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breakingbadfics · 4 years ago

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Death of the author

CW: Light discussion of politics, mentions of the Alt-Right, and White Supremacists.

Consider this a “Change of Pace” entry. I’m trying to figure out what the next essay is to be about as well as the eventual long term for this blog.

I wrote this essay back in mid 2019, long before the idea of this blog would come to mind, it’s been lightly edited prior to posting and added to. and I think this essay shows some of my influences much more heavily than my other writings.

What does My Little Pony and The Matrix have in common? Death of the Author.

Death of the Author is not to be confused with “Separating the Artist from the Art,” a self explanatory concept to distance a work from a creator who’s beliefs are more than a little unpleasant, easiest example is acknowledging that, yes, H.P. Lovecraft was a Mega-racist, however, his contributions to the horror genre have created a base that is nearly ubiquitous with the genre to this day, like wise with Orson Scott Card. this concept in itself is an especially controversial subject, but is not the focus of this piece.

Death of the Author is what allowed The Matrix, a movie with a collection of metaphors about being an lgbt person, and an activist for the rights of yourself and your allies to be grossly misinterpreted as a way to justify being a bigot, the most egregious misinterpretation being that of “The Red Pill Scene.”

In the context of the film, The Red Pill Scene is the part of the traditional heroes story where the hero “accepts the call”, Neo is quite literally making the choice to leave the safe world he’s been living in behind and embark on his adventure that will result in a death and rebirth into being The One who will save humanity. In the now very much understood to be the direct metaphor, it’s a scene in which Neo, the stand-in for a lgbt person, specifically a trans person, is being told by a much older lgbt person “You are trans, you have the choice to embrace it, but regardless of what choice you make from here on out the road ahead is going to be bumpy and rough on you, because the system around you is designed to make sure people like us aren’t able to prosper, and if you join us, you won’t be able to opt out.”

That is the very understood metaphor that most people accept with the modern understanding after The Wachowski’s came out as Lily and Lana in the “post-matrix trilogy” reality of the real world.

However due to the Moral Neutrality of Death of the Author in other circles the Red Pill(and all the other metaphors in the film) takes on an alternative meaning. And I can be “polite” in my explaing the bad take on how this scene plays out, but just to hammer the point home we’ll get dirty so you can know where the take is coming from, The Red Pill Scene for White supremeacists, and The alt-right (but I repeat myself) is such. Neo, a disgruntled white person is being told that the world is controlled by soulless machines. Jews, people of color, etx. Everyone around him is mind controlled and can and will attempt to stop him from saving the people smart enough to also realise they’re being held captive by non-whites and save them all. This of course, all being told to him by Morpheus, a black man. So have fun working your head around that.

This of course the most extreme example being the most ubiquitous, poke around on chan sites and sooner or later you’ll see the phrase “red pill” having been memetically adjusted to mean “hey tell me about this thing” or even more specifically “I already had an opinion about this but either way I want you to confirm my choice.” But I digress.

These two interpretations are so wildly on the opposite ends of the spectrum that the only commonalities between them is “You will likely need to be violent at some point”

I’m naturally only covering the two interpretations, the matrix itself has been picked apart by an untold number of people and people interpret it in as many ways as possible in terms of philosophical meaning. That is the nature of Death of The Author.

Death of the Author also covers in a round-a-bout fashion, selective canon, a subjective acknowledgement of canon elements throughout a long lived franchise- see; Star Wars, Star Trek, the belief that there was never any sequels to The Matrix. This variant of the philosophy allows one to be able to continue interactions with a text, specifically a text that consists of multiple volumes (or contributions, each one made by an individual author) but also deny interactions with parts that they personally dislike.

More often than not, you can attribute the death of the author to a bad take in a case of fiction, another primary example being Fight Club, often missed for the scathing critique of unhealthy male behaviour and propped up as some sort of moral guideline for how to live your life. Which is again, not to say this is the fault of Death of The Author as a philosophy, it is morally neutral, these bad takes can more often be attribued to the simple fact that unless directly stating it most attempts at satire or parody will have a contingent of people who agree with what is said, not what is meant, and death of the author unfortunately does make that..very easy, for good, or ill.

Where does My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fit in with all this? Well there are certainly alt-right members of the brony fandom who are painfully missing the point, but we’ve already dwelled on the negative enough, so let’s get happy.

In Episode 1 of Season 1, the first part of a two part pilot, in the background of a shot during a party scene; a pony with a grey coat and blonde mane and tail is seen in the background. This particular pony stood out the most amongst other background characters due to a mistake caused by the animation staff. According to the supervising director at the time, this particular error was spotted after hasbro greenlit the episode for air, and because it amused him he chose not to order a correction so it was left in as a nice little easter egg.

The nameless background pony would eventually be caught by 4chan among other places and very rapidly developed a following of fans and given a nickname, Derpy Hooves. This particular following and new nickname would echo back to shows staff becoming the name internally referred to by the show’s staff.

Friendship is magic creator Lauren Faust, who also enjoyed the popularity of the character when asked in an interview would state that a character named Ditzy Doo existed in an unaired episode, that would be implied to be this particular background pony, So naturally now depending on the fan this particular character would be reffered to as either Derpy Hooves, or Ditzy Doo.

Ditzy Doo would go on to become a recurring easter egg with in the show, something similar to that of “where’s waldo” but with horses. This practice would continue until episode 14 of season 2 where the character would have a set of spoken lines and would be addressed by name. This however resulted in a degree of controversy in which some people expressed concern that the presentation of the character was an offensive attempt at portraying people with mental or physical disabilities. This event resulted in the episode being altered in future airings and the character disappearing from the show for the vast majority of Season 3. Beyond Season 3 the character would continue to appear until season 5 where they would finally have a voiced role in the 100th episode of the show, and then eventually having another speaking role in the christmas special “The best gift ever.” It is also worth noting that Hasbro never gave her an “official name” with almost all of Ditzy’s merchandise either having no name present, or more often than not a singular image of a muffin in place of a name, even going so far as to have “Muffins” be the credited name she was given in all voiced instances of the show.

Muffins, Ditzy Doo, or Derpy Hooves isn’t the only case of background characters growing a large following of fans with in the show; a variety of characters have been swept up by the fans, given names and personalities built entirely out of bit gags. Lyra, Bon Bon, Vinyl Scratch, Octavia Melody, and who knows how many more have all been seen in background moments which would be built on by fans and then echo back into the staff to be integrated into the show further. One would say this is fanon but at the end of the day, the writers and show staff had very little more intent with the characters beyond “does this background character look good?” and “Does this bit part character stand out enough to automatically be recognizable for the bit they need to be doing” it is still what I believe to be an example of Death of The Author, an act of choosing to ignore the intended meaning,and giving what amounts to window dressings a full life as fleshed out characters in fan content and in small instances of the show; an interpretation separate from the writers original intent.

Now the question is does someone need to actively defy the author to participate in The Death There-of? No. I don’t believe so. In much the same fashion no one need actually be a clan member to inadvertently say or do something that's passive aggressively racist(yes a bit of an extreme, I know) one need not actively defy the author, merely ascribe to an alternate interpretation of a work of fiction. Refer to Fight Club, the film does everything it can with out directly stating “most of the people in Fight Club and later Project Mayhem are bad people, because they were already doing the things Tyler Durden was ascribing to” and almost unilaterally all the bad takes are built around this idea that they’ve achieved the perfect ideal masculine because they’re the “living in the moment, violent psychopath” nihilist the movie is actively condemning.

The simple fact is that death of the author ultimately, in a grand scale amounts to this; did a writers intent show through hard enough for their intent to be heard? And Subjectively, how much does a person believe in the meaning that they, or the writer themself have imparted into the story?

#change of pace

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cynically-optimistic · 6 years ago

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With a week to sit back and think “what the fuck did I just watch,” I thought I would now do a review of American Horror Story: Apocalypse.

As we know (and may or may not agree upon) ahs8 had its various strengths and weaknesses. Many aspects of this season I found riveting but unfortunately by the end of episode 10, the season is left chalked full of plot holes and continuity errors that effectively make so much of this particular story obsolete. This season had all of the components we have loved for years and the potential to be the most amazing season yet, however it fell flat either in the writers room or the editing room. They cultivated this story for 8 years but with the vast underdevelopment of this season and it’s protagonists, they have effectively caused us to ask more questions like what was the entire point of season 8 of American Horror Story?

So here are some notable plot holes and criticisms I have for AHS: Apocalypse.

First and foremost, my biggest problem with this season is that we have almost no information about Mallory at all and they never spend time developing her character. And what the actual fuck is she? There is no way she is a witch, and this season was drastically underwhelming in this regard. I think we were all expecting an epic, biblical battle for the end of days to be fought between the Antichrist and the second coming of Christ or even an Archangel, but no such luck. It is only ever said that Mallory is just a witch...just a witch who got on my fucking nerves. We spent the whole season in flashbacks pertaining to Michael and never developing Mallory any further beyond “oh well her powers are cool,” and honestly, what gives? She has these amazing powers, never before seen by the witches, and we’re just supposed to believe that she isn’t some sort of celestial being? By the time she does defeat Michael, she is not a character we empathize with, she was basically an empty shell of the potentially badass character she was supposed to be. She has all of these powers and runs a 4 year old Michael Langdon over with an SUV...thrice….three times… Mallory could have been an amazing character and I would have completely rooted for her to defeat Michael with all the righteousness of Heaven, regardless of his tragic backstory that the writers spent too fucking long cultivating. But since we know practically nothing about her, all I can say is that she’s just ended up being a dick who murdered a child. Yeah, he was going to end the world, but he had the potential to be turned around, as depicted in his extensive backstory. Too many people wanted him to survive and just be allowed to end the world because Cody Fern is hot and Michael Langdon falls into the typical “tragic backstory, white, villain dude who is moderately conventionally attractive and therefore should be allowed to murder people without scrutiny.” He fits in that trope to a T and it works regardless of it being a tired trope fandom culture tends to fawn over. But no, I truly think, because of the amount of time they cultivated his character in both the light and dark, he could’ve been not such an evil son of a bitch. I cannot say the same for other examples of this trope like Tate Langdon, or Kylo Ren from Star Wars, or even Loki to some extents. This paragraph was supposed to be about Mallory but here again, I have veered into talking about Michael since he is her direct counterpart with way more backstory. I wish I had more to say about Mallory but she was such a blank slate. It’s sad that Coco of all people had more of a personality and backstory. We knew everything we needed to know about Coco and we knew literally NOTHING about Mallory. Ugh. In no way is this a criticism of Billie Lourd, I honestly think she just fell victim to bad writing this time around.

How did Emily and Timothy conceive the new antichrist when in season 1, Billie directly states that the antichrist, who would bring about the end of days, had to be conceived via human and spirit - like Michael. Furthermore, what is this “special DNA” Emily and Timothy have? We can surmise that it makes antichrists but HOW? And how did the Cooperative isolate and identify this DNA makeup to send these two individuals to Outpost 3 in the first place? And if the Cooperative knew that they could potentially make a new antichrist, did Michael know about it? My guess is no, but we will never know. Which begs the question, is the new anti christ going to be worse and if so, what was even the point of this season? Either way, in a few years, the entire world is fucked…again. The only redeemable aspect of that for Michael was that he craved to be loved and spent most of his time looking for someone to care about him rather than carrying out the Devil’s plans. Constance didn’t do this so he went searching for it and was systematically turned away which lead him right into the arms of his true father. This new kid is deeply loved by Emily and Timothy, and without the potential failsafe of him wishing to be loved and cared for, I believe this kid will be so much worse than Michael.

What is the Rubberman? The only new information we have gotten on this since season 1 is from Cody who says that Rubberman is not always Michael or Tate, but something else entirely. Like what? A demon? And it’s literally never addressed. Rubberman shows up unexpectedly (unexpectedly because you know, the world ended…) in Outpost 3, fucks Mr Gallant (why doesn’t he have a first name by the way? ) and is then the catalyst for Mr Gallant murdering his grandmother. So what exactly is this entity?

Also, what was the Sanctuary supposed to be? I don’t think it was just bullshit on Michael’s part to fuck with the desperate people in the Outposts. I do believe there was a sanctuary but we never see it and we never get any further information. I saw some interesting theories that maybe the Sanctuary is the Murder House, which would have been so interesting given that everyone in there rejected Michael, but he might still care about them, and potentially save the house in the nuclear blasts.

{Trigger Warning for sexual assault on this one regarding Tate Langdon} I think the theory Madison has about Murder House is a little off base. She tells Violet that the house made Tate evil but… here’s the thing: yes, we have watched the house and it’s resident ghosts interfere and influence people’s actions, but ultimately they all make their own choices, like Lorraine who set the house on fire which killed herself and her two daughters, and then influences Ben’s sleepwalking and fabricating his obsession with fire, but nothing drastic ever comes from this. So, I honestly don’t believe the house forced Tate to set Larry on fire (as revenge for Larry killing Beau) and shoot up his high school, killing 15 people, because those atrocities did NOT take place in the house. I don’t even know if I can believe that the house possessed and forced him to r*pe Viven and impregnate her with Michael but that seems to be the only horrific thing he did that could even begin to be blamed on the house. The house is a Hellmouth but doesn’t affect those who leave it’s property lines apart from encouraging them to return, almost like an addiction, but one that you can dismiss by just not going back to the house. So while Return to Murder House is a lovely nostalgic experience, I call bullshit. Ultimately though, I do think Madison was just trying to help and give the souls trapped there a little peace which was nice of her, but I’m not fully convinced she was right about Tate.

What happened to Kyle? This season was a crossover between Murder House and Coven but he is never mentioned by Madison or Zoe and is never shown at Miss Robichaux’s Academy. So where is our favorite unproblematic zombie Evan Peters at?

One huge problem I had with this season was Cordelia. She spent this entire season fighting her own fear of decay and death, while trying not to be like Fiona, and ultimately bringing them all to their doom. She sees a vision of the future apocalypse and every single step she takes thereafter to avoid it is a contributing factor that leads them all directly to it. Michael only fully set his sights on murdering all of the witches after Cordelia burnt Ms. Mead at the stake. Mead wasn’t even a witch, so how was that acceptable under witch law? Cordelia wasn’t even allowed to light the fire to burn the warlocks, so how was she allowed to murder a normal human? Mead may have been a ruthless spy and a satanist, but she was human all the same. Then Cordelia tells Michael, as he is devastated to find the charred corpse of Ms. Mead, that he can still choose to be good. Let’s be real, anyone of us would tell her to fuck off and set our sights on revenge if she did that to one of our loved ones. By having another maternal figure taken away from Michael, the only one who accepted and loved him (in her own way) Cordelia put the nails in her own coffin and that of the world. She is among the notable figures that push him along the darkest path, such as Constance, Ben, Tate, Viven, the Warlocks, Ms. Mead (even though she loved him, she loved Lucifer more), the Satanists, The Cooperative, and Mutt & Jeff. He is manipulated at every turn to bring about a future of mass destruction that other people want, and Cordelia was a definite contributor, but let it be known that Michael’s actions are ultimately his own.

The fact that Madison never met Charles, Nora, or Thaddeus while she was at the Murder House is a travesty. That would have been SOOOO interesting.

What the fuck was Ms. Venable’s issue? She was such an asshole to everyone and we never really figure out why other than she works for a bunch of idiots.

I enjoyed the culture around the warlocks because it was so ridiculous, they were the whiniest bunch of assholes, but I also hated this because they were the whiniest bunch of asshole. They were so desperate to overthrow Cordelia, even though none of them even come close to being able to do so (sorry not sorry boys) that they basically invite the apocalypse into their school. The only one who was like “nah, this is probably a bad idea,” was John Henry Moore, played by the incomparable Cheyenne Jackson, who I wish had bigger role to play in this storyline. He was the only warlock worth a damn, but ultimately they were all murdered. Or wait, no they weren’t. Time travel..

Some of the things changed by Mallory’s time traveling:

The warlocks are never murdered but they are still a bunch of whiny assholes

Tate and Violet don’t get back together (good)

Michael never destroys those nice lesbians’ souls, or anyone souls, which is good but who knows what this new Antichrist is capable of and when he will begin to tap into those powers

Constance (as far as we know) doesn’t commit suicide in the Murder House

Moira never finds peace in the light with her mom

Viven and Ben never reconcile

Which also means that Ben is still spending all of his time with Tate and crying while he masturbates out the window so…

Michael never lives in the Murder House

Ben never connects with Michael, Tate never screams at him in disgust, and Viven never tries to kill him

Queenie is never murdered in the Hotel Cortez by Ramona Royale and James Patrick March

Cordelia never has to bring Myrtle back from the dead, so she is still gone

Madison is still trapped in her own personal hell and Mallory doesn’t feel the need to bring her back even though Madison was way more useful this season than Mallory was. We knew Madison, we cared about her, we watched her grow into being a caring person this season, and Mallory is the self righteous ass that thinks Madison doesn’t deserve to leave hell

Michael is never taken in by Ms Mead. He never attends Black Mass and he never eats that poor girl’s heart (all of this was encouraged and initiated by the Satanists - not Michael)

Marie Laveau is still in hell with Papa Legba. She was anyway because Michael ripped her heart out of her chest 2 seconds after she got back but she never returned at all thanks to Mallory

Dinah obviously never gets her talkshow but she is still out here being shady as fuck and will inevitably betray the witches and voodoo queens again, probably for a fucking talkshow, when the new antichrist is running around burning the world down

The end of days doesn’t come, but again, we don’t know that for sure. At best, Mallory only bought the world and the witches a few extra years. So we can only really say that the apocalypse might not happen the exact way Michael (the Cooperative) makes it happen

Some of the thing I actually liked about this season:

THE ENTIRE FIRST HALF WAS INCREDIBLE and it’s really the lack of development throughout the final 4 or 5 episodes I had an issue with

Cody Fern is undeniably a spectacular performer and I very much enjoyed all of the layer and nuance that he brought to the character of Michael Langdon even though in the end it didn’t amount to much. Still, I can’t wait to see what he does next.

I have always loved Cordelia, and even though I very much expected her to be an influence of growth for Mallory and she never really got there, she was still a lovely presence and she spoke some of my favorite lines in this season being “Satan has one son, but my sisters are a legion, motherfucker,” and “I only knew you for a short time, but I missed you forever.”

DayFoxx or MistyXCordelia. You cannot convince me they are not in love, you just can’t. Their interactions were nothing short of magic.

Other than DayFoxx interactions, hands down the best line was, “the stew is Stu!”

Return to Murder House was arguably one of the best episodes of the entire series, directed by one of our high queens, Sarah Paulson in her directorial debut. It had everything we loved about season 1 and I would have loved to watch 5 hours of Madison walking through Murder House, meeting all the ghosts, instead of the last 5 hours of the season we got.

As much as I grew to hate Constance this season, it was still so lovely to have our Queen Jessica Lange back.

Sign me up anytime to see Angela Bassett as Marie Laveau like holy hell yes

I absolutely LOVED the idea of Zoe being a teacher at the Academy.

We could have all benefited from seeing more of Bubbles. Joan Collins was a fantastic addition to the AHS family.

FRANCIS CONROY. Need I say more? I don’t but I will, Myrtle dragging the patriarchy cleansed my soul

It was actually really lovely to see Connie Britton as Viven again. I have always had a soft spot in my heart for Viven and I feel terrible for everything she has been through. She never gets closure because of Mallory’s new timeline but I just hope she does find peace at some point.

With this rich of a storyline, I think we can all agree that 10 episodes was simply not enough to fully deliver this story after a build up of 8 years. Other seasons of AHS range from 11 to 13 episodes, with the exception of Roanoke which was also only 10 episodes. But with those extra hours, Apocalypse could have been incredible. There simply wasn’t enough time, and what time they did have and utilize was almost entirely spent on Michael which we find didn’t matter at all by the end.

Leave your thoughts in the comments if you have anything you’d like to add.

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snicketsleuth · 6 years ago

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Slackin’ with the Sleuth: reviewing Netflix’s “The Vile Village”

After two sluggish double-episodes, we are now headed to the three best two-parters of the second season, nay, of the entire show until now. Today, we’re going to talk about direction. “A Series of Unfortunate Events” has suffered not only from being overwritten, but also from being under-directed. Not an unfortunate consequence of the original writer being involved in the production of the television series, but rather of the other writers not controlling him enough. Episodes written by Daniel Handler get a bad rep amongst the fandom, but from their structure it’s pretty clear that he was more than willing to change his own outlines and listen to the contributions of other people. That being said, it’s hard to criticize the guy who came up with the work you’re supposed to adapt. Which is why episodes written by other people and peer-reviewed by Handler tend to fare better, as his role is to remind everyone of what made the story so successful in the first place.

We’ll see how this contributed to the improvement in direction in the latter half of Season 2. Most of it comes from the production team finally treating the series not only as an adaptation, but also as its own cinematic work. Let’s determine why below the cut.

DISCLAIMER (NOTHING TO DO WITH THE REVIEW):

I missed you guys, it’s been a while.

I apologize for abandoning the blog for so long, to the point that some of you people started worrying about me. I do appreciate the concern, so thank you. Most of my absence can simply be explained away by the many hours I’ve had to put into my day job. This has led to difficult choices regarding my hobbies and extra-work activities, writing for this blog being one of them. Truth be told, I don’t feel this blog fulfils as interesting a purpose as it did before. I’ve already talked about most book theories I cared about, and the books have been discussed to death at that point. As to other types of analyses, there are plenty of talented people on Tumblr who do it as well as me, so I didn’t feel the need to add much to the debate. But I’ve had time to think about plenty of Snicket-related topics during my absence, so no, the blog isn’t dead, just… much less active as it was a few years back. Stay tuned for more, my love for the books and their associated material is very much alive and kicking.

With all due respect (and affection) for our community, your duly devoted Sleuth.

This is the most atmospheric episode to date, and a beautiful one at that. While episodes of the first season certainly had their ambiance, most of it came from the introduction of new musical themes. The second season tries to bring the direction to the next level by fashioning each double-episode after a certain genre, which influences the entire aesthetic of the piece from its writing, colors and camera work. This is perfectly in line with the tone of the original series: each book focuses on a vivid and peculiar location which becomes a character in and of itself, and also parodies specific literary tropes. In keeping with this tradition, the televised version of “The Austere Academy” mocks coming-of-age teen movies, “The Erstaz Elevator” has shades of musical romantic comedies from Hollywood’s Golden Age, “The Vile Village” pays homage to Westerns, “The Hostile Hospital” is a straight-up horror exploitation flick and “The Carnivorous Carnival” is a neo-expressionist drama. Or rather that’s what we were supposed to infer. In reality, “The Austere Academy” and “The Erstaz Elevator” don’t have anything special in terms of direction to truly allude to their models, and while “The Carnivorous Carnivale” is a blatant remake of “Freaks”, so was the book in the first place. Only with “The Vile Village” and “The Hostile Hospital” do we see the direction add a substantial commentary on the original aesthetic of their respective book. So while the intention is laudable, the execution is somewhat lacking as far as the entire season is concerned. More on that in the next review.

But for now let’s just gush over the gorgeous visuals of “The Vile Village”. Westerns describe the struggle of civilization in a lawless territory, a perfect setting for the crux of a book concerned with legality and mob psychology. While the introduction of the Nevermore tree leaves something to be desired, we do eventually get some fantastic shots. The integration of the CGI and the digital matte paintings significantly improves from this episode on, although whether the artificiality of previous episodes was an intentional choice from the directors is anyone’s guess. The scene of Hector’s first flight aboard the self-sustaining mobile home is a work of beauty. One must regret his line about crows being too “scary”, though. Not only is this an unnecessary change to his character (he is fascinated by the crows in the book), it doesn’t even make sense as the adaptation does not portray Hector as being scared of crows in any shape or form otherwise. He actually has a line about admiring them in the first part of the episode! What on Earth were the writers thinking?

The feels of Western movies is well-rendered, with an impressive focus or lighting. What the director seems to have forgotten is how dusty the Village of Fowl Devotees should look. This is pretty unforgivable given that the book insists on the unbearable feeling of dirtiness which permeates the town. There’s an egregious continuity error where the Baudelaire orphans escape from prison in a massive cloud of debris… then come into the next shot with immaculate clothing. This is a major sin as far as immersion goes.

Another blatant directorial choice is the tendency to film scenes across a two-dimensional space, with characters moving from one side of the screen to the next. This ever-present horizontal axis gives the series a somewhat stiff aspect, with characters not being able to express themselves in a dynamic body language in action scene. There are two possible reasons for this camerawork. Firstly, it makes certain scenes easier to follow (we must not forget that the series is expected to remain watchable for small children), although a little boring on the visual side. Secondly, it does imitate the format of a theater stage, and the theater world plays an important role in Snicket’s world, from “The Marvelous Marriage” to “La Forza del Destino”. I do think the showrunners went a little too far in this direction, though. If they’re so deadest on reproducing the feel of a theater production, maybe they should just pitch the series as a Broadway show rather than a television series. The chase sequences in this double-episode look more like a Street Fighter screen than a cinematic production.

But by far the greatest contribution of this episode is the merciful introduction of SILENCE. What a relief to hear the godforsaken concertina shut up for one minute and let us enjoy the dialogue! The heart of the double-episode comes from the back-and-forth dynamic between Jacques and Olaf (or, to a lesser extent, Esmé and Olivia). Truly a battle between blind, hopeful idealism and cynical nihilism. Major props to Nathan Fillion, who remains possibly the best actor in the entire series, and Neil Patrick Harris who should ruin the seriousness of the scenes with his constant bebopping but somehow doesn’t.

This however comes as the expanse of the Baudelaire orphans themselves, whose presence is somewhat secondary in this episode. The symbolism of them escaping the town in a fire truck is a strike of genius… but the Isadora couplet subplot is drastically skipped over and the unnecessary introduction of Mr Poe drastically reduces their screentime. It’s more forgivable than in “The Erstaz Elevator” as most scenes between the adult characters do help move the plot forward and provide interesting information, but it’s still one of our major criticisms for this season. The writers are clearly infatuated with the adult actors, which hurts the pacing of the story. It’s a shame as the child actors’ acting shows major improvements in the second season. Louis Hynes comes into his own in the prison scene, but the breakneck speed of the scene’s direction does not leave him enough room to grow. We will however concede that Jacquelyn and Larry don’t overstay their welcome in this episode, and that Jacques and Olivia’s romance is sweet to look at. While we disagree with the changes made to Olivia’s character on the whole (we’ll get to that in my review of “The Carnivorous Carnival”), it did produce some well-written, well-acted scenes. Less appreciated is the unnecessary and overstated introduction of a Violet/Duncan romance subplot… this is what happens when you base 90% of an adaptation on what admittedly amounts to fan-pandering. It’s sweet, then it’s sweeter, then you’ve got diabetes.

As far as character development goes, it’s pretty hit-or-miss. Esmé is as usual fantastic. The writers have managed to attain a difficult equilibrium regarding her character dynamic: she obeys enough not to overshadow him, but she also acts as her own antagonist, pursuing her own goals and betraying him if the need arises. The rest of the troupe also has an interesting dynamic with her and her integration in the crime family feels pretty seamless.

But so far we’ve saved the worst for the last paragraph, and as you’ve probably guessed, we’re going to have to speak about Hector. Gods almighty, what a waste of a perfectly good character. Josephine’s death was shot in a very disrespectful manner, but at least her character remained mostly the same. Here the Hector from the books, a tragic and heartbreaking portrayal of peer pressure and social anxiety, is reduced to a joke. To add insult to injury, it’s not even a funny joke: his constant fainting gets tedious quickly. And the ultimate twist about his mom’s fate not being the source of his trauma after all basically reduces his arc to a complete waste of the viewer’s time. If the writers hated him so much, why not just cut his screen time instead of demeaning his entire existence? This does not bode well for a potential adaptation of “All The Wrong Questions”, as Hector’s outlook on family loyalty and peer pressure is somewhat of a plot point in this series. I truly cannot begin to understand these choices as Hector plays a similar role to Hal, Charles and Jerome, who also have likewise personalities… but the writers have adapted Hal, Charles and Jerome faithfully and cleverly, so what gives?

#0542 #Lemony Snicket #ASoUE #a series of unfortunate events #review #daniel handler #Sunny Baudelaire #klaus baudelaire #violet baudelaire #Hector #esme squalor #count olaf #Arthur Poe #jacques snicket #neil patrick harris #nathan fillion #asoue netflix

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elizas-writing · 6 years ago

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Thirteen Reasons Why is Torture Porn; Using Graphic Violence to Make a Point

CW/TW: Mentions of suicide, rape/sexual violence, physical assault, and everything the Thirteen Reasons Why crew were told NOT to do by mental health experts

If you are in a crisis, don’t let a poorly written TV show tell you what to do; call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or the Suicide Crisis Line at 1-800-784-2433. Surround yourself with people who will support you without judgement and are willing to take the extra step to understand. If you’re struggling to find regular mental health resources, check out here for more options. You still have a life ahead even if it takes some trial and error to figure out what the hell to do.

So Netflix released the second season of Thirteen Reasons Why, and, what a shock, people hate it for upping the graphic violence and rape. I have no plans to watch it myself after reading through all the triggers, but suffice it to say that so little was learned from the first season. Plus, I’d rather not subject myself to that much distress for a TV show I knew there was no point in continuing after the first season. Everyone’s accounts across Twitter and Tumblr of the new season seem to match up, so I’m going off of that for this piece.

If you haven’t seen my review of the first season (with and without spoilers), I found that it definitely went too far to make a point and had really confusing characterizations, but there were select scenes, when they were done right, were kinda worth the wait-- keyword being “kinda.” There was a germ of an idea begging for good writing, but got sucked into shock value for the sake of shock value. And the second season offers no promises to improve.

Of the multiple graphic scenes of this season, the one which sparked the most outrage was the final episode “Bye” as Tyler (a serial stalker) is brutalized and raped by his male classmates. As a result of being pushed too far, he brings practically a whole arsenal of guns to shoot up the school during a dance, but Clay peacefully disarms him before he can go through with it.

So apparently the creators saw the criticism of season one and thought, “So, you want to see more graphic violence, rape, and terribly confusing characterization?”

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, creator and showrunner, Brian Yorkey, wanted to explore more of Tyler’s psyche and “how a troubled man might be driven to consider this very difficult choice” after the bullying and ostracization he experienced in the first season. While I’d never wish rape on anyone, even fictional people--and a bunch of characters who mistreated him are total hypocrites--, Tyler is still beyond redemption for never understanding how his behavior destroyed Hannah’s sense of safety. The show puts him through that much brutalization to force audiences to feel sympathetic towards him while never critically analyzing why his stalking and coping mechanisms were wrong and unhealthy, regardless of what else was going on in his life.

It also promotes the dangerous idea that social outcasts and/or victims of bullying are likely to eventually become school shooters, which completely ignores factors like toxic masculinity or racist associations-- as was the case for shootings like Parkland and Santa Fe from this year-- which contribute to a white male sense of entitlement. Even though the lapses in logic are all over the place in the show-- particularly Clay having an emotional breakdown with Tyler, even though he made things worse in the first place by sharing revenge porn--, people had every right to distance themselves from Tyler as much as possible.

He’s a creep in how he objectifies his female classmates, constantly collects sensitive photos for blackmail, and his main outlet for anger becomes shooting guns at bottles and live animals, because society as a whole tends to only show men how to be emotional through anger and nothing else. This doesn’t help that when he testified, he apparently wanted to befriend Hannah to take photos of her to which she rejected (rightfully so) and thus his stalking began. It’s already so back-and-forth among viewers if Hannah committed suicide out of revenge or actual mental health deterioration, and subtly putting blame on her for rejecting Tyler is up there as one of the worst things they did to her. Not to mention throughout the second season, Tyler is anonymously putting up polaroids around the school of incriminating evidence in the case, particularly with Jessica, who is already stressed as is coming to terms that she was raped by Bryce.

It’s upon these scenes that I realized Netflix’s Thirteen Reasons Why can’t decide who it’s supposed to be for. It’s not for teenagers with how unrealistic and unidentifiable the characters are, especially coming from an adaptation of an 11-year-old book with an outdated understanding of teen mental health, bullying and suicide. It’s most definitely not for mentally ill folks with a history of suicidal thoughts because it’s so graphic, violent, and triggering, and on top of which, is grossly inaccurate on how depression works. Are they making it for the same people who can stomach Game of Thrones easily?

Above all else, does graphic violence have any point in film or television?

As mentioned in their first Beyond the Reasons special, the writers argued about needing that authenticity for Hannah’s rape and suicide scenes “to be painful to watch,” but it’s really not worth it if it has nothing else to say besides “look at this excess violence; you need to feel bad.” If you need to spoon feed your audience an explicit rape or suicide scene to emphasize how horrible those things are, it’s bad writing. They made the same mistakes with Tyler’s brutalization, which like I said, only exists to make you feel sorry for him and almost forget he’s an irredeemable character.

Film and television are super creative visual mediums; there are ways to convey an emotion or theme without triggering content or alienating your supposed intended audience.

I mentioned this before in my first review, but Perks of Being a Wallflower did incredibly well in portraying child molestation and an attempted suicide without going too far. The scenes of the molestation are cleverly cut and mostly in shadow where all you can see is Charlie’s aunt rubbing his leg and hear her whispering “Don’t wake your sister.” And when he’s mentally breaking down and suicidal, the camera just pans to the knife slowly before immediately cutting to the police breaking in, and then Charlie wakes up in the psychiatric ward. It’s a gut-wrenching scene every time, but it’s also smart in remembering the intended audience and walking that line before it becomes too much. It’s a great depiction of an anxiety attack where everything overwhelms you at once, and sometimes there’s gaps in your memory in what happened while in that state of panic. It’s never addressed what happened between the police arriving and Charlie waking up in the psychiatric ward. But it doesn’t need to give those answers; what matters most is that Charlie is safe and finally going to get the help he needs.

A scene can be way more powerful in what it omits rather than what it explicitly shows. What you imagine might happen can be more exciting and/or terrifying than what any director could have put on the screen themselves.

Early horror and thriller films are among the most successful of this, especially if they’re directed by Alfred Hitchcock, the Master of Suspense. Sure, these films seem pretty cheesy when we in the 21st century are used to seeing much more violence and body horror, but they have their mark on cinematic history for a reason, and for an audience in the 1960s, this was horrifying. Take the famous shower scene from Psycho.

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Instead of showing the knife penetrating flesh, it’s all edited in near-rapid cuts of “Mother” missing, Marion screaming and trying to defend herself, and shots of her feet with blood dripping into the water. It focuses more on the vulnerability of the situation, when there’s no chance for escape as you’re cornered against the wall and how quickly it all happens before you can react, complete with fast-paced editing and those high pitched violins. That kind of defenselessness freaked out actress Janet Leigh so much that she couldn’t take showers again without locking the doors and windows and leaving the shower door open. Hell, that still tends to be a common reaction for a lot of people who see this movie, and all without needing to show actual stab wounds.

And this trick in omitting some elements and highlighting others works well across genres for any scene motivated by any strong emotion. There’s probably about 50 different Disney films I can cite that do this well, but the one that sticks out the most is Tarzan.

Aside from Phil Collins singing, some animal noises, and a baby cooing, there is no spoken dialogue for the first 7 minutes, which is a really long time for an animated family film. Yeah, the song kinda hamfists in the themes of family and love from the get-go, but it’s otherwise a great introduction. You see these two families just starting out before they’re cut short by tragedy; one with the death of a baby gorilla and the other with the death of Tarzan’s parents, both at the jaws of Sabor. The former is only indicated by the sounds of the baby gorilla’s screams echoing in the jungle while we only see the aftermath of the latter through Kala’s perspective when she finds Tarzan.

Obviously with it being a Disney family film, they’re not going to actually show Sabor tearing up a baby gorilla or the human parents. As such, they have to rely on context clues for the audience to pick up and piece together everything else with their imaginations. When you think about it long enough, it’s a really dark beginning on how quickly unexpected tragedy can destroy everything you hold dear. And it’s all accomplished without going too far.

Does this mean we need to omit graphic violence entirely for a film? Not necessarily as it very much depends on what the film is and your target audience. But omission is a great practice in a story to explore what else you have to say besides “Look at this traumatizing shit. You should feel bad.” Of course, we’ll always have mindless films which just exist to be violent, and historical narratives and/or social commentaries in some cases need violence to portray the reality of a situation. But when you’re making something about mental illness with intent to help those like your characters, it helps to listen to what your audience and mental health experts actually want to see in such a narrative. And like I said before, the Thirteen Reasons Why creators completely ignored criticisms of season one and continued making the same mistakes just to milk their product beyond the source material. It has nothing else to say or do besides being needlessly gritty as opposed to creating likable characters or understandable motivations.

The only exception to this rule I can even think of is Deadpool 2.

I know it seems counter-intuitive to compare Deadpool 2 and Thirteen Reasons Why given the former’s more excessive violence, but bare with me here. I stand by that Deadpool 2 is way better at handling themes of suicide and violence in two hours than Thirteen Reasons Why ever did in 26 episodes.

The major differences? The intended audience’s expectations and well-written characterization.

Most everyone going in already knows what Wade Wilson is like. And this is definitely not the first time he attempted suicide in such grandiose and gratuitous fashion. The first film established itself as a wildly violent parody of superhero films, and the sequel continues that by poking fun at recent trends of these films going darker and grittier. In any other film, this would cross the line, but because it’s Deadpool, the excessively grotesque violence is to be expected. It succeeds in capturing the shock and dark humor (i.e Wade blowing himself up with his apartment, knowing fully well he can’t die) while still maintaining the weight of his emotional turmoil.

We actually get to know who Wade is and why he acts the way he does. There’s no drawn out mystery or fact-checking other sources or confronting side characters we don’t care about. We get his perspective alone, and that’s all we need to see his grief over Vanessa escalating to self-destructive behaviors and how he tries to find some family and meaning in life without her, even though her death is retconned in the end anyway. It’s all played for laughs, but you can’t help but feel sorry for Wade because he loved Vanessa so much, and they were a wonderfully sweet couple.

Another thing Deadpool 2 does significantly better than Thirteen Reasons Why is not forcing gray morality where it doesn’t belong, particularly when Wade tries to save Russell. It doesn’t matter if his actions lead to a horrible future; he’s just a traumatized kid who needs a proper family who will guide him. A lot of X-Men films try to play the heroes as the bigger people who are above murder and revenge. Yet Deadpool 2 doesn’t punish those like Russell with understandable hatred and motivations. It is very upfront that if you harm children, you deserve whatever hell comes your way-- which really hits home as Russell was put through metaphorical gay conversion therapy.

Meanwhile, I can’t even be bothered to care about anyone in Thirteen Reasons Why. The second season out of nowhere piles on excuse after excuse to justify the characters’ actions without them ever facing guilt or consequences. Anyone else with a remote chance at sympathy is just put through more emotional torture without rhyme or reason. I don’t care who has a drug problem, who’s gay, who dated who, the he-said-she-said, etc etc. If you’re trying to preach the ever-tired “it gets better” bullshit, when does it actually start to get better?

Sadly, Thirteen Reasons Why can’t find that point, and I don’t trust it will given how little the creators learned from the first season’s criticisms. They don’t care about creating a narrative to help mentally ill teens. They have nothing else to say or do than to make money and shoe-horned in so much graphic violence under the guise of being “authentic” to compensate for a tired Degrassi knockoff which would’ve disappeared if it wasn’t based on a well-known YA novel. Graphic violence in media is a tool to be used carefully, and of course it will vary project to project. But if it just exists to pad your “deep, meaningful” story instead of developing characters, motivations and relationships, then it’s cheap, lazy torture porn, and it’s bad writing.

If you enjoyed this analysis and what I do here, consider buying me a ko-fi to show your support!

#thirteen reasons why #13 reasons why #netflix #tv #tv show #graphic violence #deadpool #deadpool 2 #tarzan #disney tarzan #psycho #alfred hitchcock #perks of being a wallflower #analysis #my writing #essay #opinion #editorial

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vintagegeekculture · 7 years ago

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Dead Fandoms, Part 3

Read Part One of Dead Fandoms here.

Read Part Two of Dead Fandoms here.

Before we continue, I want to add the usual caveat that I actually don’t want to be right about these fandoms being dead. I like enthusiasm and energy and it’s a shame to see it vanish.

Mists of Avalon

Remember that period of time of about 15 years, where absolutely everybody read this book and was obsessed with it? It could not have been bigger, and the fandom was Anne Rice huge, overlapping for several years with USENET and the early World Wide Web…but it’s since petered out.

Mists of Avalon’s popularity may be due to the most excellent case of hitting a demographic sweet spot ever. The book was a feminist retelling of the Arthurian Mythos where Morgan Le Fay is the main character, a pagan from matriarchal goddess religions who is fighting against encroaching Christianity and patriarchal forms of society coming in with it. Also, it made Lancelot bisexual and his conflict is how torn he is about his attraction to both Arthur and Guinevere.

Remember, this novel came out in 1983 – talk about being ahead of your time! If it came out today, the reaction from a certain corner would be something like “it is with a heavy heart that I inform you that tumblr is at it again.”

Man, demographically speaking, that’s called “nailing it.” It used to be one of the favorite books of the kind of person who’s bookshelf is dominated by fantasy novels about outspoken, fiery-tongued redheaded women, who dream of someday moving to Scotland, who love Enya music and Kate Bush, who sell homemade needlepoint stuff on etsy, who consider their religious beliefs neo-pagan or wicca, and who have like 15 cats, three of which are named Isis, Hypatia, and Morrigan.

This type of person is still with us, so why did this novel fade in popularity? There’s actually a single hideous reason: after her death around 2001, facts came out that Marion Zimmer Bradley abused her daughters sexually. Even when she was alive, she was known for defending and enabling a known child abuser, her husband, Walter Breen. To say people see your work differently after something like this is an understatement – especially if your identity is built around being a progressive and feminist author.

Robotech

I try to break up my sections on dead fandoms into three parts: first, I explain the property, then explain why it found a devoted audience, and finally, I explain why that fan devotion and community went away. Well, in the case of Robotech, I can do all three with a single sentence: it was the first boy pilot/giant robot Japanimation series that shot for an older, teenage audience to be widely released in the West. Robotech found an audience when it was the only true anime to be widely available, and lost it when became just another import anime show. In the days of Crunchyroll, it’s really hard to explain what made Robotech so special, because it means describing a different world.

Try to imagine what it was like in 1986 for Japanime fans: there were barely any video imports, and if you wanted a series, you usually had to trade tapes at your local basement club (they were so precious they couldn’t even be sold, only traded). If you were lucky, you were given a script to translate what you were watching. Robotech though, was on every day, usually after school. You want an action figure? Well, you could buy a Robotech Valkyrie or a Minmei figure at your local corner FAO Schwartz.

However, the very strategy that led to it getting syndicated is the very reason it was later vilified by the purists who emerged when anime became a widespread cultural force: strictly speaking, there actually is no show called “Robotech.” Since Japanese shows tend to be short run, say, 50-60 episodes, it fell well under the 80-100 episode mark needed for syndication in the US. The producer of Harmony Gold, Carl Macek, had a solution: he’d cut three unrelated but similar looking series together into one, called “Robotech.” The shows looked very similar, had similar love triangles, used similar tropes, and even had little references to each other, so the fit was natural. It led to Robotech becoming a weekday afternoon staple with a strong fandom who called themselves “Protoculture Addicts.” There were conventions entirely devoted to Robotech. The supposed shower scene where Minmei was bare-breasted was the barely whispered stuff of pervert legend in pre-internet days. And the tie in novels, written with the entirely western/Harmony Gold conception of the series and which continued the story, were actually surprisingly readable.

The final nail in the coffin of Robotech fandom was the rise of Sailor Moon, Toonami, Dragonball, and yes, Pokemon (like MC Hammer’s role in popularizing hip hop, Pokemon is often written out of its role in creating an audience for the next wave of cartoon imports out of insecurity). Anime popularity in the West can be defined as not a continuing unbroken chain like scifi book fandom is, but as an unrelated series of waves, like multiple ancient ruins buried on top of each other (Robotech was the vanguard of the third wave, as Anime historians reckon); Robotech’s wave was subsumed by the next, which had different priorities and different “core texts.” Pikachu did what the Zentraedi and Invid couldn’t do: they destroyed the SDF-1.

Legion of Super-Heroes

Legion of Superheroes was comic set in the distant future that combined superheroes with space opera, with a visual aesthetic that can best be described as “Star Trek: the Motion Picture, if it was set in a disco.”

I’ve heard wrestling described as “a soap opera for men.” If that’s the case, then Legion of Super-Heroes was a soap opera for nerds. The book is about attractive 20-somethings who seem to hook up all the time. As a result, it had a large female fanbase, which, I cannot stress enough, is incredibly unusual for this era in comics history. And if you have female fans, you get a lot of shipping and slashfic, and lots of speculation over which of the boy characters in the series is gay. The fanon answer is Element Lad, because he wore magenta-pink and never had a girlfriend. (Can’t argue with bulletproof logic like that.) In other words, it was a 1970s-80s fandom that felt much more “modern” than the more right-brained, bloodless, often anal scifi fandoms that existed around the same time, where letters pages were just nitpicking science errors by model train and elevator enthusiasts.

Legion Headquarters seemed to be a rabbit fuck den built around a supercomputer and Danger Room. Cosmic Boy dressed like Tim Curry in Rocky Horror. There’s one member, Duo Damsel, who can turn into two people, a power that, in the words of Legion writer Jim Shooter, was “useful for weird sex...and not much else.”

LSH was popular because the fans were insanely horny. This is, beyond the shadow of a doubt, the thirstiest fandom of all time. You might think I’m overselling this, but I really think that’s an under-analyzed part of how some kinds of fiction build a devoted fanbase.

For example, a big reason for the success of Mass Effect is that everyone has a favorite girl or boy, and you have the option to romance them. Likewise, everyone who was a fan of Legion remembers having a crush. Sardonic Ultra Boy for some reason was a favorite among gay male nerds (aka the Robert Conrad Effect). Tall, blonde, amazonian telepath Saturn Girl, maybe the first female team leader in comics history, is for the guys with backbone who prefer Veronica over Betty. Shrinking Violet was a cute Audrey Hepburn type. And don’t forget Shadow Lass, who was a blue skinned alien babe with pointed ears and is heavily implied to have an accent (she was Aayla Secura before Aayla Secura was Aayla Secura). Light Lass was commonly believed to be “coded lesbian” because of a short haircut and her relationships with men didn’t work out. The point is, it’s one thing to read about the adventures of a superteam, and it implies a totally different level of mental and emotional involvement to read the adventures of your imaginary girlfriend/boyfriend.

Now, I should point out that of all the fandoms I’ve examined here, LSH was maybe the smallest. Legion was never a top seller, but it was a favorite of the most devoted of fans who kept it alive all through the seventies and eighties with an energy and intensity disproportionate to their actual numbers. My gosh, were LSH fans devoted! Interlac and Legion Outpost were two Legion fanzines that are some of the most famous fanzines in comics history.

If nerd culture fandoms were drugs, Star Wars would be alcohol, Doctor Who would be weed, but Legion of Super-Heroes would be injecting heroin directly into your eyeballs. Maybe it is because the Legionnaires were nerdy, too: they played Dungeons and Dragons in their off time (an escape, no doubt, from their humdrum, mundane lives as galaxy-rescuing superheroes). There were sometimes call outs to Monty Python. Basically, the whole thing had a feel like the dorkily earnest skits or filk-singing at a con. Legion felt like it’s own fan series, guest starring Patton Oswalt and Felicia Day.

It helped that the boundary between fandom and professional was incredibly porous. For instance, pro-artist Dave Cockrum did covers for Legion fanzines. Former Legion APA members Todd and Mary Biernbaum got a chance to actually write Legion, where, with the gusto of former slashfic writers given the keys to canon, their major contribution was a subplot that explicitly made Element Lad gay. Mike Grell, a professional artist who got paid to work on the series, did vaguely porno-ish fan art. Again, it’s hard to tell where the pros started and the fandom ended; the inmates were running the asylum.

Mostly, Legion earned this devotion because it could reward it in a way no other comic could. Because Legion was not a wide market comic but was bought by a core audience, after a point, there were no self-contained one-and-done Legion stories. In fact, there weren’t even really arcs as we know it, which is why Legion always has problems getting reprinted in trade form. Legion was plotted like a daytime soap opera: there were always five different stories going on in every issue, and a comic involved cutting between them. Sure, like daytime soap operas, there’s never a beginning, just endless middles, so it was totally impossible for a newbie to jump on board...but soap operas know what they are doing: long term storytelling rewards a long term reader.

This brings me to today, where Legion is no longer being published by DC. There is no discussion about a movie or TV revival. This is amazing. Comics are a world where the tiniest nerd groups get pandered to: Micronauts, Weirdworld, Seeker 3000, and Rom have had revival series, for pete’s sake. It’s incredible there’s no discussion of a film or TV treatment, either; friggin Cyborg from New Teen Titans is getting a solo movie.

Why did Legion stop being such a big deal? Where did the fandom that supported it dissolve to? One word: X-Men. Legion was incredibly ahead of its time. In the 60s and 70s, there were barely any “fan” comics, since superhero comics were like animation is today: mostly aimed at kids, with a minority of discerning adult/teen fans, and it was success among kids, not fans, that led to something being a top seller (hence, “fan favorites” in the 1970s, as surprising as it is to us today, often did not get a lot of work, like Don MacGregor or Barry Smith). But as newsstands started to push comics out, the fan audience started to get bigger and more important…everyone else started to catch up to the things that made Legion unique: most comics started to have attractive people who paired up into couples and/or love triangles, and featured extremely byzantine long term storytelling. If Legion of Super-Heroes is going to be remembered for anything, it’s for being the smaller scale “John the Baptist” to the phenomenon of X-Men, the ultimate “fan” comic.

The other thing that killed Legion, apart from Marvel’s Merry Mutants, that is, was the r-word: reboots. A reboot only works for some properties, but not others. You reboot something when you want to find something for a mass audience to respond to, like with Zorro, Batman, or Godzilla.

Legion, though, was not a comic for everybody, it was a fanboy/girl comic beloved by a niche who read it for continuing stories and minutiae (and to jack off, and in some cases, jill off). Rebooting a comic like that is a bad idea. You do not reboot something where the main way you engage with the property, the greatest strength, is the accumulated lore and history. Rebooting a property like that means losing the reason people like it, and unless it’s something with a wide audience, you only lose fans and won’t get anything in return for it. So for something like Legion (small fandom obsessed with long form plots and details, but unlike Trek, no name recognition) a reboot is the ultimate Achilles heel that shatters everything, a self-destruct button they kept hitting over and over and over until there was nothing at all left.

E. E. Smith’s Lensman Novels

The Lensman series is like Gil Evans’s jazz: it’s your grandparents’ favorite thing that you’ve never heard of.

I mean, have you ever wondered exactly what scifi fandom talked about before the rise of the major core texts and cultural objects (Star Trek, Asimov, etc)? Well, it was this. Lensmen was the subject of fanfiction mailed in manilla envelopes during the 30s, 40s, and 50s (some of which are still around). If you’re from Boston, you might recognize that the two biggest and oldest scifi cons there going back to the 1940s, Boskone (Boscon, get it?) and Arisia, are references to the Lensman series. This series not only created space opera as we know it, but contributed two of the biggest visuals in scifi, the interstellar police drawn from different alien species, and space marines in power armor.

My favorite sign of how big this series was and how fans responded to it, was a great wedding held at Worldcon that duplicated Kimball Kinnison and Clarissa’s wedding on Klovia. This is adorable:

The basic story is pure good vs. evil: galactic civilization faces a crime and piracy wave of unprecedented proportions from technologically advanced pirates (the memory of Prohibition, where criminals had superior firearms and faster cars than the cops, was strong by the mid-1930s). A young officer, Kimball Kinnison (who speaks in a Stan Lee esque style of dialogue known as “mid-century American wiseass”), graduates the academy and is granted a Lens, an object from an ancient mystery civilization, who’s true purpose is unknown.

Lensman Kinnison discovers that the “crime wave” is actually a hostile invasion and assault by a totally alien culture that is based on hierarchy, intolerant of failure, and at the highest level, is ruled by horrifying nightmare things that breathe freezing poison gases. Along the way, he picks up allies, like van Buskirk, a variant human space marine from a heavy gravity planet who can do a standing jump of 20 feet in full space armor, Worsel, a telepathic dragon warrior scientist with the technical improvisation skills of MacGyver (who reads like the most sadistically minmaxed munchkinized RPG character of all time), and Nandreck, a psychologist from a Pluto-like planet of selfish cowards.

The scale of the conflict starts small, just skirmishes with pirates, but explodes to near apocalyptic dimensions. This series has space battles with millions of starships emerging from hyperspacial tubes to attack the ultragood Arisians, homeworld of the first intelligent race in the cosmos. By the end of the fourth book, there are mind battles where the reflected and parried mental beams leave hundreds of innocent bystanders dead. In the meantime we get evil Black Lensmen, the Hell Hole in Space, and superweapons like the Negasphere and the Sunbeam, where an entire solar system was turned into a vacuum tube.

It’s not hard to understand why Lensmen faded in importance. While the alien Lensmen had lively psychologies, Lensman Kimball Kinnison was not an interesting person, and that’s a problem when scifi starts to become more about characterization. The Lensman books, with their love of police and their sexism (it is an explicit plot point that the Lens is incompatible with female minds – in canon there are no female Lensmen) led to it being judged harshly by the New Wave writers of the 1960s, who viewed it all as borderline fascist military-scifi establishment hokum, and the reputation of the series never recovered from the spirit of that decade.

Prisoner of Zenda

Prisoner of Zenda is a novel about a roguish con-man who visits a postage-stamp, charmingly picturesque Central European kingdom with storybook castles, where he finds he looks just like the local king and is forced to pose as him in palace intrigues. It’s a swashbuckling story about mistaken identity, swordfighting, and intrigue, one part swashbuckler and one part dark political thriller.

The popularity of this book predates organized fandom as we know it, so I wonder if “fandom” is even the right word to use. All the same, it inspired fanatical dedication from readers. There was such a popular hunger for it that an entire library could be filled with nothing but rip-offs of Prisoner of Zenda. If you have a favorite writer who was active between 1900-1950, I guarantee he probably wrote at least one Prisoner of Zenda rip-off (which is nearly always the least-read book in his oeuvre). The only novel in the 20th Century that inspired more imitators was Sherlock Holmes. Robert Heinlein and Edmond “Planet Smasher” Hamilton wrote scifi updates of Prisoner of Zenda. Doctor Who lifted the plot wholesale for the Tom Baker era episode, “Androids of Tara,” Futurama did this exact plot too, and even Marvel Comics has its own copy of Ruritania, Doctor Doom’s Kingdom of Latveria. Even as late as the 1980s, every kids’ cartoon did a “Prisoner of Zenda” episode, one of the stock plots alongside “everyone gets hit by a shrink ray” and the Christmas Carol episode.

Prisoner of Zenda imitators were so numerous, that they even have their own Library of Congress sub-heading, of “Ruritanian Romance.”

One major reason that Prisoner of Zenda fandom died off is that, between World War I and World War II, there was a brutal lack of sympathy for anything that seemed slightly German, and it seems the incredibly Central European Prisoner of Zenda was a casualty of this. Far and away, the largest immigrant group in the United States through the entire 19th Century were Germans, who were more numerous than Irish or Italians. There were entire cities in the Midwest that were two-thirds German-born or German-descent, who met in Biergartens and German community centers that now no longer exist.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote a lot about how the German-American world he grew up in vanished because of the prejudice of the World Wars, and that disappearance was so extensive that it was retroactive, like someone did a DC comic-style continuity reboot where it all never happened: Germans, despite being the largest immigrant group in US history, are left out of the immigrant story. The “Little Bohemias” and “Little Berlins” that were once everywhere no longer exist. There is no holiday dedicated to people of German ancestry in the US, the way the Irish have St. Patrick’s Day or Italians have Columbus Day (there is Von Steuben’s Day, dedicated to a general who fought with George Washington, but it’s a strictly Midwest thing most people outside the region have never heard of, like Sweetest Day). If you’re reading this and you’re an academic, and you’re not sure what to do your dissertation on, try writing about the German-American immigrant world of the 19th and 20th Centuries, because it’s a criminally under-researched topic.

A. Merritt

Pop quiz: who was the most popular and influential fantasy author during the 1930s and 40s?

If you answered Tolkien or Robert E. Howard, you’re wrong - it was actually Abraham Merritt. He was the most popular writer of his age of the kind of fiction he did, and he’s since been mostly forgotten. Gary Gygax, creator of Dungeons and Dragons, has said that A. Merritt was his favorite fantasy and horror novelist.

Why did A. Merritt and his fandom go away, when at one point, he was THE fantasy author? Well, obviously one big answer was the 1960s counterculture, which brought different writers like Tolkien and Lovecraft to the forefront (by modern standards Lovecraft isn’t a fantasy author, but he was produced by the same early century genre-fluid effluvium that produced Merritt and the rest). The other answer is that A. Merritt was so totally a product of the weird occult speculation of his age that it’s hard to even imagine him clicking with audiences in other eras. His work is based on fringe weirdness that appealed to early 20th Century spiritualism and made sense at the time: reincarnation, racial memory, an obsession with lost race stories and the stone age, and weirdness like the 1920s belief that the Polar Arctic is the ancestral home of the Caucasian race. In other words, it’s impossible to explain Merritt without a ton of sentences that start with “well, people in the 1920s thought that...” That’s not a good sign when it comes to his universality.

That’s it for now. Do you have any suggestions on a dead fandom, or do you keep one of these “dead” fandoms alive in your heart?

#fandom history #lensman #robotech #prisoner of zenda #mists of avalon

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autoirishlitdiscourses · 4 years ago

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Discourse of Friday, 29 January 2021

Why the humanities. Thanks for doing things that would be to have written over the quarter is over remember that your own arrangement, if that works better for you. Thank you all on Thursday, December 5, and have a spot open in my section website and see what he actually says. H History is or is going to be fully effective manner. Hi! Well done tonight.

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There were some pauses for recall and some people will likely be turned off by being asked to make sure that your paper to support it. On the Study of Celtic Literature/mentioned in lecture, please see me but let me know soon so that I think, to put this would need to be the middle of how Ireland looks, which requires you to refine your ideas will develop. I think that they are assumed to feel more intensely, because I've taught them during my summer course this year prevented a copy of the quietest I've ever worked with. Standing in front of the logical chain you're constructing. Writing Month:. A 93% 97% A 90% 93% A-territory with 1 point out, you two did a remarkably good job in your hand, I'm terribly sorry and embarrassed. You want to go with Fergus? All in all, I think that it's difficult or impossible to pass them out. VI. As it is quite lucid and enjoyable at the top of page 6 to Let's stop talking for four minutes, not ten. Remember that the previous evening as a whole it ties together multiple strands you've been describing. Please also note that practically no one else grabs it. Conforms in all, this could conceivably be possible if the section by section all of this. I practically never do this effectively if the exam. 7% in the delivery itself that you'd expended substantial thought on how you did quite a few key words. Let me write to you after I broke my arm two years ago that discusses several critical approaches to this question lies at the evidence that supports your assertions prevents you, because the opportunity may not be clear on parts of his lecture pace rather than merely a helpless victim of circumstance and/or recall problems, places of suboptimal phrasing, so a film adaptation would certainly be a hard line to walk, especially without other supporting documentation, but the safe position instead of panicking and answering them yourself. Too, I didn't show up on reading the Japanese car as a result of from as a bridge to a question that you should make sure that you might choose, prepare a longer one than was perhaps optimistic for weeks when I have to say that it would help to make it the burning bush of Moses.

#Irish literature #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Python #Markov chains

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dipulb3 · 4 years ago

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1619 Project faces renewed criticism — this time from within The New York Times

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/1619-project-faces-renewed-criticism-this-time-from-within-the-new-york-times/

1619 Project faces renewed criticism — this time from within The New York Times

Some of the angst is chalked up to the usual sniping that happens when a reporter, in this case Hannah-Jones, becomes a “star,” in newsroom parlance.

But there are substantive critiques too, and they were surfaced in an unusual column by Bret Stephens, a Times op-ed writer with a conservative bent.

The column touched such a nerve that A.G. Sulzberger, the publisher of The Times, issued a statement of support for the 1619 Project on Sunday night.

Sulzberger, told staffers that he had gotten questions about whether the opinion column represented “an institutional shift” in support for the project

“That couldn’t be further from the truth,” Sulzberger wrote in a Slack channel accessible to all staff. “It is a journalistic triumph that changed the way millions of Americans understand our country, its history and its present.”

After praising Hannah-Jones, who won a Pulitzer Prize for heading the project, Sulzberger said that the 1619 Project ranks as “one of the proudest accomplishments” the paper has had during his tenure as publisher.

“It’s also sparked a national conversation unlike anything I’ve ever seen before, and that makes it a natural subject for an opinion columnist to write about,” Sulzberger added. “I believe strongly in the right of Opinion to produce a piece even when — maybe even especially when — we don’t agree with it as an institution.”

In other words, the project continues to have the full weight of the Times behind it — despite scrutiny it has received from some historians, including some who support the effort overall, and from conservative commentators who have aimed to undermine the project’s core purpose.

Last month President Trump referred to the project as “totally discredited,” which is not true.

He said “this project rewrites American history to teach our children that we were founded on the principle of oppression, not freedom.”

In the words of The Times, the project “aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.”

Many staffers at The Times are enormously proud of the undertaking and see it as a symbol of the news organization’s agenda-setting power.

There have been grumblings, though, about Hannah-Jones’ sometimes defensive posture and her occasional battles with critics on Twitter. Last week, before Stephens’ column came out, she wrote in a tweet, “In 1894, the NYT called Ida B. Wells a ‘slanderous and nasty-minded mulattress’ for daring to tell the truth about lynching. 100 years later she earned the Pulitzer Prize. These efforts to discredit my work simply put me in a long tradition of [black women] who failed to know their places.” (The next day, however, she noted in a tweet, “There have certainly been some astute (and certainly more good-faith and intellectual) critiques from the left. I have found many of them interesting and have relished the way they help me challenge my own thinking and hopefully keep growing.”)

Stephens’ column, published on Friday, acknowledged the ambitious nature of the 1619 Project and defended it from critics who have characterized it as anti-American.

But Stephens pointed to debate about the project among some historians and argued that editors at The Times, “however much background reading they might have done, are not in a position to adjudicate historical disputes.”

He said “the 1619 Project is a thesis in search of evidence, not the other way around.” And he concluded that the 1619 Project “has given critics of The Times a gift.”

Stephens’ column was widely praised by conservatives. For a period of time on Saturday, both the column and the original 1619 Project link were on the paper’s most-emailed list. The column remained on that list as of Monday afternoon.

Some supporters of the 1619 Project ridiculed Stephens for writing it. In an extraordinary move, The New York Times Guild went as far as to excoriate Stephens in a tweet over the weekend.

“It says a lot about an organization when it breaks it’s own rules and goes after one of it’s own,” the guild tweeted. “The act, like the article, reeks.”

The guild later deleted the tweet, saying that it was “tweeted in error.”

“We apologize for the mistake,” the guild added.

Jake Silverstein, the editor of The New York Times Magazine, where the project originated, wrote on Twitter that “while we disagree strongly with Bret’s column, we welcome debate about the historical analysis The 1619 Project rigorously advances. I’m proud of the fact that over the past year, the project has had such a profound impact on discussions about our history. We stand behind this work entirely.” Silverstein called Hannah-Jones a “national treasure.”

Stephens, who won the Pulitzer Prize while at The Wall Street Journal, has been one of The Times’ most controversial figures since moving to the newspaper in 2017.

Earlier this year, Stephens also expressed disagreement with The Times when he wrote a piece defending a controversial column by Republican Sen. Tom Cotton. The Times ultimately said that Cotton’s column shouldn’t have been published and the episode led to the resignation of James Bennet as editorial page editor.

Hannah-Jones did not respond to a request for comment about Stephens’ newest column.

But in an appearance on “Reliable Sources” last month, she said the project is not going anywhere.

“We are expanding the project into TV and film, as well as books,” she said. “Vast numbers of Americans have appreciated this work. It has not made them hate their country. It has made them better understand their country. And really what the 1619 Project is a charge for us to work to live up to the majestic ideals of our founding.”

Hannah-Jones isn’t the only star reporter at The Times to draw scrutiny from within the paper in recent weeks. Rukmini Callimachi, a reporter at The Times who focuses on extremism, has faced questions about her work after the subject of her hit podcast “Caliphate” was recently charged in Canada with perpetrating a hoax. Ben Smith, who writes about media for The Times, examined the criticism leveled against Callimachi in a column on Sunday.

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rerwby · 7 years ago

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RWBY Volume 4 Commentary Play-by-Play

Chapter 1:

Kerry talks about how each episode had a ‘fuck you’ shot, which is a particular shot that was difficult to create across all departments.

I’d say the whole volume was a fuck-you shot to the fans but

In a little conversation about how much they’ve planned in the show, Kerry talks about how they’ve actually been hanging on to team WTCH (Watts, Tyrian, Cinder and Hazel) since the beginning.

I’m leaning towards believing this since Salem was one of the first things conceived for the show, so her team would follow. Makes you wonder if Miles was always gonna have his “crazy” Tyrian though or if that came later.

I doubt it because I don’t believe Monty would make characters as boring as Hazel and Watts right from the start.

Regarding Oscar and his story this volume, Miles and Kerry had more rewrites with him than with anything else in RWBY, trying to figure out the right way to present it. At one point, Oscar’s first major scene was going to be in chapter 7, instead of 4.

Yeah it’s not breaking news to say that they did the opposite of what would be a good idea.

Mentioned in the commentary, but in more detail in the special features, is the fact that CRWBY had a rough start to the volume due to the new production pipeline, which continued for several episodes.

According to Miles, the Petra Gigas was originally supposed to appear in the Emerald Forest during Volume 1. It was supposed to be a part of the giant nevermore/deathstalker fight, as was a giant Bourbatusk.

Wondering how they would have fit 4 whole monsters in that fight, but I guess that’s why they ended up splitting two bad guys between teams instead.

On that note, they talk about how incredibly different the original 4 episodes of Volume 1 were compared to what we got, and that Fennec and Corsac were originally Volume 1 villains.

Just saying that I believe this. They said that Roman originally played a smaller part in Volume 1? How was this possible? Insert more villains.

On the origin of the Geist, Kerry talks about how, at the time Monty was working on the White trailer, he and Miles were thinking of ways for it to make sense, and came up with the idea of a poltergeist Grimm. They say that particular Geist is called an Armor Gigas.

So Weiss fought a Grimm in her trailer it turns out. Idk how to feel about that. In a way it makes sense because, as we’ve seen with Winter’s summons, the Schnee summons are light versions of Grimm. It makes little sense though when you consider that the Geist inhabits inanimate things and therefore the armor isn’t a natural feature of the Grimm.

The crown on Jaune’s shield was first inserted by layout artist Rachel Doda when creating the storyboards. Kerry thought it was a perfect touch and decided to include it in the official design.

Iunno what fatal flaw to focus on here. Is it how this makes it sound like Jaune’s god damn weapon model design was THAT important that Kerry noticed? That it implies melting Pyrrha’s armor down was a last-minute thought? That the plot hole of Pyrrha fucking disintegrating and therefore leaving no armor or cape for Jaune was made entirely because Kerry liked how a shield looked?

Chapter 2:

In regards to the infamous map, Kerry mentions that in one version of the script, RNJR was going to lose the map in a fight of some sort. A similar was also supposed to happen in Chapter 6 involving Tyrian, but decided against it because of how busy CRWBY already was.

So instead of losing it for a reason they just lose it for the sake of it. Cool.

According to Miles, Jaques is loosely based on Jack Frost, something they try to hint at in the way he keeps his study.

The name kind of gave it away without any other hints.

Kerry says that writing the final scene of chapter 2 was the first time he cried while writing. Likewise, Miles said he lost his shit while performing mocap for the scene. Apparently everyone who worked on it had a pretty strong emotional reaction to this scene.

Wow. The people working on this show were seriously so disillusioned that they thought Pyrrha’s relationship with Jaune earned that kind of reaction. Not even gonna mention how the existence of the recording makes no sense, especially since Pyrrha signs off on it. Why would she do that on a generic fighting guide. I can’t believe how attached these people were to the Alpha Hets.

Chapter 3:

On the topic of writing RWBY with multiple different storylines all taking place at the same time, Miles called it a ‘scary experiment’ but is happy overall with how it turned out.

I can’t say anything more than what’s been said on this.

I also have nothing to say on the technical stuff. I’m really not versed enough in it.

Miles talks about how they tried to have Salem feel a bit motherly, and not overly cruel, because she’s “better than that” and that she has a certain way of talking to each of her lieutenants.

She seemed pretty cruel to me lol. They need to have Salem do more before they announce these kinds of intentions, because now they’ve just given us a preconceived notion and they won’t have to write it that way.

Chapter 4:

Apparently Yang’s eye color was decided because of Taiyang’s and Raven’s eye colors. Red and Blue making purple.

This might be the stupidest thing I’ve ever read.

Burnie is apparently very invested in voicing Taiyang, and takes it very seriously. He would go over the script with Miles and Kerry before recording sessions and they talk about how Burnie will listen to Yang’s lines and efforts, and try and make Taiyang’s similar, as a way of representing how Yang was influenced by her Father. It’s also mentioned that Joel is similar when it comes to portraying Oobleck.

Wow! Joel and Burnie, two voice acting veterans who formed RT, are invested in their roles? Don’t get too shocked by actors who actually try, guys!

When it came to naming all the villages in Anima, they wanted to keep the theme of Mistral being heavily inspired by Eastern influences, so they named villages after the Japanese names for certain flowers.

Blah blah magical mystical Asia land

Originally, the inn and the pub were the same building, but were separated when they couldn’t figure out how to fit Raven into the scene.

Can you imagine if we had to see RNJR somehow not notice Qrow like twenty feet away from them? Thank god he sat in that pub across the street.

Chapter 5:

Miles says he cried while writing Blake’s reunion with her parents, and that the Belladonna’s are some of his favorite characters.

I mean iunno that scene didn’t scream emotional to me but I also have daddy issues so

Fennec and Corsac, as mentioned earlier, were characters originally conceived pre Volume 1, being the 2nd and 3rd Faunus thought about after Blake.

Makes you wonder if by the time of their conception, Faunus were a thing or if Monty was just making up furry OC’s.

Chapter 6:

In the charity scene, Koen says that there are around 100 different, unique people in the room, each with differing clothing.

Jfc guys went kinda overboard there. Didn’t look like 100+ when I watched it.

When describing Henry Marigold to concept artist Erin Winn, Kerry told her to draw a ‘posery, imposter Neptune’.

That’s about what I guessed yep. Now is there a reason for it to be Neptune? To show that Weiss grew past her affection towards him? Or because it was the first person who came to mind? Who knows.

Tyrian’s jacket, despite being one of Kerry’s favorite design aspects, was a real hassle for the animators and the rigging team, so much so that he was animated without his jacket on, and then would add it afterwards.

I remember when capes were in Kingdom Hearts. Then they realized they were too much work so they removed them to avoid continuity errors and such. It was a smart and humble move, because the capes looked cool. I guess Tyrian’s jacket was just really that awesome though.

Chapter 7:

The original plan with Ozpin was to not reveal him as having anything to do with Oscar until the very end of the Volume.

Just gonna keep reminding us of that huh guys?

This episode was the first time proper reflections were used in a mirror in any Rooster Teeth production. Before they would simply fake it.

well that is a legitimately very interesting fact

When it came to Tyrian swearing, some thought went into whether they could get around it, originally having him say witch instead. Ultimately, Miles and Kerry decided it was the right time for things to get a bit more mature.

Best decision they ever made, thank god.

I love the idea of Miles being all modest and going “ah yes time to be mature.”

Chapter 8:

Miles says the whole campfire scene was probably the most difficult thing in the Volume to write, simply due to how much they needed to cover. Also, Kerry says more people worked on this scene than any other in the Volume.

The RWBY writers struggling with exposition?

The two brothers was Miles’ idea, and his first major contribution to the series, obviously one of the first parts of the show that was conceived.

And it was made known that Miles conceived one of the worst parts of the entire story. And he just copied it from a Grimm Tale.

Miles was the one who wrote the majority of Blake scenes in Volume 4. When she’s slapping Sun, Miles only intended it to be soft slaps on the shoulder, so he was quite surprised by the end result.

Isn’t this why you, like, direct your scenes? To avoid miscommunication like that?

Chapter 9:

Apparently there were several colour combinations the were tried with Ilia that “did not work”.

Apparently the animation crew’s passion is graphic design.

All the patches of mud on the ground were originally water puddles, but Kerry forgot that while the scene was being animated.

Again, directing.

Chapter 10:

In the scene with Nora being bullied, Miles jokes about that if you feel bad about it, those other kids likely died the next day. To follow that up, Kerry then mentions that they actually considered to have one of those kids lying face down on the ground in the background during the attack. Damn.

Idk how to feel about this but it is kind of disturbing that Miles would be so quick to make that joke.

According to Miles, they actually described Ren’s father in the script as “A handsome Hanzo looking motherfucker”.

guessed everyone who knows of overwatch’s existence

One of the ideas they had that didn’t make it into the episode involved Ren’s father going to see the mayor. Since he’s a hunter, and he had just returned from a hunt, Li was going to talk to the mayor about how they didn’t find any animals and it was almost as if they had been spooked away, and that they should get a Huntsman to come and investigate.

That probably would have made some sense.

According to Kerry, Jaune and Ruby’s moment was originally going to end with them hugging, but was cut due to time and Kerry not wanting people to “worry”.

So Lancaster gets shot down completely, cool. Cool thing of a creator to do. How dare we imply Ruby and Jaune are close after all they’ve been through.

Chapter 11:

Recording Tyrian’s efforts in this episode was a ton of fun according to Miles.

Yeah I bet Miles loved Tyrian.

Kerry’s “proudest accomplishment of this Volume” was having the photo of Whitely on Jacques’ desk be face down after Ironwood slams down on it.

Cool?

Kerry talks about Sun’s abs (as you do) and actually reveals that, contrary to popular belief, they didn’t remove them, but instead Sun’s model was made to be more muscular and they would be picked up by lighting and shadows instead.

Pretty sure Sun’s torso is a tube with the new models.

Chapter 12:

When talking about the fight, it’s mentioned there were several different versions of it. They don’t go into detail, but Kerry does mention that Qrow was originally supposed to do something, but Miles reminds him it’s something they can’t talk about.

God, what is left for Qrow to reveal? We got his weapon’s forms, his Semblance, his transforming thing, what else? Tbh my bet’s on Ozpin’s cane. They planned for him to use the cane but decided against it because of their artifact bullshit.

#rwde

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varaeya · 7 years ago

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Reya Plays Midnight Cinderella: Obligatory filler episode

...part the first.

I started writing this earlier but ended up having to get a friend to frankenstein me a new computer, so apologies for how late this is. I’m almost done Albert’s route, which just released this month, and I’ve decided to write about it after I’m done rather than as I play it. What will I do in the meantime? Well, since MidCin uses a lot of filler text, I’m going to too! =D

Confused? Start here. Missed the previous post? It’s over here.

Let’s start off with yet another apparel mishap:

{Image: My avatar, which is set to the deepest of the three available complexions. Her blush is lighter than her skin due to an error in shading.}

This “Tipsy Red Cheeks” apparel don’t look very red to me, @cyikemen. Honestly, how hard is it to check the apparel on all three complexions before releasing them?

On a completely different note, I want that pretty platter of pastries and tea.

I forgot to mention last time about how Sid keeps telling Aria that he’s never met another woman like her, and how I kept thinking, “You must not have met very many women.” Can we please cut waaay back on this awful trope of how SHPESHUL and UNIQUE and DIFFERENT from all those other “boring girls” the protagonist is? Especially when she does nothing to indicate any uniqueness? I hate how this trope paints women in a single brushstroke. We gals are all a monolith now. ‘Cept for the SUPER SHPESHUL and DIFFERENT and UNIQUE SHNOWFLAKE main character. Is it really so unreasonable to ask for a relatable protagonist?

Anyway, today’s filler post will focus on Manpain’s Ever After route. Because MidCin’s Ever Afters feel like filler to me. They have less chapters than the regular routes. Character growths are very minimal and revolve solely around “love” for our princess. The antagonists are antagonistic for the sake of being antagonistic, complete with cliched motivations. They’re just thrown into the Ever Afters and so don’t leave much of an impression. The crises are uninteresting; they don’t feel like they have any weight because the reactions and conclusions don’t seem real. Hmm, I guess what I mean is that it doesn’t feel like there aren’t any true bad consequences to the supposed “hard” choices that the main characters “have” to make.

I get that this is an otome where things are supposed to end happily. And no, I don’t want every otome to give me the feels, for lack of better term. But MidCin keeps hinting at political crisis or pending war or critical bureaucrats... then fails to really deliver ‘cause everything’s just glossed over. Like, I just want to shake the writers and yell, “PICK ONE! Either give us light and fluffy or serious and thought-provoking! Don’t just pretend you’re trying to be serious!”

And you know what? There’re ways to make the story light and fluffy and still thoughtful. One example that immediately comes to mind is Heartbaked. I might write a quick review post about that otome later if I’ve got the time (whiiiich is looking unlikely right now *cough*). But suffice it to say that it’s so refreshing to play an otome where the bachelors aren’t these incredibly handsome, near perfect paragons but have actual ridiculous but somehow realistic character flaws instead. Also, the music is fantastic.

Back to MidCin and Manpain’s Ever After. I’m going to go based mostly off of memory and excessive amounts of caffeine. If I miss important plot details and/or character interactions, it’s because they weren’t memorable enough.

*drowns in coffee and ice cream*

So like, Louis, now King Manpain, wants to, um, build a bridge or somesuch in this one community to help, uh, *looks at smudged writing on hand* something about transportation of goods. Stuffs gotta go the long way around some body of water and, like, it takes, like, forever? to get supplies to this community of peons commoners.

{Image: Leo and Giles inside a large hall that I suspect is the throne room. Leo is saying to Giles, “That said, Louis sure has some bold ideas, doesn’t he?”}

Since when was building a much needed bridge a bold idea. It’s a bridge, not some new radical policy that’s never been proposed before. It’s not like the people in that region haven’t been complaining about how long it takes to receive goods. Not sure how or why no one’s thought about doing SOMETHING about this issue before Manpain became king. Probably because everyone in this game is incompetent.

There’s this Marquis Alberic who owns a good chunk of the land around said body of water and hates Louis for some stupid reason. So while this marquis agrees - due to public pressure - to the building of the bridge on his land, he secretly sabotages the construction efforts because??? Even though, as pointed out by a nameless bureaucrat, Alberic can’t really use that land for anything. I’m pretty sure I could think of something but I’m not a flat, two-bit antagonist with no personality whatsoever.

Since no one is able to directly pin the construction sabotages on Alberic, the nobles freak out completely on King Manpain because??? and then accuse him of caring more about commoners than nobles because Louis used to be a commoner himself. Beeecause he wanted to continue with the bridge construction despite the sabotages?

Wouldn’t this bridge be good for everyone, not just the commoners? Folks having more buying power and therefore more wealth would also contribute more in taxes. Also, the vast majority of the bureaucrats and nobles were heavily in favour of this bridge when Louis proposed it. They’re just going to suddenly turn heel and blame Louis when it’s pretty obvious an outside source is sabotaging it instead of, oh I don’t know, call for increased security and an investigation into who might be messing up the construction like most reasonable policy makers would? No? Okay then. Throw reason to the wind.

Not gon’ lie, I don’t remember how this was resolved or what Aria did. She was pretty much useless. I’m sure the other characters were praising her for her supposed hard work and queenliness during the entire route. I could look through all the screencaps I took to see how the problem was solved, but where’s the fun in that?

This post was brought to you by summer holidays:

I really wanted to go on a trip this summer but couldn’t because I need to save up for tuition T-T

*UPDATE* Next post is up!

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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The Making of We Bare Bears: The Movie

https://ift.tt/2YUDRci

This We Bare Bears: The Movie interview contains spoilers.

We Bare Bears: The Movie is the perfect send off to the loveable Grizz, Panda, and Ice Bear that have been warming hearts on Cartoon Network since 2015. Their last adventure sees them going up against their own right to simply exist in the world as the government tries to capture them. The story is not only relevant to our times (where racism continues to show its ugly face) but also contains the melancholy that made We Bare Bears such a warm show alongside its trademark humor. It’s truly a special film that does the herculean task of wrapping up a long running series, commenting on the world, and just being the fun we need while going through dark times.

We spoke with show creator Daniel Chong for an in-depth discussion about the making of the film from its original conception to what Chong hopes fans take away from it. He also reveals how the film was reworked, adding a more serious tone to a mostly wacky series, and YouTube culture.

DEN OF GEEK: Let’s go all the way back and let’s talk about the initial process of how the movie came together two years ago. Did you pitch the story to Cartoon Network? Did they ask for a film? How did it go?

DANIEL CHONG: Yeah, they wanted a movie. They basically brought me into a room and they just said, “Would you be interested in making one?” And honestly, it was a call that I’ve been wanting for a while, because coming from Feature Animation, that’s where most of my career was. I felt very confident. I knew it was going to be difficult, no question, but I knew a little bit better what to expect making a movie.

I also felt that we had characters that could exist in a movie. They had enough emotional depth in them or capabilities that I knew that we could sustain them for a long period of time in a movie. So (Cartoon Network) suggested it and we were like, “Sure, we’ll do it.” But we had to write it while we were finishing episodes too. I think we wrote it over the course of a couple months, but at the same time, we were writing 11 minute episodes, and we were finishing episodes (in production).

A lot of it was just stacked for a while. It was a little stressful, but our two main writers, Mikey Heller and Kris Mukai, they really buckled down and were able to multitask and that’s how it got done.

What was the inspiration, the spark, for the initial story? What made you want to do the film that we are now getting to watch?

New Power Rangers Showrunner Reveals Dino Fury Plans

By Shamus Kelley

The first thing that we needed was a sense of scale. We needed a really big idea. One of the big ideas in the movie is there’s a forest fire. Around that time, there were tons of forest fires happening in California and there were images that were floating around in articles of bears that had their paws bandaged up. It was a really sad scene but I think when I saw that, I immediately sent it to our writers and was like, “I think this is what our movie is about. I think this is the big climactic thing that’s going to happen in our movie. Something that involves fire and these bears dealing with a forest fire.”

I immediately knew that that’s something we’d never be able to do on a regular show, it’s just too complicated, it’s too expensive and too busy. But I knew if we had a movie, we should just go for it and do something ambitious. It definitely was also very high on the ambition scale. So I think that felt right.

The second thing that I knew that started to coalesce was that we were basically going to use all the big themes that we’ve used in the show and put it into the movie. And almost, we were going to make fun of the show in the movie.

There’s a a scene where the villain is talking about all the reasons bears shouldn’t exist and walk around humans. In a way, it’s almost like we’re making fun of the show. It’s like, why are bears talking? We’re basically making fun of the cartoon concept that we’ve created and using it to give us a story, because then everybody’s like, yeah, why haven’t we questioned that? That is weird. Why are they walking among us?

And so it was a way to kind of make fun and point at our show and expose it, I guess, and then use that to really set the movie into motion. So I think those were two of the really big ideas that helped motivate where we were going.

You have a lot of serious things going on and you have a lot of comedy. Bagel Rat shows up in this movie! How do you achieve that balance when you’re telling a more serious story?

It was a trial and error thing. I mean, honestly, we already had the show so we knew what a Bears episode looked like. But there were some moments when the emotions weren’t working because we had never gone there before and we didn’t know how to handle a certain levels of emotion.

There was one scene that was a pivotal, emotional scene that was happening before the end of the second act. I remember one of the characters was just in agony. The first time it was pitched, the whole room laughed, and it wasn’t because it wasn’t boarded well, it wasn’t because the scene was written wrong, it’s just that we had never experienced that emotion with our characters and almost was like, “what are we doing? Is this right?”

How Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts Codes Blackness

By Kevin Johnson

It was almost a defense mechanism in some ways. It’s like, this is too heavy, but that’s what you need to do in a movie. Once we put all the pieces together, it’s really just about managing tone and music can help a lot with that. It’s a balancing act, kind of like you said. It’s about finding where does comedy need to exist to lighten it and where do we need to just commit straight to the emotion and the drama? It’s really a trial and error and you just kind of figure out as you go.

But the nice thing is I’ve had this team that worked on this movie for quite a long time. We worked together, we had a really strong workflow, and we just could read each other’s minds. I trusted them, they trusted me and we just all held hands together and really just made a very long episode, essentially. It was a lot of business as usual in some ways where we just were kind of just doing it the way we’ve always done it.

I loved the focus on Grizz in this film. His dream sequence especially was very, very powerful. Talk a little bit about the focus on him and how he really finally has to take responsibility for some of his wacky antiques.

Yeah. I think it’s great that you pointed that out because it was kind of like a late decision to steer it more in his direction. The nightmare never used to really be centralized on him. It was a decision kind of a little later as we started seeing the movie a little better. It made sense because he is the one that’s carrying the burden of his brothers. He is the one that cares for them the most, he always comes up with the ideas, he’s the first one we meet in the movie, and he’s the one that basically has the most responsibility for this family staying together. It just made sense as we were making it. It’s like, no, I think he’s the one that has to lead the charge and bring everyone back together because he’s also the most flawed.

He’s the one that makes the most mistakes and also pushes for things when people don’t want them because he just needs to be a leader. It was fun to find out how important he was going to be to the whole overall arc of the story. But it felt right, I think once we did it, that the older brother is the one that carries that burden.

Was it the nightmare scene originally focused on all three bears then?

The nightmare scene never existed before; it used to be something completely different. When Grizz remembers that flashback with him as a kid, that scene actually used to have all three bears remembering it. But as we got into the writing, we realized, no, I think Grizz is the most important person here. He’s the one that had the nightmare that exposed his vulnerabilities of how much he was concerned about the wellbeing of everyone. He’s the one that can make the most change and bring everyone together.

I love that bit where he’s locked up and he meets all the other bears and they don’t speak human, for lack of a better term. That was so striking to me that, even though he doesn’t understand his own kind, he’s still willing to help them out. That’s just Grizz, that’s just what he would do.

Yeah, totally. Having bears is a big rule breaker for our show. I never wanted to have other bears on our show because it would make our main characters less interesting, but this felt like the right time to do it.

For me, it almost related a lot to being Asian American because I don’t speak my own native tongue either. So I know what it’s like to go back to my country and realize that there are people who have my same heritage but I don’t speak their language. We talked a lot about that experience when we went into that scene and how we would play the miscommunication or the recognizing each other, but at the same time, not being able to communicate.

It’s just so much of your own experience and I’m sure the experience of a lot of people who worked on the film as well. I’m sure it’s just countless experience but feels like it all filtered into the film and made it like the best episodes of the show. They’re very funny but also very, very personal.

How Cardcaptor Sakura’s Queerness Broke Through Censorship

By Shamus Kelley

I think that is the key to what our show is. It’s the personal touch. Knowing that this story had a very personal message that I really cared about and experienced deeply is something that helps. But we try to give a voice to not just the writers or our directors, but even the story artists. We make it in a way that they also get to be participants in the writing and in the brainstorming so that they can put their contributions in. It becomes this amazing hive mind of, how can we make this as authentic of a feeling and experience as possible? I do think a lot of that is just getting the right team that gets along and just cares enough about the show or the movie. That even extends to the art team and the production.

It really makes a difference when they care about what’s being said and what the message is. I think everyone really understood what we were trying to say and really got behind it and really valued it. It really helped the production just move a lot better.

On the more fun side of the film, and the show set the precedent for this, but We Bare Bears gets YouTube and video culture more than any other kid show out there. Since the Bears were so obsessed with it in the show did that mean it had to become a plot in the film as well?

It was always in the DNA of the pitch of the show. I think it’s a risky thing and not a lot of shows want to do it because it can verge on the cringy side. It can also get outdated really quickly and become too topical or too in that moment. So you really always will run the risk of those things when you introduce internet things.

But we just went for it. I hadn’t quite seen it done a certain way so I just said, “I’ll put my own spin on it and I’ll find a way to make it so it doesn’t get outdated too quickly.” And so our first episode was called ‘Viral Video’ and it was about the Bears trying to make a viral video. It was always embedded in the DNA that internet culture and those things were going to be inherent in the film.

We Bare Bears The Movie Reminds Us Of The Series’ True Message

By Shamus Kelley

We Bare Bears Does Episodic Cartoons Right

By Shamus Kelley

As we started bringing in different story artists and different writers, they were all very young, in their twenties and they all were internet cultured kids and it was a big part of their lives. So I just said, “Let’s just go for it. You guys should just write what you guys know and push the things that are funny to you on the Internet and let’s put it in the show.”

I still have to sit through it and if I don’t get the reference enough, I’ll probably have to tell them not to do it. But that’s just kind of the balance that we do. In the movie we just exploited it to the 10th degree. I mean, they did the most cringy viral video you could have imagined, and it almost worked that they were all outdated memes because it had to fail. Then we go into this animal commune and we basically get to expose all these new internet animals, which was really fun to do. We just used the movie to go all out on everything.

Is this film the last time that we’re going to see the adult bears? Is this their final adventure?

My belief is that We Bare Bears hopefully will be a show that can continue on in different ways, not just in spinoffs. I think to me, it’s the perfect vessel for something that could be reinterpreted or carry on for a long time, hopefully, and re-envisioned. I’d like to think that there will be a future where we’ll continue to see Bears for a while, as long as we can keep it interesting.

Note: This interview was conducted before Daniel Chong publicly announced that the film was the finale of the series and that he’d be departing Cartoon Network to work on a unnamed project. He did provide us with a quote reflecting this, which can be read below.

It’s been an incredible journey making We Bare Bears with a crew that I absolutely adore. I’m heartened to know that the response to the show has been so positive, and that I can leave knowing that we brought something good into the world.

After this film comes out, what are you hoping that people take away from it?

It’s funny because I think when we made it, we definitely had a very pointed message that we were very aware of and were thinking would be very relevant. That is one aspect of it but if the movie is not entertaining and not bringing people joy, it fails. It can’t just be a piece of a film that just has a message. So to me, especially when the pandemic hit, I think it became very real to me that maybe a bigger purpose for this show might just be to make people happy and to just bring joy to them. More and more, especially after a pandemic and honestly, to some degree, even now with everything else happening, I do get a lot of messages from people just saying how We Bare Bear’s has been able to be something that’s just made them happy in spite of how horrible things are in the world.

They enjoy seeing the bears and it kind of de-stresses them or makes them feel hopeful. I think that more than anything, if the show can aspire to attain those things? That is good enough. That is a goal that is already exceeding expectations. The message is there if people want it or people want to receive it, it’ll always be there and they can read into it however they want.

But I think for me, if people just like the film enjoy it and it brings them hope and joy? I think that is good enough for me. That’s kind of where my head space is at right now. Maybe it changes in a week, but that’s how I feel right now.

Do you have any other messages to share with either the fans of the show or just any other things that you want to put out into the world?

I’ve been thinking a lot about what making Bears has accomplished, and how I was able to use it to represent my culture and normalize things in episodse that would otherwise be considered so foreign. With everything going on now- I think it’s even more obvious the value of having more diverse animated shows, particularly with African American creators and what that could contribute to pop culture and the way we see the black community. Especially since so many kids watch animation, it would be so formative. My hope is that studios are making a concerted effort to fix that. And I hope I can help contribute to that change with the resources I have.

Stay tuned to Den of Geek for more about We Bare Bears: The Movie as Chong discusses the more serious side of the film and how it tied into the core message of the series.

The post The Making of We Bare Bears: The Movie appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/38p8KJ0

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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strangegeez · 7 years ago

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The defiant HMS Thunder Child attacks the Martian abominations.

I've always wanted to view The War of the Worlds from another perspective. My new vision would remain in the same steampunk realm of Victorian Britain. I admired that era in history. I thought it would be exciting for a reader to see the apocalyptic world through another pair of eyes.Many of us fantasise about escaping into a domain of science fiction. I still live inside a schoolboy’s imagination where I can go on grand adventures and battle mythical Titans. Of course, I always defeat them. I also enjoy historical stories. The feel of being in the land of yesterday is stimulating. From an early age, my mind has always been full of fantasies. I was captivated by the notion of dystopian lands or themes with a turbulent and exciting past.The War of the Worlds fits into sci-fi and historical genres. I freely admit to being biased towards this story on account of it being British based. I'm compelled by much that has a British feel. I also know there are fabulous and wonderful stories from across the world that deserve applause.I remember enjoying The Day of the Triffids and The Chrysalids. Both the novels were written by John Wyndham. I read them during my English literature course. On the historical front, I had fallen madly in love with Lorna Doone. I thought R.D. Blackmore's compelling story was a joy. I never wanted it to end. I wanted to be John Ridd winning the affections of the fairest lady of my fantasy.In my English literature class, the teacher (Mrs Foster) would get each pupil to read allowed for a few pages before selecting another student to continue. Gradually, we developed confidence as we read aloud. My English teacher was very good at encouraging us to be bold and clear when reading. Those pupils that were slow at first, began to read with seasoned ease after a short time. Sometimes the teacher would stop and explain issues that the author was trying to get across. Mrs Foster was also very articulate. When she spoke to the class we listened. She had total control of all us adolescent boys. Many of us fancied ourselves as Jack the lad. But not in Mrs Foster’s class. She was not a strict teacher and was never given to scolding us. She did not have to. This was because she had that infectious enthusiasm to get us into the books. It worked. We all lived inside the pages and chapters. We were encouraged to dive into these worlds and escape. My adrenalin would soar. My imagination knew no bounds. I wanted to live in a world of danger.I’m certain the idea of writing my own story germinated in those English literature classes back in the seventies decade. A happy time when I was at my secondary school. It left me with a love of books. When I started work in the city of London, I always looked forward to commuting. I would have my book to read going to, and coming home from work.When I first read The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells, I started to imagine how I might be a Victorian British sailor from the time of 1898. This occurred when reading a particular episode that compelled me to dwell on the incident for a long time afterwards. Perhaps a little on the obsessive side. I was on board the HMS Thunder Child. I could see H.G. Wells’ horrendous portrayal of Britain in panic. The alien fighting machines shooting heat rays and blanketing the conquered land with sterilizing black smoke. In reality, I was sixteen and going work in London. The year was 1977 and the train was rolling along. I was a low-grade filling clerk in a Re-insurance company. I watched underwriters dealing with Re-insurance brokers from Lloyds. Yet I wanted to be sixteen and in the Victorian Royal Navy of 1898. In this illusion, I was low-grade sea cadet watching the powers that be deal with this uncanny situation. A surreal world where giant Martian contraptions stalked the Earth.I wanted to know more of the HMS Thunder Child and her plucky crew. The intrepid ship was a monument of heroism. The most valiant vessel on Earth. Mythical, but real in my mind's eye. A reader could live in that danger and return to a cosy chair afterwards. How did the Victorian ship arrive at such a circumstance? Perhaps the crew had never seen such things as the Martian fighting machines. The HMS Thunder Child would be at sea. News of such alien abominations would come via strange semaphore messages. Imagine the surreal information coming from the shore stations. Invaders from Mars striding about and destroying the entire fabric of human civilization. Would you believe such outrageous fixations? The HMS Thunder Child would be alive with speculation and disbelief.As readers of the original story, we would know these sailors would be destined to confront three Martian fighting machines. The huge monster tripods that will wade into the River Blackwater to attack a paddle steamer full of fleeing refugees. The small ironclad would steam to the rescue. The coal-driven engines would move her between the Martians and the escaping boat. The HMS Thunder Child against the monumental three. Each abomination, a colossal edifice of battle. That would be the final goal of the story. Everything must lead to the climactic conflict. The small section of the original story. A pastiche to lure an avid science fiction reader.

When the time was right.One day, I decided I would go further with my pretence. I would go aboard the legendary ship and invite others who might wish to come along. I would write a pastiche story dedicated to The H.M.S. Thunder Child. I began to imagine the captain and other ranks. I looked through history books and decided the ship would look like HMS Devastation. I knew my aim for the story. I had an end before the adventure had started. Now I needed a beginning and a compelling storyline between start and finish. There were so many rudimentary ideas. With these basic concepts, I begin to write things down. As I did, more thoughts began to manifest and soon my appetite for the tale began to take control.

I Needed a New Perspective.The classic sci-fi tale could be shown from a new and unique perspective. I wanted to re-create the dystopian world of Victorian Britain in chaos. Being on board the HMS Thunder Child would be a magnificent way to offer a fly on the wall account. Watching from the sea as though one could be a spectator from a safe distance. A new viewpoint through the eyes of the Royal Navy crew. The pastiche novel had to convey a greater understanding and appreciation of the original classic.

The Pastiche Project

Step1. The Tale Begins to develop

The book was an enjoyable venture and many fine ideas fell into place. The delightful indulgence took the best part of a year. A little here and there. It became my hobby. A forbearance that took up much of my free time. A tolerance that I easily allowed for myself. It was like being an artist trying to paint a landscape. Except my panorama was with words and it could move. The whole endeavour was wonderful and very absorbing. Gradually I got to the finishing line of my written work contribution.

Step 2. The Next Phase of the Story’s Creation

No matter how pleased we should be with ourselves we must stop and think. We are pleased because we have got all of our wonderful words down on a canvas of creation. We must get a liberated assessment. Especially if the writer is an independent author. There will be many mistakes and a good critic will wade in and unpick every sentence.I knew that the next step for my story would require proper editing. I put my project before a board of qualified editors. They began to bid for the editorial work of my story. These bids came with an overall price and some sample pages to show what the editorial work looked like.

Step 3. Choosing Your Freelance Editor

It is important to know that good online editorial agencies have a list of qualified editors. These people must have all the relevant qualifications. The agencies will check these and only recruit freelance editors that make the grade. It is important to know that there are a lot of predators out there.I selected an editor after some sample pages came back. There were many that were good and choosing from so many fine bids was hard. I was spoilt for choice. Then the professional editorial work followed, chapter by chapter. There were many errors that I had missed time and again. I was pleased that I had accomplished the written work but realised I could not see the wood for the trees. Each page seemed to be a sea of red. Nothing escaped scrutiny. I got my page in red and the edited one side by side. Although I was shocked by the many errors, when I read the newly edited version, I was thrilled by how better the story flowed. I would advise any independent author to get good editorial work done.

Step 4. I Needed a Front Cover to Capture One’s Imagination.

After the editorial work came the front cover. Again, there were so many artists that put in bids for this work. There were lots of wonderful samples. I felt guilty having to choose one and reject so many other fabulous bids. I think the completion of the cover design caused my excitement to reach a new and undreamed of height. This was it. The moment had arrived.Finally.My adaptation was done. A science fiction and alternative history pastiche of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds. The Martians did fall from the sky in 1898. I could offer science fiction lovers a chance to join the crew of the HMS Thunder Child as she embarked upon her incredible voyage. Walk her decks before her courageous battle with three Martian tripod fighting machines. An action that takes place on the River Blackwater in the county of Essex, England, the UK. The golden age of Queen Victoria's Empire. An alternative British Empire in a more dreadful circumstance. An empire that is vanquished within days.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1484088263/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_U_x_lm4rAbV18Z6E7

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#steampunk scifi #sciencefiction #science fiction #apocalypse #dystopia #war of the worlds #adaptation #scifi #Thunder Child #martians #Alien invasion #Reading Books #Kindle #kindle unlimited

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autoirishlitdiscourses · 8 years ago

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Discourse of Tuesday, 28 February 2017

I think that a cynical and dangerous rhetoric has co-opted a historical truth, but I don't think those criteria really apply here. Again, thank you for doing a strong job of making. I feel that it's fresh in their introductions and/or capability. I don't fully know myself the professor and see what other people talking. Forster said. Additionally, you did quite well in many ways to do that, and the 1916 Easter Rising, and you deployed humor well.

Thank you so much thought and writing are as nuanced and graceful, and your writing is very strong delivery. After grading your presentation. You're got a really strong essay in a late paper is straining to do as soon as possible productive ways that you prepared more material than was actually turned in up to him. Think about what your priorities are if you will engage actively, vocally, and had some important causal elements in and/or embarrassed in places, with Stephen's rather strained relationship with each other than brute strength. 20 November discussion of a few more lines, each of your/grade, though as I can help you grow as a threat to order, civilization, rational thought, that you had a chance that someone could disagree with you, plus a few people who decide they want to cover Ulysses. Think about how you'd like; you also gave an engaged, and you didn't hear this: Ultimately, it's not as useful that way:/Anything and everything looks good to me, and haven't quite punched through to even more effectively. I have one of the play, but reaches this length by tweaking the format of the poem you didn't choose and why that connection, and you asked some very minor error, a free Excel clone. You did a number of important goals well, and make your paper to problematize the issues. Yes, there is going to be at least represents itself as a way into Ulysses, it could be done; I feel bad about that. You may not have made any concessions to the aspects of the title and copyright page from the horrors of the poem even more successful would be to go over fifteen minutes if you're still scrambling for those.

I think it's too late to start participating now, you should rightfully be proud of. You move over some important thematic issues of relevance will, of Godot is about, or at your cell phone—is cause for disciplinary action. I think that you need to do that metaphorically. Again, you've done some very good job of making an audible tone. Could enter into this task of analytical writing. Thank you. Hi!

See you tomorrow morning!

It turns out that there are two potential difficulties that Stephen has with Irish nationalism, for the midterm and the discussion overall. Ultimately, like getting letters of recommtion, because there were things that would mean that you performed the selection you've made and how each part of this, and you helped to project a bit in the back of your readings of Godot and would almost certainly learn more about me than you do such a good night.

Does that help? He may have required a bit nervous, but there are large-scale concerns that Ulysses has a goatee. Yet another potentially useful gender-based than I had the answers to questions from other sources, and your analytical exploration of the Discussion Section Guidelines handout, which, given the context of a letter grade is OK. Hi, everyone is also a good choice, and an estimate of where they're going to be spending time thinking about them. One of these are all very small number of points in the play as a whole, and I've just been going through them and wind up with a passage that is related to your presentation tomorrow! 5% on the syllabus, of Yeats are thoughtful, reflective piece and your bonus for the English-language writer from Coleridge's time forward. You can potentially use this as being the natural outcome of the things holding you back from your outline is a pretty strong, I would most need to cancel my office with the texts you've chosen as a postcolonial novel as a group to read. You might also choose any poem at all a serious possibility, but in the English Language; Giorgio Agamben's Homo Sacer. I'd also guess that he had lived. You provide some tantalizing suggestions but never quite come out and take a look at how he postures like a natural bridge from #4. If I have to take so long to get a higher overall grade for the quarter overall you did quite well done. It's all yours! Though it's not intrusive and doesn't delay your presentation by the previous presenter had warmed the section Twitter stream while we were reading it. —I've really enjoyed having you in section we will have noted that he will be paying attention to the poem I've heard it before you finished early. I think that your reading of Ulysses. Again, I think that you read attentively, that you made the choices you've made and how that has profitably set you up and either satisfies or frustrates the expectation for its repetition. If people aren't talking because they haven't read; it's of more benefit to introduce a large group of graduate students who are interested in completing the honors section, not on me. I'll see you then. However, you will have other priorities instead of trying to get into one of the paper means that, ultimately, do you think that your paper more organically together to make a habit of it myself, since I'm going to be sure you're correct and prepared to defend it; it's of more benefit to introduce the text exactly right down to the connections between the large lecture hall because.

I think that your grade. Because you're specifically interested in getting into the next presenters, and will not be exhaustively articulated in lecture, and listens to a question. Overall, you know that you were my student who sent a panicked email after sleeping into the final, is 50, some people.

Thanks for being a strongly religious woman whose son is not to do this well in the third line of the midterm to pass' policy is that it naturally wants to have toward the Nugents there are probably mandated by the metaphor. I would like me to do to get people to characterize it what is accomplished by the date for Spalpin Fanach. I'll post it as-is and what are Joyce's attitudes toward sexuality in general, and some of them in some ways in which I suspect from previous experience that we've read this poem is very lucid and enjoyable. In these circumstances, though as I take to be a productive place to close-reading exercise of your argument? You must also provide me with a bit short.

For instance, if you'd compressed your initial proposal. I don't think that the questions that you examine as part of the total quarter grade at the end why is this Friday, I hope you're feeling better soon! One of my section website if you found interesting, and some hesitations and corrections, but you were waiting for the course website:. No! /at Wikibooks: Daniel Swartz's article 'Tell Us in Plain Words': An Introduction to Reading Joyce's 'Ulysses': Joyce's two structural schema of/four-thirds/of your passage, getting 95% on the grading rubric that what you're going to depend on most directly would be more or less like a good student. Nicely done. You can continue forward as-is if you score less than thrilled about with this is a productive direction, but really, really, really nice work. I myself tend to do both at once, necessarily, but you adjusted gracefully to questions and letting the class, now that I'm speaking from experience here. I occasionally feel that your decision to talk. I believe that I? So, this was not my intent is to let yourself be more specific this may result in automatic course failure because you will have to leave my office! One thing that might help students to make real contributions to the overall purpose of helping to advance an original line of discussion. 97%. 3 were all over the break. Let me know and we'll work out a mutually agreeable time for someone who lived in Santa Barbara. I will be worth a similar number of things well here: you had an A in the best way to find that the professor's syllabus specifies that your topic, I suppose, is the general overall trend of the plays on the previous presenter had warmed the group as a forum for substantial discussions about money more comprehensible. 177. Also: remember that its structure was articulated more explicitly—the refusal to push your argument though there are no meaningful differences—there are several good ideas here, you gave in section. You do a very good job of structuring an in-class one-third of a combination that would then be reciting as soon as possible. I will be noon on Wednesday. Thank you for a job well done overall. I recall correctly, is a productive logical path through your selection specifically enough that you want and take a look and see what other students, followed by all readers/viewers of the entire class, the highest grade that a cynical and dangerous rhetoric has co-opted a historical narrative is fair to all of the first episode of Ulysses that we have discussed your grade on the Aran Isles: love of one's country is a violent and sadistic serial killer; on the exam, research paper. As promised in the paper. Have a good student this quarter. I've marked some places. All in all, and that poetry is an impressive move, but looser ones that would then be reciting Patrick Kavanagh, On the Concept of History, which shows that you're talking about home in general, but does perhaps suggest that everything goes well and that I will not necessarily benefit you:/Ulysses/is not horribly complicated at the third line of your discussion questions that are very impressive moves. Great! Hi, and not because you provide a useful skill, too, and he's writing about one of three people reciting from Godot or McCabe's The Butcher Boy. 4, and that's also an impressive delivery. Well done on this. So, you had thought closely about it more in terms of the telltale signs that you've constructed and draw it out sooner, because a visit to the people who have not yet been updated to reflect the Thanksgiving weekend, everyone! Unfortunately, I can't imagine why he missed. You did a good student this quarter, and you touched on some important things to think about the absolute last piece of writing in order to be over. As it turns out that I think that they describe and how we react to Lecter and how you want to say. This will be much much much more candid on Reddit than I was waiting until I realized that each day that the overall logical and narrative paths that your central claim expressed in your delivery was solid in a different direction.

I have waiting and will incur a heavy penalty of one-third of a person's thoughts based on it. I didn't anticipate at the beginning of my margin notes because your focus on whatever revs your engine, intellectually speaking, of course agree with the group. Walking beside Molly in Ulysses and Godot that might help students to review that document anyway, right now. There are two potential problems that I've pointed to in my earlier email.

Here's what I am willing to answer these questions, OK? But it's entirely normal when you want me to answer right now, actually though I feel this way. To-morrow the hour of the female figure and with sensitivity; written gracefully and in a genuinely collaborative, rather than 10, but this is a good job with a judgment, and has a particular orthodoxy of belief or that themes are reflected in your home you poor little Rudy had lived. The Butcher Boy; Stephen Dedalus's rather morbid and misogynist fixation on the final. Being chivalrous in the symbolism of the quarter. I do not miss any other questions, OK? In order to contribute.

My point is more likely selection. I've heard it before and am happy to meet students outside of your idea of what I'm expecting it's a concentrated bit that represents, in order to be more specific thesis statement, though it might not. Well done, both of us, then go from there, and had a B paper is due or a report. 6 p.

You should format it so that my daytime responsibilities on campus on Monday, if you send me an outline for the final, and why is this exploration of a letter grade for the quarter. You do a good set of numbers is in how you're phrasing your central argument as your topic to topic. Let me know. Have a good plan going into the next week in which students often make a two-minute and two-minute and prevents you from analyzing closely. The sample paper available from the opening of Lucky's speech and, Godot TBD, McCabe TBD McCabe TBD Remember that the questions were so effective working together that you examine. This is not a substitute for coming to section I was waiting until I had properly remembered who you were trying to promote discussion is going OK for you to construct a narrative/logical path through them in section next week, constantly had thoughtful and focused, and let me know, and to revise it while you are present/at the beginning would have asked yourself what you need to participate actively in the best way to move further on. Just a reminder email in just before it was written close to this is a good selection, gave what was overall an excellent winter break! I understand how important it is difficult in this task of analytical writing. I've marked everything that you were nervous and a mountainy ram, and you display a thoughtful delivery of a female role model would have been a good night, due to nervousness and/or social construction of femininity in any reasonable way, nor does it express their situation, and an even better quality, but there are no specific formatting or topical or length requirements.

However, if there's anything to talk about. See you at 3:00 section and are perfectly capable of tipping the scales in this passage has Francie being passively aggressive toward the Nugents as Anglo-Irish Literature, fall 2013 at UC Santa Barbara, who told it to introduce the text itself in some ways in this regard. Well done on this subject from the paper, in the assignment write-up exam tomorrow in section two, this means that you need to do.

Keep your eye more clearly on the final. You could theoretically also file a petition to get a grade in a solid elementary job of contextualizing your selection on pp 58-59, Godot 8-9, rather than counting on me to think more specifically what the relationship between the selection you've made and how much time you have a good overview of your own argument even more than the syllabus. All in all, you've done your research paper. VIII.

Hawthorn blossoms are gathered by young men in literary texts, and seemed to warm up more midterms from my other section I've ever worked have managed two out of the poem.

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