden ray, colours rippling across the water.

Yet not one of them watches it. Instead, they are caught by each other. How the sun makes them glow. How the light gentles their faces. How they smile at each other.

The day grows warmer, the sun goes higher, and they are trapped in a single moment, aware of the way they are pressed up against each other, the way they are happy, the way they are loving without reserve.

Scene from the sea isn’t yours but you’re still the sea’s which may or may not be an AU of my own AU:

Sometimes kindness is an innate part of us, sometimes it’s there regardless of whether or not we know it. Sometimes kindness is apologising and saying ‘What can I do to help?’ Sometimes kindness is helping when help isn’t wanted but needed anyway.

In one world, there would be an information network growing in the shadows, spreading further and further with no one aware of it but one boy. In another world, there is no information network growing, but something else grows instead—hands stretching out, faces looking down. Kindness shared is kindness that can be passed on. Small things can stack, one on top of the other, and sometimes they lead to massive changes that are unforeseen. When a boy extends his hand out to a homeless child, she reaches back cautiously, but their story will end in trust and loyalty, (always).

Scene from Wayfinders‘ epilogue:

“This is what it means to be human.” The words seem to shock everyone and Toru smiles as he watches heads turn to one another, muttered discussion growing once again. “It is human to fight when the odds are against you,” he says. “It is human to say ‘we will keep living’ when it seems impossible. It is human to find a way to survive when an army marches towards you.

“It is human to fight. Sometimes this is against another opponent in a test of strength and sometimes it is against grief that threatens to overwhelm you. Sometimes you fail. Sometimes you fall. Sometimes you bow your head and give up. But you are not alone. Someone will reach ask if you’re alright. Someone will gift you a kind word. Someone will reach out a hand. There will always be someone reaching out a hand.

“A new era is dawning,” Toru lifts his chin, looks not to everyone below but to the sun overhead, shining down. “A new era is dawning and it is not one of war. It is one of peace, of love, of acceptance. It is one of kindness, of family, of friendship.” He smiles. “I speak not only to my people now, but to all of you. Let us remember hope, in times of hardship. Let us remember kindness, in times of cruelty. And let us remember to reach out and lift one another up high for you are never alone.”

(There are so many things Toru wants to say. He wants to engrave the lessons he learnt into people’s skin. He wants them to know what he does, that kindness is not a flaw, that mercy is not a weakness. But they will only learn that in time. And they have the time. They have the opportunity. Toru will see that they have all the time in the world.)

 (In the end, there is only one village that hears the words Toru does not say. One full of ghosts and laughing people. One full of refugees and fighters. One full of survivors and graves. Uzushio hears him and hears what he says with every word that escapes his lips.)

 (The sea will never die.)

[johannas-motivational-insults]

For the DVD commentary ask, my first thought was the BDE/“no toasters” scene from Chapter 3 of Satisfaction, because the idea of a “making of” commentary over that is very funny to me for some reason. But since that probably falls quite a bit too far on the NSFW side, my fallback was the scene from Chapter 20 of Demons where Catra decides to leave the Horde. That one is probably my favorite of the story so far.

omfg, that would be hysterical but I don’t even know what I’d say about that. Your easy pick is an excellent choice though so I’ll do that! (Commentary is bolded.)

I was so excited to finally release this chapter after so much buildup of Catra becoming disillusioned with the Horde and her identity in it. It was clear to me that Catra would not leave just because something bad happened to her, that would only make her more determined to stay and prove herself, so she’d have to see people she cared about getting hurt to make that mental leap. And so, this scene was born.

Eyes scrunching shut, Catra covers her mouth in an attempt to suppress a yawn. It leaks out through her fingers all the same, high and squeaky and embarrassing. Blinking the focus back into her eyes, she flicks them around in search of witnesses. Seeing no cadets looking her way, she sighs in relief and folds her arms back together. She scowls into the sparring circle, watching but hardly paying attention. Is she really supposed to give a shit about any of this?

Don’t forget this happens the morning after Catra has her big breakdown when it hits her that she’ll never have another chance to earn Shadow Weaver’s love or approval. She’s finally at a tipping point.

A few more moves and Lonnie is victorious, slamming her opponent on his back before rolling and dragging his wrist into a devastating arm bar. He taps out and Lonnie gets a modest amount of applause as she stands. Grinning with a sweeping bow, she offers a hand to her opponent, who takes it grudgingly. Kyle and another boy take their places in the circle and Lonnie shares high fives with a few cadets on her way out. She’s nursing a sprained ankle from a couple days ago, but you wouldn’t know it by the way she struts.

When Lonnie’s eyes lock onto hers, Catra groans internally. Of course Lonnie can’t just ignore the folded ears, crossed arms and twitchy tail that very clearly say ‘leave me the fuck alone.’ No, that’s like a homing beacon for Lonnie. She’s always gotten a kick out of getting under Catra’s skin.

Well, Catra won’t give her the satisfaction. As Lonnie sidles up to her, she extends a congratulatory fist. “Nice armbar, dipshit.”

Lonnie grins, bumping it with pride. “Thanks, bitch.”

I love these two so much. Anyone who reads my fics can probably tell but I am Invested in Catralonnie. In my head this ship falls under the category ‘brotps who hate fuck.’

She turns to the circle and they stand silently side by side, watching as the next fight gets underway. In theory, anyway. Catra’s zoning out, her lips sinking into a frown as she settles back into the numb, dark, heavy place she’s been inhabiting today. Grief, she supposes, though not in the usual sense of the word. She’s not grieving that abusive witch who tormented her all those years, body and soul. No, what she’s grieving is the end of their relationship, how it’s encased in stone forever, how she’ll have no more chances to make things right. No more chances to make Shadow Weaver proud, to earn a gentle touch and kind words, to earn her pride and her trust. But that’s bullshit, and she knows it. Those things were never earned, never given fairly.

Oh, she’s starting to get it...

Catra grits her teeth, glaring straight ahead. Today’s numbness has been punctuated by occasional bursts of anger, rage so blinding it makes her wants to tear her own skin to shreds to purge the feeling from her body. (*thousand year stare into the camera*) She rides out this latest wave of fury in silence, clenching her fists but keeping her claws sheathed to avoid making a scene in public. She takes a few deep breaths, pushing them out until the sensation releases her and she sinks back into the depths.

Shadow Weaver is gone. Catra will never get what she needs. It’s over.

Girl, you need to get you some therapy.

“What’s eating you?”

Catra jumps slightly at the invasive words, turning to find Lonnie watching her with those infuriatingly smug green eyes. Licking her lips, Lonnie cracks, “I know it isn’t Adora.”

Me @ y’all:

Catra’s eyes narrow and she gives Lonnie a weak shove, prompting a laugh. “Nothing’s eating me,” she growls. “I’m fine.”

“Then why aren’t you sparring?” asks Lonnie. “Usually you love the chance to beat the shit out of some dumb human.”

“I don’t feel like it,” Catra answers flatly, mouth twitching only slightly. She doesn’t have the energy to be indignant. She doesn’t give a shit.

Damn that’s when you know Catra’s really got it bad.

Nodding with an exaggerated hum, Lonnie remarks, “You’ve been weird all day, dude. Broody, like more than normal.” (Have I mentioned how much I love Lonnie??) Catra summons the strength to shoot her a withering glare, but she’s undeterred. “You snuck into the barracks after midnight last night, then you woke me up again with your snivelling at four in the fucking morning,” she says with a glare of her own. “You owe me an explanation.”

“I don’t owe you anything, assface,” retorts Catra, jamming a threatening claw against her chest. “And I was only snivelling because I inhaled something weird up on the rooftops.”

Lonnie tips her head with a condescending smirk. “Sure, Catra.”

Yes, this is in fact a hat tip to ‘Sure, Jan.’

“I’m serious,” insists Catra. “There must’ve been some kind of spill in one of the factories.”

“Uh huh.”

Catra turns away with a glower, shaking her head. “Whatever, fuck you.”

“You wish,” snickers Lonnie.

“Ughhh!” Catra smacks her forehead with a huge sigh of exasperation. “Fine, I’ll fight you if it will get you to shut up. For fuck’s sakes, Lonnie.”

Lonnie’s preferred method of therapy is to piss people off enough that they’ll fight her and I think that’s very sexy of her.

Chuckling deeply beside her, Lonnie slings an arm around Catra’s shoulder and gives her a playful shake. “That’s my girl.”

Catra would usually shove Lonnie away in this situation, but she doesn’t this time. She’s too tired to fight the contact and needs to save her strength for the actual fight. Besides, it’s not the end of the world. Lonnie’s arm is beefy but not so heavy as to be uncomfortable. The pressure is actually kind of soothing in a way, clearing Catra’s mind and lulling her into a state of calm. Not that she would ever admit that to anyone, let alone Lonnie.

BROTPS WHO HATE FUCK Y’ALL. Okay but honestly I love that I have this relationship to work with because having someone who’s really good at getting under Catra’s skin is another way to open up her character. Lonnie is not only a loveable character she’s a very useful one for a writer who tells stories primarily through character work and relationships.

A loud thud and a howl of pain pierce the air, snapping Catra back to the moment. Her ears prick up at the familiar sound and she moves toward it on instinct, only to realize she’s half a step behind Lonnie. Humans like to say that cats aren’t pack animals, she’s heard that one many times as a reason she can’t be trusted. Catra is no more an animal than anyone else here, but she thinks Magicats must be different from their feline relatives in that way. The urge to protect her pack is overwhelming and immutable. One of her squadmates is hurt, and she needs to be there to help. Now.

Anyone who says Catra doesn’t care about other people can fucking fight me and that’s a fact.

She and Lonnie arrive at the edge of the circle to find Kyle sprawled on his stomach, moaning and writhing, pounding the floor as he tries to hold back wails of pain. It’s not immediately apparent what the problem is from Catra’s vantage point, but Rogelio is already kneeling on Kyle’s other side, telling him to breathe and that he’s going to be fine.

Okay so I fucking went 16 chapters never specifying whether the rest of the squad understood Rogelio’s language because it wasn’t clear in canon and I wanted to see if they would confirm it one way or the other, and of course as soon as I posted chapter 17 (where I specify that they can) season 4 came out and implied that they know him well enough to understand via his tone and gesturing but they don’t understand the language. So mark me down as annoyed over that. Anyway that wasn’t something I wanted to retcon so I kept it for the rest of the fic.

The instructor, some lower tier officer Catra doesn’t really know, steps into the ring. Pushing Kyle’s worried sparring partner aside, he shouts, “Enough theatrics! Get up and fight!”

Oh boy, Shadow Weaver likes to use that word on Adora too. I don’t remember if this mirrored that intentionally.

Catra feels Lonnie tense beside her, hears Rogelio snorting at Kyle that his leg is broken and he’d better stay the fuck down. Cringing in anticipation, Catra peeks over Kyle’s body and immediately wishes she hadn’t. The sight of his unnaturally bent shinbone sends a shudder of sympathy through her bones.

The instructor must not have any reptile friends (likely) or he understands and is a complete and utter asshole (also likely), because he keeps yelling at Kyle, “Come on, don’t be such a princess! I said get up, you coward!”

The boys’ wailing and snorting is getting them nowhere, so Lonnie intercedes. Gesturing down at the deformed limb, she shouts over the din. “His leg’s broken! You really think that’s a good idea?”

The instructor’s mouth falls open and he peers down at Kyle and then back up at Lonnie, his face turning red. “Don’t talk to me that way, Cadet!” he barks. “You’re running laps for the next half hour.”

Okay, Shadow Weaver Lite.

Lonnie blinks, purging her face of emotion. “I’m just trying to help. You needed a translator.”

“The next hour!” he shouts. “Wanna push it more?”

Scowling, Lonnie shakes her head tersely and begins to push her way out of the circle of cadets. Watching her go, the instructor puffs out his chest and waves a dismissive hand down at Kyle.

“Someone take this weakling to the infirmary,” he orders.

Rogelio glares up at the instructor, though to be fair the asshole probably can’t read reptilian expressions either. Lucky Hel. Rolling his whimpering boyfriend to lie on his back, which results in another howl of pain, he grunts out an apology. Then, supporting the injured leg with one massive arm and the rest of his body with the other, he scoops Kyle up and carries him away.

Okay but the bridal carry is *chef’s kiss*

As the crowd reforms around the sparring circle, the instructor claps Kyle’s partner on the shoulder and declares, “Alright, let’s get a real soldier in here to fight this guy!”

I feel really bad for this kid tbh.

The cadets erupt into cheers and several rush forward to take Kyle’s place, which results in a couple of impromptu fights as they try to push each other out of the circle. Catra is knocked back into the crowd in the process, but she doesn’t react with her usual bared teeth and claws, too busy staring slack-jawed at the chaos. Never in her life has she felt more disconnected from her surroundings, not even when she wanted to be.

At one point in her life (okay, many points), Catra would have been clamoring along with the rest of them. For a chance not just to prove herself, but to avenge her injured squadmate. But she feels no need to prove herself to this incompetent asshole of an instructor, and it’s not that kid’s fault they’re compelled to fight each other like this. He clearly felt terrible about Kyle, anyway.

As Catra watches the scene play out, watches the instructor continue to egg the cadets on, only one clear thought forms in her head.

What the fuck is wrong with these people?

Seriously. How is it weak and cowardly not to stand and fight on a broken leg? That’s not how the body works. Then again, they also like to say that deserters are weak and cowardly. Maybe they don’t know what those words even mean. Maybe weak and cowardly just means having a mind of your own.

Catra’s eyes track Lonnie as she hobbles around the room with a red face and clenched fists. Though she isn’t visibly fuming in the same way, a similar heat smolders deep in Catra’s belly, filling her mind with treasonous thoughts. The whole thing is so fucking unfair. But that’s hardly some grand revelation. Nothing that happens in the Fright Zone is fair.

So what is she even doing here?

That thought in particular makes Catra blink. Hard. She knows why she’s here, she’s been saying it over and over, clinging to these words, this need. She needs to show them they were wrong, she needs to achieve what everyone thought her incapable of. If she leaves, she’ll never do that, and everything that happened here would be for nothing. But if nothing is fair here, rising to the top says nothing about her qualifications, only her ability to work the system. A system that’s absolute bullshit.

And who does she need to prove it to, anyway? These mindless idiots submitting to an incompetant authority figure? Her temperamental former boss who put blind faith in her one day and took it away the next? Her deceased sorry excuse for a mother? Her ex-best friend who left her alone to suffer, but has since come to understand her wrongdoings? No… the only person Catra really needs to prove it to is herself. But if the system is bullshit, there’s nothing to prove, only a painful void to fill with… something.

Honestly this is a rough feeling to deal with but at least now that the illusion has been broken she can go about trying to find that thing to fill it. And no that’s not a sex joke lmao, though I suppose it could be.

Scorpia’s words from last night filter into Catra’s brain through the distant sounds of cheering and shouting. If it feels like everything is for nothing, she needs to find a way to make something of her suffering so she can be at peace. Her eyes fall on Lonnie again, her ears recalling Kyle’s sounds of agony. If she can stop other people from being hurt the way she was, would that make something of it? Would that be enough to satisfy the longing deep inside her, to heal the yawning, yearning chasm Shadow Weaver created with her rejection and cruelty, with her refusal to provide validation and affection? Catra doesn’t know.

All Catra knows is she’s done with this shit.

Catra I am so proud of you bb I love you and you deserve better.

Anyway sorry I had less coherent thoughts for this commentary but this scene makes me emotional so I got a little meme-happy. I have had many experiences like this where I was just holding, holding onto something that was unhealthy or a lost cause and then something happened and a switch flipped in my brain, releasing me from that mind trap. I really wanted to get the feeling of that experience across and I’m proud of how it turned out. It’s a great payoff scene for that whole ‘return to the Horde’ arc for Catra. I didn’t want her to leave for Adora but I also knew she wouldn’t leave for herself until she witnessed the brutality and inequality hurting someone else.

[a-kosher-dunk]

May I ask about something I’ve read regarding Miriam? Is it true that she made a racist remark against Tzipporah, and that’s why she wasn’t allowed into the Promised Land? I could be totally misunderstanding something, but I do remember reading that. Thank you!

I hope you're prepared for a 2000 word answer, because this is a complicated question about a difficult passage. Content warnings for violence, non-explicit discussions of sex, and (maybe) racism.

The incident you're talking about happens in Numbers/Bamidbar 12. Here's what the text says, quoting from the translation by Everett Fox, skipping over some verses that aren’t relevant to the question, and anglicizing Fox’s spellings of names for clarity:

12:1 “Now Miriam spoke, and Aaron, against Moses on account of the Cushite wife that he had taken in marriage, for a Cushite wife he had taken.

12:2 They said: ‘Is it only, solely through Moses that YHWH speaks? Is it not also through us that he speaks?’ And YHWH heard.

12:5 And YHWH descended in a column of cloud and stood at the entrance to the Tent; he called out: ‘Aaron and Miriam!’ and the two of them went out.

12:10 When the cloud turned away from above the Tent, here: Miriam has tzaraat like snow!”

Tzaraat is usually translated as leprosy, but this is a bad translation. What you need to know is that tzaraat is an affliction sometimes caused by angering G-d and, as in this case, it can turn a person’s skin white.

If you're not confused yet, you should be, because this passage gives a lot of confusing information. Why is Moses's wife referred to as a Cushite, when before Tzipporah was called a Midianite? Why is Miriam punished while Aaron isn't? What was their problem with the "Cushite wife" in the first place? Why does the text say that Aaron and Miriam were speaking about Moses's wife, but then the rest of their dialogue is about their roles as prophets?

I'm breaking this down into a series of questions and explanations for better readability. 

Question 1: Is the Cushite woman Tzipporah?

You'll notice that the "Cushite wife" isn't named. So the first question we have to answer is, are Miriam and Aaron even talking about Tzipporah? Or has Moses married another woman? (Polygamy would have been fairly normal in this place and time.)

Previously, Tzipporah was described as a Midianite, which would suggest that this is a different woman. However, today we don't know exactly where Midian was. We're not even sure that it was a place; it might have referred to a collection of tribes instead. "Cush" is generally assumed to mean modern Ethiopia, but that's not totally clear either.

It's possible that there was some overlap between Cush and Midian. Maybe the Midianites were a tribe of people living in Cush, or maybe Midian was an area in the larger territory of Cush. This might be the Bronze Age equivalent of saying "Tzipporah was from Texas" and then later saying "Tzipporah was from Houston."

Most Torah commentaries agree that this person is Tzipporah and that’s my interpretation too. For ease of discussion, I will continue referring to her as Tzipporah.

Question 2: Were Aaron and Miriam equally at fault for this situation?

In your question, you mentioned reading that it was Miriam who "made a racist remark," but as you'll notice from the passage, both Miriam and Aaron spoke. What you would miss if you only read this text in English, however, is that in Hebrew, verbs are gendered. In this case, the verb for "spoke" is gendered feminine. Normally, if you were referring to something done by both a woman and a man, you would use the masculine form of the verb.

Why doesn't that happen here? One traditional explanation is that it was Miriam who initiated the discussion. She went to Aaron first and persuaded him to join her in her complaint. Aaron has a history of acceding to what others want (see: the thing with the Golden Calf), which I think is very Hufflepuff of him. Meanwhile, Miriam has a history of taking leadership and persuading others to go along with her plans (see: convincing Pharaoh's daughter to adopt Moses, or leading the Hebrew women in a song of victory after crossing the Red Sea). So this explanation is perfectly in character. Either only Miriam said the part about Tzipporah, or both Aaron and Miriam said it, but Miriam was the instigator. A more fun explanation is that Aaron is trans and prefers feminine pronouns, but I don't know of any other passages that support that reading and in any case, that would be a subject for a different post.

Question 3: Was this about race?

First off, I'll point out that no one in this story would be considered white today. Miriam, Aaron and Moses would be considered Mizrahi Jewish or Middle Eastern by today's standards, while Tzipporah would be considered... well, again, we don't know where Midian was, but Middle Eastern, Ethiopian, or specifically Beta Israel would all be valid modern guesses.

That said, racism can absolutely exist between different people of color. Midianites and Hebrews would have seen each other as different people, if not different races. And there are lots of examples of violence flaring up between those two groups. In Genesis/Bereshit 37:28, Midianites enslave the young Joseph. In Numbers/Bamidbar 31, the Israelites launch a war against the Midianites. In a particularly violent scene from Numbers/Bamidbar 25:8, a Midianite woman and an Israelite man are killed for sleeping together.

So, it's totally plausible that Miriam was being racist. This would explain why Tzipporah’s race is highlighted twice with the repetition of the phrase “Cushite wife.” It would also explain why G-d chooses to punish Miriam specifically with tzaraat. The affliction is described as making her skin look "like snow," i.e. unnaturally white. This might be G-d's way of saying, "You think skin color matters so much? Okay. Let's see how you feel about your skin color now." Rabbi Rick Jacobs interprets the story this way, and has a very good talk about it in this podcast episode.

However, racism isn't the only explanation for what's going on here.

Question 4: Why the abrupt change of subject halfway through the complaint?

As I mentioned above, the text at first says that Miriam was speaking "on account of the Cushite wife." But then the very next line from her and Aaron is, "Is it only, solely through Moses that YHWH speaks? Is it not also through us that he speaks?” Which is a total non-sequitur. Imagine saying to your sibling, "I hate your girlfriend, and also, you’re not that special. Dad gives us special treatment too."

One explanation is that the real issue all along was the issue of leadership. Jenna Reback on an episode of the podcast Bad Jew Weekly says, “The ostensible reason that Miriam and Aaron had for talking badly about Moses wasn’t actually the root of their problem… They’re like, “Ugh, he married this Cushite woman.” And then they really get into what’s actually bothering them, which is that they should be more celebrated by people and by G-d because G-d has spoken to them too. In a way, I think this is one of the reasons that G-d is so mad at them, because they don’t actually just level their complaint… Miriam and Aaron are kind of being surreptitious and saying one thing but meaning another and talking behind closed doors…Miriam and Aaron don’t have the guts to just say it outright.”

In this reading, Miriam at first tries to hide her true intentions, possibly out of shame, or possibly to delegitimize Moses ("How can he lead us when he didn't marry a woman from our people!") before admitting to her real problem. This would explain why her punishment from G-d is harsher. Not only did she criticize her brother; she wasn't even upfront about what her criticism was!

But there's another explanation that ties these two threads together. According to commentary from Chizkuni and Rashi, Miriam spoke "on account of the Cushite wife" not to disparage her, but to help her. They interpret the repetition of “wife” to mean that while Tzipporah was being a good wife, Moses was not being a good husband. He had become too wrapped up in the responsibility of leading his people and stopped paying attention to Tzipporah. From Chizkuni’s commentary: “’Miriam and Aaron spoke out critically against Moses;’ how did either of them know that Moses had separated from his wife? They had both noted that Tzipporah no longer wore the jewelry she had been in the habit of wearing. Miriam asked Tzipporah why she no longer wore that jewelry. Tzipporah replied that it was because Miriam’s brother (Moses) did not pay any attention to her jewelry. This was a hint that he had separated from her. She told Aaron about this and they talked about that situation criticizing him.”

I should point out that the language used here is euphemistic; the implication of “separated” is that Moses and Tzipporah were no longer having sex. Tzipporah was upset about this, and Miriam was angry on her behalf. It’s kind of like that one scene in Brooklyn 99.

Let’s revisit the line, “Is it not also through us that he speaks?” According to Exodus/Shemot 6:23, Aaron was married to Elisheva. No spouse is named for Miriam in the Torah, but one midrashic tradition says that she married Caleb, a man introduced in Numbers/Bamidbar 13:6. I’ll come back to him, but for now let’s think about this setup. All three siblings are prophets. All three are married. But unlike Moses, Miriam and Aaron have remained close with their spouses, despite the challenges of leading their people. That’s why they make this point. This isn’t a challenge to Moses’s leadership; it’s a reminder that fulfilling G-d’s wishes is no excuse for neglecting human relationships.

This explanation seems random, I know. Where are Rashi and Chizkuni getting this backstory from? Turns out, there's a story about Miriam intervening in a similar situation between a wife and a husband. According to Rashi, back in Egypt when Pharaoh gave the "kill all the baby Hebrew boys" order and before baby Moses was born, Yocheved's husband Amram divorced her. Amram's argument was that if all baby boys were going to be murdered, there was no point in having more children, and therefore no point in being married. How Yocheved felt about this isn't elaborated on.

Miriam, however, was ready to fight. Rav Chanina says that Miriam “told her father: ‘Father, your decree is harsher than that of Pharaoh! He only decreed against the males, but you have decreed against both the males and the females. It is doubtful whether the decree of the wicked Pharaoh will come to pass, but you are righteous, and so your decree will be fulfilled.’ Amram immediately took back his wife.”

Keep in mind, most commentary says Miriam was only six at the time. Please picture a tiny, furious six year old girl standing up to her father and refusing to let him break their family apart. This is why I love Miriam.

Anyways, that story sets a precedent that A) Miriam is willing to intervene in extremely personal matters if she thinks it's for a good reason and B) when there’s a dispute between a husband and wife, Miriam intervenes on the wife's side. Feminist solidarity FTW.

Recap: I know that was a lot of information, so in summary, here are three possible explanations for what happens in this section. 

1) Miriam spoke against Tzipporah and Moses because she was being racist about Tzipporah. 

2) Miriam and Aaron resented not getting a bigger leadership role, but rather than admitting this directly, Miriam initially pretended that their problem with Moses was that he had married Tzipporah. 

3) Moses was neglecting Tzipporah and Miriam tried to talk to Moses on her behalf.

Addendum: In your question, you asked if Miriam "wasn't allowed into the Promised Land" because of this incident, and at first, I was going to say no. In Numbers/Bamidbar 14:27-14:35, G-d states that because the Hebrews will not stop bickering amongst themselves and doubting their G-d, they will wander for another forty years. The generation that was enslaved in Egypt will not set foot in the Promised Land, but their children will. I always assumed Miriam was included in the category of the generation from Egypt.

However! There are three exceptions to G-d's pronouncement. One is Joshua, who doesn't matter for this discussion.

The other is Moses because G-d plays favorites. And the third person is Caleb.

Remember the midrash I mentioned earlier about Caleb being Miriam’s husband? Well, if we take that as true, that implies that Miriam would have been allowed to enter the Promised Land with him. Especially since the other exception to G-d’s declaration is Moses, her brother. They’re supposed to settle in the land and raise families who will never have to suffer under slavery. Doesn’t make much sense for G-d to deliberately break up a family.

But let’s go back to Moses. Because guess what? He messes up. In Numbers/Bamidbar 20, G-d instructs Moses to summon water from a boulder by speaking to it. Instead, Moses strikes the boulder with his staff. G-d’s response is, “Because you did not have trust in me … you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I am giving them!” And with that, Moses is barred from entering the Promised Land.

From this we know that G-d can and will revoke Promised Land privileges for certain offenses. The incident with Tzipporah may have been one such offense. Maybe that is why Miriam doesn’t make it to the Promised Land, and why she is the first of her siblings to die.

There’s a lot that I didn’t cover. Sefaria lists 77 commentaries just on the first sentence of Numbers/Bamidbar 12. If you want to read more about this passage, I’ve linked some of my sources in the post and listed two others below.

Miriam in the Desert with Alicia Jo Rabins: a video discussing, among other things, popular interpretations of Numbers/Bamidbar 12

Sefaria: an all-purpose encyclopedia of Jewish texts and commentary

[sol1056]

six anons: wtf were they thinking

Another round-up! I seem to have poked the hornet’s nest when it comes to the EPs --- though in some ways I was just building on the same clues that prompted such awesome meta from @janestrider​ and @ptw30​ --- and now I have a box filling up with asks, all over again.

Behind the cut: newbie writers, EP arrogance, earlier versions of S7, writerly randomness, EPs aren’t writers, and over-confidence. Welp. 

Let’s get this started.

Your words about being fascinated by this trainwreck is me 100%, I'm a newbie writer & I wouldn't dream of being this arrogant and think I can handle writing something like VLD by myself, like, premise and character arcs and characterization and consistency etc. are in my mind at all times and I still would have messed things up, but minor things like that don't even matter to the EPs apparently! VLD Is a giant What Not To Do list. How did they miss the 50 signs saying Danger: Cliff Up Ahead

and a second in the same vein:

Calling the EPs newbie writers is highly inaccurate methinks, newbie writers upon getting the reins ... sit down and write the rest of the story from scratch, trying to make it make sense and not completely ruin the premise and the character arcs. Regardless of success, they WRITE the rest, they don’t assemble random story points others wrote & copy paste things around. EPs aren’t writers.

Well, there’s newbie and there’s newbie-who-doesn’t-realize-it. 

Consider someone who’s ridden the train, every day, for the past ten or so years, always sitting in the first car near the conductor. They’ve been on the train when it’s broken down, when it’s late, when it’s early, when it has to plow through snow. Then someone offers them a supervisory position -- not as a driver, just a supervisor -- and they figure, hey, I’ve watched this enough, I can drive, too. Plus, the EPs had the power to force the real drivers to step aside, which just makes the entire situation even worse.  

In other words, they missed the signs because they didn’t even realize such signs exist. Those things you don’t learn (or even see) when you’re only watching from the outside. 

You, and everyone else replying, are classifying yourself more as the person who’s gotten a job on the train, and you kinda know trains, and you know they can break down, but driving it? Whole ‘nother ball of wax. 

Hold onto that humility. It’ll serve you well as a writer. Even once you reach the point you can confidently handle a complicated storyline, you still want to retain that humility, because it’s one-half of keeping empathy for your readers. 

The irony is, they were so arrogant in their belief they could do better than actual storytellers w/ years of experience (also presumably execs who checked up on them) that they not only loudly (and unprofessionally) complained about specific parts, but also broadcasted that they changed the story, and gave many clues as to where and above all why. 

You have no idea how many times in the past two years my jaw has dropped in complete shock when yet another EP quote has gone by on my dash. I cannot fathom making public that I disagreed with my bosses --- let alone using an interview to re-litigate a case I’d already lost. Well, I could, but only if I didn’t expect to have a job much longer. And that bit about doing “damage control” as a result of exec demands? Jeepers crow, dude. 

(there have been points where all I can say is, ‘wtf do these people have on their bosses to get away with this!?’ photograph negatives for blackmail? sleeping with an exec? I mean, srsly.)

On a more serious note, I’m constantly reminded of the old adage about innkeepers: you want to appear as a swan, gliding peaceful and serene, and never let the guests see that you’re paddling as fast as fuck under the surface. These EPs need a major come-to-jesus about that, because they’ve gone out of their way to splash loudly on a regular basis.

Then again, I don’t think either EP has much (if any) experience with interviews where they’re the main attraction. They seem ignorant of the fact that an interviewer is not your friend; there’s an agenda, and that agenda is to get clicks: something controversial, surprising, that’ll bring the eyeballs. The good interviewers can and will manipulate for their agenda. This is why PR people are usually present (if off-screen), because they’ll know the warning signs and call a halt, set certain questions (or answers) as off-limits. 

Most of the EPs’ interviews, there’s been no sign of PR. Hell, the EPs have admitted in interviews they couldn’t remember what had happened in the season they’re being interviewed about! (wtf srsly wtf) If we got more than we should’ve, that’s also on the EPs for not realizing they were getting played. 

And while I’m at it: an interview is not where you tell the story. Explain what did happen? Sure, though that’s a tacit acknowledgement that the story failed, if it requires your explanation after the fact. But to tell things that are vital to the story but don’t actually happen in the story? No. Just no. 

did we really get an interview where the EPs confirmed there was an original script with Shiro as the Black Paladin? If that's the case then HOLY CRAP. Talk about a missed opportunity.

Yep, I saw the quote but didn’t chase down the source. I think it was one of the interviews shortly after S7 aired. You’d need to ask someone who still reads all those interviews, since I don’t. I only see what goes past on my dash.

Well, missed opportunity but also... we all know (or should know) that the first idea is never what makes it to page or screen. And once the story’s done and the dust has settled, then you can do a track commentary about how the story changed between idea and execution. 

While the story’s in progress? Nope, nope, nope. You smile and say it’s all going according to plan, it’s an awesome season, you hope everyone enjoys it, everyone went the extra mile, etc. You say nothing about the disasters, the late-night sessions, the last-minute changes. If you can’t be a swan, be a cat: yep, we totally meant to do that.

To say what JDS did? I still cannot fathom why anyone would ever say that. There is no fandom on this planet that wouldn’t have some percentage enraged by news they’d been denied the story they’d expected. Hinting at discarded paths will always, always, disappoint someone --- and quite often, a lot more someones than you realize. 

Really, the only reason I can see is sheer contempt. For the audience, for the story, for anyone who’d worked on that previous version. It’s gloating. It’s saying, a lot of people worked on it, but we decided to throw away everything they’d done, and redo it as we wanted. 

Yes, I know that happens. It’s part of the process. But you don’t freaking boast about it, and you don’t plant in everyone’s head that there was something else out there. Especially when that something else was exactly what they’d been waiting for. 

It’s an asshole move, no two ways around it. 

@janestrider's post and yours about the VLD writers and EPs reminded me of a phrase JDS said in one interview after S6 about Cosmo ... "well, I wanted to give Keith a wolf, so I did". ... he doesn't seem to consider the consequences of his actions? That's also how he decided to write the Black Paladins episode ... "I wanted to make it a Winter Soldier type of thing, so I did". It feels like something a very unexperienced professional would do.

There’s no rule against throwing something into a story that you think is cool. I mean, easily 90% of any story out there revolves around something the author thinks is just freaking cool. Considering the hours we’re going to spend writing, revising, writing again, revising again, discussing, thinking, living, breathing, eating, dreaming about the story? It’d better be something we find cool. 

But that said... there’s a difference between making sure the story fires you up, and treating the story like a tossed salad. I’ve seen multiple pull-quotes from LM that affirm their approach was to chase the rule-of-cool. And... that’s not quite so okay, really. 

The Black Paladins episode is probably the best example, and ironic that it’s the only one JDS wrote, ‘cause it’s textbook failure. If you cannot hold the entire story in your head, then you will be blind as to how tossing in this idea or that -- no matter how cool -- may halt, muddy, or even undermine the story’s forward movement. When you can’t even pace a story properly, throwing in extra cool is just going to make the whole thing even more rickety. 

I did a long walk-through on that episode to outline how I’d translate it into a written story, and I’d planned to do a follow-up talking about the emotional aspect. The problem is... once I had a chance to think about the episodes after, there is no emotional context to that fight. Sure, it got a huge budget and attention, and it’s hyped like a big deal. 

But there’s no there, there. 

None of it matters. Keith went through all that for someone who wasn’t even his friend, someone who dies (or whatever) right after and is treated like an empty shell. And the one who rescued him wasn’t even the person he’d fought, but the person he’d thought he was fighting for and with -- who was dead, the whole time. The two episodes that follow basically gut the entire premise --- and all the emotion --- of that fight scene, and render it null. 

And that’s where the rule-of-cool smashes up against the need to hold the shape of the story in your head. You need to see the big picture of how each scene supports the story’s theme. JDS hasn’t the chops to see how what he’d created was promptly undone by what came next. 

Oh, I’m aware there are lots of fans who loved that episode and he sure basked in the accolades, but I can’t ignore that in the end, it means nothing. No one pointed out this will impact another thing downstream, or this later thing undermines what came before, or this breaks a continuous motif, or contradicts a theme. Anything. 

Or maybe someone did, and JDS told them that as the EP, he got the final say. Frankly, from the way he talks in interviews, I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if that’s how it went down. 

@lysanatt commented on a post:

This to some degree even explains the over-confidence of EPs that avoiding the BYGs trope did not apply to them because, sure, they could do it better, landing them in the exact trap of doing a classic double BYG.

Call it what it is. It’s not over-confidence. It’s arrogance.

It’s complacency in over-estimating social capital as to what an audience might forgive or overlook. It’s an assumption that job titles or IMDB entries or the nice things people had said on twitter could be protection from being held accountable. It’s certainty that a rigid and uncreative vision of the story can and should override all other concerns, including the larger playing field in which this story is only one of millions. 

It’s a lack of concern for real-world damage. A lack of care for the craft. A lack of understanding that there even is a craft and it’s not learned overnight. A lack of willingness to stop and think about what the story is saying, what it means, what it’s trying to do. 

It’s an inflexible certainty, engendered and enabled by the near-constant attentive interviews and adoring reviews. It’s an inability to hold onto (or listen to) any reality-checks when it comes to hype. It’s falling so hard into enjoying the ego-strokes of constant interview and congratulatory reviewers and forgetting no one is doing anything out of altruistic reasons. Including them. 

In the end, it’s a complete failure of empathy. It’s near-constant trolling of execs and the audience at large, a broken record of obvious contempt. It’s an amoral and frankly callous disregard for the characters, the story, the messages, the themes. 

It’s never seeing the characters as people, and never seeing the audience as people, either. Stories matter because we, as human beings, care about other human beings, real or fictional --- a care the EPs have made clear they cannot, or will not, afford anyone but themselves. 

[imsfire2]

Director's Commentary- chapter 2 of Keeping Faith: "'Captain, a word.'" through "'Thank you for your honesty, Captain Andor.'" -- Basically the whole conversation w/ Draven. This fic made me cry and I still tear up when I read it sometimes :)

Thank you for the ask, and for the feedback!  I remain very fond of “Keeping Faith” months after finishing it.

(This whole scene was written to have two people who are not very good at talking about emotional matters trying to address some extremely important emotions.  They are both of them very tense and uptight, and neither of them really has much experience of doing this, and least of all of sharing this kind of stuff with each other.  But they do care; and it’s through their conversation, as they fight for each word of it, that I wanted to explore Cassian’s state of mind and the agonising decisions and choices he’s trying to make).

“Captain, a word.”  Davits Draven touches his sleeve in passing and he stops dead in the gangway.  He hasn’t seen Draven since the evacuation.  Since – since -

Get a grip on yourself.  “Yes sir.”

(So Cassian is really struggling at this point in the story: Jyn is listed as missing following the Hoth evacuation and he’s just about holding it together a couple of weeks later with the help of meds and through having been assigned to desk duties.  The smallest thing can set him off to thinking about Jyn & whenever that happens he wants to scream.  He fears he will never, ever, ever be whole again.)

“At ease, Captain.”

“Yes sir.”

There’s a long cold pause while Draven stares at him and then at the wall of the corridor, as if looking for words printed there.  Finally he says “I saw your request to take part in the recovery operation.  Your choice of wording was – unusual.”

(authorial confession: I have no real idea what Cassian actually said in his memo)

“Sir?”

(and already, only days after he sent it, nor has he.  That’s the kind of state of mind he’s in).

“Oh for the love of life, Andor, at ease!  Why do you want to go back to Hoth?  I don’t understand why you could possibly want to return to – well, to return there.”

(I have such a lot of feels for Draven, the bitter, cold man who does what has to be done and gives the orders no-one wants to have to utter, and shoulders it all on his conscience; and a lot of feels too for the Cassian/Draven pseudo-father-son relationship.  Ever since reading that Cassian was recruited by the young Draven I’ve never seen any of their interactions in quite the same light.  If you want a really heartbreaking one-shot on this relationship, btw, read the brilliant “Biography of a son” by rapidashpatronus).

Cassian stands numbly waiting for the General to carry on speaking.  He does want to get a grip, he truly does, but he really can’t find the words to answer; not like this, just standing in a passageway, impromptu.  He worked for hours on that posting request, trying to sound professional and make a logical case.  He has no idea what this reference to “unusual wording” is about.

His mind is grey, like the ice of his long-ago home.  Gripping on to ice is a doomed task.

He’s beginning to wonder how much longer he can go on like this.

(I used words like numbly, doomed, and the images of ice, & Cassian’s feeling that he cannot express himself without having time to work out carefully what to say, etc, are all based on my own and friends’ experience of depression).

Draven does not continue speaking.  He meets Cassian’s eyes and his lips tighten to a thin line, thinner even than usual, and he waits.

Cassian says at last “I made a mistake.”

“Does that mean you’ve changed your mind about wanting to go?”

“No, sir.  Not that.  A – a mistake…”  He can’t go on.  He can see it all, the enormity of it, but explaining it would be like trying to bring a thundercloud inside the ship just by the power of words, and he can’t find words, he just can’t…

(We know that Cassian in canon is a man of few words.  I have a headcanon that he can be perfectly fluent and glib on an undercover mission but when it comes to talking about himself, over time this laconic tendency has become so normalised that he really struggles.  Add in the emotional pain he’s in now, and the effects of the sedatives he’s taking, and although he knows what he’s trying to express it does literally seem beyond words to him).

(Also I do like that metaphor about trying to bring a thundercloud inside a space craft; it sounds so unpleasant, and would of course be terribly dangerous, were it not also completely impossible).

Draven sighs.  “Well.  Who gets to go back to Hoth isn’t my decision.  Perhaps that’s just as well.  In the meantime I’m extending your temporary re-assignment to the Signals and Comms team, as per your second request.  But I wanted to tell you in person that there will still be a place for you in Intelligence, whenever you do decide you are ready to return.  You were one of our best.  When you’re fit for field work again, I want you to know you can come back.  It doesn’t matter if it’s months.  A year, even.”

(Draven has a lot of faith in Cassian; after all, he wasn’t just “one of our best” but hands down the best operative in Intelligence).

“Thank you, sir,” would seem to be the appropriate thing to say.  But it doesn’t feel right.  “May I be frank, sir?”

“Yes.” Draven looks ill-at-ease with the clipped assent he’s just given.  But he has given it.  (Read: It’s very unusual for General Draven to accept frankness because it usually means the kind of trouble best kept under hatches).

Cassian grabs at the one thing he feels able to say.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to return to Intelligence, sir.  Least of all to working in the field.”

“You were one of our best,” the General says again.  “I can wait.  Take as long as you need to get back to par.”

(The General really, really wants Cassian to reach out and grasp this offer; I guess that to his way of thinking, it would be the beginning of the way back for him, from the disaster at Hoth and from his emotional collapse at losing Jyn).

“Thank you, sir.  Nonetheless.”

There’s a long silence; Cassian stands rigid with his hands clasped behind his back, waiting to be dismissed.

(& now Draven, who is also a man of few words - and my guess is that Cassian gets it from him - tries to express his own understandng of the situation and his feelings.  Not terribly well, poor chap).

“I realise,” Draven says slowly “That it would be pointless for me to push you for reasons and explanations you are clearly unable to give.  I am aware that you’ve been under medical supervision since Hoth.  Losing someone you care about in circumstances like these is – traumatic.  I do have some idea what you’re going through.”

Out of nothing, out of nowhere, for a fraction of a second Cassian feels sheer rage heat him. He breathes fast, his nostrils flare on a single inhalation and exhalation before he controls himself and commands his face to impassivity again.  Tells himself it doesn’t matter; and he looks through the wall, at the base of the vertical hull plating behind Draven and fifty metres back.  Goes numb, empty, grey.

(For just a moment Cassian is in touch with all the emotions he can’t face or handle at the moment; it’s triggered by a sudden reaction of thinking Drave is trying to minimise what he’s going through and talk about some minor personnel losses from a few years back or something, and make this about himself.  He isn’t; but the rage that thought inspires wallops Cassian like a brick.  And then he disasocciates and goes blank, his fall-back method for dealing with something he just can’t handle.  Just like in the fight after Eadu, when his emotions break through his usual control, the top layer comes out as anger).

“Cassian.”

Reluctantly he hears the sound.  Not Captain or Andor but his given name.  He’s not sure how many seconds have passed.  He comes back into himself.  “Sir?”

“We have to work alone, in this field.  We tell ourselves that, we build our armour and carry it with us.  But doing the kind of work we do, it kills, it starves something in you.  So you decide to take the risk; have a friendship or two, maybe risk a relationship; stop being so isolated.  Tell yourself it can be done, you can do it.  We’ve all done it.  I did it.  I did it twice.”

The repeated iterations of do, done, did, did make a pattern, are almost a kind of poetry; but he blinks and realises what’s just been said.  It’s an unbending beyond anything he’s known from Davits Draven in more than fifteen years.

(I wanted even that moment of open self-expression from Draven not to be completely successful.  Because Cassian is so traumatised right now and only just crawling out of the rabbit hole, he doesn’t register immediately how honest and open this is; which is tragic because this is Draven about to bare his unhappy soul, and an enormous display of trust from him, which he probably couldn’t make to anyone else.  But for a moment all Cassian hears is words making noises…).

“Sir?”

A faint mirthless breath escapes (as near as poor Draven can get to a chuckle) and the General says shortly “The first one left me and the second one died.  I learned my lesson.”  (I wanted his summing-up of his emotional past to be as succinct, and as loaded, as possible). He looks at the deck for a moment, his mouth tightening over swallowed memories.  “But I don’t blame you for trying.  Your relationship with Sergeant Erso seemed to be strong.  It gave you a foundation you hadn’t had before.  Had me thinking, if anyone on my team could manage to make something like this work it would be you.”

“But I couldn’t.  Sir.  It was –“ He’d like to break down and curl up and clutch his head again, right here in this public place, sooner than have to say this; but such melodramatics are unacceptable.  He takes a deep breath, holds it for the count of four, looks for each word.  “I told myself the same thing. That I could do both.  Make it work.  I could keep both commitments going.  I told myself I wouldn’t let either one slip, I cared too much about them both.  The rebellion, and – Jyn.  But then I didn’t follow through.  When the attack happened, I focussed on just one of my commitments and didn’t even think to look at the other; and I failed her.  I didn’t look.  I didn’t keep faith with her.  I wasn’t there.  Now she’s gone and I can never bring her back.”

(Cassian had just assumed Jyn would know what to do and would do it, because he has total faith in her - but this time his devout certainty that she is infinitely competent has backfired and because he has grown used over years to holding himself responsible for every death & mission error, he blames himself, almost out of habit).

“Officially she’s missing in action.”

“But she’s gone.  It was – it was an error of judgement.  Sir.  I should have quit after Scarif.  I should never have let myself believe I could handle both.  If I go back into the field, now, having to make decisions, having to trust my own judgement, I – it won’t work.  I can’t do it, sir.  I know now that my judgement is fallible.  It’s fallible at the most serious level.  If I can fail something so profoundly important to me, then I can fail anyone.  Anything.  I can fail the cause.  I can no longer trust myself in the field.”

(And he manages to express something of the agony that is destroying him.  It isn’t just that he’s failed Jyn but that he now knows he can fail the most important thing in his world.  This degree of failure cuts apart everything he has known/thought about himself and leaves it bleeding; and Cassian feels himself profoundly broken by that.  He has a lot of self-loathing, which has been overlayed with happiness and commitment for the last few years; but failing like this, failing the most crucial person in the most crucial way, has brought it all right back).

Silence. His shift is due to start in twenty minutes and he knows he needs to get something to eat in the mess first.  But all he wants is to go back to the dorm and take his pills, and sleep.  Turn off life for ten hours and not have to think about any of this.

Draven waits for Cassian to go on.  Says quietly, when he does not “I hope in time you will come to feel differently.”  His face is set, and sad.  “You will remain on secondment to Comms until you request a reassignment.  Thank you for your honesty, Captain Andor.  Dismissed.”

(& I wanted to end the conversation with Draven trying, in his stilted and shut-off way, to show that he still trusts Cassian’s judgement, even now when he’s this fucked up, and he’s prepared to let him make his own decisions about this).

Thank you very much for the ask!

[tanteitwopoint0-blog]

Danganronpa V3 and How It Plays With Expectations

I, uh, went off on the Danganronpa subreddit, and thought, hell, why not, edit it / add some more to it and post it here, too.

This was in response to someone saying that they thought Shirogane was suspicious from the start, and my take on that— it’s essentially just… 2500 words, more or less, on my thoughts about how the game plays with your expectations and constantly keeps you questioning— in more ways than one.

Obviously, spoilers under the cut! And very long, disjointed thoughts.

I feel it depends a lot on your initial standpoint.

Danganronpa V3 is meant to subvert a lot of your expectations as a Danganronpa fan. It's a soft reboot, so knowledge / experience of the Kibougamine / Hope's Peak arc isn't exactly necessary, but also it's best to experience Kibougamine / Hope's Peak for the optimal... well, experience. And it’s very much how SDR2 ties to DR1— though it’s less on the connection, and more on how the game plays and subverts all your expectations— way more, I’d even argue, and for many different things.

One of them, I feel, is the fact that Shirogane is the ringleader (I use ringleader, because in the original Japanese, the word they used for mastermind in DR1 / SDR2 is kuromaku (黒幕), while in V3 from chapter 1 - chapter 4, and by Shirogane in the last trial they use shibousha (首謀者); kuromaku /mastermind is used in V3 after the flashback lights are used in chapter 5 and their revert back to the Kibougamine arc (I'll get back to that in a moment), as well as to describe the outside world, the "true mastermind" behind everything, but, anyway).

From DR experience, the mastermind / ringleader is always someone... crazy. Basically Junko. (Who is usually actually is, aha.) It goes with the duality of hope and despair that the entire Kibougamine arc is practically built upon; "hope" and "despair" are the two extremities, and so Danganronpa has always been built off those extremities. (Again, Junko, but we can see it with the ultra-optimistic Naegi, and Hinata / Kamakura's Ultimate Hope... Talent... thing he has going on.) In general, I feel, the Danganronpa series has trained its fans to always suspect the crazy and insane; that the mastermind / the person behind everything is someone obsessed with having fun, of alleviating boredom-- like Junko and Kamakura. They're someone who creates chaos, who hates when nothing interesting happens, who are basically forces of nature to get what they want, being manipulative, playing with your emotions, etc...

(On that note... who exactly fits this description in V3? And what did they do, in chapter 5?)

However... V3 is an important derivation from that. I think the most important clue for this is the fact that the protagonist is a detective.

In the previous two entries, the protagonists were straightforward... normal people. Naegi and Hinata were normal people, and their arcs centered a lot around this particular fact. Naegi's difference from his Ultimate / SHSL classmates and how... well, detached he was from their experiences / pressures of being SHSLs allowed him to be hopeful. Hinata's a little similar, but with key differences; he too, was pressured, even as a normal person, by the expectations of society; thus he eventually caved and participated in the Kamakura project. I guess what I'm trying to say is that their arcs centered a lot around personal / societal issues; this goes with how while DR1 and SDR2 are murder mysteries, at their heart... they kinda aren't? The mysteries are there, of course, but I feel at their core— their hearts— as their respective last trials demonstrate, it's more about the social commentary / lesson they're about. Naegi and Hinata are also pretty normal for them to be more relatable, for their respective arcs to hit us closer to home personally. At the end of the game, DR1 and SDR2 aren’t murder mysteries; they’re more of personal stories, with personal lessons, regarding hope and despair, and the fact that they’re murder mysteries kinda… only serve to frame that— but they don’t embody the usual common themes of the genre.

Not that it's a bad thing, of course, but it's where V3 deviates. Saihara, whether you like him or not, is the true protagonist of V3; however, he's much different from both Naegi and Hinata. He has a very established backstory we get pretty early on, compared to Hinata and Naegi; Saihara is a detective apprentice, living with his uncle, working for him out of his gratitude, who has a fondness for novels and alligator finding and is a bit too much of a pushover for his own good (as Shirogane calls him last trial, "weak, weak, Saihara-kun"). People say his anxiety is too similar to Naegi and Hinata's, but... personally, I'll have to disagree? Because his uncertainty about himself isn't from a personal / societal place, or at least the way it is for Naegi and Hinata-- it isn't something society put on him, but rather, one that came from himself. His identity is actually completely established compared to Naegi and Hinata-- he isn't looking for it. He knows it already-- he's the Detective. The only issue, or conflict, regarding it I suppose… is his acceptance of it? He's a detective, he knows that, but it's more of his exploration of what that means, and his fear of the truth.

And that's a pretty straightforward, murder mystery thing. Instead of being a social commentary like the other two games, Saihara's entire arc centers around the truth— his personal identity does have something to do with it, but it's more of intertwined with the entire truth / lies themes of the game, which makes him an effective protagonist for V3, in my opinion. After his first encounter with the truth, with the man who killed the person who drove his family to death and Saihara became reluctant to find the truth, he learns more about accepting the truth despite how hard it may be, as we see starting immediately Chapter 1; meanwhile, the game itself centers around truths and lies, up to its very end. It's similar to the last two games, somewhat, in that sense, how the protagonist embodies the themes of the games (Naegi's hope as the other side of the coin to Junko's despair, and Hinata as pretty much the epitome of "my past may be me, but I can still chose the future" with his Kamakura thing going on). Only thing is, Saihara's and V3's themes are a little different than the last two.

There's also the fact that V3 is the only entry in the core DR games to not have an Ultimate / SHSL Lucky Student. Luck and Hope are tied very closely together in the Kibougamine arc; Naegi and Komaeda are both Lucky Students, and I think we all know pretty well how closely these two were tied into their respective game's definition of hope and how it's treated. Anyway, I won't go too far in, but it's interesting how V3 actually doesn't have a Lucky Student. It's something I actually noticed because my girlfriend (who isn't spoiled yet) pointed it out; we were looking at the cast and she was giving her first thoughts, and she said it bothered her that there was no Lucky Student, and-- well, it got me thinking, because that's the point. V3 doesn't focus on the hope / despair dichotomy; instead it focuses on truths and lies. And so, with the absence of the dichotomy... is the absence of the Lucky Student, as well.

What I’m trying to get at is, V3 is a lot different from the Kibougamine arc, for a lot of reasons. And yet... they still try to pull you in with the same tropes, to see if you've been paying attention.

Chapter 5, I feel, is the best explanation of this. Remember what I said about a character that fits Junko's / Kamakura's description? If you haven't guessed yet, it's, yeah, Ouma Kokichi. He's ... well, clearly very Junko like. He's playful, an annoying cryptid, is an overall chaos bringer and it'd be a lie to say that even with the fact that he's my 3rd favorite V3 character (after Saihara, out of complete and total personal bias, and Shirogane, aka my favorite slimy, stinky ringleader ever), you can't deny he... says... some shit. Well, a lot of it.

Though, as V3 always goes, he inverts that. Ouma, both as a person and a character, also preys on your emotions, the same way Junko does; he pulls it off, making you feel a certain way to hide his true intentions. He says a lot of shit, yes, but if you look at his actual actions and their effects, before Chapter 4 he... was actually quite helpful. Recall his "COOL MOTIVE, STILL MURDER" speech post-trial 1, where he says that sure, maybe Akamatsu's actions came from a good place, she still, you know, committed murder. Recall his actions towards Yumeno, how, even with how harsh and seemingly insensitive he was, he helped her come to terms with her refusal to express her emotions and her feelings for Tenko and helped her cry. Recall how he basically gave us the answer to Trial 3 when he got a concussion and cryptically proved that the trick was set up in all three rooms. (It's actually pretty amusing in the trial, if you take one of the back routes-- if you decide not to use the truth bullet of "Bloody Ouma" and prolong the discussion with a lie bullet, instead of napping like he does if you get the right truth bullet as Saihara points it out, instead Ouma stays awake and literally goes out of his way to say, "Hey, listen, were any of you guys paying attention, I proved that the trick was in all three rooms, remember?" Of course, not word for word, but, you get the point.)

And so on.

But, well, as I said, he tests you. V3 tests you, to make sure you're paying attention. Chapter 4 and 5 is basically the culmination of this; his actions are suspicious, but if you were thinking without your emotions (which, as said, both Junko and Ouma are very effective at), you can tell something's up. Chapter 4 is the best example of this, I’d say; before his actions were never outright malicious— perhaps cheeky, perhaps a little rude, but the scene of his cooperation with Monokuma is suspicious. It’s meant to be suspicious, though— again, in which way you come into the game will change your perspective on it. One way you may go tackling said suspicion is perhaps like Comun, who in his livetweet thread of Chapter 4, points out how he noticed that most of Ouma’s actions were from a generally good place, and was suspicious of the fact that he worked with Monokuma because that wasn’t something that lined up with his actions.

However, many people also do the opposite-- fall into the trap, because Ouma's so much like Junko, he's been suspicious as fuck, what the hell is he up to? -- and, well, they see him talking to Monokuma, and they get suspicious not because it’s uncharacteristic of him, but because they think it’s just like him.

Chapter 4, I feel, in that way speaks lengths about Ouma’s character, and by extension, the game itself. Chapter 4 and 5 in general is meant to challenge you and your expectations, how you saw Ouma— and, as he is practically the embodiment / personification of the game itself, your perspective of the game itself as well. And Chapter 4 is the start of it. As shown, it checks to see if you’re paying attention; Ouma’s actions are undeniably cruel and terrible, but the why is so vital. His feelings towards them are incredibly important, and extremely influential as to how you understand his character.

As the game itself says, his actions were out of self defence; that part is undeniable. The real issue, however— the real debate, the true fact of the matter— is whether or not you think he actually regrets it.

The game itself teases it— practically asks you— post-trial. Ouma claims it’s all a lie, that he never cared about Gonta, and here your perspective of him is absolutely vital into how you see his next actions, in my opinion. If you played the beginning of the game thinking his actions were malicious, that he was evil this entire time, then you believe he’s telling the truth. On the other hand, if you’ve been paying more attention to Ouma’s actions and believing him to not be as malicious and evil as he claims to be, then you believe he’s lying.

Either side, frankly, fits, but I feel that’s more without context. Within context, and having picked up on the fact that aside from all the crap Ouma says, you’re a little more skeptical than usual of his post-trial lies.

This leads up right into Chapter 5. This chapter pulls off all the traditional Danganronpa tropes, essentially, and it's to see if you've been paying attention: if you'll say "Oh, yes, this is Danganronpa, I knew Ouma was suspicious from the start" or "Uh, actually, this is kinda weird, where is this coming from? Isn't this whole game about truths and lies, not hope and despair?" (The fact that they start using the word kuromaku / mastermind again instead of shibousha / ringleader is another clue, but it's lost in translation, alas.)

Still, though, even without the little translation / vocabulary tidbit, I feel it tests you, yet, still. Ouma continues to be his cryptic self, and again his actions can be taken either way, depending on your perspective of him and his motives. Ouma snatches the title of mastermind, the game launches itself back into Kibougamine world out of literally nowhere, and you’re either left thinking “yes, this is Danganronpa”, or “wait, what the actual fuck, there’s something off about this entire thing…”

And it all culminates, I feel, into the Chapter 5 trial— Ouma, the seeming mastermind, the one who apparently trapped them all in a killing game, cooperating with the person who seemed to hate him the most to take down the actual mastermind.

It’s meant to send you reeling, either way, regardless of your initial emotions / feelings towards Ouma, but again, the game asks you at the end— what were his intentions? Was he evil? Or was he not?

The game constantly questions you and your perspective, and Ouma is, in my opinion, the culmination of all of that.

So to the actual meat of everything. Was Shirogane suspicious? Of fucking course. She never did anything, all her words were empty, and unlike literally every other V3 character, she has absolutely no meaningful relationships with any of them. However... was she like Junko? Because-- well, like I said-- isn't that what a DR mastermind / ringleader supposed to be like? Didn't Ouma fit the description better? Yes, but that's the point. She's suspicious, but she's unassuming-- and DR antagonists are batshit crazy and cryptic and weird, not unassuming and nerdy and quiet. If you play the game from a murder mystery perspective, with the detective protagonist? Yup, she's there. That's her.

But if you're playing from a Danganronpa perspective? Expecting another Junko, staring daggers at Ouma (who amusingly enough, was in somewhat the same mindset, as he never found out Shirogane himself, either)? Then, nah, she's gonna fly right under your radar. Funny enough, back to my girlfriend, aha-- she was the same way. I'm lucky that my tastes are eclectic-- she knows that I like Shirogane, but doesn't know why. And on her first look at the characters? She thought Shirogane wouldn't mean anything.

It's what she wants you to think.

The game plays a lot with your expectations, and asks you a lot of questions. Some things seemed obvious— others, not so much. It's just all how you look at it.

[marvelandponder]

Through the Fire and the Flames, We Carry On

So, Honest Apple. This is the first episode this season I’m rating more negatively than positively, I think.

It’s not really my style to rail into things, and as a super fan I always find little things to love even in episodes I consider less than stellar, so this post isn’t a rage-boner, believe you me. I know some fans have grown averse to hearing criticism of the show they love because other fans have been so scathing in their analysis before, but hopefully we can take the burn out of it and focus on what’s interesting about it. Plus, yeah, there’s a number of cool details I can’t wait to get to. 

I’ll start with the major stuff, and get to the fun part later.

The major problem with this episode is characterization and the pacing of it. It’s not that it’s out of character, really, but that it’s paced in such a way that it might feel out of character. Sounds like a weird problem, but its a problem nonetheless.

The big one is Applejack. 

Spelling it Out 

It’s no secret that Applejack has a stubborn streak and can be stuck in her ways. She’s had to deliver hard truths even knowing the price. And, of course, she and Rarity notoriously tease each other for their frou-frou and rustic lifestyles respectively, so AJ doesn’t understand the appeal behind fashion.

Yet, I think this episode portrays her as too inconsiderate too fast.

Other analysts have pointed out that even if AJ doesn’t get the appeal behind a fancy hat, she could respect the amount of work that went into it. And if not that, her at this point long history with Rarity has clearly taught her to respect Rarity and her line of work a great deal.

And if not that, there’s the fact that Applejack usually isn’t thoughtless to other ponies feelings. It can happen if she’s, say, very angry or yes, even just very stubborn on an issue, but in most situations you’ll find her going out of her way to make her friends feel better.

While you can argue that it’s in-character, especially after episodes like Hearthbreakers and Winter Wrap-Up, the pacing almost makes it feel a little too far out of character. Going from reasonable and level-headed to not understanding the difference between opinion and fact as fast as Applejack does doesn’t quite work.

And I think this is mostly because of how the moral is handled.

Rarity needing to spell it out for Applejack, as funny as it is, makes AJ seem almost deluded. It takes her an exceedingly long time to figure out ‘wait... my opinions aren’t the most important thing???’ and at this point I’m talking in circles, but you can sort of see why this episode’s exploration of a character’s flaws doesn’t entirely work for me. It’s a little too much too fast.

The only other big negative is one that wouldn’t make or break the episode on its own, and ironically it’s one of the funnier gags the episode has to offer:

Rarity breaking out into a metal solo.

Immersion Break

Why is it a problem if it’s funny? This is a Pinkie gag. 

Pinkie is the one able to bust out the Random, the fourth-wall breaks, and the meta-humour. There’s a reason its usually limited to just her breaking out into 90s-inspired rap sequences or pulling Back to the Future references out of nowhere.

When you start allowing other characters the same powers as Pinkie or Discord, it messes with the immersion of the world. Now, I can totally buy Rarity having a Drama Couch on hand at a moment’s notice and not needing much of an explanation because as cartoonish as that gag is, it’s in her character to be that prepared and that, well, dramatic.

The guitar solo joke isn’t really. You don’t expect Rarity to be able to do that, which is why the joke works and even could be considered a subversion, but again, you don’t expect Rarity to be able to do that. 

Reason being: she’s not even really playing an electric guitar, meaning this is a meta joke for the audience where they even break out a flaming background. Meaning, she doesn’t normally know how to shred, she’s just illustrating a point to you.

It’s a bit too close to meta for comfort with a character like Rarity. Pinkie, I would have no problems with, but even if I find this funny, it did sort of pull me out of the world the first time I saw it.

So, I just spent a lot of time talking about the two things that bothered me, but do I really hate this episode? No.

In fact, there are some really neat things to love about it!

Details, Thoughts, and Whatnots

Sometimes you’re rewarded if you pay close attention to colours in Friendship is Magic. In this episode, when Applejack apologizes to Rarity and Rarity forgives her, the sky itself blends orange and purple to match how close they feel again:

The valley girl pony chokes on how much she can’t even. She’s actually gagging because she can’t even so hard. I love that the show staff interpreted ‘cant’ even’ as ‘can’t even breathe properly’

Goth pony and Maud would make great friends, don’t you think?

APPLEJACK WITH HER HAIR UP CONFIRMED FOR THE CUTEST THING:

The episode is 1000% worth its faults for that right there

I love how Applejack’s just walking in the background when Rarity announces her name. It makes for great staging and really funny sight gag when you know it’s coming. Good use of foreground and background, for sure.

While it felt sort of unnecessary to cutaway from Applejack’s decision after building up tension for it, that ending scene with Rarity and Applejack joking with each other is pure and adorable, more of that please

As always Pinkie showing up just to make funny jokes and help the main characters of the story is always, always welcomed. I love that her wanting guitar lessons could be its own subplot.

Speaking of characters that have an appearance in this episode, oh hey, Spike still has a crush on Rarity. I honestly thought he’d gotten over that in Inspiration Manifestation when Rarity told him how much it means to have him as a friend, but I guess the little guy still has hope. I would ship it harder if he wasn’t a dog compared to a Rares the human in the EQG/ human universe

I can’t get over how savage she was to Applejack. It’s the best thing. Just like, oh hey? You spend your entire life dedicated to this thing? It’s the worst fruit and full of worms and you disgust me kthnxbye~

Applejack crying when she realizes what she did wrong is a thing of beauty. I swear, this season seems to be the season of tears (which sounds like an insult but it isn’t)

Photo Finish and Hoity Toity! Long time, no see! Photo Finish is still clearly the superior pony, just announcing everything she does, but you know I love me some continuity, so it’s good to see them back.

There’s some good dialogue in this episode. Like I said, even if I didn’t buy how fast Applejack turned from in the right to extremely unreasonable, I love that her commentary on some things makes sense for her to say, like how she will never understand ripped jeans (she says, hiding her ripped shorts under the bed...)

So, all in all, definitely not the worst episode out there, but it’s problems are the first thing I think of when I think back on this episode. 

There’s some good, there’s some bad, but in the end, all of that is just my opinion anyway, huh?

More pony stuff? Yeah, I’ve got that! I’ve done other reviews, editorials, and here’s the last three things I’ve done, just to make it easy on you:

Trailer Analysis, Comic Con Coverage, and Hard to Saying Anything Review

Year of the Pony 

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If Someone on Staff Doesn’t Ship Rarijack, I Lose Ten Bucks

[popcultureliterary]

Tropes: When You’re Fairly Certain You’ve Seen These Odd Parents Before

Anybody who watches cartoons or anime might recognize today’s topic: tropes. These literary devices act as a mostly visual way (at least, on screen) for the creator of a work to quickly and easily convey a concept to their audience. They can take many forms: a figure of speech, a character type, a plot device, a location or location type, a pattern of storytelling, a sub-plot, and other repeatable elements.

I originally intended to focuses on the anime Silver Spoon for today’s post, but after whipping out a Fairly Oddparents reference, I couldn’t stop myself. The series sucked me in with its abundant tropes, clichés, and stereotypes (which are all related, as you will see shortly). For the sake of keeping this post at a reasonable blog length, I didn’t cover every example (or even one tenth of them) appearing in this ongoing series. If you have a favorite example that didn’t make the cut, be sure to share it in the comments! I would love to see which ones you like.

Hey, I’ve Seen this Before!

Did somebody oversleep and run to school with a piece of toast in their mouth? You’ve got a trope! Did a romantic scene feature beautiful tropical trees and a placid lake? You’ve got a trope! Did an unsavory character in dark clothing with a thin mustache and shifty eyes slink in and declare their evil ways? You probably didn’t need them to proclaim their badguy status because… You’ve got a trope!

Although often considered the mark of lazy writing, these literary devices are not inherently bad. They allow an author to quickly communicate an idea without spending too much time elaborating on it. Imagine if the last cartoon you watched spent five or more minutes elaborating on the personality of every single side character. That’s nearly half of its 10-12 minute episode run time per character. Doing so would really take away from the main story and characters, slowing the pace and bogging everything down. Instead, the writer or artist can throw in a few characters with pre-established types: the aloof cool kid, the absent parent, the shy poet. These character types quickly establish each character’s role and clues the viewer in on their purpose and personality.

Let’s take a look at a few examples found in Butch Hartman’s The Fairly Oddparents.

Characters

The most common examples are character tropes. As discussed above, character types appear in cartoons in order to quickly establish background characters’ personalities and relations to the story or other characters.

Timmy’s friends AJ and Chester, for example, represent the genius friend/idiot friend combo. One is a brainiac, while the other arguably wouldn’t find his way out of a paper bag even with a map. Both types of characters typically fall into the unpopular category at school, with AJ and Chester being no exception. Audience members have seen this character dynamic in other series, and don’t require an in-depth explanation. They know what to expect, and draw the correct assumption that Timmy is most likely as unpopular as his friends.

Social Structures

Speaking of Timmy’s popularity, a trope might also convey larger concepts such as social structures. In The Fairly Oddparents, we see a common social hierarchy: the popularity food chain. This hierarchy often comes in to convey where the main character stands in relation to their peers, as well as quickly establish more information about the story’s setting.

It’s easy to spot the popular kids Trixie, Veronica, Tad, and Chad in The Fairly Oddparents. They are well dressed, travel as a group, and say disdainful things about their peers. Additionally, they never miss an opportunity to brag about their family’s massive wealth, relying on it to get them into and out of every situation they come across.

In order to demonstrate that the main character, Timmy, is not on the same social level as them, the popular kids regularly treat Timmy poorly. Trixie even refers to him as “Empty Bus Seat,” indicating his low standing in the social order. With the inclusion of these characters, Hartman sets Timmy up as the unpopular underdog, and shows that the world he lives in is just as unfairly tipped in favor of money and status as our own.

These characters also allow Hartman to create contrast, cause tension, draw parallels, and achieve other desired effects throughout the series.

Story Arcs

Everybody usually has their favorite episode type: the beach trip; the everybody-swaps-bodies; the school festival; the year that so-and-so almost ruined Christmas (because, sadly, the other holidays rarely ever get their own special episodes…). Narrative patterns like these are also tropes. Many creative works will use similar episode storylines for a variety of reasons. They often introduce new information about the characters while using a familiar narrative to do so. The audience easily settles into the familiar pattern, freeing them to focus on the characters rather than getting caught up in the conflict of the episode.

First season alone contains a number of notable tropes without even looking at the other 9+:

The trope of a child becoming trapped in an adult body appears in the episode “The Big Problem,” the first full-length episode following the shorts released for Oh Yeah! Cartoons. Tired of being picked on and pushed around by older kids and adults in his life, Timmy wishes to become an adult. He expects to enjoy all of the privileges that come with adulthood, but it all blows up in his face (as often happens with this type of episode) when he fails to consider the drawbacks and responsibilities of adult life. Episodes like this often appear in order to highlight the similarities and differences between children and adults, as well as demonstrating that adult life isn’t all fun and games like it sometimes seems.

Successful use of a trope requires some level of ingenuity as well. If every child-in-an-adult-body episode was exactly the same, nobody would like them. Hartman does this brilliantly. The episode serves to establish Timmy’s relationship with the adults in his life, as well as shining a light on Timmy’s tendency to try and take the easy way out. Using this particular story arc also allows Hartman to introduce the concept that Fairies can only grant the wishes of children. As soon as Timmy ages to adulthood, Cosmo and Wanda lose the ability to grant him wishes and receive a new child assignment. The same concept could have been established using dialogue, but using dialogue for key concepts often creates flat characters and boring conversations that feel forced and fake.

Other trope episodes include “Power Mad!” (characters enter a videogame world), “Transparents” (characters pretend to be someone’s parents to get them out of trouble), and “Tiny Timmy” (characters shrink and enter another character’s body only to discover a literal civilization inside). And what kind of late 90’s, early 2000’s cartoon would it be without the “Christmas Everyday!” episode? The first season concludes with an episode in which Timmy wishes for Christmas every day. Naturally, the wish backfires, leaving Timmy and his Fairies to set things right.

Comics inside of Cartoons

World building elements such as magic systems, television shows, or hover cars are also tropes. Authors can provide some fast world building by including everyday things that their viewers can relate to such as comics, cartoons, or other media from the fictional world. These elements reveal characters’ personalities, add commentary on real social issues, or make characters more real and relatable.

Timmy loves reading The Crimson Chin comics. Every month, he eagerly awaits the next issue, devours it, and repeats. Whenever he doesn’t want to wait, he simply wishes himself into the heavily inked panels (look, another common story arc!). These superhero comics add depth to Timmy’s personality and to the world as a whole.

Turning the Cliché Trope into a Joke

Unfortunately, when used too often, either in the same work or in multiple, tropes become a problem. If ten series on the same network utilized a scene where a character falls down the stairs and wakes up in another world, things would start to feel a little stale. Audience members would grow bored. They know what’s going to happen and knowing yanks them out of the immersive experience of watching. When this happens, the well thought-out device becomes a dastardly cliché. Just like a pair of underwear worn unwashed for a month, nobody likes clichés.

One of the things that I love best about Hartman’s work is that he often takes clichés and skillfully flips them into jokes. He sees tired tropes turning into clichés and shines a spotlight on them so brightly that they become jokes in his works.

Take a look at Timmy’s mom and dad. Who are these characters? Simply Timmy’s mom and dad. No explanation needed. They act as the authority in Timmy’s life, the symbol of traditional family structure, and the oblivious parents who don’t understand their son’s life. Parents appear in many stories with no further explanation behind them, presenting the assumption that the character simply needed a mom and dad. In many series, especially older cartoons, moms and dads rarely receive names because their only purpose is to represent the authority and family structure in a character’s life. Hartman takes this and turns it into a running gag in his series.

What are the names of Timmy’s mom and dad? Why, their names are…. Actually, we never learn their true names. The episode “Father Time” addresses the question when Timmy travels back in time and meets his parents’ childhood selves. Whenever someone goes to say either character’s name, a conveniently timed loud sound drowns them out, and the audience catches the follow-up of “but you can call me Dad/Mom.” Accordingly, we can only assume that their names are Mom and Dad.

How Stereotypical!

When used carelessly, Tropes can easily become stereotypes by mistake. If a character or location isn’t fleshed out enough, they tend to take on vague concepts often used to characterize a particular type of person or place, creating a stereotype or cliché. People generally feel negatively toward stereotypes as they do not reflect the true characteristics of the people or locations being portrayed. In many cases, stereotypes present harmful representations of people or groups.

For an example, let’s consider the popular girl mentioned earlier, Trixie Tang. Trixie seems like the stereotypical popular girl. She cares about makeup, her social standing, clothes, and anything girly. On top of that, she treats all unpopular kids with disdain (or simply acts like she can’t see them) and sucks up to the adults around her who can get her what she wants. Characters in her role typically don’t care about the less popular kids, carry around a snarky attitude, obsess over their looks, and float through life in relative bliss.

In many cases, stereotypes and clichés are not only boring, but also harmful. Many create a generalization of what a particular type of person acts like, whether maliciously or not, that makes it seem like all people who identify that way must act similarly. Like other popular girl stereotypes, Trixie does not accurately represent real girls and young women who consider themselves to be popular. Sure, there may be a number of individuals who act similarly in real life, but this is not true of all popular girls and young women. Every person is their own unique individual with layers upon layers that shape their personal and social identities.

At first, Trixie receives very little screen time with which to build her personality and show her as anything but a cookie-cutter representation of popular girls. Anybody who has seen the gender-swapping episode “The Boy Who Would Be Queen” knows that Trixie just puts on the stereotype persona for the sake of her popularity. She actually really likes The Crimson Chin comics, and admits that she wishes girls could do more boy stuff and vice-versa.

Bonus: If the popular-girl-secretly-does-unpopular-things storyline seems familiar to you… you guessed it—you’ve got a trope! The concept comes up in countless other narratives in order to convey the idea that people are deeper than their social presentation allows others to see.

Bet You Didn’t See This Coming!

Overall, tropes are useful literary devices that allow creators to develop and convey new ideas using familiar sequences, characters, locations, or other narrative elements. They work as a type of short-hand utilized by all, understood by most.

Now that you know what they’re all about, it’s time to tackle finding some and identifying their significance on your own! You can find them in your favorite games, shows, movies, books… they’re everywhere in pop culture. If you’re coming up blank, here are a few suggestions to get you started. Come back and share what you find!

The competent new kid (The Backstagers)

Annoying laugh (Spongebob Squarepants)

Salvage pirates (Firefly)

Carrying a cutlass between your teeth (Muppet Treasure Island)

Superheroes wear capes (The Incredibles)

A bus full of innocent people put in danger (Detective Conan/Case Closed)

Body swapped (Gravity Falls)

School festival (Ouran High School Host Club)

It was all a dream (The Wizard of Oz)

Your hero is a jerk in reality (bonus points for finding an example! I’m chagrined to admit that I drew a huge blank here!)

If you’re an anime fan and want to see more examples, check out KawaiiPaperPandas’ great post listing ten of the most common occurrences and cliches in anime!

Wrapping Up

I wanted to extend a huge thank-you to the amazing minds over at TVtropes.org for their ongoing work in discussing and rounding up tropes in the narrative worlds around us. Their extensive work helped me to put simple names to long-winded ideas. If you enjoyed reading about this literary device and want to learn more about it, check them out!

What’s your favorite trope? Share it in the comments! You can also connect on Twitter at @Popliterature, or send a message on the “contact me” page of my home blog.

And as always, if you have a literary device you want to know more about, or a game, comic, show, or movie that you want to see make an appearance on the blog, leave a shout-out in the comments!

[sidestorystudios]

La La Land

Why the Backlash? and The Cipher of the Musical Film

By Colby Herchel

Originally posted here. 

       La La Land is a movie that is doing exceptionally well across the board, and deservedly so. It’s getting people from all walks of life into the theatre, and this reviewer has been dazzled by the work of both director Damien Chazelle and composer Justin Hurwitz, from both this outing and 2014’s Whiplash. So some are rightfully confused with the “Oscar backlash” it’s getting from both film critics as well as lovers of musicals. Why, if something is reaching out to everyone as a fun dose of optimism, is it worth the trouble nitpicking? There are certain moments that the film goer should relax and take it in, and not linger on inconsistencies. Tom Hanks said of it, “if the audience doesn’t go and embrace something as wonderful as this then we are all doomed.” I guess we’re not doomed.

       But there comes a moment, namely tying the record number of Oscar nominations, that gives these critics a pause for thought. This is no longer a fun distraction— this has become the representation for the musical film. And to answer the question, should it be? No, it should not.

       I’m certainly not making any friends here, but I urge you to see it this way: this article is not a put down of the movie in any way, but more importantly, a context provider, a reaching hand into another understanding. What were choices, what were mistakes, and, most importantly, where do we go next?

Musical on Film on Musical

       First and foremost, I would like to make one thing clear: a medium is a means of expression, like a book, a painting, a play, or yes, a film. They do different things and have their strengths in different areas. None are superior; they are different at the basest level. A genre is a trend or style of storytelling, like science fiction, horror, or comedy. As you may have noticed, the world at large lists the musical as a genre. This is understandable, as there are certainly tropes in classic Hollywood musicals that are consistent. But when you really think about it, the musical doesn’t have to have a romantic or cheesy slant in order to be a musical. It simply has to be a story told with the characters singing. In fact, musicals have their own genres, think of Jesus Christ Superstar and Hair as rock musicals, and Hamilton and Bring in ‘da noise, Bring in ‘da Funk as hip-hop musicals. So you can find it problematic that in the same genre are smushed Sweeney Todd and Hairspray. They tell completely different stories with completely different music, but both happen to have characters who sing. Isn’t the musical beginning to sound like a medium to you?

       Now, when you throw in the musical film, you have a whole new set of issues. For some reason or other, when people see a musical live, they are more forgiving of the singing. Whether people used to treat showtunes as pop songs or that hearing music live adds a concert feel to the event, it seems to work. But when you film a character singing, it is an entirely different moment. Film is constantly trying to create the most realistic scenario, and Theatre always requires a bit more imagination (which is why puppetry is especially jarring at first). When a character in close up belts that she is telling you she’s not going, there is no realism. The illusion is immediately shattered, and many film goers can no longer stomach it.

       This issue is usually explained away by this (which Damien Chazelle has discussed in interviews): the character has reached an emotional point in which they can do nothing but sing their feelings. I am not fully subscribed to this, as have you ever met anyone who has been so emotional that they have to sing? With backup orchestra and all? Chazelle, for that matter, does not subscribe to this either, as there is probably one instant in La La Land that the character sings a song out of desperate emoting. Oddly, we have some modern entries in this category, Les Miserables and Into the Woods, which I think both work pretty well, but lack a certain reasoning which is inherently off-putting. Adapting a stage musical to film is always an issue, to be sure.

       So alright, the Gene Kelly and Vincent Minelli explanation falls flat. And it physically did, in 1969, when the Hello, Dolly! film was an inordinate flop (which is a shame, that movie is comic GOLD). The stories that had characters just sing for no reason other than singing were no longer working.

       The musical film could never be the same. Bob Fosse, that rascal, was the first to really challenge back. With Cabaret in 1972, Fosse made a film where every number took place diegetically in a music bar, which offered commentary on the scenes. This device was so well received Fosse beat Francis Ford Coppola for Best Director at the Oscars the year The Godfather was up to bat. We all forgot about this device until Rob Marshall brought it back for Chicago in 2002 to similar praise. Every song occurs in Renee Zellweger’s booze addled brain. I personally like this idea, but unfortunately, it doesn’t allow for the freedom other solutions bring.

       So along came a little picture, a humble, indie darling you’ve never heard of. Moulin Rouge! I think it’s called. This was the first to sell the idea that sometimes, in a musical, everything is ridiculous and you can get it or get out. This is fun, but not very challenging. This embrace of the ridiculousness of the medium also bleeds into La La Land, but to a lesser extent. Obviously people in the real world don’t sing, but forget it, it’s fun! “What if they don’t like it?” “Fuck ‘em.” I usually find myself crinkling my nose at these outings, mostly because they do really well, and stigmatize musicals even more than they are by everyday moviegoers. To put it in perspective, I also classify Mamma Mia! in this subset. The post-Seinfeld cynical self awareness can go so far, but meta humor is a kind of well that all too quickly runs dry.

What is The Umbrellas of Cherbourg for Christ-sakes?

       What is this reviewer’s favorite, you may ask? Well, let’s rewind back to 1964, before Hello, Dolly! and even The Sound of Music. And while we’re taking the time tour, let’s pop over the Atlantic Ocean. Jacques Demy’s les parpluies de Cherbourg, or, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, is a film entirely told through a jazz soundtrack about two ill-fated young lovers (Michel Legrand the more than competent composer this time around). Sound familiar? The differences, then, are twofold. The characters only sing in this film, which makes Les Miserables critics moan. Don’t worry, the songs never take their time to withhold information, but rather press on at the rate any movie would (its run time is a blessed 90 minutes). It actually has more in common with opera than you would expect, but that’s a thesis for another day. The other difference between this and La La Land is in the fact that the characters are decidedly not dreamers. They are a poor daughter of a single mother, and an orphan who works at a petrol station. The dramatic kick comes at the end, at the pan out from a gas station. These emotional highs and lows came from the most mundane of locations, and the reason for singing is a beautiful one: your difficult life is worthy of music. How does this translate as a format, then? Simple: give a thematic reason. It doesn’t have to be revealed the minute the movie starts, but as long as it plays into the major themes of the film, it fits. These characters constantly talk about the opera, and about the melodrama in their lives. Genevieve and Guy are much more self aware, and both get full, emotional arcs. I’ll say no more, everyone who likes musicals should see this film.

       “Aha!” you may cry, “Chazelle has cited that very film as his major influence! Isn’t La La Land just as thematic?” Well, you certainly have a point, but please don’t interrupt me until I’m finished. Certainly, the choice of color palette, the cinematography, and many portions of that ending are swiped right from les parapluies de Cherbourg. The name of Mia’s character in the one act? Genevieve. That circle wipe that stops, then keeps going? Demy. The use of a jazz score? Gershwin, but Michel Legrand really was the one to perfect it on film. There are full scenes swiped from it in La La Land, and Chazelle seems to be kind of embarrassed about it. From a personal friend who broached these similarities with him, this is one of his favorite movies (as well as Casablanca). That’s not to say it’s a bad film— no, steal away! What else do we make art for but to be a reference? And to answer the question on whether the music comes in thematically, well, yes and no.

The Themes of La La Land

       Alright, so before we go any further, you should probably have watched La La Land if you don’t want to be spoiled. Below, I will discuss the thematic push behind the film.

       First, of course, is dreams. This is made apparent from the opening number— the difficulty of living life for one’s dreams. And this is essentially what’s at stake throughout: will Mia achieve her dreams, and to a lesser extent for some reason, will Seb do the same? This concept is brought forth in Whiplash, Chazelle and Hurwitz’s earlier venture, which makes this reviewer ponder if they are meant to be companion pieces. Whiplash is a much more cynical outing, exploring the selfishness of dreams in a high paced thriller. La La Land, is, essentially, the optimistic fluff. The stakes are never that big, and that’s ok. It is interesting that Mia is not punished for cutting off her connections to other people as much as Miles Teller’s character. She gets her dream, and leaves Seb (I really, really hate this name) behind. He’s sad about it, but all in all more than supportive.

       The second theme is less inherent— the death of art. Namely jazz, and Hollywood sensibilities. Seb explains that jazz is lost on young ears. You have to listen to it for the dialogue, which gives a cue for the rest of the film, particularly concerning their relationship. Mia, who claims she hates jazz, once taught how to hear it, finds a way to appreciate it. But other than these two, everyone else seems to be just fine with its fade from popular ears.

       Of course, there’s love, but isn’t there always?

Song to Theme

       I’ve heard some silly critiques that say Hurwitz’s score is not “hummable.” That is an absolutely useless critique unless you are trying to make popular songs. When you are writing songs for characters, all that matters is you honor the character and the story. Hurwitz’s score is deeply lyrical and rich and his orchestrations for that matter are quintessential. I give him every credit— but thematically, I have a few issues.

       Let’s begin with that opening number, Another Day of Sun. I personally really like what this song is saying. It’s an excellent way to delve into the struggle of all these everyday dreamers. As important to the song in a musical film is the way it’s shot. And Chazelle has done his homework, because we begin with Fellini’s opening scene from 8 1/2: a person in bumper to bumper traffic who, through some bout of magic realism, finds a beautiful escape (Guido Anselmi flies up and out, the cast of La La Land break into a musical number). This is a great way to indicate to the audience that their watching an old-style musical, right?

       But how does Chazelle shoot it? After celebrating the width of the aspect ratio (dear God, throw a parade why don’t you), we pan along different cars listening to all different kinds of music, some pop, some hip-hop, some classical. Oh! What an excellent way to launch into the death of jazz! Ah, but hold on. We keep panning, and begin to have that sure feeling that, oh no, he’s going to try his hand at the long take. And suddenly everyone, all these different people who from the first minute were shown to have separate tastes in music, are jumping out of their cars and belting jazz music! Is jazz truly dying in the world of this movie? No! It seems to be the heartsong of an entire traffic jam! The idea here is that since we’ve decided this is an old Hollywood musical, you can suspend your belief. Which is all well and good, but largely why I find this more akin to Moulin Rouge! than les parapluies de Cherbourg. “What if they don’t like it?” “Fuck ‘em.” Why on earth not use the music that the people were listening to in that same take? Make a fusion of styles to accurately represent the modern world, and, therein, one of the major struggles for our main characters? What could, and should have been an introduction into the major theme of the movie ended up being sacrificed for nostalgia.

A note on the long take: I think it’s absolutely fun, but unless there’s a good reason behind it, it is only a gimmick, an ‘Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better’ between directors. Alphonso Cuaron has made it his trademark, but you’ll notice he always has a thematic and filmographic reason to use the device. The Spielberg “Oner,” like the ferry scene in Jaws, is always trying to hide in plain sight, without convincing the audience that he is clever, but rather exploring the dialogue with proper attention and depth. Hitchcock, who explored it to its fullest extent in Rope, found it to be cheap and unfulfilling for the rest of his career, and very much regretted using it in the first place. Reel it in, Chazelle, Mendes, and Iñarritu.

       As you imagine these problems bleed throughout, at least concerning the other large group number, Someone in the Crowd. The song doesn’t seem to decide whether it’s critical of this ambitious world or not. Is it a joyful celebration of the struggling actor, or a condemnation of the shallow world? The prevailing image is the yet another long take of spinning in the pool, watching the chorus dance around like zombies. But in the following scene, we have an 80’s cover band featuring Seb at one of these parties. Good Lord, what is the real world of this picture? Is it in Mia’s Turner Classic Movie Mind? That could work for the party number, even A Lovely Night (sweet as a song, but clearly the talents the number is given can’t make it spin), but not the opening.

       Moreover, John Legend gets a song too, We Could Start a Fire, which clearly delineates popular music from jazz. Why, since the production was openly aware of their choices and the world around them, would they not remain consistent with this theme?

       Now, I do give a lot of credit to the cinematography, even in its gimmicky moments. It’s very difficult to shoot chorus numbers in a non stagnant way. Famously Tim Burton cut the wonderful chorus parts from his adaptation of Sweeney Todd, but this in effect made his film work that much better. Chazelle crafts a deft and complete world.

       Mia and Seb’s love theme is gorgeous, and a rival to many love themes throughout cinema history. The dance scene in the planetarium is just wonderful. But after a while (and as a composer I absolutely have suffered from this) it’s repeated a little too often. Hurwitz’s jazz arrangements are lovely, particularly Herman’s Habit. Here’s to the Ones who Dream is the only number to really come from a character’s emotions, as stated before, and largely it is the best song in the movie, if preachy. A few lyrical flubs, but we’ll certainly get to that.

       That dream ballet at the end is basically a medley of all the songs to come before it, which orchestrally, it’s lovely, but thematically, it’s weird. When we get into sequences of the film repeated we have all the right beats, their love theme and the audition song most prominent. But at the beginning, there are musical mentions of Another Day of Sun and Someone in the Crowd whichonly serve as musical filler. When a musical theme is assigned to a scene, whenever it is played again, it should have a direct correlation between them.

       You’ll notice I left out a rather popular song.

City of Stars is Terrible

       The big question that always comes up for a songwriting team is “What is written first, the music or the lyrics?” Friends, we don’t have to ask this question about Hurwitz and his lyricists. We know. It is the music first.

       The lyricists of the film are actually fairly well versed in the musical genre, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul. They are both composers and lyricists, known for Rent of the year Dear Evan Hansen as well as Dogfight and the Christmas Story musical. This reviewer thinks they are more than competent and have a deservedly rich career ahead of them.

       Therefore, it is troubling how many awkward lines sneak into the final film. Theatre can always be changed and edited, but a film is forever. We have some slant rhymes in many songs:

“When they let you down/you get up off the ground”

Another Day of Sun

“Then everybody knows your name/we’re in the fast lane”

Someone in the Crowd

       In City of Stars, we have issues of prosody (how syllables and poetry are naturally spoken) and the difference between masculine and feminine rhymes. To illustrate the culprit of prosody, I have put the strong syllables in bold:

City of stars/Are you shining just for me/

City of stars/There’s so much that I can’t see

City of Stars

       Repeat those lines back in the as if you’re speaking them, then in the rhythm of the song. Do you feel how they don’t fit together? Rhyme goes beyond words, it’s in the meter as well. An example of how it should be done:

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens/

Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens

My Favorite Things, The Sound of Music

       Feel how they’re different? And now the culprit at the end of the song, the recipient of the masculine/feminine rhyme debacle. A masculine rhyme has the center of the rhyme based on an emphasized last syllable, i.e. Men/Den or Forgot/A Lot. A feminine rhyme puts emphasis on the second to last syllable, i.e. Belly/Smelly. You would never force a masculine and feminine rhyme together, like Foreplay/Today, simply because you never say Today or Foreplay. For each rhyme, the emphasized syllable must fall on an emphasized beat of music, be that at a downbeat or at least on a kind of beat. Not off. That’s when you feel that weirdness. So our culprit in question:

City of stars/Are you shining just for me/

City of stars/You Never shined so brightly

City of Stars

       Other than “Me” rhyming with “-ly,” there is really nothing in common with the final couplet. You never say “brightly,” you say “brightly.” These flaws show that the text was smushed in to fit the music, and not composed hand in hand. This juxtaposition ruins the intent of the song.

       “What a nitpick!” you must be screaming. “People don’t need to rhyme correctly for it to be good!” And I would say you’re correct if we were talking about popular music, and stuff you can listen to day in and day out, without needing to pick up everything on first listen. But what, I ask you, is the function of rhyming? Clarity. And what, then, is the great function of film language? Clarity. So, in a film, if you’re not doing your due diligence to perfect every facet of being clear to an audience, then, you are doing a disservice the audience and diluting your craft. But don’t take my word from it— living legend Stephen Sondheim quoted lyricist/composer Craig Carnelia in his book Finishing the Hat:

       “True rhyming is a necessity in the theater, as a guide for the ear to know what it has just heard. Our language is so complex and difficult, and there are so many words and sounds that mean different things, that it’s confusing enough without using near rhymes that only acquaint the ear with a vowel… [a near rhyme is] not useful to the primary purpose of a lyric, which is to be heard, and it teaches the ear to not trust or to disregard a lyric, to not listen, to simply let the music wash over you.”

       Moreover, City of Stars stops the movie still to sing a Falling Slowly wannabe, which never really comes back into play. It could be there love theme but we already have a clear theme in their waltz. The lyrics, on the whole, try and double as generalizations about love and what the characters Mia and Seb are feeling. The song, at least in terms of the movie, is largely a lie. Everyone in Los Angeles is looking for their dreams to come true as dictated in the opening number, but now we also say that everyone is just looking for love. Dreams win, poor Seb.

       So, other than a hit love song, it doesn’t really service the movie. We already gleaned they were happy in love from the waltz, and maybe this articulates their thoughts with less subtext, and maybe (though it’s never clear) this is Seb’s love song that he’s testing out with her. Either way, we’re not learning anything.

       And then there’s the fact that-

Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling are… Okay

       Alright, alright, they’re absolutely cute together on screen. But in a film that tries so desperately to soar with Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, it feels like your college’s club musical. I’m the first in line to claim that it is better to see an actor who can sing over a singer who can act, but goodness. If we’re buckled in for a nostalgia trip, why cast people who cannot tap in a tap number? What a Lovely Night made me long for the actual Singin’ in the Rain. And though this reviewer respects both of their acting abilities in a great way, and loves their work, Emma Stone’s singing voice is rather breathy, and Ryan Gosling is, frankly, flat. Whilst Russel Crowe felt the brunt of the masses for Les Miserables, ol’ Gos gets a pass.

       There is the rebuttal that this amateurishness was entirely the point, which is absolutely fair. Most dreamers are amateurish, and only the lucky few make it. But ask yourself seriously, in a world where they casted some of the myriad of amazing singer/dancer/actors who might not have the name recognition of Emma and Ryan, would you have been upset that they gave good performances? Not really.

Conclusion

       Is La La Land a musical? Yes, it has songs, but you’ll notice that after the first 20 minutes, there are barely any tunes until the end. This is more of a romance/drama than a complete musical. And that’s wonderful for it. It seems to keep the music as a reference to happy times, and the spiraling out of Mia and Seb’s relationship is done in silence. But when a musical is plotted, that’s when the songs really mean the most. They say Broadway composer Jerry Herman makes his name on production numbers, namely Hello, Dolly!, Mame, and The Best of Times. But go to one of his shows, and you find yourself enraptured in the sad moments, the I’ll be Wearing Ribbons Down My Backs, the If He Walked into My Lifes. The musical has not been explored to its fullest extent, and La La Land has ignited a spotlight. It is dangerous to be represented by a mere pastiche of the past, albeit lovingly and warmly. We must understand that this movie is not the example— rather a doorway. I really enjoy this film, even plan on buying it when it’s available, which is why I’ve thought so deeply about it. Through this lens, we can clarify much about where we are to go. Focus on telling a story with music, telling it surely, honestly, and clearly. There are a myriad of possibilities, and perhaps it’s time to move on from nostalgia and pastiche, and into the forays of tomorrow. Medium, not genre.