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aossimusings · 4 months ago

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Claire from the Bear, and why she's not badly written, she's just not occupying the character role people expect of her and they don't know what to do with that

Alright. I'm bringing some film student analysis to The Bear, and subsequently, Claire, because I'm tired of people saying crazy things like, "she's a manic pixie dream girl" or that her character is underdeveloped or badly written or that she's pure male fantasy or any other crazy, extremist reaction to her character, when really, I think she's occupying a different character role than we're used to seeing from characters like hers, and in typical The Bear fashion, we as an audience are not being told how to interpret her character with words, but with visual and narrative structure.

Be warned, this is a very, very long post.

Lets take a minute to understand narrative structure in film:

There's an A plot and a B plot. The A plot is what is referred to as "the promise of the premise." It's why you come to watch what you watch. The B plot is all the emotional character development/growth that undergirds the A plot and makes it emotional and impactful. So in the Bear, The A plot is the whole thread of, let's fix the Beef -> let's make a new restaurant -> let's get a star, etc etc, that evolves with each season. The B plot is mostly centered on Carmy (although other characters also have their own smaller B-plots) and on him healing from his grief and family and kitchen trauma and finding himself as a person, etc etc.

Claire as a character is a B-plot character. Her role as a character is to be a part of Carmy's emotional B-plot development, whereas the rest of the characters in the show occupy roles in both the A plot and the B plot. In a show centered

The thing that I think is causing a lot of the discourse around her character is the fact that she's not occupying a typical character role for her sort of character, and then people don't know what to do with her. They're either trying to slot her into a a bad female character role (like a manic pixie dream girl) and are then angry that that type of character would be included in the show, or they think she's a badly written attempt at a more developed character and are then angry because they think her character was fumbled, when in fact, she's neither.

Let's take a minute to examine these two roles:

The Manic Pixie Dream Girl

A manic pixie dream girl as defined by the Oxford language dictionary is:

"(especially in film) a type of female character depicted as vivacious and appealingly quirky, whose main purpose within the narrative is to inspire a greater appreciation for life in a male protagonist."

On paper, I can see why people would say that she's a MPDG. She's a little quirky, and she appears to "inspire a greater appreciation for life" in Carmy. She's a doctor, but she's a bad driver, she loves Mondays, she shoplifted in high school for the adrenaline rush, etc, etc. But I would argue that she's not actually a MPDG because her role in the narrative is fundamentally different than that of a MPDG.

In terms of narrative, MPDGs are a catalyst. They are crucial to the movement of the plot and the development of the main character. Specifically, they're supposed to be a catalyst for main male character growth. This is part of why MPDGs are a sort of problematic character -- the idea that they don't get dimension as a character, yet their entire role is to catalyze the main male character's positive growth and evolution is sexist. They aid the MMC at the cost of their personhood.

However, notably, Claire doesn't actually inspire positive growth in Carmy. He is not made better for knowing her. He doesn't grow as a person, learn from his mistakes. He isn't calmer or nicer in the kitchen, he doesn't resolve any of his trauma, I would argue that he doesn't even have a "greater appreciation for life" as is critical to the relationship between the MMC and the MPDG; he is just as depressed and anxious for knowing her as he was when he didn't know her.

So Claire: not a manic pixie dream girl, despite being quirky and trying to "inspire a greater appreciation for life."

The Badly Written Main Female Character

I think for a lot of viewers, if Claire isn't a MPDG to them, she's viewed as a badly written, badly developed main female character, who isn't afforded a lot of screen time, and as such, is one dimensional because she doesn't get much character development.

Wait, what? She's a badly written main character without a lot of screen time to develop? But part of being a main character is to have significant screen time to develop! But Claire doesn't have a lot of screen time... Tina has more screen time. Sugar has more screen time. Marcus has more screen time. It's almost like...Claire isn't a main character, even though, as a love interest, she occupies a role typically only allowed to main characters.

So then...what is she? To understand her narrative role, we need to take a minute to understand what Carmy's B-plot has established thus far. My apologies for the following, very drawn out explanation of Carmy's mental health. I promise I'll return to Claire, but this is important.

Carmy's B-plot (aka, the emotional stuff)

Seasons 1 through 3 are essentially following Carmy having a slow, drawn out breakdown. Or rather, it's not slow. It's a pretty realistic depiction of someone who is pretty mentally/emotionally unwell continuing to not get the help that he needs, and trying to fix things unsuccessfully on his own. But admitting that he's unwell feels like admitting defeat, so he's trying to fix things while never actually admitting that he needs help, and as such, is in a self-destructive spiral of trying to fix things unsuccessfully, feeling out of control because of it, trying to fix different things unsuccessfully, feeling even more out of control, etc etc.

By S3, we have a better understanding of the Berzatto family structure: an unnamed father who walked out leaving them in debt, Donna who is/was an alcoholic and otherwise emotional black hole, Mikey who died at age 43 (born 1979, died 2022 as seen on his prayer card), Sugar who's 36 a year after his death (born 1988, confirmed by her hospital intake in Ice Chips), and Carmy who is 26 a year after Mikey's death (confirmed by the original script.) So when Carmy was born, Sugar was 10 and Mikey was 18. This is important because in light of Fishes and Ice Chips, Donna was an alcoholic for as long as they were children, was incredibly unpredictable with mood swings, poor emotional regulation and maybe even emotional abuse (see how Carmy and Sugar essentially are trying to regulate their mother's emotions in Fishes), and probably some physical altercations if Donna's behavior in Fishes is anything to go by. Sugar explicitly says that she frightened all of her children. Mikey was probably the de facto parent in a lot of instances, being the only other adult in the household. The fact that he was also an addict, and as seen in Fishes, also violent or unpredictable at times, complicates this. S3E1's scene with Sugar and Carmy at the airport implies that after Mikey started cutting Carmy out (and struggling with addiction) Sugar started to assume that parental role. So that's a whole fucked up childhood right there, with very little room to healthily develop emotions or coping mechanisms or an understanding of healthy relationships. In ice-chips, Sugar demonstrates that she's aware of this. "I ask people if they're okay way too much," and "I'd make myself sick to make you feel better." Everything with Carmy's character demonstrates that he does not have this self awareness.

Carmy explains in his al-anon monologue that the rhythm of the kitchen became soothing to him, because it was so rigid and so predictable (a direct contrast to his home life.) But while it was soothing, he also cut contact with people in his life, because the self-isolation made things "quiet" (and probably gave him a feeling of control, like most self-destructive impulses do) which led to him being incredibly isolated and incredibly dependent on work as a coping mechanism by the time he ends up working with the abusive NYC chef. Important thing to note about that: now his only coping mechanism has been polluted by abuse as well, and the trauma of that will haunt him increasingly throughout the seasons (coupled with the fact that he's probably never learned how to healthily process his own emotions, in part because he ended up having to set them aside to emotionally regulate his own mother.)

Then Mikey kills himself. (which again, is the fucked-up family figure of brother and parent and addict and idol all rolled into one suddenly dying on you after abruptly cutting your out of their life)

I say all this because I want to make very clear that mentally, Carmy is not well. Across his various al-anon monologues, the fridge conversation, his flashbacks, etc. it becomes really clear that he's never really had any sense of safety or security in his life except for maybe when he was 18-24 when he did the French Laundry, Ever, Noma, and Daniel. The amount of anxiety that he experiences in his day to day life is not normal, it's not healthy. It's exhausting and damaging. He's also probably pretty depressed, and probably had been even before Mikey and NYC chef. He talked about in al-anon that when he was a kid, he could never feel happy or excited about anything because he was always waiting for the other shoe to drop (arguably because of his mother, because if she was upset, she made everyone else upset to deal with it, and if she was happy, he was waiting for her mood to shift.) We very rarely actually see him happy or joyful in any of the seasons. So basically, as evidenced by that and what we see in the seasons, he's got this really damaging spiral of anxiety and depression, where he's so anxious he can't feel happy.

Pursuit of happiness is actually what brings us to Claire as a character. He meets her almost right after he talks in al-anon about the fact that he should "provide amusement and enjoyment" for himself. Then he meets her in a grocery store, and promptly, and deliberately, gives her the wrong phone number. Personally, I read this as Carmy knowing that he's not ready for a relationship. He pursues it anyways, for likely 2 reasons:

Pursuit of happiness. Sugar always wanted him to get away from the Beef in S1, now he's trying to get some space and do something to "provide amusement and enjoyment"

Mikey! In Fishes, Mikey was really excited about the prospect of Carmy dating Claire. At the time, Carmy was like WTF, but in the wake of Mikey's death, this is probably a way of connecting with him. See, I can do it! I can date a girl! I can do this thing that you thought would make me happy. I can be normal. I can be what you wanted.

Now a little film student analysis:

One thing that I love about the Bear is that they're really good at the whole concept of "show don't tell". You'll hear about this a lot in writing advice, but it's actually even more relevant in film. Here's a good example from the bear:

The Bear never, ever says that Carmy has anxiety. I'm not even sure if the word "anxiety" is even said onscreen. Instead, The Bear shows:

Carmy drinking bottles of Pepto Bismal and chewing fistfuls of Tums, yet rarely eating anything

Carmy sleep walking and almost setting his apartment on fire

the sheer amount of nervous energy he has (tapping spoons, sharpies, cigarettes, etc. , never standing still, being generally twitchy)

some really great tricks with filming and lens that make the world around him shift focus, shift perspective, blur, and otherwise visually simulate the effects of an anxiety/panic attack.

In film, you have to be incredibly intentional about what you keep in and out. In my first film class, when we were doing film analysis, a lot of people would start "I'm not sure if this was intentional, but..." and the film teachers immediately shut that down with this statement:

"assume everything is intentional. even if it wasn't, someone still chose to leave it in" meaning that, in film, what you see on screen is actually a fraction of the material that filmmakers had to work with; if something makes it through to the final cut, it was important.

I mentioned before that despite Claire occupying a main character role as a love interest, she does not get main character screen time. Like I said above, I think a lot of people perceive this as her character being done a disservice, that she's badly written, that she's meant to be this perfect male fantasy, etc, etc.

Firstly, I present to you the fact that characters such as Sugar, Sydney, Tina, Donna, all have absolutely beautiful storylines and arcs. They're complex, well-written characters. I don't believe that Claire's lack of screen time is because the show-runners secretly idolize manic pixie dream girls and women of "male fantasy" and thus Claire is supposed to be this perfect person who doesn't need any screen time to be developed (which feels like a thread I've seen a lot.). I really don't think the show runners are secret misogynists. Sorry.

What I do believe is that Claire as a character is not meant to be central to the story. The show very intentionally spends more time developing Carmy's relationships with Sydney, Tina, Sugar, Richie than it does with Claire. Why? A host of reasons.

1. Because Claire is a new form of escapism for him, not that the kitchen is no longer is sanctuary.

I talked before about how after the NYC chef, and I would argue, now that he's trying to start his own restaurant, his one safe space of the kitchen has become polluted with the same chaos and/or abuse from the rest of his life which he spent years running away from. But because he's so isolated, he has no where else to go. So he creates somewhere to go, by creating a relationship with Claire. That relationship is his new form of escapism.

The show communicates that to us in one very specific way: 90% of the time, if Carmy is with Claire, we don't see him. This is not 100% true 100% of the time, but there was a clear pattern that developed in S2 that time spent with Claire is time spent off screen. I think a lot of people see this as "not developing Claire's character" and not giving her screen time, when in fact it's more so about Carmy's absence.

When he ditches Sydney to move boxes with Claire, we never see that scene. We just assume that he was doing it.

When Sydney is trying to figure shit out in the restaurant by herself, it's implied that Carmy is with Claire, but we don't cut to them.

When Carmy talks to Sydney about all the menu things he talked about with Claire, we never see those scenes.

Why? Because he is escaping The Bear by being with her. It would be a very different narrative if we actually did see these scenes, because it would demonstrate that they have an emotional weight and importance in the show. Instead, they're defined by their absence.

Carmy and Claire's relationship is defined by its absence in the show.

2. Claire is not the right type of partner for Carmy, and we're not supposed to believe that she is.

I think it's interesting to look at Carmy's relationship with Claire through Sugar's relationship with Pete. I was talking with some people and they observed that in a lot of ways, it makes sense that Sugar would be with Pete because he is completely non-threatening. In many ways, he's the opposite to most of the men in the Berzatto family (note: I'm not saying Berzatto men are threatening.) But Berzatto men are loud, and opinionated. Some of them engage in behaviors such as: screaming in their kitchen, and throwing spoons and sharpies; throwing forks like darts at their relatives and also shouting; telling their nephews that there nothing and worthless and will never be anything; walking out on their families and leaving them in debt; lording their financial success over various family members. You also have Donna as a parental figure who also throws things violently, yells and screams, is an emotional black hole, and has aggressively grabbed Sugar at least once. Pete is about as far away from all of this as you can be.

I think that Claire is Carmy's Pete in a lot of ways. She's quiet, and calm, she's non-threatening, etc. She's not emotionally manipulative, she doesn't ask much of him (so when she does ask things of him, it's a welcome escape), she is a doctor, which is meant to help people. However, and part of why I don't think their relationship would work in the long run, is that Carmy doesn't need a Pete. Sugar has an emotional intelligence that Carmy doesn't, for one thing. For another, as alluded to by Ice Chips with Sugar listening to the podcast about Adult Children of Alcoholics, each of them were affected differently by their traumatic childhood. And quite frankly, I think that Carmy needs someone who can be gentle and empathic and quiet with him, but also someone who won't take his shit and can stand up to him. (because unlike Sugar, who tends to internalize everything, Carmy has a tendency to externalize everything.) He tends to take it out on the people around him, and I think he needs someone who can simultaneously shut that down and hear him out. And I don't think Claire is that.

3. The chemistry just isn't there.

I don't want to get into an argument about shipping. I can't predict if Carmy is going to get back with Claire after some emotional development, or if he's meant to be with Sydney, or whatever. Personally, I think that any discussion of a relationship is premature (and I think that Carmy knew that subconsciously when he gave Claire a wrong number and was very hesitant on the phone when she called him the first time.)

What I have observed is this: the few scenes that we do see of Carmy and Claire feel a lot less emotionally charged than other scenes in the show. Forgetting romantic relationships, there is so much more emotion and connection in the following scene than in the scenes we see with Carmy and Claire:

Richie and Carmy's conversation about purpose in S2.

Carmy and Sydney's conversation under the table in S2.

Carmy and Mikey's conversation in the pantry in Fishes.

The snippet in the fridge when Carmy's talking to Tina.

The scene with Claire that really sticks out to me having emotional weight is the scene in S3 where they talk about the days of the week, Carmy's hand scar, and Claire accidentally almost killing that girl in the ER. It hurt so much you couldn't feel it. Firstly, it's telling that that scene happened in flashback, not during their relationship, and secondly, the main thesis of that scene was more of a commentary on trauma than it was about their chemistry (ie, Carmy is so traumatized atm, he doesn't realize that he is because of how much it hurts.)

This demonstrates to me that a) the show writers can write emotionally powerful scenes, and scenes with chemistry, and b) the lack thereof in scenes with Claire was an intentional choice because it demonstrates that other relationships are more important for Carmy's character than the one with Claire.

For all that Carmy said that he loved Claire, we never see any evidence of it. It's told, not shown. Whereas his affection for other people in his life isn't mentioned, but it is shown: "I have time for this" and sitting down to talk to Richie about purpose. Buying Sydney a monogrammed chef's coat because she liked his.

His relationship with Claire is important for what it helps demonstrate: his desire for escapism, his self-destruction, his emotional immaturity, the fact that he has other very important relationships and that he needs to deepen those bonds, the fact that he needs to get his priorities in order. It's not so much about Claire. And maybe that will read as sexist to some, because it's more about him than it is about her, but I don't think she's really meant to be a main character either.

#the bear #the bear hulu #carmen berzatto #claire the bear #character analysis #carmy berzatto #the bear fx

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absolutebl · 11 months ago

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TOP 10 BL Trends of 2023

This is just me with my analysis hat on.

1. 2023 = the year EVERYONE went outside their lanes

Everything went topsy-turvy this year in BL.

For example, Korea gave us agonized yearning and outright queerness (The 8th Sense, The New Employee) while Japan served up soft office workers and tender family (Our Dining Table).

The BL world went askew for a while, especially in the spring of 2023.

Not that we still didn’t still get Korea’s soft angsty bubbles or Japan’s “what are you doing and why does it hurt?” kink-fests. But there were quite a few BLs that made us chronic watchers sit up in confusion and wonder if Korea was dabbling in Taiwan’s territory or Japan in Thailand’s. Then they fudged the kisses and we were like... okay, back in familiar territory.

In contrast, Thailand stayed course-correcting for the damage they’ve done in the past with tropes (2022) and self referential meta criticism (2021), but also almost aggressively returned to their BL roots after last year’s series of shockers. Certainly, they are reexamining those roots, transplanting some, aerating others. But they really went back to classic Thai university and high school BL and pulps in a big way in 2023.

Taiwan is always difficult to gage because they produce so few but they seem to have stuck with what they do best with no deviation while producing more this year than they have in ages. I’m happy for that, why change a good thing? But there is a tiny part of me that really wants them to hit it out of the part with a quality piece soon. For me, We Best Love still reigns supreme, but I would really like the HIStory franchise to give us that level but longer - like a happy version of Your Name Engraved Herein. I think Taiwan has the chops to give us something as good as The 8th Sense or Old Fashion Cupcake but in their style, and I would like to see them exercise their talent for good rather than just profit.

I know, what a very odd thing for me to say. But if any BL is going to break into the mainstream American market, I genuinely think it’s most likely come from Taiwan.

Vietnam and the Philippines are falling behind, in general. They just didn’t bring out very many shows in 2023, and what the brought out tended to fub the endings. This is forgivable in Japan (because of their style and quality) but not what watchers want in the lower production value propositions. In other words, if you do a pulp, you can’t mess up the ending (by romance standards). that doesn’t look to be changing anytime soon.

2. The Office Romance Dominated

After years of Thailand serving us an endless (and slightly bland) buffet of university (and a few high school) BLs, this year Korea was basically like...

Ofiice. We like the Office. It’s cheap to film we can use grown up actors, acting (mostly) their actual age.

And yeah... it totally worked.

To be fair, Japan has always given us office live action yaoi from the beginning (they had the source material) but this year everyone else, including Thailand, seriously started playing in this setting.

3. Boys Danced with Boys

The darling @heretherebedork was a big fan of this one, and I rather like it myself. Prior to this boys dancing together was very very rare in BL, but this year we got way more than our fair share. It was lovely.

Never Let me Go

My School President

Bed Friend

The Day I Loved You

Step by Step

Be Mine Superstar

Tie the Not

Dangerous Romance

I think there were a few more. These are the ones I remembered to write down.

4. Getting (even more) Meta With Tropes

BL has been getting more and more meta over the past few years but this year they really focused in on tropes specifically. Calling out their own biggest and most favorite tropes in a massive way, especially Thailand and especially GMMTV.

Like they tunneled in on damaging tropes with Bad Buddy and the like over the past 2 years, and now they are just having fun with us.

I mean they just started the dancing trope and already they are calling it out? That’s like rapid-fire regurgitated meta there, GMMTV.

5. Cameos are the norm now

Taiwan has always loved cameos but in the past the other countries have been show and steady with only one or two a year. (Unless Japan does a parody.)

This year Korea got in on the game.

Korea rarely starts trends but they do adopt smaller and lesser known existing ones and make them super popular.

This year they did that with cameo couple appearances, even borrowing a few of Thailand’s pairs (TutorYim and MaxNat traveled north). They did it so much I stopped tracking. Love Class 2, Why R U?, and Jun & Jun were the heaviest hitters.

Taiwan, of course, came back swinging. Kiseki was the gum-ball machine of pair cameos. (In Taiwan mafia = gay.)

6. We are entering the cross pollination age

The number of remakes picked up or started this year was startling, not just countries revisiting their own content (Thailand, Japan) but countries revisiting OTHER countries stuff.

Lemme explain...

Korea has started remaking Thai content (Why R U?) alongside cameo'ing Thai pairs.

Thailand is doing Korean IP (My Dear Gagster Oppa) and has 2 Chinese ones slated for next year.

GMMTV acquired a lot of Japanese IP (Cherry Magic, Ossen, and My Love Mix Up) - and then had problems distributing it.

This is probably the most surprising trend for me. Especially the Japanese stuff. I would have thought these properties well outside of Thailand's price range (even GMMTV's) not to mention Japan’s legendary IP issues (I swear I typed this pout before the pulled TayNew’s excellent Cherry Magic).

Also why not option some of the older popular manga instead? Bet that's much cheeper. (I did see a NEW Thai translation of Finder into Thai, which is 90s yaoi, so I have my fingers crossed on that front.)

I shouldn't be too surprised.

Thailand is running out of y-novel content. Their publication industry is just not robust enough (I was just talking to a friend about this at length recently). But I didn't think they had the funds to option, especially from Japan.

Perhaps the option deals are for peanuts?

7. Korea got cheeky

I’m not sure quite how else to put this.

After finally figuring out boys can kiss, Korea started to do not just higher heat but playful higher heat, with more aggressive word play and linguistic innuendo, like they are entering their racy rom-com teenage years (Why R U? Love Class 2 and Jun & Jun in particular.)

I guess: Welcome to your BL teens, Korea?

It’s cute of them. I am very much enjoying it.

And now that comedy is warming them up, we get to see them play with actual queer burgeoning physicality in shows like The 8th Sense.

It’s nice. I like seeing Korea stretch its wings. They still stick to their bubble, but that bubble seems to be expanding.

8. The Amnesia Trope is back

And I, for one, would prefer to forget about it.

9. BL got trendy

I’m not quite sure how to articulate this category but basically we started seeing a lot of “modern” romance trends out of the west (like a/b/o) show up in our BL. Not a ton and sometimes quite small, but there has a been a steady rise of things like: no seme/uke, femme gay, out gay, condom use, messy gay.

We also got an increasing range of sub genre frameworks (like mafia, office setting) that’s moved BL pretty firmly (even in Thailand) out of school and into the workplace, whether actual working is involved or not.

It’s not to the point where it feels like we get more non-school BL than school BL (if I include all countries in this assessment).

Japan, in classic Japanese fashion, quietly started moving in the opposite direction. It’s what they do.

10. The Vampires are coming

This is an announcement trend, which I don’t usually report on but it’s so CLEAR.

So last year we had a spate of announcements of possible Omegaverse (2 from China, 1 from Japan, 1 from Thailand - the only one that’s happened).

This year we got 5 Vampire (or vampire-esk) Thai BLs announced including one from GMMTV.

Whether all 5 will actually get made is unlikely, but having had (basically) none prior to this (Kissable Lips), I’m pretty confident that we will get at least 2 of them. And I wouldn’t be surprised if at least one other country made one as well. (Side eyes Taiwan with interest.)

Final thoughts

It feels like we are also seeing a decline in BL (both by quantity and quality) from Vietnam and the Philippines. As you all know, I don’t track or really watch either of these two very closely. But it feels like, now, no one else is either.

I think we have likely seen the BL heyday already in both places and their industries are now on the decline.

We might be witnessing a thinning in the players in the BL field.

FYI we had approximately

136 BLs in 2023

Previous Years

2022: 117

2021: 95

2020: 62

2019: 40

2018: 30

2017: 44 (China’s last gasp)

2016: 27

2015: 17 (50% micro)

2014: 17 (50% micro)

And that’s it! Let me know in the comments if you’ve spotted any additional trends you want to call out.

Last year, 2022′s trend report

2021′s Trend report

Last Year’s Stats & Predictions

(source)

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thefandomenchantress · 2 months ago

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A Very Long Morgie Analysis

Warning: As the title says, this is a very, very long post. You should fear that keep reading button. /j

So I watched Descendants 4 with pretty low expectations a week or so ago, since I heard a lot of people criticizing the film. I’d watched the first three Descendants and thought they were a very fun kind of over the top, and figured that this one would be similarly kinda cheesy but hopefully in a charming way.

The first time I watched the film, I liked it. While I thought the beginning of the movie’s plot dragged slightly only for a far too hasty conclusion, I figured that with a supposed part 2 coming, things could possibly wrap up nicely in the future. That was my mindset throughout almost the entire film…Until suddenly Morgie got a scene.

This is a post mainly for people who’ve seen the film, but just in case I’ll explain the scene. Morgie, son of Morgana, is assigned as look-out during the villain heist. He then makes an amusing comment about what the signal should be if he sees Merlin, and no one answers him. We leave his character for a bit before coming back when Merlin returns to his office, about to catch the villains. Morgie does his signal as planned, and when Merlin looks at him, he hides behind a branch as though that’s going to do literally anything to hide him.

By the end of his little dose of screen time, I was quite amused and wondered how I hadn’t really noticed him earlier in the film, since his character archetype seemed right up my alley. After a day or two, my curiosity peaked and I decided to watch the movie again, but this time pay lots of attention to him whenever he was in a scene. I both wanted to appreciate his character more as well as reevaluate the movie after my first viewing, wanting to decide if it really was ‘bad’ like people said it was (spoiler alert: I had fun watching it the second time as well, while it is flawed it’s a fun movie and I like it and I will die on this hill—).

On my second watch, I realized that Morgie is surprisingly pretty well-characterized for a character that doesn’t have too many speaking lines. And I really wanted to hyper-analyze his character and all that, so now I’m making a very long post about it. I really just need to ramble for a bit because for some reason I have become deeply fixated on this character and NEED to blurt out all my thoughts.

So without further ado, how about we watch this movie for a third time and point out every single little thing about Morgie and appreciate it? Let's go!

(There's also my theory about how the new and old timelines work below all the movie analysis, in case anyone just wants to see that).

YAY HE SAID HIS FIRST LINE WOOOO!!! After a whole 48 minutes, the best character has finally entered the movie /j.

Now on to actual thoughts and stuff. Morgie's first ever words in this film are, "Son of morgana", which, from an out-of-universe perspective, can be easily explained by the movie needing us to know who he is, since he's one of the two completely unheard-of characters in the villain gang.

But Uliana, notably, only has her relation to Ursula mentioned after her verse. So the "son of morgana" line didn't have to be the first thing to ever be said by him, but it is.

That could just be because it flows best from a music standpoint, but in-universe, I think it could possibly represent how Morgie got into the villain gang in the first place.

You see, while I was trying to dig up all the Morgie information available before I made this post, I found these blurbs:

(From an official Descendents book, 98% sure it's called "Descendants: The World Of Auradon: Royals And Villains").

Notably, Morgie's entry says he isn't the most well-liked in the group. But in that case...How is he still in the group??? The villain gang don't exactly seem like the types to keep someone around just to be nice. So here's what I think the reason is.

Uliana wants to be the most feared person at the school. She wants to surpass even her sister when it comes to being mean and scary. And that means that her gang has to be mean and scary. And when she hears that the literal son of Morgana--Morgana, in this universe, seems to be a very powerful sorceress who almost took over the world--is attending her school, she knows that having him on her side will definitely give her more of a powerful, evil image. Afterall, if the son of one of the most powerful villains was willing to follow her, people would think that she must be very mean and scary.

Of course, she needs people to know that Morgie is the son of Morgana, so I wouldn't be surprised if she asked him to mention it the first chance he got, and he listened to her.

This was all a very long way of saying that Morgie says this line first possibly because Uliana told him to, since having evil, scary people on her side makes her look better. And it's also interesting that the first words he ever speaks are about his relation to someone else, not his own character, unlike all the others in his group.

But we're not done with this shot yet! I also want to add that the Son of Morgana's name is Morgie, which means that Morgana has joined the long, long line of Descendents villains who basically just name their children after themselves, (probably because they view them as a sort of mini-me). I wouldn't be surprised if his name was actually Morgan, though, and Morgie's just a nickname.

Also, something I noticed is that, if you look at the book-pictures above again, Morgie's paragraph is in past tense, while Morgana's is in present tense. Morgie's being in the past tense makes sense, since we know that in the future, the villain gang in Rise of Red no longer exists, all of them being their own solo acts. But Morgana's paragraph being in present tense means that she is still alive, powerful, and presumably still wants to take over the world. So I guess that means she's technically a candidate for antagonist in the next movie. But I'll get back to speculation about that sort of thing later.

Now we can finally talk about the next moment, haha.

(Morgie is the one singing the line here)

The first time I watched this I didn't catch that he called Uliana hot but--Yeah, he did. Which means that he either thinks she's so hot he must declare it to random strangers, or Uliana specifically asked him to say that she's hot. Either way it's kind of hilarious.

I am genuinely unsure as to whether they are trying to get us to ship Morgie and Uliana because:

-On one hand, we've got Morgie not being well-liked, and him "desperately wanting Uliana to like and respect him". Which seems to imply that, at least to some extent, she does not like or respect him, or at least not as much as Morgie wants her to.

-But on the other hand, we've got Morgie calling her hot, staring at her longingly, and Uliana calling him 'honey' later in the movie. Disney what do you want from us--

Personally, after reading that Morgana is cruel person who doesn't care about innocent people and who's first priority is world domination, I guessed that Morgie probably didn't have the most loving upbringing. It could've possibly been something like Red's, where his mother could be 'kind', but only if he did what she said and helped her take over the world and all that. In this scenario, Morgie tries his best to follow her lead, but most of the time still doesn't do well enough to satisfy her and fails to get much validation or love from her. When he goes off to school, he tries to get validation and love and respect and all that from Uliana instead.

But that interpretation sort of implies he sees her as a stand-in mother figure, which makes me think that no, them being a couple doesn't feel quite right.

But it's not like that interpretation is canon or anything, it's just something I came up with. So it can't prove that he has no romantic interest in Uliana and that's why he's so desperate to please her. But I did want to share my thoughts on that matter, so here you go. :)

Aside from Morgie getting hit by Uliana's tentacle and falling over being really funny, there is something else interesting that this moment made me notice.

I read somewhere that a character being lower in frame than another, or lower from a high angle in general, can symbolize them being less powerful. And I noticed that there are a few scenes where Morgie does crouch or appear at a lower angle than the other villain gang members, which reinforces the idea that he isn't the most powerful/well-liked member and is at the bottom of the totem pole in the group.

I don't know if I'm reading into that too much, and I don't know a lot about film-making techniques so maybe that's not completely accurate, but I thought that was interesting.

There's nothing too important about this one, I just think that all the villains frowning or glaring while Morgie goes :D is really funny. He looks so head-empty in this moment.

Morgie uses 80's slang confirmed!!

Also, Uliana lets Morgie call her Uli. Considering the fact that Uliana says her full name (Uliana) is what will strike fear into people's hearts, her letting Morgie use a semi-cute nickname is fun. It proves they're at least a little close, since she didn't sock him in the face for calling her that, especially in public. She cares a lot about her image, so her not minding definitely seems to imply she cares for him at least a little bit.

I don't have much to say about this one, I just think it's amusing.

Though the fact that so much of Morgie's dialogue can go unheard/unnoticed without captions on or on a first viewing is interesting. I couldn't actually hear the 'wicked' line, I'm just trusting the captions. And both this line and the last he says while not on-screen, which seems to put the other's reactions in more of a spotlight than what he's saying.

I suppose this is part of the reason I found Morgie harder to notice and keep track of when I wasn't putting my undivided attention on him. Throughout a good chunk of the movie, he's treated as nothing more than Uliana's lackey. Him not having too much to do besides follow her is true to his character, though. His entire role is all based around doing anything to gain her affection. He cares about her more than anything, and sometimes that leads to him not being a character of his own. Which is pretty cool, if done purposefully.

Hm, I've noticed that Morgie's main ship in this fandom seems to be Hook and him, and is this one moment the reason for that? I've heard people say they have chemistry on-screen, but after watching the movie a few times, they only have a few close moments from what I can see. This and introducing Uliana are probably where their friendship is most prominent. Hook and Morgie definitely seem the most dedicated to Uliana, so they are similar in that regard. And the ship is cool, don't get me wrong. I suppose I just wonder if there's some sort of logic behind it, or if it was more of a "ah yes two conventionally attractive men it's shipping time" situation, haha.

This is an interesting frame, because Uliana is suffering as she's turned into a...uh...flamingo-squid-human hybrid? And you'd think that Morgie, since he cares so much about her, would be the most distressed. Instead, in this moment he seems to be smiling (not sure if you can tell as much in this screenshot, though). This could mean a few things:

As stated in the Descendents book, Morgie is rather dense and still hasn't realized that Uliana isn't fooling around anymore and is in genuine distress.

He is happy Uliana is in distress because that means he gets to help her, and she will feel grateful for that and like him more in result.

As shown later in the movie, he likes animals enough to even learn how to mimic the sounds they make, so he's just happy that two of his favorite things are being combined, haha.

Some sort of theory about him secretly not being super loyal to her, though there's not much of a case you could make for that other than this moment in particular, as far as I'm aware.

I'm not sure which one I believe, though I think I'm probably leaning towards the first one, even though possibility 2 would be quite interesting. After all, he looks very visibly worried when she falls into the fountain later, so him just not realizing at first probably lines up the most.

Not too much to say about these two moments, besides the fact that they once again showcase how desperate Morgie is to please Uliana. First by him being the first person to try to help her (but he fails and falls over, which he seems to do a lot). And second by him being the first to sprint out of the courtyard after her. Though it seems Hook caught up and got him to stay with the others to cut off Bridget and Ella at the other side, since we don't see him running behind Uliana anymore in the next shot, and then we see him standing beside Hades after we move to the fountain scene, implying he went the way Hades did instead.

(Side note, I think that Morgie's the one who shouts 'Uli!' but the captions just say student so maybe not, I can't tell).

Okay, so, the captions claim that Hook says this line, but not only can we see that Hook has his mouth shut as he pushes branches out of the way, not speaking, the voice also sounds way more like Morgie to me. Originally, I was going to use the nickname Uli as evidence that it was Morgie, but then I remembered Hook also calls her Uli earlier in the movie. So I guess I can't prove anything, but I'm 99% sure this was a mistake on the caption-er people's part.

To get on with the actual scene, Morgie compliments Uliana in an attempt to comfort and please her, though it doesn't seem to work like he'd hoped it would. Other than the last scene of the movie, this is probably the only scene that remotely shows that maybe she doesn't like him as much as some of the others, like the book claims. But more on that later.

I had a hard time getting a good frame of it, but I wanted to point out that Morgie kinda froggy-hops on the first two stones in this scene, before jumping across them normally. Whether he stopped because he realized the others weren't doing it or because he simply remembered that he is Not A Frog, I found it to be a fun detail and wanted to point it out.

Pfft, he's so eager to participate, his worryingly excited vocal delivery never gets old to me here. You could also argue that this is another lower-in-the-frame moment, since he sort of crouches and then rises up here.

It's noteworthy that Morgie is the only one of Uliana's gang to not come up with his own idea for a way to get revenge on Bridget. Which at first glance seems like a strange choice, since all the members getting individual lines is a chance to characterize each one a little bit more. And that's especially valuable with a character like Morgie, since most kids probably don't know a lot about Arthurian legend and therefore Morgana. And Morgie's not even actually her, he's her son. Meaning in his limited screentime, they really need to put the effort in to make his general personality clear.

But the fact that Morgie just copies someone else's answer does characterize him. Like I said earlier, at least to me, Morgie seems a lot more eager to participate in the conversation than to come up with ways to punish Bridget for what she totally definitely did. In fact, he begins to climb on top of the rock-thingy to jump off it and excitedly repeat Hades' idea before Hades even has a chance to finish his thought (he's still on "we could"), meaning Morgie was probably going to excitedly parrot whatever Hades said no matter what it was (or maybe that just happened because the actor didn't have enough time to climb up, jump, and say the line if he waited until Hades finished speaking but shhhhhh).

This would imply that Morgie doesn't really care as much about evilly getting revenge and whatnot as much as he cares about getting to be included in the conversation and following what the others are doing. This may be getting into more headcanon-y territory, but Morgie seems to crave the love and companionship of his friends, and I think this scene sort of demonstrates his want to do what they deem as good and acceptable and what will make them happy rather than come up with anything on his own.

I suppose that's one thing that makes his character morally grey to some extent. Sure, he doesn't seem to take as much direct joy/satisfaction in torturing Bridget, but he still cares far more about his friends' approval than her well-being. As long as his friends are happy and want to keep him around, Bridget and anyone else's happiness doesn't matter.

I have no idea why they put in a random shot of Morgie jumping in the middle of the song, but it's really amusing to me so I'm happy they did. I just needed to mention this really quick, I find the hard cut to Morgie dramatically jumping off something way too humorous not to.

Off-topic, but since it's sort of implied Morgie likes animals at the end of the movie, I like to think he feeds this guy sometimes, and when asked why he'll say sadly, "No one comes here besides us anymore, so he hasn't been able to eat any innocent people in a long time :(" like it's this terrible, tragic backstory. Idk I just think it'd be funny. Anyway, back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Ah yes, the scene I keep mentioning. The one that made me go, "woah, he's funny and has a discernable personality :0". The one where he asks what the signal should be and all that.

This scene finally shows us what the Descendents book from earlier kept claiming, that he wasn't the most well-liked among their evil clique. When Morgie talks, Uliana rolls her eyes in exasperation and walks off, not answering his questions. And the others follow suit, ignoring him.

For most of the film, Morgie seems to be on even ground with the other members, and at first, I thought maybe that wasn't on purpose and they just wanted to shove this in at the end, like how most of the ending was rushed. But now I'm thinking that maybe the reason Morgie isn't as well-liked is being shown throughout the scene, revealing why it's only more obvious now.

You see, Morgie's easily excitable personality fits in when Uliana and the gang are all just messing around, like how they were laughing and making jokes at someone else's expense earlier in the movie. Morgie just has to cackle evilly behind Uliana and be supportive. But when they try to do more 'serious' evil things, like this heist, his attitude doesn't translate quite as well.

Uliana wants to be taken seriously as the threat, and I assume the other villain gang members do as well. They want to be evil and scary and tough and all that. But Morgie doesn't really have a more serious, threatening mode. Well, he does, like when he's trying to be threatening during his introduction. But when there's no bystanders to impress, only his friends, the real Morgie isn't the serious type. He's still energetic and excitable, even in situations such as these. And the others find this a bit grating, since they want to be real villains. They don't want all of this to be childish or a game, they want to be taken seriously as villains. They want to be real villains. And Morgie's demeanor isn't as cut out for that sort of environment. Or at least his natural demeanor isn't, and he has trouble reading when they want him to be more serious.

Side-note: I swear I love every line this character delivers, something about the way he talks makes my ears happy. So I just wanted to point that out really quick.

"Ah yes, this extremely small branch will guarantee that no one will see me! >:D" I find this very funny. I want to say this isn't very smart of him, but I mean it works and Merlin doesn't see him so you can't argue with results--

Anyways, Morgie impersonates a few animals and hides behind a small tree branch. I thought about screenshotting all the animal noises but they're pretty straight-forward and for this you just need to acknowledge that they happened, so I didn't.

Morgie is the son of Morgana, and presumably has the capacity to be an extremely powerful magic-user like her. Which means there are a lot of cool magic things he could be doing. So I think the fact that we are directly shown that shape-shifting and mimicry are the skills he focuses his energy on the most, is important. Well, I suppose it's possible he isn't using magic to mimic the animals, but I've always assumed he is. And even if he isn't, the fact that even in scenes where he's completely alone he's still mimicking something else is rather telling.

...

...Oh, wow, we finished analyzing the actual movie! Yay! Time for one last thing, then!

Apparently, there was a deleted after-credits scene where Morgie finds the sorcerer's book. Unfortunately, I couldn't locate the original post, which supposedly came from Morgie's actor. It's not that I doubt it's real, I don't know how someone could fake this photo, but I would've liked to see it and know what he said about it.

(Warning, a lot of this gets even less objective than it already was, and most of it is just me theorizing with varying degrees of evidence to back my statements).

So what implications does this photo have? Well, it confirms my suspicions that Morgie being forced to stay behind wasn't for nothing and was setting up something else. I heard there was a lot of cut content in Rise of Red, and the fact they thought the 'Morgie barks like a dog scene' was important enough to keep over other things seemed telling.

If there was a scene dedicated to him finding the book, then him finding it must somehow be important. But in that case, I'm guessing we'd have to assume that Morgie can open the book. After all, if he can't open it, what's the point of him finding it? And it sort of ruins the original timeline, too.

If Morgie can't open the book, then that means all of the villain gang couldn't open it. And in that case, how would they prank Bridgette in the original timeline? They couldn't, because none of them would be able to read the recipe and give the cupcake to Bridgette.

However, if Morgie can open the book, then things make more sense. I wasn't sure if I was going to share my whole theory here, but so far I haven't seen anyone have the exact same idea as me (though I haven't read every Morgie post out there, so it's possible), so why not share it?

What if the thing that changes the timeline isn't that the villains were able to get the book without getting caught by Merlin, it's that the villain gang knew Morgie could open the book?

Let me explain.

Let's start with the fact that I don't think we often acknowledge, at least in my experience, how random of a choice putting Morgie in this movie was. They could've chosen any classic Disney villain to be in this movie, yet they chose Morgana. A character who has never even shown up in any Disney project, besides a live-action film and Sofia the First. They could've chosen to round out the pirate trio from the second movie and added in Gaston, or chosen one of the core four's parents from the first movie, or picked literally any famous character from any Disney movie ever. And yet, they decided to go with not just Morgana, but the son of Morgana.

And personally, I think that if Morgie really was just a throwaway character, they probably wouldn't have gone through the effort of making a whole new character instead of just choosing an already established one, like with Hook, Maleficent, and Hades. There has to be a reason they did this, right? Anything Morgie did in this movie could've been accomplished by anyone, since his only large contribution to the plot was being a look-out and failing.

And there are two things I realized. One, that being the child of a villain basically gives you automatic redemption arc privileges in this franchise. The core four, the pirate trio, and Red in this movie are all proven to be good deep down in the end, and we're supposed to see them as heroes. And for some reason, they decided their new character couldn't just be Morgana, it had to be the son of Morgana.

My guess is that they want to be able to push the "Oh their parents taught them that being evil is right but deep down they're a good person" angle they did in all the other movies with the Descendents. Especially since it would parallel Red, who's basically the main character of these movies, even if Chloe is at a close second.

The second thing I noticed is that even if you read just the first paragraph of Morgana Le Fay's Wikipedia page, it says that a significant aspect of her character is her unpredictability when it comes to being good or evil. She has the potential for both, and since they seem to have decided to just make Morgana evil in this universe, I'm guessing that trait is being handed down to Morgie.

They needed a morally ambiguous villain who could open the book in order for the timeline to work properly, and choosing a villain we know is 'evil' thanks to their movie, wouldn't allow that. So obscure villain's son it is.

Alright, so if we assume my logic makes sense and isn't just incoherent rambling, Morgie can open the book. How does this tie into the way Chloe and red changed the timeline? Here's what I've come up with:

In the new timeline, Red and Chloe steal the book for the villains and the villains take it, opening it in front of them just to brag and getting frozen. Red and Chloe take the book and, assuming that Uliana and her friends can't go to the dance, leave the book behind off-screen. In the deleted scene I think they left it...Is that their room? I genuinely can't tell, but Morgie finds it. Possibly via following them after seeing them leave the building, since we know that the trip from Red's room to Merlin's office is in direct eyeline of the tree.

But even though Morgie found the book, the prank isn't enacted in this timeline. If Morgie can open the book, why is that? After all, he could just do the prank for Uliana, right? Well, here's what i think happened:

Uliana and the gang don't know that the book is enchanted so that non-good people are unable to open it. That's why they try to open it without a second thought. Which means there are two possibilities going forward:

Morgie did indeed follow Red and Chloe back to their room so he could get the book back for Uliana, and overheard their conversation about how the book proves Red is a good person and won't turn out like her Mom, etcetera. When he finds it, he's aware of what could happen when he opens it, unlike his friends.

Morgie doesn't know about the enchantment on the book when he finds it, because he didn't follow them or couldn't hear them through the door or something else.

Both options, for my theory, garner the same outcome, it's just that things take slightly longer to happen.

If we go with the second option, Morgie is unaware that opening the book with no side effects means anything and after he opens it, he decides to show Uliana and the others the book whenever Merlin gets the spell off of them and all that. But when they do meet up, Morgie asks how they got caught before he shows them anything. And Uliana's answer would be something along the lines of, "That stupid book was enchanted and froze us in place! Only some goody-two-shoes could open it without that happening" (she would know because she heard Chloe's explanation of the spell when her and Red were talking). And Morgie takes a moment to process that...Uh oh, wait, that didn't happen to him. Why didn't that happen to him? Cue Morgie having an identity crisis as he realizes that the book doesn't seem to think he's a bad person, even though that's what he's supposed to be. He's the son of Morgana. He's part of a group that knows their actions are bad and they don't care. His entire motivations are around getting his mother, Uliana, and whoever else to give him validation for being good at being a villain.

But according to this book, he's not one.

Morgie tries to play it off and decides not to show them the book. Uliana and the gang are all about being evil, and they are all he has. What if this was the last straw and they kicked him out of the group because they think he's not evil enough? He'd have no one left.

He's decided that he can't tell them about the book, but what if they figure out that he has it? As long as he has the book, it's a liability. So, he does the only thing he can think of.

Burn it to a crisp.

And with the book destroyed, the prank can't happen. The recipe that can turn Bridget into a monster is no more.

If we went back to those first two options and say Morgie knew about the spell when he opened the book, then everything is the same except the book gets destroyed sooner, the night Morgie's friends are still frozen and won't be able to catch him actively sabotaging their revenge plans.

So that's the new red-and-Chloe timeline. What about the old timeline? Well, in that timeline, let's say Uliana doesn't feel the need to show off and open the book in front of Red and Chloe, so they escape Merlin's office unharmed. That means they get to meet up with Morgie, and whenever they open it, they're around to see that oh, Morgie isn't frozen, that's weird.

And they can't know for sure why, since they don't know what the enchantment is or what its qualifications are, but they do know that Morgie can read the recipe and do the revenge plan, so Morgie is able to read the instructions and they're able to prank Bridgette.

And ta-da! That's how the timeline got changed! At least in my mind, there are probably tons of other possibilities, but this is the one that made the most sense in my head.

And with that, the post is finally finished! I'd love to hear anyone's thoughts or ideas on this! Despite this being an analysis, a lot of it is dictated, at least slightly, by my own opinions. Morgie is the centerpiece of the timeline changes for a reason, haha. With such a large fanbase compared to some other pieces of media I like, I'd love to hear what the masses have come up with and like or disagree about in this post.

Thank you so much for reading if you've made it this far! I can only imagine that if you have read all this, you're some sort of Descendents or Morgie super-fan, and for that you have my respect.

#hopefully 'wicked' actually originated from the 80's or i've made a fool of myself #bonus headcanon: since morgie seems to have snake theming i like to imagine he has snake-like traits #he WILL go lie on that rock in the sun for hours at a time and you can't stop him #descendants #descendents 4 #rise of red #morgie le fay #descendants morgie #descendants rise of red #descendants the rise of red #descendants theory

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murfpersonalblog · 20 days ago

Note

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTFqc5yJ3/

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTFqcGyPq/

I hope this isn’t weird but, I stumbled upon these TikTok’s and they reminded me of some your iwtv metas.

@louis-of-nola omg it's not weird at all; thank you for liking my IWTV metas, and for sending me links to these REALLY good analyses of Black & LGBTQ+ people in white media! ❤️ TBH I'm never on apps like TikTok, Twitter or Instagram, so NGL I was bracing myself for rage bait when I clicked the links, only to be pleasantly surprised by these two videos by Mouseabolition on film theory--I sincerely appreciate it!

The first link especially got to me:

Cuz in Mouseabolition's critique of the White Gaze--particularly the White (Female) Gaze--she mentioned one of my favorite horror movies, Get Out.

"A lot of black people I know are able to very deeply care about and empathize with pieces of media that are attempting to speak to our experiences, even when it's done poorly. And we're not necessarily trying to say: 'That's a good thing and that was done well.' But it's the same reason why Chris from Get Out--THE template for black horror--why Chris from Get Out felt like such a new, refreshing horror protagonist. A huge part of what makes Get Out work, and what differentiates Chris from the average horror movie protagonist--outside of just like the surface level analysis of he's a black man--is that Jordan Peele (who is also a black man) was able to write a black character with the realistic higher level of consciousness and alertness towards danger, that all black people have to move with. And that higher level of consciousness is a huge part of why most black people I know can't take white people's horror movies seriously anyway. It's because white people walk around throwing themselves into situations that are destined to create horrific scenarios; and when you are somebody who has to walk around going: 'I can't do that, I'm gonna die!' it's really hard to feel shocked and horrified and surprised when somebody does something that you know damn well is gonna end up with them dead! Black people--particularly like black women and queer folks--don't really have the privilege of walking around with the illusion that we are more or better represented than we are. And so you learn to look at things more critically, and that gets stereotyped as nagging or a bad thing! But it's not, because thinking about things critically, genuinely all the way through, is frequently what leads the black people I know to finding those kernels of good in stories, where most people are just like: 'No, I just think that's silly, it's just dumb.'" (4:10 - 6:02)

I've made four IWTV metas comparing the horrific experiences of Chris in Get Out and Louis in IWTV, cuz I noticed that the core themes of Black men in white spaces wrt vulnerability, exploitation, gaslighting & manipulation resonated between both horror shows in a way that directly reflects IRL experiences.

This is particularly the case when Black people are involved in toxic interracial relationships that end in horrific tragedy for the Black partner. The horror comes into even sharper focus when it's the Black victim who ends up blamed/lied on by their white abuser/murderer that tried to play the innocent victim, weaponizing White Tears to justify/get away with literal crimes--which I've also provided links to before, cuz this BS really happens to us (x).

It's especially effed up when you're dealing with victims of abuse who suffer from mental illness, and are blamed/attacked by the authorities/masses. IRL we see Bipoc mentally ill folk who call the white cops for help and are the ones who get killed (x x); yet the IWTV fandom is overrun with racists who REFUSE to put 2 + 2 together to save their biased AF souls. I felt so vindicated in 2x5 - 2x8 when AMC explicitly showed that Louis & Claudia were telling the truth about the Drop Scene in 1x5, and that Armand had lied the whole time, effing with Louis AND Daniel's memories; after so many racist AF white Lestans & Armstans said the Lou & Claudia were spiteful liars who just wanted poor uwu blorbo Lestat & Armand to look bad cuz they're not Black, like WHAT!? We saw a literal Black LYNCHING happen on screen, where Black!Louis was buried alive & Black!Claudia was burned alive by a bottle-blonde white man in front of a predominately white audience in a "play"/snuff film co-written & directed by 3 non-Black people (Armand, Sam & Lestat); meanwhile the fans INSIST that this show's NOT about race. 🤡 BUFFOONERY!

By race-swapping Louis & Claudia & heightening the abuse they suffered in the books to make their treatment WORSE, AMC was literally talking to the predominately white gaze of the audience that SALIVATES over fetishizing Black people on one hand but still perpetrates injustices against Black people on the other hand; and the racist IWTV fandom proves them right every effing day!

And I also LOVE what MouseAbolition's Tik Tok said about the careful & highly conscious ways that Black people (esp. Black queer people) have to move in society, BECAUSE they're more vulnerable to persecution & penalties & punishment than white people.

Black gay men are marginalized by white AND black people alike; there are Black fans who are also against seeing Louis as a female-coded character. Because this is a white world, the white gaze affects ALL of us, and the panopticon of censure & censorship forces us to police each other and mistreat our own sometimes even worse than white people will--look at emotionally abusive/negligent mothers like Florence who has a particular image to uphold amongst the conservative Catholic Black elite during Jim Crow (vs. white Gabrielle who CAN support her white son's eccentricities); and homophobic women like Grace (who herself is married to a man who's NOT "the man of the house," Levi coddled by Florence & financially supported by Grace's inheritance & Louis' money). But at the end of the day the problem still lies with white (wo)men who weaponize Othering by means of race/gender/sexuality/etc in order to isolate marginalized peoples from systems of support, so that they might be more easily exploited & abused--which I've constantly argued wrt to Loustat.

It grates on my effing nerves when white fans (esp. Lestans) hypocritically talk about gender, culturally appropriating Black queer terminology like "Mother"--which originated in Black gay drag, pageantry & ballroom culture, a la Drag Mothers as exemplified in Paris is Burning, and shows like Ru Paul's Drag Race & Pose--in order to prop up Lestat's femininity and dismiss Louis', all because Louis (as a Black man they've hypermasculinized) doesn't conform to their cis white paradigmatic bias of what femininity & motherhood looks like--which is informed by the white patriarchy to control the social hierarchies of both women AND men, straight & gay alike!

I've adamantly critiqued white female fans' surface-level discrimination against Louis as a female-coded character just because Louis doesn't crossdress--as if Lestat's Mardi Gras dress is the only indexical determiner of gender; esp. for closeted & conservative Black gay men who historically CANNOT safely & freely move in public spaces the way out white liberal LGBTQ+ men can.

Cis white women lusting after Lestat & screaming Yaaas Mother~!, or circling the wagons around Armand cuz they want AMC to move on to Devil's Minion (which not even AR GAF about, lol), just loooove to jump on Louis for being a pimp, for not being feminine enough, for fighting back in 1x5. Black men are hypsersexualized to the point that straight AND gay Black men are perceived as universal dangers to white/non-Black purity, and were lynched by the mob in DROVES whenever if it was even suggested that they stepped out of line; "Louis can sometimes act out."

So yeah, people act like I'm crazy cuz I call this ish out, when the facts are staring them right in the effing face. But I've already been explicitly told by white Lestans that they're deliberately ignoring the red flags cuz it's not fun to turn their brains on & look at their precious blorbos critically and that they'll casually dismiss negative portrayals of Lestat on the show as "poor writing"--

--then the same stans spin their effing tops when they actually pick up a effing book and read for themselves that we're telling the truth when we say AR's darling Lestat's a LEGIT abusive rapist p.o.s.--

--and that Hannah Moscovich was legit for pointing out that it's not character assassination when Lestat's abusive oppressive toxic behavior is effing CANONICAL.

#interview with the vampire #get out #louis de pointe du lac #lestat de lioncourt #loustat #loumand #iwtv tvc metas #white privilege #racial inequality #racism #gender inequality #democracy of hypocrisy #read a dang history book #like wtf #louis de pointe du black

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elodieunderglass · 1 year ago

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Referring to you "anxieties of the culture" horror tropes post, I just watched the 1990 adaptation of IT and this comes less than a month after watching both Kolchak movies & starting the TV show. What do you think it was about the late-70s/early-80s that led to "the killer is a monster that hibernates for a set number of years before returning to perform the killings again, as a grim echo of the past, and it's up to the heroes to stop it now before it rears its ugly head again"? There's gotta be some "pass-the-buck" crisis that PEAKED in that time period, something that was a long time coming before that and may or may not have continued since. I don't think it's climate change, that wasn't really at Critical Mass yet until the HFC hairspray crisis of the mid-80s. Your thoughts?

(In reference to this post: https://www.tumblr.com/elodieunderglass/729604545735458816)

Oh that is SO interesting! I also like the Horrors of the Past that Re-Emerge. You get them in fantasy too. To some extent they’re quite nice, because they displace responsibility, allowing the heroes to grapple with something distanced. necromantically resurrected Zombie Nazis will always be a more appealing enemy, for a broad market, than your present-day actual real life QAnon uncle. You can blow up an Ancient Horror as much as you like, can’t you? You don’t need to worry about the tricky present-day political circumstances that birthed the serial killer if it’s actually an ancient time-travelling monster. Monsters are often articulated and described and used because they are “safe” in this way: a displaced thing that can be used. Separate from us in species, appearance, home planet, history of origin, motives, spacetime - the farther they are from us and our shared background, the more justifiable it is to nuke them from orbit, to make a splashy movie.

HOWEVER. As I said in that post - “horror reflects social anxieties” is a SUPER well-described piece of media study and you can read proper writing about that anywhere. I encourage you to seek it out! They say it much better than I do.

I also said in that post that I, myself, don’t watch horror/movies/film. It isn’t due to contempt for the genre, or fear of the content - I just can’t get into it or get immersed, which defeats the point of an immersive genre meant to provoke response. (For example, despite being explicitly told that I would love Stranger Things Season 4 and that I was required to write fic about it for a friend, I gave out at the beginning of season 2; despite being really fond of Welcome to Night Vale at a formative time of my life, I dropped out before StrexCorp. And those are things I generally liked, wanted to consume, and knew I would enjoy! It’s a me problem, and I’m not bothered by it. I am TOO BUSY.)

That’s just to say that I could spitball some thoughts, but I’d be out of my depth.

But here’s an idea. A very small minority of people in the notes took offence to me having meta thoughts about horror when I don’t consume the genre - and worse, saying them out loud, while also openly admitting that I’m out of my depth and would prefer an expert to say it better. “YOU are a COWARD,” they say. “The audacity of commenting on a trend in a genre that you don’t even watch.” “You complain so much but don’t even watch these films” “imagine writing all this with such a bad attitude about horror.” etc.

I think those people have effectively volunteered to write you an essay. They clearly have the horror-consuming chops! Perhaps not the reading comprehension … or analysis skills… but they definitely watch a lot more horror media than I do, so why not give them a crack at it? (This is jokes, don’t bother them.)

Alternatively - there are a lot of clever and savvy people with good takes around here, so they’re welcome to spin out some answers on this post.

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all-seeing-ifer · 9 months ago

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Aromanticism in Academia

Since it's currently Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week and I'm currently in the middle of a master's research project about aromanticism and asexuality, I figured I'd contribute by putting together a list of some books and other academic sources I've read so far that deal with aromanticism! There's very little written about aromanticism in academia, so I think it's important to spotlight what we do have.

DISCLAIMER BEFORE THE LIST: Due to the lack of discussion of aromanticism specifically in academia, most of what I've found are texts that are primarily about asexuality but also discuss aromanticism. It's unfortunate, but it is also where we're kind of at right now in terms of academia, so bear that in mind.

Books:

Ace Voices: What it means to be asexual, aromantic, demi, or grey-ace by Eris Young - Definitely has the most focus on aromanticism of everything that I've read so far, this book draws from a combination of the author's personal experiences and interviews with other members of the a-spec community, including aroace and alloaro people. A good source of discussion of aro issues and how they interact with things like gender stereotypes. Also notable for its discussion of QPRs, a topic which I find has generally been ignored in academia about a-spec identities.

Ace: What Asexuality reveals about desire, society, and the meaning of sex by Angela Chen - Primarily deals with asexuality, as the title suggests, but also contains some relevant discussions of aromanticism, including the experiences of aroallo people. If you're going to check out the book, I would especially recommending looking at chapter 7: Romance, Reconsidered, which features most of the discussion of aromanticism and non-normative relationships

Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on our Sex-Obsessed Culture by Sherronda J Brown - Again, asexuality is the main focus here, but I would still recommend checking out this book as it does still contain some useful discussion of aromanticism, particularly an extended critique of "singlism" (i.e. discrimination of single people) and how it is weaponised against aros. I also find Brown's criticism of the dehumanisation of aromanticism in media to be very compelling!

Minimizing Marriage: Marriage, Morality, and the Law - I would be remiss not to mention Brake's work here. While Minimizing Marriage is not specificallly about aromanticism and deals with marriage reform and the concept of amatonormativity more broadly, I think it's fair to say that many of Brake's ideas (particularly her coining of amatonormativity as a term) have become vital to the aro community and aro activism in recent years. Definitely a must-read for anyone interested in deconstructing amatonormativity and in contemporary critiques of marriage as an institution, though it's worth noting that this is a work of moral/political philosophy first and foremost, and as such it gets very into the weeds of things. Available on the Internet Archive here

Academic Articles/Essays (all can be found in the collection Asexualities: Feminist and Queer Perspectives):

"Why didn't you tell me that I love you?": Asexuality, Polymorphous Perversity, and the Liberation of the Cinematic Clown by Andrew Grossman - A really interesting and engaging analysis of the archetype of the silent film clown, and how it can be read as an a-spec figure. While Grossman uses the language of asexuality, his analysis makes it clear that he is looking at the clown as both an asexual AND aromantic character.

On the Racialization of Asexuality by Ianna Hawkins Owen - A personal favourite of mine. I think many parts of this essay will be very relevant to aromantic people, particularly Owen's investigation of how romantic love came to be pedastalised and her critique of attempts to normalise asexuality by distancing it from aromanticism.

Mismeasures of Asexual Desires by Jacinthe Flore - A critique of the pathologisation of asexuality that also discusses how aromanticism challenges common discourses around intimate relationships

Finally, I would like to mention the work of Bella DePaulo, who has written extensively about singlism and compulsory coupling, and who Brown uses extensively as a source in their writing on aromanticism. I didn't want to make this part of the main list because I haven't yet had a chance to get stuck into DePaulo's work, but based on Brown's mentions of her work I believe she has some very interesting ideas that are very relevant to aro people.

As you can probably tell, the list of academic sources dealing with aromanticism and aro issues is very limited. However, while aromanticism is vastly underdiscussed in an academic context, I'd like to point out that this is also only what I've been able to find so far. If anyone has any other recommendations please do add them to this post - I for one would love to hear about them!

#aro shtuff #asaw 2024 #aromantic awareness week #asaw #aromantic spectrum awareness week #aromantic #ifer rambles #also if u guys have recommendations for aro academia it would be very helpful for me personally #so y'know. there's that #grad school tag

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liquidorcard · 19 days ago

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Could we maybe get an analysis on her “stop making villains like Magneto, they suck” video?

Also, I for one am sat patiently for that Flowers In The Attic analysis.

FItA Lorch Analysis coming next.

For right now: Part 3, Final round. FIGHT!

[Part 1] [Part 2]

Lily Commits Elder Gay Mutant Abuse, feat. "Eldritch Lily" (Part 3)

8:30: "And making these characters hop in the giant death robot so they can randomly do some heinous act of evil so you feel less guilty for wanting to bring them down is very telling about your priorities as a writer." [We're still talking about Korra, for context.]

I'm highlighting this quote more than anything as a means to really dig into the big stink with Lily's media analysis here. I've said something along the lines of, "I kind of agree with her, but not actually," several times while writing this, and this is exactly why.

I think a lot of people come at media criticism from a very flawed position because of the way the grading works in our school systems, of all things. They judge it like there is the possibility of getting an A+ on your show, movie, novel, video game, etc. For the purpose of reviews, as a quick way to indicate quality/how much you recommend a piece of media, I understand why critics would use scoring systems like that-- but when it comes to analysis, that's not really a useful approach. There are technical skills and proficiencies in execution that you can grade media on like that, but even they have their nuances. Conceptual ideas presented in media, however? No dice.

There are certain filmmakers in particular who I fully acknowledged are very skilled at their craft-- I still strongly dislike their films. I don't agree with the conceptual ideas they have to present, and I don't think they convincingly rationalize their position textually, subtextually, or otherwise. With that said: I think most media produced, regardless of quality, is a net positive for the intellectual landscape of humanity as a whole. With the exception of media that is actively harmful in a very direct way, disingenuous propaganda, or particularly egregious cases of cooperate slop, I support any creative's ability to add to the long-form conversation art and creation offers. Those highly proficient filmmakers I ideologically disagree with, their ability to articulate their worldview so genuinely, and clearly helped me as a creative articulate why I disagree.

With all that said, it's clear Lily doesn't think in that regard. Lily has taken media crit she has heard from other sources. She has just retrofitted it to whichever property she wants to rip into. If it superficially applies enough that she can misrepresent a piece of fiction with an argument, she will apply it across the broad. Approaching media crit like there is a definitive way to "score" fiction on its conceptual value, like it's a high schooler's end of term essay. Context be damned.

What she is articulating here is a valid criticism of certain fictions that try to present morally complex villains. This is a complaint I've made myself over properties like the first Black Panther film (which, thankfully, they at least did their best to rectify in the second). But not Kuvira. Not Magneto as a whole.

9:07: "Which would have been interesting, and led to some criticism of the main characters for trying to restore the same monarchy that has previously failed the people."

They weren't trying to restore the monarchy. They were protecting the prince from assassination. I feel like it'd be pretty tyrannical of the Avatar to say, "fuck you Earth Kingdom, you don't get your royal family anymore," without their say, Lily . . .

9:18: "Maybe talk about the United Republic being a literal concurred settler state."

YET AGAIN LILY'S CRITICISM BOILS DOWN TO, "I HAVE NEVER READ A COMIC."

9:30: [Lily takes like, the 12th bullshit pot shot at the creators of Avatar.]

I've ignored it up until this point. There's been too much else to talk about. But Lily has assumed an absurd amount about the authorial intent of everyone she's discussed in this video-- including Jack Kurby's intent when creating Magneto.

9:40: Lily fumbles through some final point here with two sentences that make no sense when put together about how this is all people doing tropes badly, but if you did it well then the trope wouldn't exist and aaaaaaaaaaaaa.

God please strike me down.

10:10: Lily calls this all propaganda.

Again. She's sort of right in the abstract, divorced from the content of her video. Wrong when taken in context of what she's talking about. SOMETIMES "sympathetic villains" are used as political propaganda. Sometimes, they're a legitimate expression of a creator's misunderstanding or mischaracterization of an ideology. Sometimes, they're an earnest dissection of the ideological concept.

Good argument of specific pieces of media, retrofitted, flattened of any nuance, used to discredit a thing Lily doesn't like across the board.

We're in a timeloop.

10:25:

God is dead and we have killed him.

11:01: "The problem is that this idea of all villainy being nuanced and complicated has just never really been true. Evil people in real life will often just invent justification for evil things they already want to do. And there's a point where someone crosses the line of evil so much that nothing they say earns them sympathy."

Lily thinks people commit acts of extreme violence and atrocity for . . . Fun, I guess. Disturbingly enough, this tracks real well with how she's justified her own abhorrent actions in the past. When other people do bad things, it's because they like it and are bad. When she does a bad thing, she has a reason, and therefore, it's justified. Another self-tell Lillian.

11:42: "The problem with my idea for these kinds of villains is that they inherently make white people of any gender uncomfortable."

GOD FINALLY FUCKING DONE THIS GOD FORSAKEN VIDEO AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

Pray for me, the fucking psychic damage I just fucking took for you guys.

I suppose the only take away here is this:

The thing that's so exhausting about Lily's videos is the complexity of the degrees in which she is wrong. She's developed, for lack of a better word, a talent for laundering good arguments in a very disingenuous fashion. I wouldn't go so far as to call what she does plagiarism. Her work is more than just stealing other people's arguments and regurgitating them back-- but what she does is a spiritual cousin of sorts.

She bootlegs intellectualism to sharpen it into a shiv she can use to stab at anything that displeases her. The same way she weaponizes her marginalized identity, she weaponizes honest and thoughtful media analysis aswell.

This video was, frankly, barely even about Magneto. Barely even about sympathetic villains. She has no interest in the material that was the topic of this video-- not even enough to do a bare-bones Google search beyond looking up vague facts she could massage into supporting her claims.

A lot of those very early X-Men comics are fucking rough. They include shit like Charles expressing some very creepy thoughts about a (I believe then) teenage Gene Grey. Some very yikes dynamics with the then mostly/arguably entirely white mutants acting out very on-the-nose imagery associated at the time with the black liberation movement. And some very questionable framing and dynamics due to the fact that, real life marginalized groups typically don't have dangerous superpowers.

However, you can almost sense the moment when Kurby started to take the reigns and make the X-Men into something really special. Not to imply that Stan Lee is a bigot or a bad writer, he had very good intentions. By his own admission, he did his best work as a collaboration with his artists guiding the story along with him (sometimes, well, functionally being the actual writer, no offense, Lee left a bit of a complicated legacy, we can't get into it right now.) Anyone familiar with Kurby's work as a whole will know just how profoundly humanist he was with the stories he told.

Despite what Lily arrogantly implied here, he always intended Erik to be a very sympathetic character. Even as a "villain," a sympathetic character vaguely coded as an "extremist" black activist was kind of bold for the 1960s. I can't tell you for certain what ol' Jack's authorial intent was, the man very rudely died 3 years before I was born so I never really got the chance to ask him-- but dare I say this was his best attempt at laundering the idea that maybe "radical" activists actually maybe had a point? To an audience who would have been VERY against that idea if presented to them outright at the time? Even now?

Media does have the power to shift cultural perception-- even if that takes time. In the early 2000s, when I was taught about Malcome X for the first time as a child, even then, 40-some-odd-years later he was presented to me in a negative light. It was in the context of him being the inspiration for Magneto, however. The emotional connection I had to that character made me question whether that characterization of Malcome was entirely fair-- even though I was too young and didn't have the full context to grasp what I was being told at the time. I do believe to some extent that Magneto's popculture relevance has helped preserve the legacy of some of the more controversial activists in history. By being a figure people can personally connect with. Of course, it's all more complicated and messy than I'm making it sound, however. It's unfortunately very easy to flanderize figures of history, boil down their motives, and flatten their narratives. A character in a story, detached from any direct sociopolitical baggage, is something you can form a bond with. Something that can (if handled properly) promote empathy for their real-life equivalents.

There absolutely is a conversation to be had about certain ideologies or positions being more often than not, for practical or political purposes, cast in the antagonistic role in fiction. However, Lily's thesis here, boiled down to the bones, has been disproven ten times over by the abject failure of shit like The Comic's Code Authority and The Hays Code. People don't emotionally connect with squeaky clean moral paragons as much as they do messy, complicated, emotionally challenging complex characters-- even when you paint them as the abject villain of the story.

People fucking adore Magneto. He's a cultural icon. Even before the FoX-Men movies came out, he was probably one of the few comicbook characters your mom could name. Vaguely recognize, at the least. And yes, that doesn't always translate into people being charitable to "radical" civil rights activists in real life-- but doesn't necessarily harm it either. Anecdotally, it helps, if but just a smidgen.

Anyway, get fucked Lily. Magnet Daddy FTW.

P.S. X-Men '97 is really good. Also, it's 100% alluding to these two having fucked. Maybe outright confirmed it by now, I'm not totally caught up.

I mean, we all already knew they totally were lovers, but.

Come on Disney, give the people what they want. Make 'em kiss. These poor old men have been having sexual tension for like, 60 years.

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reflections-in-a-critical-eye · 1 month ago

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The way k-dramas have this opposite side showing to people than what goes on k-side is really something. Not saying like that's not how the world goes but the way i see everyone on other sns have this mindset towards Koreans as how it goes in k-dramas. My own country fans think that's what korea is about.....U know how men in there are, just a few months ago we saw them getting exposed with those telegram groups, them bullying their Olympics female participants over short hair n all. Saw 2 days ago the men victimizing themselves because a korean female writer won an award. She's actually the first female from Asia but here those men being "You can imagine what men in Korea have to go through daily".

Then you have this 21 year old idol having to leave his group because korean fans are mad he had gf and smoked before debut like??? Saw a video of him seeing all those funeral wraths with his own eyes because he walked passed through all of them like nothing is more fked than that shit. And I for a fact know that most of those fans are female fans. There's one picture of the "fans" sitting with those protests all seemed female (if I'm not mistaking what that picture and those banners mean). So these fans and more especially here these female fans (i know male fans for gg would be the same) acting like they own these idols is crazy. Put every single one of them in jail or in a mental hospital cause that mentality is harmful. Him going through this shit at the age of 21 is fked. This is gonna leave a big scar on his life forever but hopefully he'll heal.

I think a lot of damage is being done on the international community side, especially in fandom spaces, due to lack of education. It boils down to that. But of course, the issue is more nuanced. The average age has to be taken into account, but it's the lack of knowledge, critical thinking, mixed in with xenophobia that leads not only to a distorted image of a country and its cultural/social/political aspects, but not knowing how to properly differentiate between real life and advertisement.

Should we expect that anyone who is now interested in Korean entertainment to pick up some articles and read a few things here and there? What lead to the investment in culture and entertainment and how the state was involved? What is the purpose? To what end and for whom is it being promoted and how? No, although it would be ideal. But at the same time, you would think that anyone can understand the difference between an idealized and promoted image to be consumed and the real life. Unfortunately, it is not the case.

It is also not fundamentally wrong that the majority of people rely on k-dramas and kpop to get a glimpse or immerse themselves into another culture. A K-drama or any other type of media product is a narrative fiction that contributes to the creation of imagined, national communities. The mainstream Korean imaginary is created through the help of these mediated audio-visual fictions (this is applicable to other countries, as I myself took the terms from an analysis of American culture and its effects on Europe. Don't take my interpretation as a rule of thumb though, I haven't done any research into my response).

Popular Korean entertainment is meant to create a very specific image of national identities and values, but it clashes with other realities (which are also represented through fiction, but that's more marginalized). It is on us to be able to navigate between all these aspects, but my god, there's a lot of stupid people out there.

(It's interesting how my introduction to SK as an adult was through Kim Ki-Duk's films. I was hit with extreme levels of representation of violence and mysogyny, but also an incredible beauty in a controversial filmography. Nothing near the fantasy of the "CEO falls in love with the poor young girl in an environment that screams advertisement").

As to the idol who was pressured to leave the group, unfortunately SM set a very dangerous precedent with their decision and it has been pointed out a lot in the past 24h. The company is telling so-called fans that their strategies work and that they have power over idols.

For them, idols are a commodity, hence why they become enraged and talk about their time and money which they have invested in them. It's a really dark way to think of these entertainers through this capitalist lense. Which is not particular to k-pop, it happens in any entertainment industry. But it slowly leads more and more to the dehumanization of idols. And that's a consequence of companies and fans. They are at fault for creating and perpetuating such a system.

#m thoughts

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bengiyo · 1 year ago

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top 5 unpopular bl opinions??? no pressure lol

Wedding Plan is good and the most queer narrative MAME has ever made, and the first BL to have lesbians that are critical to the story, and I suspect folks didn't like watching a self-actualized assured uke. We should really examine what it means for this genre that we pick on MAME for exploring the lines between taboo, boundary crossing, and romance with queer characters, and the fact that her one project that responded to all of our criticism may have flopped.

I prefer my shows to be more serious and queer. I tend to like the shows about characters who Knew who they were. I like when there is a recognizable queerness to them that lets me know they were othered. Some of my favorite shows as a result are Eternal Yesterday, 180 Degree Longitude Passes Through Us, Until We Meet Again, I Told Sunset About You and I Promised You The Moon, What Did You Eat Yesterday?, La Pluie, The Day I Loved You, etc.

KinnPorsche is beautiful and fun, but honestly a goddamn mess. It's also incomplete. I find it hard to talk about this show because people had a great time with it and pulled some incredible analysis out of it, but it's kind of disjointed and will never be complete, so it's low on my lists.

Shipping makes the shows worse, not better. I really hate the heavy breathing going on over Only Friends. I cannot go into the tag because all the hand-wringing over whether a ship is intact drives me insane. I'm here for compelling narrative, not fap material. I hate how effective it is at getting y'all to buy merch and follow socials.

GMMTV is the Disney of BL. Because of their YouTube strategy, everyone is aware of them, and they're usually people's path into the genre. However, it seems like a lot of folks stop here. Maybe it's the paywalls and the fact that you have to join fan spaces to learn about a lot more of the shows, but it's kind of insane reading posts and talking to people who have basically only watched Thai BL, and specifically GMMTV BL. I'm from the era of hunting down gay film based on the rumor that a film existed. Queer media and cinema is an international experience. I trully cannot fathom identifying as an enjoyer of queer content in the modern era and then ONLY engaging with content from a single country let alone a single company. We are queer. Why would we ever allow a single corporation to dictate our tastes? That's not punk at all.

#answered #thai bl #japanese bl #taiwanese bl #filipino bl #korean bl #bl series

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imagitory · 7 months ago

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@andrewmoocow Personally I find them to be misguided. There is a very well-done analysis video I've cited before that talks about the animation and why it ends up looking like AI, and I think it really addresses this argument better than I could --

youtube

-- but TL;DR, the animation looks "fake" largely because of stylistic decisions (l.e. turning off motion blur with the thought it would look "more like 2D") that weren't well thought-out. And I actually think the film's writing issues run into the same problem.

Because here's the thing -- writing high fantasy is not as easy as it looks. I can testify to this because I myself am writing a draft for a high fantasy novel right now.

All these years, Disney has been in an advantageous position with their animated films largely being adaptations of previous works, since they're already given a lot of the parameters a writer needs to build a world, plot, and characters. In a Snow White adaptation, for instance, you need a vain queen, an innocent princess, a prince, seven dwarfs, a magic mirror, and a poisoned apple, as well as a fairy tale world where these things fit comfortably. And since so much mainstream fantasy is largely inspired by medieval Europe, that aesthetic remains very familiar with audiences to the point that you need a lot less explanation for things. We don't really need an explanation for the political landscape of Cinderella because we see "fairy tale kingdom" and immediately know it's an absolute monarchy led by generally amiable rulers. We're not surprised when fairies appear in Sleeping Beauty, or when a magical sword predicts who should be king in The Sword in the Stone, or when Tiana and Naveen are turned into frogs in The Princess and the Frog, or when trolls appear in Frozen -- all of these magical conventions fit within the usual fantasy aesthetic and really don't need any explanation or backstory. I'd hazard to say that most people -- aside from those nitpicky critic types who get all hung up on how many servants are in Beast's castle just because they saw a bunch of extra silverware in the Be Our Guest sequence -- just don't bother questioning these things. And the original material also gives some shape and form to the adaptation's story, characters, and overall feel. It doesn't matter how close the finished product matches the original idea or even how familiar the audience is with that original material -- it still provides a jump-off point and sense of focus for the writer(s), the same way fanfiction (even an AU fanfic) can, in contrast to original content.

All right, well, what about those Disney projects that aren't fantasy? Well, in the case of stories like Treasure Planet, Robin Hood, and Mulan, they're still based off preexisting properties that people will find familiar enough that the writers can focus more on the adaptation's unique additions and not focus on detailed backstories and explanations about how the world and societies depicted in the story work. It's a lot easier to just focus on the fantastical elements like the space tech, talking animals, or Mushu and the ancestors if the rest of the story and cast are relatively easy to understand. Even in the case of original stories like The Lion King (which admittedly was largely inspired by Shakespeare's Hamlet, but I digress), Lilo and Stitch, and Lady and the Tramp, they still exist in a non-magical world that closely resembles ours, with only superficial changes like animals being able to talk or the existence of aliens. Even quasi-historical settings like The Great Mouse Detective and Atlantis: The Lost Empire look enough like our real-world equivalent that their settings are largely recognizable to us.

In just about all Disney animated films, the screenwriters didn't have to world-build that much. They didn't have to put the character development and plot on hold to explain the rules of the universe these stories take place in that often -- not unlike how writers like Rick Riordan didn't have to explain as much about the country his hero Percy Jackson lives in, because his books are an urban fantasy where our real world is just "plused up" with magical elements. We don't need to know if gravity works on the story's characters the way it does for us. We don't need to be told about the political landscape, history, or terrain of our location. We don't need to ask whether dying is something our characters can come back from.

Wish, on the other hand, is an original story in a high fantasy setting that doesn't resemble our world. People might try to claim it takes place in the Iberian Peninsula, but come on -- Rosas is a completely fictional country in a world that has magic we don't know the rules of and countries that faintly resemble cultures from our world, but we don't know the histories of or how similar they actually are to their real-world inspiration. We also have a cast of characters we've never met in any other media and a story and messages that we know nothing about beforehand. This means that we have no preexisting framework going in for what's possible and impossible in this world; no frame of reference about who these characters are and what their histories are; and no parameters that the plot, characters, and themes must fit inside, whether based on the fantastical story being adapted or a real-world setting that's a lot like ours. And I don't think that Disney really thought through just how challenging it can sometimes be to tell this kind of a story without stuffing the script with a lot of "tell" and not "show," which, as just about any film person can tell you, is the exact opposite of what you generally want. In film scripts, you want to show your audience a lot more than you tell them -- this not only takes full advantage of the visual medium and communicates your point in a much more natural and artistic way, but it also lets your audience think for itself and come to its own conclusions.

Now of course, can you write a high fantasy original story that's easy to follow and evokes a lot of emotion in your audience? Of course! But it does take time and a lot of careful and creative world-building. J.R.R. Tolkien was the king of such things. George R. R. Martin has done it. Neil Gaiman has done it. Ursula K. Le Guin has done it. Even the writer of the Nimona graphic novel, ND Stevenson, did a good job of it! But I think it's quite clear that Wish's script was not in the works that long -- development of the original idea started back in 2018, yes, but it wasn't until January 2022 that it was announced Jennifer Lee was writing it and Julia Michaels was brought on to write the songs, so the film's current trajectory likely wasn't pinpointed until then. And if the film was released in November 2023, then that means Wish's script was finished in under two years. Although there are successful Disney scripts that I daresay needed only that much time (Frozen, for instance, was quite rushed, by all accounts), once again, those scripts were done for stories with some sort of preexisting framework that allowed the writers to skip explaining certain visual or contextual short-hand in favor of focusing on their own creative flourishes in character and story. They were written with a tighter focus on the plot and its players without the need to build a complete stage under them.

The reason some people want to cry "AI!" when they look at Wish's writing is that they're looking at a script that makes the rookie writing mistake of exposition-dumping in an attempt to make its audience care, rather than evoking emotion. That kind of exposition-dumping is something that most novelists usually have to trim and rewrite in future drafts of their work: it's a mistake done while the writer is trying to world-build enough that their audience understands all of these original rules, societies, locations, and characters they're not familiar with. This exposition is then often trimmed down before publishing, and when adapted for the screen it's often trimmed even further or even completely rewritten, in favor of more visual methods of conveying the same information. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz writes about Dorothy traveling down the Yellow Brick Road and about the long journey that takes her and her friends through a lot of side adventures on their way to the Emerald City: it's the famous film adaptation that cuts out the Kalidahs and puts the whole trip to jaunty music for the characters to sing and dance to. Wish could've communicated to us the importance of the wishes to their owners through more visual means, but instead feels the need to reiterate this idea over and over through written dialogue. And again, this is a common mistake by writers when they're inexperienced in creating completely original content, as opposed to spin-offs, sequels, or adaptations of other people's work.

AI writing is generally known for repetitive phrasing and sentence structure, lack of accuracy, and lack of a personal touch. As much as I'll agree that there are a lot of character and world-building choices in Wish that don't make sense, I don't think that's the same thing. There clearly was a story someone (or multiple people) wanted to tell about a person hoarding the precious ideas of other people away, even if it means those ideas can never be shared with the world -- it just wasn't a story that ended up being told that well. And I think this is why Wish is almost worth seeing -- it serves as a good example of why certain writing decisions work better than others and how writing for fantasy projects and/or "family entertainment" is an art form that's worthy of respect when it's done right.

To sum up my stance on the matter -- I think Disney just bit off way more than it could chew and then didn't give its writers enough time to properly digest it.

#disney #disney wish #wish (2023)#wish critical #analysis #opinion #oh boy here i go #personal

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