#and as an ace person the trend of me liking the more sexual-driven characters is really confusing

[nanowatzophina]

Look at these idiots. I love them sm.

I should replay my Rosal PT because I really love her lots.

Is it bad that I’ve been using so many Nick Miller and Jessica Day things for Rosal and Zevran??? I do not know. I just know it’s really fun to use and draw.

Ref:

[ladyfl4me]

Hi! I've caught the trending page of Tumblr and heard that there's now an ace character, and I want to start listening to the podcast! I don't really know much about how d&d works, but is there a certain podcast that starts the campaign with the ace character? If so, do you know what podcast that starts in? Sorry if that sounds weird, but everyone's been talking about how accurate the ace rep. it is and I want to check it out! :)

Yeah, no problem! Sorry that this got a little long. Any of the thoughts I have on this are mine and mine alone, and are not blanket statements about the character’s asexuality; other people have different readings and rationales of what’s happened so far, and that is okay!

So I’m assuming the character you’ve heard about is Fitzroy Maplecourt. He is one of the player characters of The Adventure Zone: Graduation, the most recent season of the podcast The Adventure Zone. Griffin McElroy, the guy who plays Fitzroy, said in this recent behind-the-scenes special episode (TTAZZ 2020) that he always intended to play Fitzroy as an asexual character. I got so hype while listening that I wrote a transcript of his answer, which you can find here. It can be crosschecked against the official transcript, which will eventually be uploaded here. Very minor spoilers for one element of Fitzroy’s background, but nothing too revealing. 

Basically, Griffin put a hell of a lot of care and attention into his answer, which is really unexpected for a cishet white dude. He’s done his research. He acknowledged asexuality as a spectrum and as something that’s different from aromanticism. He also explained wanting to avoid aphobic stereotypes while making Fitzroy, such as the “too busy with the Real World to think about sex” stereotype or the “being asexual means there MUST be something wrong with you” stereotype (not direct quotes, that’s me paraphrasing). That’s mostly what people are excited about, and for good reason, because that’s a lot more compassion and nuance than we usually get in media.

However, to answer your question about accurate representation, the word “asexual” or a scene in the text confirming Fitzroy as asexual has not happened yet. I think Griffin plays him as an asexual character who’s just minding his own business, though, which I personally think it’s great. Like. That’s me. I’m minding my own business, living my ace life. It’s not something that’s right on one’s sleeve at all times. Starting off knowing that Fitzroy is ace, though, is a great context to have if you’re starting from TAZ Grad episode 1. Fitzroy being ace from the get-go makes a lot of the ace-projecting readings I had of lines - like a line somewhere about “missing the vibe between us” - feel like a more canonical acknowledgement. 

If you’re the kind of person who would prefer a textual acknowledgement of asexuality you can point a finger at, though - like, a “ctrl-f” search for "asexual” in the transcript sort of thing - there aren’t many options. There is subtext, like I said, but nothing direct beyond the offscreen TTAZZ. Fitzroy’s type of asexuality is a little fuzzier, too, and hasn’t been confirmed. As you can see in the transcript, Griffin obviously wrote and played him as asexual, and Travis secondhand-quoted Griffin saying, “Y’know, I don’t think… I don’t think Fitzroy really feels that,” during planning for a recent character-driven episode. This quote could go a couple ways:

Option one: this could be just a blanket acknowledgement of Fitzroy being asexual, with the “that” being sexual attraction. Not feeling sexual attraction is the textbook definition of being ace. This leaves him open to be anywhere on the ace spectrum, from sex-repulsed to sex-indifferent to sex-favorable. 

Option two: “that” could be read as the desire to have sex, which is completely different and points at a more sex-repulsed asexual reading. A lot of people have taken that, too, claiming he’s “not interested” in sex or stuff along those lines. A valid but by no means exclusive reading, re option one and the actual words that Griffin said in reference to Fitzroy.

Until we get more details, maybe in a canon text portrayal, I think it’s kind of up in the air. TAZ tends to be good about getting in-text confirmation, though; in another TTAZZ commentary episode for TAZ Amnesty, the player character Aubrey Little was confirmed as bisexual and Puerto Rican, and we got a scene in the actual podcast that confirmed her as bisexual. (She literally said “I’m bisexual” to another character. In one of the funniest exchanges in that entire arc of Amnesty. They can do it. Still waiting on the Puerto Rican part, though.) So we may get an actual scene in the future where Fitzroy’s asexuality is stated. 

That being said, I know that sexuality and personal preferences are not things that all people discuss openly, so including that scene may not be possible or natural - especially with Fitzroy’s motives/expression/characterization, which you’ll find about if you listen. Writing a realistic scene that gives explicit confirmation is tough, especially in an improv environment like D&D. I personally really, really hope that they give it a shot, though. The McElroys have made characters explicitly gay, bisexual, trans and nonbinary in past seasons of TAZ, and Travis has a whole armada of LGBTQ+ characters in the TAZ Grad universe. It’s possible. They can do it. Griffin’s dialogue/other roleplaying choices, though, do portray him in an asexual-coded way, and that may be all we get.

All I can really say is that things are looking up for ace representation, and the way that Griffin McElroy is coming at this character is really heartwarming to see. If you decide to listen to TAZ: Graduation, I really hope you enjoy it, and maybe consider listening to the other two seasons too! I wouldn’t be too worried about d&d going into this - the most basic explanation is, you got dice with numbers on them, sometimes players roll them, and a high roll means something good will usually happen to their character while a low one means something bad will happen. TAZ can be found on any podcast-streaming website like Spotify, Stitcher or Apple Podcasts, as well as on YouTube and the Maximum Fun Network website.

[pass-the-bechdel]

LOST full series review

How many episodes pass the Bechdel test?

48.33% (fifty-eight of one hundred and twenty).

What is the average percentage of female characters with names and lines for the full series?

32.08%

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 40% female?

Twenty-four.

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 50% female?

Two.

How many episodes have a cast that is less than 20% female?

Six.

Positive Content Status:

Though the female characters themselves tend to be high-quality characters who provide a strong undercurrent of positivity, ultimately this is a very solipsistic-straight-white-male-driven narrative, and that makes for an uninspiring and sometimes infuriating counterbalance (average rating of 3.01).

Which season had the best representation statistics overall?

None of the seasons did consistently better than the rest, with the various statistics fluctuating over the course of the series and never trending conclusively in one direction or another. Consequently, different seasons perform best depending on how you cut the numbers - that said, season four rises to the top of the heap by averages, despite never turning in the best score for any criteria, while season two was more of a standout in terms of scoring poorly less often than the rest, even if it didn’t match that with especially positive marks. 

Which season had the worst representation statistics overall?

Again, while not consistent, season one does tend to shake out at the bottom (more confidently than any other season attempts to achieve the top-end, at least), while season six is usually the next rung up. The middle part of the show is the better part for representation, is the conclusion.

Overall Series Quality:

Powerful, wonderful. Not without flaws, no, but as far as existentialist character drama is concerned, you can’t beat it. It rocked the industry back when it was on tv, and it damn well lives up to the hype to this day. You’ll not find another like it.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) under the cut:

Not gonna lie: I actually took a huuuge break between writing that not-much-of-a-season-six-review, and writing this. I didn’t intend to, I just...how the fuck to summarise this show in a somewhat-succinct manner? In a novella-sized essay, yeah, that’s doable, but as something I can type up without stressing that someone can then peruse at their leisure instead of clicking ‘read more’, watching the little scrolly bar at the side of the browser shrink, and going “wow, Hell no” and leaving? The plan for this blog has always been to present information and opinions without becoming a chore for y’all to read or for me to write, and sometimes that means I edit my own thoughts too harshly and get annoyed later for not having said more, and sometimes it means I look at a task before me for a while and then go “wow, Hell no” and leave. Today is not that day.

Honestly, my experience of LOST was extremely personal, and so more than with any other show I’ve reviewed thus far, LOST has made it a challenge sometimes to discuss objectively. While there were other shows I had been attached to in the past (*shakes fist at The X Files*), this was the first that I got deeply invested in, and at an age where I could critically engage, and at a time where the internet had become a big enough deal that I had all sorts of inlets and outlets for BTS information and engagement beyond just sitting down to watch an episode once a week. In six years, I never missed an episode, which is an especially big deal considering that during that time I also enjoyed the obstacle course of homelessness, a natural disaster, and the varied delights of major depression and high school graduation. At the toughest points, looking forward to the next episode of LOST was literally the only thing I held onto to get me through the week. I had a dream once (circa season four, I think) where I drove a van into a lava flow and my last thought before I died/woke up was “but I won’t get to find out how LOST ends!” It was a big deal, is what I’m saying. It was a really big deal for me.

So...now that we’re two paragraphs in already (and since this is not an online recipe for souffle or something, wherein you might expect five paragraphs at least of totally unrelated personal-life stuff before I suddenly segue into ‘so anyway first thing you need is some eggs’), let’s actually talk LOST. I mean, it’s like crack to me, honestly, with the character-driven narrative exploring grandiose themes of fate, faith, and the meaning of life. If there were more women and significantly more gay, it’d pretty much be For Real Perfect to me, like someone looked into my brain and went “I know exactly what kind of show you’re looking for” and then made that show at a huge budget in beautiful Hawaii, and then tossed Jackwad in there as the central character because no one is allowed to have a Perfect Thing, I guess. I’m not gonna get distracted by how Jack is the actual worst, not today. We know that already; we’ve bigger things to talk about. Meaning of life stuff.

The thing about ‘meaning of life’ stuff is that philosophy (and I say this as someone who 1) ACED it in university, and 2) includes it heavily in their own work because IT’S LIKE CRACK TO ME) is...kinda waffly, wanky, bullshit. Existentialism is something pretty much everyone engages with as a concept, but if you run with it too far it’s...fuckin’ empty, y’all. It’s navel-gazing garbage. The thing with philosophy is that there are NO answers, it’s purely theoretical, and so you can dig around that rabbit hole and make yourself a comfy nest in one concept or another (if we want to extend this metaphor we can make an entire rabbit warren of interconnected ideas and also perhaps make a pompous remark about undermining the structural integrity of the very earth we walk), but at the end of the day, no one’s philosophical theory is inherently better or more valid than another, nor is it entirely clear whether or not it matters. Maybe you’ve settled on a concept of God or Gods in a pre-established religion; maybe you believe in a less defined Higher Power; maybe you’re pure science and everything is a construct and nothing is ‘real’ because ‘real’ is also a construct; maybe you’re totally nihilistic about existence; maybe you think aliens are responsible; maybe you don’t fucking care. Whatever your opinion, the conundrum remains: existential philosophy is an eternal question we all brush up against, and yet it also exists (heh) on a spectrum from ‘frustratingly unknowable’ to ‘pretentious and masturbatory’. So, how the Hell do you engage with that in a way that is accessible, interesting, and meaningful? 

So, the next thing you need for your souffle is...honestly, I don’t know, I don’t know how to make souffle. LOST, though, the souffle that is LOST - the character-driven narrative is how they make that philosophical musing work. I’d advocate for character-centric storytelling any day of the week, because emotional engagement with characters enhances audience engagement with narrative as a whole, but when your narrative is dealing heavily in existentialist themes and broad intertwined-fates and pseudo-religious faith, etc., making the human characters the central focus of your story is of paramount importance in keeping that story grounded. It also means that your audience doesn’t have to be into the more heady themes in order to enjoy the story, so you don’t cut half your audience by being a lofty elitist prick about it, nor do you lose track of your own narrative by allowing it to become too conceptual. Character-driven keeps the story tight on the ground with those people living the day-to-day reality of their lives, and the conceptual wankery is significantly less wanky for being threaded throughout that sense of grounded reality. 

The characters are the absolute heart and soul of LOST, and one of its great successes there is that it entertained such a large cast. Lots of characters means lots of different opportunities for character types, for exploring different backstories, and different motivations and perspectives when handling situations in the past and present (and future, and afterlife...). Big surprise, character variety means more ways to connect with an audience! Characters with different backgrounds resonate with a wider variety of audience members! Characters of different colours provide representation for your varied audience! Characters of different sexualities pr- ok, never mind that one. Will I stop harping about the intense heterosexuality? No, I won’t. They dropped the ball on that one, plain and simple. They missed that boat, like a bunch of straight white male chumps who still accidentally wrote a lot more straight white males than they did anyone else. Can I fault them for being straight white males and writing that experience in turn? Yes, I can. If they can sit around debating the literal meaning of life and constructing an elaborate yet impeccable six-season narrative on the subject, they can look at the literal world around them and see that there’s a heck of a lot of non-white, non-male, non-straight people. Holla damn. ANYWAY. Mostly they did a not-bad job about the white part. A dodgy job with the male part. A failed job with the straight part. It’s been half a paragraph since I explicitly mentioned how salty I am about that thing in particular. Salty as an ocean surrounding an island with a magical miracle light at its centre, I am. 

ANYWAY ANYWAY there is a lot about what made LOST work that came from a well-thought-out and strong long-term plot. A lot was made of the whole ‘the writers said they knew what they were doing but they totally didn’t!’ as if that was somehow a betrayal or proof of failure. My other favourite show-ending (and one of my other favourite shows) that I have brought up before is Farscape, a show with one of the more thoroughly cohesive long-term narratives that brought its story around with a remarkable degree of continuity, and yet the writers there readily admitted they were making it up as they went along. Contrast with, say, How I Met Your Mother, for which the infamously terrible finale had been planned since the start and strictly adhered to despite the fact that the story and characters had moved far, far from it in the natural course of development over seven seasons. Flexibility in a story is essential; you have to be ready to seize upon opportunities when they arise, or to modify to accommodate unforeseen changes. What matters is that you tell a story with that all-important continuity remaining intact, and LOST well and truly did that. I don’t care how much of it they had figured out from the start; I care that they remembered what they had done, moved with it in a natural sense, accommodated unforeseen circumstances with verve, and brought the whole thing around in the end like it had been planned. Storytelling is full of happy accidents - Kate Austen is one of the strongest characters the show produced, but I am pretty damn sure the writers didn’t make her that way on purpose; she is a combination of fortuitous casting and happy-accident writing - a measure of quality in a creator is the ability to recognise and embrace happy accidents, and allow the writing to support what functions well while discarding or altering that which gunks up the gears. And if there is one final word of praise I have to speak for this show, it is that as wild and strange and wonderful and esoteric as it could be, it ran with a truly impressive smoothness. Except for Jack. 

Basic souffle recipe that I just googled and have not tried so don’t blame me if it sucks. No lengthy preamble.