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blueskittlesart · 6 months ago

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i kinda really wanna see a big ol vent/rant from you about genshin now lol. I would read an essay

I'm not sure you understand the insanity you just unlocked in me but ok

genshin impact is probably the clearest modern example i can think of of capitalism absolutely eviscerating a creative project. For context, I started playing genshin in 2021, just after the 1.4 update. it was venti's first rerun/the first windblume festival if that means something to you. and I really genuinely thought that it might have had something special. It was a gacha that didn't FEEL like a gacha, which was a huge feat to me.

it began with a very simple story pitch--you, the protagonist, are one of a set of twin siblings traveling through space. you come upon a seemingly unassuming world and your attempts to continue your journey are suddenly stopped by a mysterious, all-powerful figure. you are separated from your sibling and wake up alone on the shores of this planet you were attempting to leave together. throughout that opening cutscene and scattered through the world and your character's dialog there are implications that all is not as it seems, that your character is something unique to this world and that they possess powers and abilities that you've yet to unlock. You are told that you must travel the seven nations of this world in order to find your sibling, which is great--a simple, zelda-like objective which drives the player to explore the secondary narratives of the world. none of this is bad on the surface. in fact i'd argue it's pretty good. there's a ton that can be done with these story bones. even at launch the map and combat system were full of potential as well.

Note: for ease of reading, i'm going to label the different storylines of the game now. A-plot refers to the central objective of the entire game; the find-your-sibling plot and everything that encompasses, including the abyss order/dain, the heavenly principles, the fake sky, etc. B-plot refers to the secondary objective present in each new nation, usually meeting the archon and/or solving a problem for the archon. (A and B-plots will occasionally intersect.) C-plot refers to any story, location, or background information which remains in permanent gameplay but which isn't directly related to the A or B-plots, such as dragonspine, the chasm, enkanomiya, etc. D-plot refers to any story, location, or background information which is confined to limited-time events and does NOT remain in permanent gameplay, regardless of its connection or lack thereof to the A and B-plots, such as the golden apple archipelago, the infamous albedo/dragonspine event, the infamous kaeya/diluc event, etc. Lore as i will refer to it in this post refers to any information which is present in permanent gameplay but which is not directly told to the player within the A or B-plot story quests and objectives, including books, weapon, artifact, and item descriptions, world quest dialog and puzzles, etc.

So now we're in mid-2021, there are two nations' worth of B-plot story quests released in full, and we've run into our first problem, which is that the game isn't finished yet. I don't have any actual information about how the game was/is written, but based on what i've observed over the past few years, my best guess is that the A-plot has been fully written since the beginning, at least in some form. there were very early-game events and information pertaining to the A-plot that would take years to see any actual payoff in the main story quests (kaeya's origin story, the 1.3 scaramouche fake-sky drop, the flowers in lumine's hair, etc.) but those kinds of A-plot story easter eggs very quickly dropped off when the game absolutely EXPLODED during the pandemic.

this sudden burst in popularity was the true beginning of the end for genshin, i think, because suddenly they had a HUGE fanbase that desperately wanted more content faster than they could pump out new A-plot or even B-plot story quests. one of the most pervasive complaints about the game when I began playing in 2021 was that there was nothing to do between story quests. update 1.4 (which was the update I started playing at) was important in that it was the first time since genshin's release over a year before that players recieved any new A-plot, in the form of the archon quest We Will Be Reunited, also known as the quest with the most fucking misleading name of all time. you'll never guess what doesn't fucking happen during this quest. anyways. we were a year into gameplay, two nations out of seven released and a third on the not-so-distant horizon, and it seemed obvious that players were owed some sort of A-plot payoff. and that's very much what WWBR was advertised as, from the quest's name to the banners full of art of the twins staring wistfully at each other. The thing is, what i'm describing as A-plot payoff was actually. not really A-plot payoff at all. WWBR was the reveal that the protagonist's sibling was working with the abyss order, and that the abyss order was connected somehow to Khaenri'ah, which at this point casual players would only have known about from THAT QUEST and MAYBE kaeya's character descriptions if they were diligent enough to get him to friendship level 10 (which, btw there is no indication that you should do to get important context about the story of the game, because kaeya is a 4-star starter character and the only character in the entire game that actually has genuinely important story hidden in his character descriptions.) So what I'm calling A-plot payoff felt at the time a lot less like A-plot payoff than it did like an abyss sibling cameo in an attempt to satiate everyone who was begging for more story. We actually gained almost net 0 information. this is very quickly going to become a pattern.

As I've already alluded to, the motives behind this writing decision are transparently obvious. Genshin is a free gacha game which relies on a consistently active and engaged userbase to make its money. With fans getting restless about the lack of engaging story at the time and a new, very ambitious B-plot quest gearing up for release that would require major support from that fan base in order to remain profitable, the writers were backed into a corner. they HAD to throw the fans some sort of bone in order to keep them engaged with the A-plot, since it was originally pitched as the driving force for the story as a whole, but they were also clearly not at a stage of the writing process where it was prudent to give the player any REAL information about the A-plot. This is how we ended up with a 10-second abyss sibling cameo and an offhanded mention of Khaenri'ah, a nation whose plot-relevance was at that point still basically unknown.

The real problem is, WWBR worked. at least, it worked as intended at the time. It satiated story-focused fans in the interlude between B-plot nations, as hyv was gearing up to release inazuma, which required a lot of time in preparation. WWBR was followed almost immediately by the C-plot golden apple archipelago in 1.6, widely regarded as one of the better events of version 1. GAA was memorable especially because it was the first event that involved an entirely new, limited-time-only map, meaning the event had much more longevity than the standard events players were used to. This is, imo, most likely the update combination that led to the standard formula which hyv uses for its quests and events nowadays. the back-to-back release of WWBR and GAA satisfied both fans who wanted A-plot story AND silenced criticisms about the game lacking endgame playability, which at the time must have seemed like a goldmine to writers desperate for a solution to their content-to-fanbase ratio problem.

From here, genshin started following a standard method of release for their next three nations--inazuma, sumeru, and fontaine. the formula generally went as follows: one major version update (usually version x.0) containing a major map update which included all B-plot relevant locations in the new nation, and the first chapter of the B-plot story quest relevant to that nation. this would then be followed by 2-3 version updates which would each contain the next chapter in the nation's B-plot story quest, sequentially. After the nation's B-plot quest ended, during the downtime in which the next nation's story and map would be finalized, subsequent updates would be largely C-plot, and would contain minor expansions of the map to increase endgame playability via exploration and world quests. This is how we ended up with updates like the chasm, the several extra islands in inazuma, and the quite frankly ridiculously large sumeru map, as well as the offloaded maps like enkanomiya and the sea of bygone eras. with the possible exception of the chasm, none of these areas are A OR B-plot relevant. hyv has realized that artificially inflating the map makes their game technically more engaging during the downtime between nations. However, this comes at a price. While the scenery and set design of the game remains consistently beautiful, the actual, mechanical gameplay that populates that scenery very quickly became mind-numbingly boring if not borderline unplayable. While the 1.0 questlines were not perfect, there was at least an emphasis on the player actually DOING things. 1.0 B-plot quests would have you going to mini-dungeon temples and completing challenges which would acclimate you to the combat system while also serving narrative purpose. There were quests that required you to navigate open-world dungeons. Because your characters were lower-level, combat challenges that arose during these quests were CHALLENGES, rather than two-second buttonmashing segments. By the time we get to sumeru, though, both B-plot AND C-plot quests have become little more than moving your character from location to location and tapping through (usually unvoiced) dialog. there's no GAMEPLAY in the quests anymore, because gameplay isn't what makes money. What DOES make money is giving players 300 hidden chests to find in an open-world map segment, each of which gives them 1/80th of a gacha pull. And so the story suffers and the map gets bigger.

Along with the map expansions, downtime between nations usually also nets us one A-plot quest, usually involving the character dainslief, who was the driver of the initial WWBR quest. This is the second half of hyv's magical formula for keeping fans happy between major releases. the A-plot quests will, as a general rule, give players either very little new information or no new information at all, but will dress up the delivery in such a way that it ALMOST feels as though the protagonist has moved forward somehow. the most recent example of this writing style, the 4.7 quest bedtime story, amounts to about an hour and a half of gameplay and, while it DOES contain a segment in which the protagonist finally actually has a conversation with their sibling, that conversation literally begins with the line "I have so many questions, but for some reason I don't want to ask them right now," ensuring that the sibling will not actually be required to give away any plot-relevant information whatsoever, and the quest ends with the protagonist FORGETTING THAT THE CONVERSATION EVER HAPPENED IN THE FIRST PLACE.

As I think I mentioned before, the cardinal problem of genshin impact's writing is that fans want answers faster than the writers are prepared to give them. I don't doubt that there's a game bible or relevant equivalent somewhere within hyv which contains the explanations we are currently lacking in regards to the A-plot. the game is consistent enough in its storytelling for me to believe that this isn't all just being made up as we go along. But I'm also certain that a lot of the late-game A and B-plot that is planned (especially if the Khaenri'ah is truly planned to be the 8th nation of the game) hinges on the player knowing very little about the A-plot. this would be fine if genshin was a standard single-release video game that players could work through at their own pace, but it isn't. it's unfinished, and each nation in the game releases months to years after the last, leaving the writers to scramble to fill in the gameplay gaps and players struggling to remember plot-relevant information when it's brought up literal years after they last heard it mentioned. Not only does the time between updates leave players frustrated about the lack of A-plot, it makes the A-plot harder to understand when it is brought up, because the writers are required to throw in so much dense C and D-plot just to keep engagement high enough to make the game profitable in its downtime. we joke about the insane convolution of genshin's lore, but that is first and foremost a byproduct of its financial model. the game requires engaement to be profitable, and adding lore for players to look into drives up engagement. The fact that having so much story with so little plot relevance muddies the waters and makes the A and B-plot stories considerably harder to understand doesn't matter as long as money is being made.

I want to take a quick detour here to talk about the release of sumeru specifically, because this is when I really began to clock the fact that genshin was declining. on paper, racial sensitivity issues aside (Not that they're not important, but i'm doing this deep dive from a storytelling and game design point of view, nothing else. that's a whole can of worms i don't have time to get into here) sumeru was a really promising addition to the game. The new B-plot quest which was set to drop in 3.0 was highly anticipated for several reasons. Two fan-favorite characters (kaeya and scaramouche) were expected to play major roles, because of earlier C and B-plot quests, and much of the nation's scenery that was teased in trailers and promotional content appeared to tie into the A-plot. the most exciting draw about sumeru and version 3.0, though, was the major update to the combat system.

Arguably genshin impact's most interesting feature upon release was its combat system. The map was basically a botw clone at that point, and the story quests, while decently engaging, were rough around the edges to say the least. What genshin DID have going for it was a unique real-time combat system that rewarded strategy and quick thinking.

Genshin's combat system is elemental, and on release there were 6 elemental affiliations: anemo (wind), cryo (ice), pyro (fire), hydro (water), geo (rock), and electro (electricity.) in a sort of pokemon-like system, certain elements were weak to other ones, but more importantly, certain combinations of elements could drastically boost combat stats. Players got to construct four-slot teams of characters, each with an elemental affiliation and certain "skills" which would match their element, and you were encouraged to use the interactions of these elements to build teams. very quickly, a huge community formed dedicated to optimizing teams and tiering characters. People would even make a game out of building teams specifically to do high-level damage with "bad" characters or characters who weren't designed to be damage drivers (my 100k jean burst was an incredible moment fr.) this was, of course, also a picture-perfect driver for the gacha aspect of the game, which was how players obtained new characters.

Pre-3.0, combat was... well i won't say it was balanced, but there was no elemental reaction that had any MAJOR advantage over the others. when you actually ran the numbers, i believe vaporize was the best reaction in terms of damage output, with the best team being raiden national with kazuha for EM buffs. but a well-built freeze or melt team could do similar numbers, or even better numbers depending on your artifact rolls. (ayaka permafreeze you will always be my #1.) Despite a steady stream of new characters with each update, characters from the earliest version of the game like xingqiu and xiangling were still topping the charts in terms of usefulness and versatility in teambuilding. However, as early as 1.0, players had been teased that a major update to the combat system was planned. There was a seventh element, dendro (plants) which pre-3.0 only existed as an elemental affiliation for menial enemies. there were no playable dendro characters, and the only elemental reaction that existed relating to it was very low-level and not particularly useful in combat.

Originally, dendro was projected to be added to the combat system somewhere in version 2, but its release was delayed substantially, meaning it came out along with its affiliated nation, sumeru. And as soon as it came out, it basically broke the combat system. I assume that the scaling they ended up going with may have been out of fear that players would be hesitant to integrate a new element into their pre-established team builds, and thus they may have been worried about sales on their dendro character banners, and i assume that the fact that 3 elements are required to get the highest-level reaction was an attempt to make the meta more balanced in the face of that scaling, but, well... it didn't work. At this point, the genshin impact combat meta is basically "if you're not using hyperbloom what the fuck are you doing." there's basically no reaction in the game that comes close to it in terms of both damage and ease of use. you are not going to beat a hyperbloom team with anything other than a better-built hyperbloom team. combat is now very heavily skewed in the direction of dendro, meaning that if you DON'T want to use a dendro team, you're going to be doing significantly lower numbers. And since enemies are added with each update, post-3.0 combat becomes difficult and annoying if you don't have a hyperbloom team on-hand.

The major gripe i have with dendro isn't even the scaling, though. I mentioned offhand earlier that the 1.0 B-plot questline had a section which taught you the basics of the combat system via mini-dungeons. These mini-dungeons, of course, taught you the version of the system that existed pre-3.0, so there's no tutorial for dendro reactions. Rather than integrating the tutorial into the story and world like they did in their early quests, upon playing 3.0 for the first time players were given a popup that explained, very wordily, how dendro reactions worked. there was no opportunity to test these reactions in an environment without consequences--if you wanted to try them you'd have to remember the relevant information, build yourself a team, find an enemy to try them on, and just hope you got it right. This lack of integration is something i began to notice more and more with genshin as it progressed, especially in sumeru. where in mondstadt and liyue open-world puzzles would be explained to you by an npc or via environmental context clues, in sumeru you'd be stopped while exploring every two seconds by a popup explaining some puzzle or another which, of course, you wouldn't read, because you didn't want to do the puzzle right that minute anyway, and then by the time you DID want to do that puzzle you'd have no in-game way of figuring out how to do it. The puzzle popups may seem like a small thing, but it's one of the clearest examples in the game to me of the fact that the player experience is so clearly not being prioritized here. the game doesn't even TRY to be immersive anymore. they have no qualms about pulling you out of the story to read a paragraph about how the puzzle works. they don't care how your character, in-universe, is supposed to have acquired that information. they don't care why your character, in-universe, is doing the puzzle in the first place. because they know the reason YOU are doing the puzzle, which is to unlock a hidden chest that gives you 1/80th of a gacha pull.

That was not "a quick detour" was it lmfao. ok anyways. back to the story. Now i want to talk about D-plot, meaning limited event stories, and lore as i defined it earlier, meaning contextual details not present in quests or playable story. This is where i think genshin's story becomes completely inaccessible.

Already, we've covered the fact that in order to consume the very basic story, players have to be willing to wait years between A and B-plot quest releases, punctuated by irrelevant map expansions and interlude quests. I mentioned before that genshin's incompleteness is one of the major problems of its story. the fact that players have to wait years, remembering plot-relevant information that they have no way of knowing will even BE plot-relevant, for the payoff of these narratives is frustrating at best and actively malicious at worst. But in theory, there should be an obvious way to circumvent this. One could just wait until the game IS completely finished to play the whole thing. Sort of like buying a game in early access but waiting until it's actually finished to play it all the way through. that's theoretically possible. but, as i have been hammering home this whole time, genshin is a free game, and therefore genshin relies entirely on a consistently engaging fanbase in order to remain profitable. if genshin does not have a base of players who are willing to log in every day, or at the very least once every update, the game's financial model collapses on itself. therefore, genshin puts on limited-time events. this is a standard in gacha games, as a way to keep the fans consistently engaging. What is not standard, however, is the way that genshin uses these events as vessels for its story. about 19 out of 20 limited events in genshin impact will be useless menial bullshit with no effect on the story or really even the player aside from maybe making you fucking angry. 1 out of those 20, though, will be innocuously named, with nothing in the banner or event description to indicate that it's special in any way, but it will contain serious A or B-plot relevant information that exists nowhere else in the game. My personal favorite example is the infamous 1.3 scaramouche appearance, in which he showed up, told the protagonist that the sky was fake, and then immediately fucked off again. Scaramouche did not show up again until at least 2.0, and the fake sky wasn't so much as MENTIONED again until 3.2, almost TWO YEARS LATER. but there are others, such as the (almost equally infamous) albedo doppelganger event in which a major character's loyalties are called into question, or the event where major biographical information is revealed about kaeya, the only playable character with major known connections to the A-plot and Khaenri'ah. With all of these events, once the event period ends, the information contained within them vanishes from the game completely. there's no way to replay old events that you've missed, even sans rewards, so if you miss a plot-relevant event the ONLY way to catch up on that story is through word of mouth. again, this is a transparent way to keep genshin's userbase engaged during downtime between B-plot quests; if you don't log in and play every event, how will you know if you've missed something important? You might not be able to fully understand the future story if you miss out on the D-plot now!

The D-plot problem is something that I think could, in theory, be circumvented by dedicated record-keeping. if the wiki had anything resembling an easily accessible event database that marked story-relevant events and contained summaries or gameplay videos, at the very least you wouldn't have to fear being completely lost on the off chance that a random throwaway line in an event from fucking 1.3 becomes plot-relevant. but hyv obviously doesn't want that, because it undermines their financial model, and the sheer number of events and the amount of rerunning of irrelevant events they do makes the task of recording and categorizing them all daunting if not impossible.

Then, of course, there's lore. this is arguably what genshin is infamous for in certain circles of the internet. You know that unraveled video where bdg reads every book in skyrim? if you tried to do that with genshin the video would probably be about 10 hours long. and it's not just books; genshin hides (potentially) plot-relevant information in weapon and artifact descriptions, in random hidden world quests, in character bios... the list goes on. and 9 times out of 10, the information is essentially written in code. Plot-relevant characters will have multiple names, or the relevant information will refer to them as vaguely as possible, presumably to further the "mystery" and encourage theorizing among fans. but the sheer amount of information like this that exists within the game makes it all but impossible to determine what is plot-relevant and what isn't. For a topical example, the most recent A-plot quest bedtime story mentions the name Rhinedottir in connection with events in Khaenri'ah, suddenly making that name A-plot relevant. Rhinedottir is an alternate name for the character Gold, whose existence you would only have known of before this point if you'd unlocked and read the character Albedo's character bios. (Albedo is a limited-run character who hasn't been available since november 2022, btw.) the only other information about Rhinedottir permanently available in the game comes from the description of the weapon Festering Desire, which was only obtainable from a limited event back in 2020, anyway. So basically, if you wanted ANY context for that remark, you'd have to have been playing the game since AT LEAST 2022, AND you'd have to have taken the time to go over your weapon and character descriptions with a fine-toothed comb. keep in mind that as of right now (june 2024) there are 85 playable characters in this game, each with 10 unique unlockable character bio sections, and over 150 weapons, each with their own unique descriptions, not to mention over 50 artifact sets, each with 5 unique artifacts, which all have their own unique descriptions as well. there are also 51 different collections of books which contain written lore as well. the idea that any player could keep up with all this, or that anyone could even sift through it all to pick out the important things that they NEED to keep up with, is insane, especially when the game makes a point of withholding crucial plot information from its players within the A and B-plot quests. this amount of written lore only exists, again, to drive up engagement in the hopes of subsequently driving up profit. Even if the average player isn't reading and absorbing all this information, the fact that it's there coupled with the fact that the writers consistently refuse to reveal anything beyond surface-level A-plot information means that there's basically ENDLESS theory fodder. and THAT means that people will be posting their theories and talking with each other and getting into arguments. it means "genshin impact" trends on twitter. it means engagement, and engagement means money.

basically what it comes back to is that everything is so transparently money over player experience with this game. I think what we're witnessing with genshin is what i would call an end-stage gacha game--a gacha game that's gone on a little too long and gotten a little too popular, and so the veil has started to slip a little more than usual. Gachas work primarily because they operate by toeing the line between what is fun to play and what is a predatory mechanic. As long as the actual gameplay remains engaging and rewarding, players can ignore the unsavory business practices underneath. At this point, genshin has swerved too hard into the money-hungriness and is still hoping that they can use their old tried-and-true engagement farming methods to remain popular regardless. currently, it seems like those methods are still working, unfortunately. Like I said in the post that prompted this, i really can't wait for the hyv writer NDAs to expire 10 or so years down the line, because I can only imagine what an insane shitshow writing for this game must be. I want to see the tell-all articles. I want carnage.

That being said, I played genshin impact religiously from 2020 to 2023. I loved the game. Despite myself, I am still really, REALLY interested in the A-plot. I want to know what's going on with the protagonist and their sibling; where they came from, what happened to them, what the heavenly principles are, what role celestia plays in all of this. I want to know Kaeya's full backstory, what role Khaenri'ah plays in the overarching story, and what happened to it in the past. but I don't really have any faith that I ever will, because I know that as long as keeping their fans in the dark and stringing them along remains profitable, that's what hyv will continue to do.

Do I think genshin impact is unsalvagable? in its current state, yes. If I was given the ability to turn back time and convince a bunch of executives of the profitability of this venture, I would change almost nothing about the story of genshin and completely rework the mechanics of its release. I would make it a series of single-release self-contained games rather than a constantly-updating gacha. Each game would be one B-plot quest, or one nation, eight games in all, preferably released once every year. Removing the gacha mechanic, players would be given access to a certain pool of characters to build teams at the start of each game, and then periodically unlock new characters as the story progressed. for example, if you were playing the inazuma game, you'd start out with only your protag, and after progressing to a certain point in the story you'd get a pool of inazuma 4-stars to teambuild with freely. Then, as the story progressed and you met plot-relevant inazuman 5-stars you'd add them to your pool. I'd change basically nothing about the combat system except for a properly integrated introduction of dendro when it makes its appearance in sumeru. Once you completed the story in that nation, you could move onto the next game in the series if it was out, or if it wasn't, you could continue to explore the open world while waiting for the next release. Would this be as profitable as the gacha model? probably not, but what it WOULD do is allow for much more consistent pacing and writing, with the added bonus of not making your userbase feel like you'd shoot them in the head for their pocket change.

#jesus christ. hi everyone #asks

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maxwell-grant · 6 months ago

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Playing Princess Peach: Showtime got me the Mario brainvurms again so I wanna ramble a bit: As much as I adore and put a lot of stock into Wario and Waluigi's dynamic (and as much as Waluigi's my favorite character), I actually don't think Waluigi should be in the Wario games. Particularly Ware, but that also goes for Land in case that ever comes back from the grave. And it's not because of anything wrong or lacking with Waluigi as a character, quite the opposite: I think a lot of what defines him, what makes him interesting in different ways than Wario, actually makes him a terrible fit for Wario's narrative real state. Not an issue when they're together filling in a necessary dynamic in Mario territory, but it gets trickier when Wario's supposed to be the lead in an actual story.

In regards to Land, the central appeal of Wario Land is in the fact that you can play as Wario. I'd said as much before that, generally speaking, where as Mario is altered to fit his games, Wario's games are built to fit him. As much as WL did to flesh out Wario as a character, the core concept for Wario Land 1, and every subsequent game, comes back to the idea that you are playing a bigger, nastier Mario, who can't run as fast or jump as high, but is stronger and full of stranger surprises, so he engages with different kinds of obstacle courses and yyou have to figure out what he can and can't do to solve them. Every alteration made to the Wario Land series over the years, not just in relation to the Super Mario Land platformers it spun out of, was built around turning Wario's existing traits into gameplay mechanics.

He is a bully and a brute and thus you shoulder bash your way through problems, his propensity for comedic slapstick turned into full blown immortality and the source of his power-ups, he is far more interested in sniffing for gold than actually saving anyone so his adventures are less linear, your endgoal is to get the biggest treasures possible, his thieving bastard explorer nature eventually allowed for a timed Indiana Jones boulder escape at every level, Shake It lets you literally shake down enemies for cash, etc. The one time they took the opposite route and really altered Wario to fit a pre-ordained gimmick was in Master of Disguise, and soundtrack aside there's some good reasons why that one's so unpopular it's not even considered a Wario Land game.

All of these are traits that are built to fit Wario, and mainly Wario, and you could argue that these by extension apply to Waluigi because of his traits that overlap with Wario's, and for sure the spin-offs demonstrate that Waluigi does tag along on Wario's treasure hunts sometimes, but if we concede this and add Waluigi as a Player 2, then: A: What is so great and unique about Wario, if other characters can also do all the absurd things he does? And B: What is so great and weird about Waluigi, if all he's doing is just the stuff Wario already does?

The Mario platformers don't really have this issue with Luigi not just because Luigi as the Player 2 is grandfathered in, but because mechanically speaking Luigi isn't very different from Mario, and because the gameplay mechanics for Mario platformers are nowhere near as specialized as Wario's is. Everybody runs and jumps and collects power-ups and does the same things Mario does, that's why the Toads and the princesses can jump in on it just fine. Wario sharing the glory of being Wario is just not what Wario does, and it's Waluigi's thing even less. With everyman all-ages Mario, everyone's invited to join in the fun, but when the whole point is you reveling in "you get to play as Wario!", WHERE BEING BAD IS GOOD AND GREED IS GOOD HEHEHEHEHEH, you really lose a lot of the appeal turning it into "you get to play as Wario, and another guy (or even more) who can also do the things Wario does, turns out Wario's willing to share I guess". Even working in a different set of paths and solutions per level so Wario and Waluigi could solve problems differently would just be splitting levels by half of the work and half of the fun.

For comparison's sake, Pizza Tower has a second playable character in the form of The Noise, a rival who is opposite to Peppino personality-wise. Despite having more or less the same proportions (and in prior builds playing identically to Peppino), in order to accomodate his personality that is also his main selling point, he plays in a different manner through levels that weren't designed around him (not different enough that it excludes co-op though), and so he actually breaks the game, and that is in fact worked into everything he does: Pretty much the main running gag through The Noise Update is that he is brazenly cheating and easily clearing through the things Peppino worked so hard to beat "fairly", and that he is a piece of shit with no emotional stakes in what he's doing, turning every hardship or battle into a joke.

Pizza Tower is just as much built around Peppino's character as Wario Land is (which is part of why the game became faster and more stressful, and thus played increasingly less and less like Wario Land over every subsequent build up until release), and it was only ever going to accomodate the Noise's personality by either designing new levels (and thus a new game) around him, or going all the way on him breaking the existing ones and occupying an opposite role to Peppino's, which fits him. Again, you could argue this dirty cheater angle fits Waluigi. The problem is, again, redundancy, and it not fitting Wario Land. Gameplay-wise, Wario is already breaking and even cheating through levels to clear them, he is already flipping the middle finger to traditional Mario-style platforming the way The Noise is doing to Peppino's playstyle. And story-wise, Wario doesn't let himself be outdone, he is not getting upstaged from his own adventures. Peppino doesn't WANT to be in his own adventures, that's why the game plays him for pathos and The Noise gets played for pure satire. They get to do completely different things in a way I'm not sure you could do with Wario and Waluigi without significantly overhauling the way Wario Land works, and at that point, why bother.

That being said, I definitely do want there to be a way Wario and Waluigi could star in a platformer together, it would be a dream for me. But I don't think that's going to work for Wario Land, and not doing Wario Land runs the risk of doing Master of Disguise again so, it'd take a lot of work. I want to say there is at least a possibility of making it work, which is definitely not an argument I'd make for Waluigi joining the WarioWare cast.

The thing about how WarioWare's cast works, and how it manages to keep Wario recognizably Wario even in a drastically different role than the one he occupies in Mario spin-offs and Wario Land alike, is a very simple but effective dynamic: Wario is the boss, and everyone else is your friend/co-worker. Wario is the ringmaster, and the circus freaks need your help to keep the show afloat. Wario is Michael Scott/J Jonah Jameson, and you're in the Dunder Mifflin/Daily Bugle trenches with everyone else.

All of the WarioWare characters are lovable weirdos, it comes with the question of "what kind of person would not just be friends with, but willingly work for Wario?". They are weird, they are dorks, they are (mostly) nice, they (mostly) get along, but above all, they are accomodating. Of their weirdness, of your weirdness, even of their boss' weirdness. Their goal is to guide you through the challenges and fun and encourage you to succeed. They do all the hard work in making these games fun to play. They are directly, proportionately opposite to how much of an dynamic jerk Wario is, and that's why Wario gets to keep on doing Wario things.

He gets to cause problems and lead the gang into trouble, he gets be mean, he gets to hijack proceedings and directly insult and mess with the player, he gets to be the villain, he gets to be the butt of the joke, he gets to crash and fail. The Ware crew gets to be people you come to know and relate to and love, while he gets to be the GOTTA WIIIIN guy. It's a fine balance and a very good deal on their end.

It also has no room whatsoever for Waluigi, anti-social party crasher conniving drama queen extraordinaire, in anything other than a cameo or a one-off antagonistic competition with them. He isn't going to take Wario, or anyone's place, and his dynamic with Wario in the spin-offs just doesn't translate to Wario's role in WarioWare. And he belongs even less in the WarioWare crew (especially with characters like Jimmy T and Crygor, who have significant overlapping traits with Waluigi already), he is just not made for playing nice with others like that. It's not that he can't, his player interactions can be remarkably non-antagonistic and chill even, but it's not his thing.

He is Waluigi, as they reiterate in every bio, he is dastardly and mean and also a tryhard loser who "thinks" he's Luigi's rival more so than he actually is, and who doesn't seem to get along with anyone other than Wario, in fact he barely plays nice with Wario a lot of the time, they're partners in crime first and foremost and are depicting bickering over spoils when they work together. He'd just break the balance that makes this cast dynamic work so well without offering anything in return, and would be worse off for it. If anything Waluigi should be the last person to work for WarioWare, it has nothing to do with what he's about and the dude knows firsthand how little Wario intends to pay anyone ever. You could get stuff out of playing him as a rival trying to muscle in their gigs, or beat Jimmy T on the dance floor, and even that's stretching a bit.

I think the biggest problem comes down to the fact that the main thing with Waluigi, much like Wario, IS his outsized personality and the role it offers him, and with how Wario's games are precision-built around him and him alone as the center, putting Waluigi in those is dooming him to get sucked into Wario's orbit in roles that just don't work for him and dillute the chief appeal of putting Waluigi in stuff. Even if he's already secondary to Wario in the spin-offs, in there they fill in a niche together, two halves of one idiot, Camelot's favorite boys and all that, that you can't carry over when Wario has bigger things to do than just play along and be a nuisance to Mario.

I was very happy with Princess Peach: Showtime in part because of how committed it was to the idea of putting Peach and Peach alone in the spotlight, with NO Mario elements whatsoever tagging along for the ride. There is not a single trace of Mario or Bowser anywhere, the Toads leave at the opening cutscene and don't come back until the post-credits when their only role is to give her crown back. The game is just Peach going on adventures, righting wrongs and trying new personas and putting on a show with the people she's saving.

It's short, sweet, it's kind of a baby game and it has to be for the target audience, and it doesn't seem to be super popular in general but I'm glad it sold well, I'd like for Nintendo to make more games like it. It got me to like Peach more than I ever have before, and it got me feeling very good about the fact that this exists at all. Seems like there really has been a creative renaissance for Mario over the past years. Not that I ever expect it to happen anymore, but I always dreamed of Waluigi getting to have something like this, although I'll say that Peach's was a very long time coming (especially given the failure of Super Princess Peach) and I'm glad this premise was made with her. I never thought it'd happen and that makes the former dream seem, y'know, a little less impossible. Maybe.

Semi-unrelated but I am also extremely glad that Madame Grape exists, definitely a character I'd like to see return to occupy a position akin to King Boo or just go-karting with the others. And by no means was this intentional, but I definitely get a kick out of the fact that the villain in Showtime is an overlooked purple-clad drama queen who creates and leads a group literally called "Sour Grapes", who wants to claim her role in a world of happy shining people who don't APPRECIATE her work unless she makes them, who wants to plaster her face and name and colors everywhere, and who is incredibly invested in making Peach her nemesis and foil, even though this story was supposed to be about Peach taking a break for a change and Grape is very far from being the worst thing Peach has to deal with on a regular basis. Just reminded me of another guy who tried to hypnotize "the rhythmless masses" with sweet dance moves once.

#rambles #mario #super mario #waluigi #wario #wario land #warioware #pizza tower #princess peach #princess peach showtime #madame grape #nintendo #videogames

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howtofightwrite · 1 year ago

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So, uh, I know that this place is mostly for writing, but making your own TTRPG system kinda qualifies as writing, doesn't it?

Either way - here's a fighting-related question that came up during my process making it. Is fear an important aspect of combat? Small-scale combat, to be specific, not the kind where you see a thousand of knights fight another thousand of knights.

Would wounds (or even hits that are strong enough to be felt through armour) inflict noticeable stress to a well-trained soldier? Would it be bad enough to, potentially, make them panic, even if they aren't in any actual danger yet? Or would that mostly be a problem with inexperienced fighters, and training/combat experience could make someone relatively desensitized to that sort of thing?

It's probably worded weirdly, I know, but, in general, what I'm trying to ask here is - should one consider stress/fear as a thing that might change the tides mid-combat, even if cowardice (or anything similar) isn't a major character trait for neither of the combatants?

This one isn't really writing, it's a game design question, and fully answering it is going to require digging a lot deeper into what you're trying to do with the game. It is entirely reasonable for your character to still suffer some lesser injuries from hits their armor absorbed, and for you to have a secondary mental stat that gauges your character's mental ability to keep functional. Warhammer's Morale and the Storyteller system's Willpower stats come to mind as examples of this. Also Call of Cthulhu's Sanity stat, though that's a little more involved.

So in game design, you need to decide how you want combat to feel. And, this can be anything from gritty realism to a fun power fantasy. In fact, the genre of your game will heavily determine how you want your systems to shape your experience.

I can't remember if Warhammer tabletop does this, or if I'm conflating it with Gladius and Dawn of War, but, in Warhammer your units actually have a separate morale hitpool. Obviously, for a lot of armies in Warhammer, keeping your units fighting against horrific, unknowable abominations is a major theme, so a main system (and a part of every unit stat card) is how much stress they can take before they have a complete nervous breakdown, and start running in the opposite direction. In fact, in tabletop, the game actually has multiple systems evaluating whether your own units will actually follow their orders at all. The difficulty of commanding troops against impossible threats is a central theme of the systemic narrative Warhammer is trying to create, so it gets multiple top level systems.

Compare that to D&D, where there are no top level systems regarding the mental state of your characters. They signed up to fight unknowable abominations, and magpie their way through the world, so when they encounter something genuinely unnerving, that gets special rules on that monster. It's not part of the power fantasy of D&D (most of the time.) So when it does show up, it just gets attached as an addendum to an existing rule system or as a special rule for one creature.

So, what does your game system want?

If you want a small scale, sword & sorcery brawler, you probably don't need to model their mental state, or how afraid they are. You really need to know if their morale is high, and when it is high, you can probably handle that with simple conditional buffs. In fact, this is probably a system where you wouldn't even want to model a low mental state, unless things are truly dire, or supernaturally oppressed. (Again, with special rule cases for that, because it's not going to come up very often.)

This probably should have been a few paragraphs earlier, but just looking at an RPG's character sheet can often tell you a lot about what the designer intended for their game. The things your players are going to have to interact with regularly need dedicated systems. Stuff that comes up rarely, shouldn't get dedicated systems. (And, this is a very real issue with a lot of RPGs, where there are a lot of different systems to keep track of, that could have been scrubbed out and set aside as flavor or special rules. Including with D&D.)

If your primary focus is a kind of horror RPG, then you need those extra systems. You're going to be dealing with them constantly. You might want an attribute called Resolve (or whatever) to specifically model how well a character handles dealing with horrific situations, or seeing their friends ripped to shreds. You might also have a separate tracked HP pool (similar to how Darkest Dungeon handles it) specifically focused on their ability to manage psychological strain.

If you're going for that, psychological damage can be a lot more deciduous in a tabletop environment, because you cannot armor yourself against that. Characters might be able to have some psychological resistance through strenuous mental conditioning, but again, as the game designer, you control exactly how much a player can stack up, so you can balance around the absolute maximum damage that a player could mitigate, while also keeping in mind how much the raw damage would do to a defenseless character.

You could have a rule system where characters can pretty reliably soak off most of the physical damage, but suffer serious attrition due to psychological (or, even magical) damage that they couldn't mitigate.

How armor works in your game is a similar situation, where the rules need to follow the kind of experience you're trying to create. However, unlike dealing with psychological strain, armor rules also need to consider how easy they are to implement at the table. A lot of CRPGs use % based armor mitigation, and that's great, if you have a computer that can crunch those numbers for you. If you're at the table and rolling 3d8, it's going to be a lot more awkward to figure out what 43% mitigation will do to your resulting values. So, it's a lot easier to simply say that armor subtracts X from incoming hits. Like, “Armor 2 means that each incoming attack does two less damage.” This starts to run into a balance problem. In theory, a character with sufficient armor might be able to mitigate all incoming damage (and you will have players who stack defense with this specific goal in mind. You can't escape that.)

This leads to one of my favorite solutions for this. I think it was J.E. Sawyer's Fallout 3 that never happened, but the idea is that if you're taking damage from hits, and your armor is absorbing that, it goes into a second, less severe, damage category. To use the example of White Wolf's Storyteller system, you convert lethal damage into bashing. It can still kill your characters, but it reduces the overall effect of that damage in the moment, makes it a lot easier to recover from, but also doesn't let them just walk in and soak all the damage without issue. So, for example, your character has Armor 4, an enemy swings on them for 8 lethal damage, and 4 points of damage are converted to bashing. (When their lethal + bashing damage reaches their HP pool then they're downed or knocked out), but they're not in danger of dying unless they take more lethal damage, or are suffering from some ongoing damage effect (like bleeding.)

Another, more lethal option I really liked from a D20 system (so, basically 3.5e D&D), was Star Wars's vitality system. The Wizards of the Coast Star Wars RPG had two HP pools. One was the normal hit dice per level based on class from D&D called Vitality (if you ever wondered why your HP in KotOR was called Vitality, this is why.) The second pool was Wounds. This was equal to your Constitution score. So, if you had CON 12, you could take 12 wound points. If you ran out of Vitality, damage would apply directly to your wound pool, and if you ran out of wound points, you were dead. Just, dead. No downed state, no stabilizing, you were toast. And, here's the thing that I might be misremembering, but if you critically hit someone, instead of multiplying your damage, your damage bypassed their vitality and went directly to wounds. This meant you had a fairly normal D&D rule set that could turn lethal with very little warning. Still a concept from game design that I like to keep in mind, because it creates a very dangerous feel in combat. Because of how the flavor was written, Vitality damage didn't even necessarily mean your character was being directly harmed. Taking damage from vitality might mean your character narrowly escaped getting hit by a blaster bolt, or that they effectively parried an incoming lightsaber attack. It still had the effect of wearing characters down over time without automatically meaning that they were suffering absolutely implausible amounts of injuries (though it could, also mean that your character had suffered minor cuts and scrapes or that their armor had taken a few hits for them.)

Something that gives the player a bit more control over their own durability would be to give items HP pools of their own. This isn't a normal item deterioration ruleset, but rather you're giving their armor a fixed amount of HP, that it can absorb in their place. So, to refresh that example above, if your character has Armor 4, and they're hit for 8 damage, instead of taking 4 bashing, they might choose to have that damage dealt directly to their armor. (And, this is a case where the decision to how to deal with that damage could be in the player's hands if you wanted. It gives them some proactive agency while taking damage, which is rare in TTRPGs.) You could even use this for a blowthrough rule, where if a character takes more damage in a single hit than their armor's remaining HP, the armor is destroyed and offers no protection from that attack. This, again, plays more into horror, as their armor will be wearing down over time, and if they're not performing regular maintenance to try to keep it working, could potentially fail them in combat. (It also creates a very cathartic moment for players to sheer through an enemy's armor, dropping them on the spot.)

All of this can and really should be, tuned for your systems and numbers. I have biases on exactly how granular I like my TTRPGs, but that doesn't mean you're tied to those values, and some people really do like the triple digit HP pools of high level characters in D&D and Pathfinder. I'm not going to say you're wrong for that, because I don't think you are, but obviously, something like Armor 4 means something very different if you have an average HP of 8-12, versus, if you have an average HP pool ~72.

So, when balancing combat to create the experience you want, you need to keep track of average combatant HP, average attack damage, and the mitigation options characters can use. At this point, you then need to decide how you want these to relate to one another. All of these values are relative to each other. From a gameplay perspective, there's no difference between a game where characters have 10hp, and each hit connects for 1 damage, vs a game where players have 40k HP, and each hit connects for 8k. It's the same game, the only thing that's changed is the amount of numbers you have to scribble onto the page while tracking damage. If you think your characters are too resistant to incoming damage, you can increase the amount of damage attacks do, or limit the amount of mitigation they have access to. Limiting mitigation can take the form of simply reducing how much damage resistance they can get, or it can function by adding additional considerations to their mitigation (as mentioned above.) (Granted, the Vitality system is a bit of a nuclear option, because that will change your combat to be exceedingly threatening, without becoming instantly lethal. Which, might be what you want.)

You have a lot of freedom for how you shape your players' experiences, and with a bit of creativity you can provide a unique combat experience for your players.

-Starke

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#writing reference #writing advice #writing tips #Game design #how to fight write #starke answers

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gabichanwrites · 1 year ago

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As someone who has no strong feelings toward Izzy, I still didn't want him to die and was certain Izzy wasn't going to die because despite all the things I disliked about what they did to certain characters and plots in the second season, I thought it didn't fit the show to have a central character (or basically anyone who isn't a minor character) die. It didn't fit anything it had set for itself in the previous season to kill off one of their main characters even if it WAS for a meaningful reason (which it wasn't). And yet they did it anyway, and like I thought, it was an awful decision.

Yeah, man, exactly that!

I may be quite biased because I literally loved Izzy since I first saw and heard him, all the quips, all the potential of redemption... And, you know, I've got a spot for "pathetic, wet cat" characters. As in I want to give him a towel, feed him something nice and treasure each moment he stops hissing at me.

And even with all the love I hold for Izzy, I don't think I'm not objective when I say it's a shit narrative choice and it's a death that doesn't do anything. It wouldn't serve well any of the characters in the show in fact.

Especially with the way the show handled 1 season, with the softness and historical inaccuracies in how open everyone is to the new stuff - man, people loved it. I loved it. I trusted the writers so fully that not for a moment did I think they would actually kill off anyone, not even for a moment did I believe that Lucius would die. And this was this kind of show about pirates, this was why people liked it so much, at least partially.

And now this finale... Even if we ignore how much Izzy doesn't deserve it, it's just a bad way to go. It's a generic shot in a generic setting, with the character doing absolutely nothing special, not protecting anyone, not running away, just standing there. It's like killing Pete so Lucius will realize that pirating is dangerous and bad and he should stay on land. It's like killing Jim to make Oluwande realize that this isn't safe and... I don't know, go to Zheng. Honestly, I have a hard time coming up with similar nonsense because it just... Doesn't make sense. The writer in me recoils at the sound of so much unnecessary death and cut potential for the sake of... What exactly?

. This kind of death breaks the theme we got used to seeing and it takes away our belief that we can freely enjoy the shenanigans without worrying. A feeling I just got familiar with when the curse and Calypso's birthday happened. This kind of death takes away character in a cruel, pointless way and reduces them back to side characters, there to make way for the main couple. And I like Ed and Stede well enough but COME ON.

So yeah, in short, I fully agree anon. But you probably knew that if you took a look at my Tumblr in the last few hours. I'm gonna stop here though because it's very late for me and I am several hours behind on getting some sleep. Thank you for the ask though, I feel like this finale deeply affected even those who aren't that obssesed with Izzy and, to be honest, it's our first warning sign - writers don't mind pointless killing anymore.

Or maybe it's the saving grace - the bad reception will make them unlikely to do anything equally rush and stupid in the future.

#izzy hands #ofmd #ask

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bestworstcase · 10 months ago

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@alullinchaos here

on this topic, do you think Summer will follow the pattern tai and qrow have laid out and show favoritism towards Ruby between the two sisters or that she'll do something else when she's introduced (versus Raven trying really hard to not show that she cares about Yang and as far as I know truly not being that concerned w/ Ruby)

it's tricky because on the one hand, narratively summer is inextricable from ruby's character and she is a much more central figure in ruby's character arc, with clear disparities in how present she is narratively (there is no yang equivalent of RLR2 for example). plus the lopsided "leave ruby alive" versus crickets for yang. but on the other, yang was parentified and her grief is complicated and to some degree suppressed by the reality that she had to be ruby's mom after summer left. plus she remembers summer as a fantastic mom. plus salem lets--not just yang, but all of yang's friends including oscar--go after yang identifies herself as summer's daughter, so while she's never said in so many words that yang is not to be killed, actions speak louder than words.

the only other factor we have to go on is what very, very little we've seen of who summer actually was, and how that compares to how she's remembered, and this i find very interesting because literally everybody who knew summer compares her to ruby, ruby's just like her, you sound just like your mother, summer would have pressed on, like you--and then. we get this fleeting glimpse of summer herself and she's so much like yang it hurts.

like the way she talks to raven. the snap in her tone. the resentment of raven for leaving. the shoulder check. that is exactly yang. even going rogue on a secret mission to do what she felt was right--is that not exactly the same sort of judgment call that yang made when she decided that blake was right and they should tell robyn the truth instead of trying to arrest her?

her loved ones had her on this pedestal, the heroic paragon, the best huntress ever, that's the comparison cast onto ruby when people tell her she's like summer. but the truth, the real person, was (at least in this small glimpse) quite a lot more like yang.

there is also the factor of ruby's silver eyes and summer's silver eyes, and the fact that we know nothing about summer's past. i think realistically she must have felt some special concern for ruby because of her silver eyes (whether it's true or not the inner circle believes that salem systematically picks them off and ozpin seems to actively recruit them when he can find them) and that this concern must have partly motivated her to go rogue (she doesn't want this life for ruby).

but at the same time i wonder if maybe that made it easier for summer to develop just a normal bond with yang (no baggage) versus ruby (all the baggage)--similar to how tai's unresolved and complicated feelings about raven color his perception of yang. like, i think if she hadn't left she might have tended to be more protective of ruby but closer to yang and more emotionally in tune with yang bc their basic personalities more similar

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henrysglock · 5 months ago

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pls analyse these : https://x.com/Updates_SThings/status/1812222329570939220

Okay this is going to be a little long. That link will take anyone interested to the original tweet with the pictures of the posters.

First things first: There are a mix of real and not-real movies in those posters. Anything that says "A Hawkins picture production" was invented for the play, much like the "The Unearthly Visitors" print ad in the papers was also invented for Stranger Things.

In some of them, you can see pretty blatant hallmarks of the show, like Project Rainbow featuring a direct quote from the opening scene of TFS as its tagline (with a smaller easter egg of the boy on the front resembling Will, which ties him to Project Rainbow and the Brenners), or Spider Attack featuring a literal image of the Creel house (with a smaller easter egg for Henry, mildly possessed, using a vision of spiders to scare Virginia when she threatened his friendship with Patty):

Ones like Curse of the Killer Fog, The Squawk, and Science Monster go a little more meta:

The Killer Fog is a reference to the Mindflayer's role in TFS on the obvious level, but it also has ties to Will casting fog cloud, as Mike mentioned in the Mindflayer Shed Scene. The Squawk, as I outlined here, ties TFS, Bob's Mindflayer-tracking device, and the WSQK radio station together. Science Monster is a little self-explanatory (See: Sullivan telling Owens it was men of science who created the problem in Hawkins, but also the fact that Henry supposedly "caught" the Mindflayer from a substance a scientist was trying to escape with, making him a science monster). That one is also reminiscent of Frankenstein in design.

However...they're not all fake.

These movies are real, and their plots are also easter eggs:

House on Haunted Hill is a classic whodunit, featuring an eccentric millionaire (Frederick Loren, played by Price) who brings in 5 guests to "survive" the supposedly haunted house for a $10k prize as entertainment for his fourth wife. He brings in a test pilot, a journalist, a psychiatrist specializing in hysteria, an employee at his company, and the owner of the house.

Long story short, the millionaire's wife was cheating on him with the psychiatrist, and she a) faked her own suicide, and b) attempted to orchestrate her husband's death so she could take off with David. Loren figured this plot out, and orchestrated both the psychiatrist's death and his wife's death.

I have a lot to say about this particularly in regards to Henry, Patty, and Brenner. I've talked before about Henry's status as the narrative Barbara Allen to Patty's narrative Witch Boy John, including Brenner's status as Marvin Hudgins, who Barbara unwilling cheats on John with. Seeing the central infidelity plotline in House on Haunted Hill specifically featuring a wife cheating on her husband with a doctor and the two of them planning to run off together, especially given all of Brenner's lines about treating Virginia's hysteria with sedatives vs Dr. Trent offering Nora a sedative:

(Something something, also, the ties between Virginia and Nora Walker from the movie Tommy (which Em has talked about in greater detail, you can find it in his pinned post).) and the fact that there aren't any other instances of genuine infidelity in TFS outside the weird triangle Henry, Brenner, and Patty have going on (even Karen kissing Bob was okayed by Ted, and Jopper never actually got together despite thinking about running away together). So when it comes to infidelity stuff...it's all about them.......it's kind of damning and cements in the coding I was already picking up on between Henry, Brenner and Patty as opposed to Barbara, Marvin, and John.

Moving on to The Wasp Woman, the synopsis is fairly simple. Starlin, who runs a cosmetics company, is aging. She seeks out a doctor working with wasp extract to help her regain her youth. She overdoses on the wasp extract and transforms into a sort of were-wasp.

I'd like to show some quotes that raise red flags for me:

Like the obvious stuff is the black widow thing, the "my boy"/"you think you can scare me, Henry?" stuff, and Starlin "changing" after overdosing on the extracts

But what's more interesting to me is this continued female-coding that Henry receives. He's the female black widow on-screen, and in TFS he's the queen wasp, all of which ties in with Patty's subtle lesbian coding, all of Henry's trans weirdness, and all of Henry's mother/pregnancy stuff specifically regarding the Mindflayer.

There's also the aspect of extracts making Starlin de-age, since we see this lack of aging in Brenner throughout the show.

One last aspect I find interesting:

"Filmed in Studioscope, Prints by Technicolor". While filming with technicolor largely died out in 1957, it continued to be used as a dye transfer process in film printing, hence Prints by Technicolor. However...Studioscope doesn't exist.

That's to be expected for the fake movies...but it also shows up on the poster for the real movies. It says that House on Haunted Hill was filmed in studioscope.

In the 1950s, the popular camera/film was superscope or cinemascope, relating to Super 35/35mm/2.35:1 filming:

This means while they're referencing real movies, the films themselves can't exist, because studioscope doesn't seem to have existed.

In short: It's all fake! Even the "real" stuff is wrong.

Also...either they're hinting at another universe where it was studioscope instead of the other two, or...

#asks #st: tfs #long post

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sugar-grigri · 1 year ago

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I love you but if denji sacrifices himself for asa I will throw up and sob. I pray that you're wrong

I really think the fact that Denji dies is key to his development.

We can see that he reaches his conclusions when he's in the middle of building Asa, Denji has more of a narrative role now to influence the other characters than to be disturbed by them.

I'm not saying this because tragedy is something Fujimoto knows how to write very well, but not only does death have an important place in his works, but Chainsaw Man is about the birth of a hero, especially in part 1, which is concluded in part 2.

We see that becoming a hero brings Denji artificial personal advantages, that he remains locked in a sad solitude

It has never had any other aim than to be integrated, and it still isn't.

Part 2 takes up Shakespearean codes (double identity, intertwined love, two opposing camps, relationship with the family), death has always had an emancipating function in tragedy.

Death is not an end but a conclusion; dying for the other is Denji's best way of paradoxically finding meaning in his existence.

For a boy who would constantly be judged as perverse but also as having low vices, sacrificing himself for others would finally serve to make him a hero in the ancient sense of the word, whose power derives not from his popularity but from his moral strength.

Sacrifice through the figure of the cat, the social integration initiated by Bucky and then taken up by the birds, the question of finding oneself, all need to be answered by a strong act, and only a powerful narrative act can resolve all these questions at once.

Fujimoto has just highlighted the concept of weapons, talking about their relationship with the fact of having no will of their own, their eternal youth and immortality.

The weapons are all polarized on this subject, while the whip and spear weapons see it as superiority, Miri, who also seems to want to act for his own freedom, is more dubious.

Barem is in a special position, having internalized the fact that sowing death is a divine mission, a trait common to all beings.

Quanxi and Denji are opposite examples: Quanxi has survived at the expense of his girlfriends, just as Denji has begun to see his own immortality as a burden.

Several times, Denji emanates the idea that he's a machine to be rebooted, that the people have projected him to become Chainsaw Man.

To have won against Aki, to have survived at the expense of his older brother, a victory that marries a loss is not really what you'd call "winning".

Fate is also a central theme in CSM, and Aki couldn't escape his contract with the demon from the future, just as he couldn't escape Makima's meticulous plan to bring about the end of the siblings before they were even formed.

Denji's mother and father died young, so it wouldn't surprise me if he, too, was trapped in a kind of fatality.

What's more, Denji's eternal youth is also what's going to give him trouble.

He hasn't matured physically compared to part 1; it's simply Fujimoto's style that has taken shape.

He won't grow up, this boy who'd like to go to school, plan to find a job and have a normal life.

Denji is condemned to seeing his loved ones die or to staying just the two of them with Nayuta.

We shouldn't idealize or demonize the relationship he has with his little sister, but the fact remains that Nayuta is a demon with different values than a boy who was human before becoming a demon.

The control demon simply wants an entourage, even if it's limited to one person.

As for Denji, he only finds meaning in his relationship with the majority, with people his own age.

Denji loves Nayuta, but they don't both have the same conception of happiness, as Fujimoto develops in the final chapters.

In short, the best way to make Denji happy is to let him die for someone else.

And again from a symbolic and narrative point of view, whether it's in relation to the general scenario or Denji's arc, of course I'd cry like everyone else and you Anon

But I want and hope for the best ending for CSM

#csm spoilers #chainsaw man #csm #csm part 2 #denji #nayuta #barem #asa #bucky #sugo miri #ask #my thoughts

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katrinapavela · 1 year ago

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QTNA: 10 Questions I Would Like Kerry Washington’s Memoir, Thicker Than Water to Answer

Kerry Washington’s memoir, Thicker Than Water, will be available to the masses on the 26th of September, and I have questions that need answers. Well, I would like to have answers. I pre-ordered it in June when it was announced, and I’ll be receiving a second copy when I see her in Manchester in October (Kerry, you better not cancel this leg of the tour. I worry because we’re the only stop that still doesn’t have a confirmed special guest). Before a million reviewers start leaking and the full-court press is unleashed this week, I thought it would be fun to post some of my own questions about Ms. Washington that I hope are answered in Thicker. To be clear, I read the same excerpt on Oprah.com as the rest of y’all. And I won’t be reading any advanced reviews until mine own eyes have completed all 320 pages of Kerry’s words. I am really looking forward to reading it, and hope to recommend it to my Black women-only reading group.

As an actress, I have liked Kerry Washington since I watched Save the Last Dance in the early 2000s. And in each subsequent film I’ve watched that featured her, I’ve felt like Tony Goldwyn (but not as intense): Oh hey, it’s that really great actress and she’s always giving something different. But I never explicitly sought after articles or interviews, preferring to casually enjoy her work instead.

That changed with Scandal. My dedication to the show hedged on its compelling narrative themes. But it was the compelling relationship between Kerry’s Olivia Pope and Tony Goldwyn’s Fitzgerald Grant that created magic. It cast a spell that elicited from me reams of writing about Scandal between 2012-2018. In fact, the series changed the whole trajectory of Kerry Washington’s career (and my life, too ). It also brought significantly more eyes upon her. The first vehicle built around Kerry, Scandal gave her acting space to breathe, develop and shine. I also continued to watch the smattering of films she made during that era (Django Unchained, Peeples, Confirmation), and began reading interviews with her--both before and during Scandal. I began to notice the way in which the availability of information shifted, receded (or removed), and sometimes became opaque under a claim of ‘privacy’ whilst also offering the veneer of accessibility from late 2013 onward. Granted, I do not run any obsequious fan accounts about Kerry, so I know there will be some who try to rattle off any number of things I “should know” because they have inhaled every morsel of information and made its consumption and regurgitation their entire online personality. But I am also not a hater who consumes the actor's every move for the purpose of group chat gossip. I like knowing things about people I admire because I like to find points of connection, perspective, recognition…and differences. I admire Kerry Washington…or what she’s allowed me to see. The problem is, when I think about her, I think about a person who seems good and cares fiercely for her country, family, and other people. She’s well-regarded. She’s funny. She’s stylish. She has a great capacity for information. But.

She also seems secretive, and that’s different from being private. I feel like I know of her, about her. But who is she, really? That lack of clarity is partly by design, of course, due to her profession. Still, I hope Thicker Than Water answers the soul of that question: Who is Kerry Washington?

It is with that central question in mind that I pose the following questions. These are MY questions. I am not here to represent anyone’s fandom. I know, too, that I don’t have a ‘right’ to have any of these questions answered. I’m not delulu (as the kids say). I’m being as honest as I can with my own curiosities about Kerry, as both an actress and a human.

These are my questions. I am not here to represent a fandom. Let’s get into the QTNA of it all.

Q1: What childhood scars still itch even into adulthood?

In a recent interview, Kerry mentioned that her therapist has read her book. Samesies! When I finished the pre-copyedited draft of my first book, I started connecting some childhood dots to a few of my ongoing challenges. I asked my therapist to read it so that we could be on the same page in our sessions. It is for this reason that I wonder if Kerry’s reading back of her own writing was revelatory to her in ways she was not able to consciously unlock before. Are there things still there under the surface, the ghosts of which still tingle and itch sometimes no matter how much therapy she has had? Falling back into patterns is easy; undoing them takes so much self-awareness and intentionality.

Secondly, I ask the question based on the excerpt from Thicker that was chosen to appear on Oprah.com. Beautifully conveyed with a stark honesty I had never seen from Kerry, the selection chosen is one that gives us a sliver into the dysfunctions of the Washington’s marriage. Ones that were quite literally disruptive to 7-year-old Kerry. Aristotle famously said, “Give me the child until [s]he is 7 and I will show you the [wo]man.” The theory of the first 7 years of a child’s life has been debated in Psychology. However, anecdotally, I can tell you that both my wife and I carry deeply impactful memories of our selves at age 7, the threads of which still linger. So, why is that memory offered as the amuse bouche to the drawing back of the curtains of Kerry Washington’s life which Thicker Than Water promises (or ‘her truth’ as Kerry calls it)? Does the excerpt set a foundation for the grown up Kerry we now see? For me, the excerpt made me wonder if young Kerry’s (confessed) determination to be the living embodiment of the pleasing, “good” thing that bonded her parents together was the start of a perfectionism that would be hard to shake. Control issues that would find her guarding a carefully curated image that avoids like the plague the possibility of being seen as ‘problematic’ for a stance, an opinion, a view? Or it could be that I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. That is entirely possible.

Q2: Did you experience any body dysmorphia issues during your first pregnancy? Was your second pregnancy different?

This is a difficult and very personal question. I know. It is based on two things: 1) the unusual language Kerry used to refer to her changing body during that time; and 2) the fact that she mentioned, prior to Scandal, she struggled with an eating disorder.

During Kerry’s first pregnancy (2013-2014), I don’t recall her using the word ‘pregnant’. She would say things like how the ‘condition’, ‘orientation’, or ‘physicality’ of her body changed when discussing how she approached acting during that time. I don’t recall her talking about it in personable ways. It felt like if she didn’t have to acknowledge what our eyes could plainly see, she would not have. Kerry appeared much more comfortable with her second pregnancy (2017). Listen, I have never been pregnant. In fact, I am terrified of it, which is why I wonder what it must be like for someone who has struggled with an eating disorder (which can cause body dysmorphia issues). How did Kerry come to embrace such a purposeful but very disrupting change to her body? I have been around a fair number of pregnant women, so I know it’s not all ‘miracle of life’ stuff. The typical pregnancy narratives out there from celebrities don’t typically discuss this unless we can relate it back to inequalities in maternal health care. Even if they do, I’m asking for Kerry Washington’s perspective. I could be entirely wrong, but I’d still like to know was the changing of her body hard for her. I’d love to know how she felt after her first child was born, and what motherhood feels like for her.

A related thing about which I am curious: Did she have any fertility issues and struggle with getting pregnant? And why did she wait until after it was beyond obvious during her Saturday Night Live appearance in early November 2013 to officially confirm she was pregnant? What fear was the fear behind this late decision?

Q3: What makes you sad, insecure, or sometimes need to retreat into yourself?

Kerry seems like a high-energy, joyful, positive person. She’s commented that as an Aquarius, she loves all sorts of people. I can see that. As an introverted Cancerian, I appreciate high-energy people…in doses. Every talk show appearance, red carpet interview, and social media content are all carefully presenting a woman who is very together. I say this because sometimes Kerry speaks in therapy language even when she’s trying to be sincere about overcoming battles. Of course, the image one projects (me, too) is always only partially true—whatever the industry. Kerry is a person and most of us do not have it all together, no matter how much we present it as such, or how much we sweep aside the less salubrious, more complicated parts of ourselves. It’s that stuff that I’m interested in. Where are her edges? Negativity may be ‘noise’ (as Kerry’s Twitter banner displays), but it also gives positivity its meaning. I also recall a saying that happy people are usually the most fucked up ones. Now, I’m not accusing Ms. `Washington of being uniquely fucked up, because we all are in some ways. The always ‘on’ facade is typically a way of hiding (just one of the tools) the things we don’t think we can show. Is she a trainwreck in the mornings and a bitch in the afternoon? Please, I just want to know something real…about Kerry, not just about her parents and her career.

Q4: In what ways, are you like your character Olivia Pope?

On an episode of Unpacking the Toolbox podcast, Kerry’s co-stars/friends, Guillermo Diaz, and Katie Lowes, said that out of everyone in the cast, Kerry is the most like her character (Olivia Pope). Would Kerry say this is accurate or fair? If so, what characteristics does she have in common with Olivia? Please spare me surface-level, obfuscating comparisons such as ‘We look alike :)’ or ‘We’re both passionate about democracy!’ Somehow, I don’t think that’s what Katie and Guillermo meant. I don’t presume anything untoward. I also understand why actors in long-running shows are usually at pains to separate the actor from the character, especially when that character’s messy humanity is on display for everyone to judge. But, again, give me something of substance here.

Q5: In what ways do you draw on your Jamaican heritage? How are you imparting that to your children along with their Nigerian Igbo heritage? And who are your father’s people?

Kerry has been very vocal about her mother’s Jamaican heritage. She has been vocal about immigration, sharing that her maternal grandparents came to America via Ellis Island. In the summer of 2023, she was in Jamaica to film a special about dance forms from around the world. As a Jamaican myself, I would like something more concrete about her Jamaican background. She often mentions her Jamaican heritage, but in what ways is it important to her? How does she call on that heritage as part of her identity? How is she (or not) imparting that sense of culture to her children alongside their Igbo heritage? Lastly, I’m less certain of her father’s origins (presumably in the American South). I’d like to know more about that.

Q6: Why was Hollywood the calling? Did you feel like changing course? If so, when and what put you back on the path towards who you’ve become?

This question is about Kerry’s early experiences in Hollywood. In an old interview (hopefully, I didn’t hallucinate this), she mentioned being told early on to lose 30 pounds and fix her teeth, at which she scoffed. Despite the contemporary irony juxtaposed against the past demand, where did she get the strength of determination and belief in herself to push past what those assholes could not see? As plucky as she seems, everyone has low moments when they are pushing for a dream. What’s one of hers from those early years?

In another interview (or the same?) Kerry mentioned giving herself a year to become a working actor in Hollywood. This is after her post-University travels to India to study Yoga. I want to know more about the jump from Yoga to Hollywood. What was that internal calling, or was it a casual, young adventurous thing she thought she would try? Did the move to Hollywood occur during a highly ambivalent part of her life? If so, how did that feel as a Black woman, since those women are often under pressure to take up a more guaranteed profession than the arts?

Q7: What did you find most challenging about working on Scandal—both as an actress and as a person? What nonsense did you and your castmates get up to behind the scenes?

Kerry has been very grateful for landing a show like Scandal and for the fine company of actors with whom she got to work. Great, but can she tell us the non-PR stuff? I’m not talking about back-biting—I don’t care. I’m always interested in the process for actors and all the changes they go through when working on a long-term project. American TV shows have 16-24 episode commitments every year. That has got to dominate a person’s life! What are some specific ways it impacted Kerry’s life? Actors have talked about how unrelenting the TV schedule is, including Shonda’s reflections in her 2015 book about the incessant demand to ‘lay track’ (write) so that the train that is the TV show doesn’t run off course. I already know that Kerry has borrowed from Ellen Pompeo, the advice to approach being #1 on the call sheet of a TV show the way an athlete would approach her dedicated sport. The point here is that I’m not seeking more information on enduring the schedule. I’m interested in how she kept the motivation and rationale for her character over such a long period. What did she do when she had disagreements about things Olivia was written to do? Would she have done anything differently? What was the thing that Olivia did that she found hardest to justify? Who was that one guest star who gave her nothing when they acted together (alluded to in Unpacking the Toolbox, episode 107)? And finally, can she stop playing diplomat and just say that Tony is the better kisser?

Q8: IDTAMPL was weird. What was the fear behind that, and how do you now define ‘personal life’?

For the uninitiated, or those with short-term memories, the acronym IDTAMPL stands for I Don’t Talk About My Personal Life. Kerry adopted this saying whenever she was interviewed after her marriage to Nnamdi Asomugha was announced on the 3rd of July 2013. Occurring on the brink of the holiday weekend, the news dropped like a bomb in the Scandal fandom. Even outside the fandom. Many were flummoxed, including me. On the 4th of July, I attended a celebration in London with a fellow American who is a big-time Philadelphia Eagles (Nnamdi’s former team) football fan, including the gossip surrounding the team. As soon as she opened her door to me, she said, “Your girl married Nnamdi?!” She consumed more football than Scandal at the time. Suffice it to say, I have left out the accurate number of question marks and exclamations in her voice. Her face, too, was full of them.

Listen, we used to be a proper country. Many celebrities, with and without talent, have lost the art of mystique, preferring instead to cultivate the marketing skill of capturing attention and selling it to us as actual talent.

I am thankful for those celebrities who maintain the mystique of a bygone era. Intrigue me, but don’t shut the door completely. The latter is what it felt like Kerry did after it was announced that she was married. Prior to the announcement, I don’t recall the media being that interested in Kerry’s dating life. It was not a topic that came up. Nor did Kerry ever let on that she was dating, let alone that she had been involved with Asomugha for three years (according to Kerry’s timeline of their meeting in 2009 when she did the Broadway play, Race). I have no qualms with celebrities who don’t make their partners part of their public image, or the ones who wed outside the limelight (Margot Robbie, Chris Evans (recently)). What I don’t like is when they pretend that they didn’t volunteer the information in the first place. Kerry’s team announced the marriage, even giving PR-friendly People Online titbits from “a source close to the couple” about Kerry’s ‘regular’ looking wedding dress (I kid you not. The source called the unseen dress ’regular’). We even learned that the “secret wedding” (every publication used that phrase so it’s deliberate) took place in the potato-producing state of Hailey, Idaho in the last week of June. These things were volunteered.

But once Kerry emerged back on red carpets and public events that summer, she trotted out a new PR line when asked follow-up questions about her wedding, husband, or newly married life: “I don’t talk about my personal life”. After literal years of not mentioning a romantic life, when her very public engagement to David Moscow ended in 2007, it was Kerry who let the public know: 1) She was hiding a boyfriend (shoutout to Pusha T); and 2) Surprise! I’s married now (shoutout to Shug Avery)…but don’t ask me anything about it! Don’t even ask me for a picture with the two of us together to go with your marriage announcement headlines. That’s what photoshop is for. Figure it out!

I’m being facetious, but, girl...

BFFR. Don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining. We didn’t ask, but she definitely told us. And when folks followed up on that telling, Kerry closed up tighter than a sphincter with a ‘do not enter sign. That whole era was awkward. Can we acknowledge that, at least?

Lest you think, “You’re being way harsh, Tai”, I’m not. What I sense is that there was some fear Kerry harboured behind revealing her coupling with Nnamdi. What was the source of the fear that led to the IDTAMPL shutdown? Was it because she did not want her personal narrative to be overshadowed by her relationship status? And what inspired her to begin relaxing that… a little? Like, she waited until her second child was born in 2017 to start allowing articles to describe her as “a mother of three”, revealing Nnamdi’s daughter from a previous relationship, which she had not acknowledged before. Was it simply time that allowed her to all but retire the IDTAMPL line? Or were there key turning points that led to slow revelations? And can we agree that the reluctance to talk about a ‘personal’ life is specifically related to her husband (mostly) and children (I support her keeping them off social media)? Words mean things. One’s parents are part of one’s personal life, but Kerry has no qualms about performing her relationship with them on social media. I mean, the excerpt she chose for us to read busts-open like a ripe papaya their whole past marital dysfunction, and her mother’s contemplating being unalive. Like…are such matters not not both personal and private? With all of that in mind, what has prompted this rethinking? How does Kerry now define ‘personal life’?

Q9: What is your most enduring memory from your time in India? Would you go back if you haven’t already?

On more than one occasion, Kerry has referenced her time spent in India. Besides the fact that she chose to travel to the subcontinent after graduation from George Washington University, we don’t know that much about that period (and that she studied Yoga whilst there). Kerry graduated from GW in 1999 (?). I spent five months in the southern states of India in the first half of 2000. I’m not sure if her trip crossed over into the new millennium, but it’s kind of cool to think about us both being in that vast country at the same time. I would love to know what are some of Kerry’s outstanding memories? What did she love about that place? What does she not miss? Did she visit a favourite place, or discover a dish she continues to enjoy? Does she, like me, share Indian heritage as part of her Jamaican identity?

Looking back, did travelling abroad at such a formative age, shape her coming of age in any way? I would welcome any memories or anecdotes from that time in her life.

Q: Beyond “mutual respect” for each other, why are you at your most playful around Tony Goldwyn?

I cannot be sure, but it is likely that Kerry has come across online theories and conspiracies that are both outlandish and semi-reasonable based on visuals alone. Whenever fans (to be clear, I am ‘fans’) are treated to her interactions with Tony Goldwyn, it feels like a hit of sugar injected directly into our veins. Their power has a hold on us.

It is not simply fans seeing in Kerry and Tony a nostalgia for Olivia and Fitz. Both entities are a force unto themselves. Most don’t confuse one for the other, if they have a shred of media literacy. Even people who hated Olivia and Fitz as a couple can acknowledge that there is a je ne sais quoi between Kerry and Tony. Their chemistry has its own fans; it’s palpable. I know that Kerry knows that the Kerry x Tony appearances are gold because she leverages them on social media. She’s leveraging it right now for her book tour. It’s no accident that the Washington, D.C. tour stop with Tony Goldwyn as the special guest was the first to quickly sell out dates were announced. People are coming to that tour stop for the cerise sur la gateau which is the Kerry x Tony bond. I’m not cynical enough (or blind enough) to believe that their interactions are simply good “PRs” for both their images (as some have alleged). No, there is an energy, an authenticity that crackles and fizzes between them, even when they are simply standing next to each other.

Hell, it’s there when one of them simply talks about the absent other. Fair enough that chemistry works in mysterious ways that can’t be manufactured. But when Kerry is in the vicinity of Tony Goldwyn, there is also Physics at play. There is inertia in their body language to familiarity and comfortability with each other in ways that speak to a shared intimacy. I mean that in the sense of closeness and rapport. Kerry and Tony are clearly very close. Beyond the “mutual respect” they say they have for each other, there is something about who Kerry is when she is around Tony that is different than when she is around others. She doesn’t have that with her other Scandal co-stars with whom she has remained friends. Other than her passionate and on-point political advocacy, her time spent with Tony Goldwyn lends a cozy texture to her personality that is more easily felt than described. It’s like popping the bubble of perfectionism and letting out a giant exhale. Me, I exhale when they are together. Am I trippin, or is there something about Tony Goldwyn that effortlessly extracts this playfulness in her, and can she feel it, too?

Bonus Question (A la Inside The Actors Studio): What is your favourite curse word? What sound do you love? What sound do you hate? What scares you? What makes you cry? What petty thing have you had it with? What did you finally embrace only after you were in your forties?

Even if Bravo were to resurrect Inside The Actors Studio [LINK], Kerry Washington will never have the chance to be interviewed by James Lipton because he passed away in 2020. A venerable institution himself, Lipton’s sincere and earnestly pointed manner of asking questions gave actors the opportunity to embark on a journey of both self and art in the space of an hour, in front of a live audience of actors-in-training. Through this show, the audience could learn more about their favourite actor, and all the ways in which the personal intersects with their art, and much more. My favourite part was always the quick-fire round near the end when Lipton would ask the small, quotidian questions that are the true stuff of life. You know, the anti-Hollywood shit. Though it’s a cheat, it is in that vein that the bonus questions above are designed. A few are taken from James Lipton, and others added by me.

Those are all of the questions…until I read Kerry’s tome.

Perfect-seeming people are boring and untrustworthy. But is the perception entirely a fiction created by the celebrity or us?

“…[She’s] clearly a beautiful, intelligent, multi-talented, quietly formidable woman with a Jesus-like heart. From what we can tell, she is highly respected among her peers. Well, that’s who we’ve made her out to be. We choose to see those things in her because that’s what’s on public offer. Because of that, it’s so easy to turn KW into some Magical Negress archetype imprisoned on a pedestal in our minds. We believe Kerry is clean. Kerry walks on water. Kerry makes the fishes and the loaves. As her fans… we mythologize her, and others like her, because we have this deep-seated human need to create heroes for ourselves. We need to believe that there are people less fallible than we are: that if we believe in their perfection, it might take us a little closer towards that ideal… Kerry doesn’t walk on water. She’s not perfect. The reason I know is because she’s flesh and bone and blood, just like you and me.” (Me, 2013)

It's true: the perception is a little but her, a little bit us (me). However, I can’t say that I’ve seen a lot of evidence of the proverbial ‘flesh and bone and blood’. That perception seems poised to change on the 26th of September with Thicker Than Water’s release.

I was surprised (in a good way) to see Kerry reference this early ‘need’ she placed on herself to be ‘good’ as a point of connection for her parents, whose marriage was in trouble. I was also sad because I know what that means. I did that to myself at age 12, and it’s been hard to completely abandon. But the admission intrigued me, and I hope there is more of that kind of self-revelation in the book as the timeline approaches the Kerry we see today. Above all else, my wish for Thicker Than Water, is this: to offer me insight and greater clarity about a woman whose public persona, for the last ten years, has been highly visible, yet persistently opaque.

I get it. To exist publicly as a Black woman in the 21st Century is to navigate a high-wire act. Perception is always on the mind, especially in Kerry’s industry. If you share too much, people have a problem; not enough, people have a problem. Nothing you share is impervious to being twisted into the most ungenerous or scandalous interpretation. We have watched Queen Mother, Beyonce, in the last decade become more deliberate about what she shares with the public. But even she feels like less of a question mark than Kerry Washington. Beyonce has, at least, given us glimpses into her personal life and thoughts via documentaries, BTS photos, and the intimacy of confession in her art—the parts that are beautiful, fucked up, or ambivalent. This is not me pitting two bad bitches against each other. It is me offering an example of another Black woman who has told us that she battles perfectionism, and who has found a way to let us in (or feel like it), through her art, whilst making her boundaries clear.

Thicker Than Water will be a part of Kerry’s artistic self. It is a product of memory and polished fiction; narratives carefully organized and swaddled in beautiful prose (based on the excerpt) that promises to take the reader on a journey. As someone who recently published a book that is small in its number of pages, but big in its revelations of things unspoken and unshared, I know that writing is an intimate act of exploring one’s mind and interiority; of the past and its pertinence with the present. What your mouth cannot say, your fingers will. It is my most profound hope that Thicker Than Water allows me to feel a sense of connection with flesh and blood and bone Kerry Washington. And I hope for her the book accomplishes a giant exhale of whatever she wants to release into the world. Whether or not I will personally be satisfied by the book... stay tuned.

Q: What are your questions for Kerry?

#kerry washington #Thicker Than Water memoir #thicker than water #scandal #tony goldwyn

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opencommunion · 10 months ago

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"On 7 October and after, ZAKA served as a front for the Israeli army to launder false Hamas atrocity propaganda. The Haaretz investigation revealed that during the first days of the war – when the Israeli narrative concerning the nature of the Hamas operation was crucial to establish – uniformed soldiers from the Israeli army’s Home Front Command made many media appearances. 'But over their uniforms, they wore non-IDF vests on which the name ZAKA was emblazoned. Military officers who were informed about this blaring detail could not account for it,' the paper found. This gave the impression that claims coming from the Israeli army, an obviously biased source of information, were coming from a neutral third-party source. While even Israeli journalists were skeptical of claims by army commanders, including the false storyline that Hamas hung seven dead babies from a clothesline, the equally implausible claims made by Yossi Landau and other allegedly selfless ZAKA volunteers were largely reported uncritically in the US, UK, and Israeli press. The close relationship between ZAKA and the Israeli army is further illustrated by Haim Outmezgine, who is the head of ZAKA's 'special forces' and also a reservist in the Home Front Command's rescue unit. Outmezgine was one of several senior officials who made frequent press appearances wearing the yellow ZAKA vest. But he didn’t only play a media role; Haaretz notes further that according to some sources, 'he also played a central role in the association' between ZAKA and the Israeli army. He was 'in command of several sites starting from the evening of the attacks,' including the site of the Nova music festival in Re'im and the settlements (kibbutzim) of Kfar Aza and Be'eri. Outmezgine’s dual role in the army’s Home Front Command and ZAKA apparently led to the decision to deploy untrained, amateur ZAKA volunteers to collect bodies at these sensitive sites rather than army soldiers already well-trained for this purpose. The only soldiers the Home Front Command chose to use alongside ZAKA were from the Military Rabbinate's southern search unit, stationed at the Shura military base. Several army officers involved in the operation at the Shura base told Haaretz they had 'no explanation' for why the additional soldiers were not allowed to assist in the mission. One officer at Shura said that the inexpert way ZAKA volunteers collected the bodies 'made the identification process very difficult.' A volunteer who worked at Shura said: 'There were bags with two skulls, bags with two hands, with no way to know which was whose.'

But why were amateurs from ZAKA deployed to the most sensitive sites with the most bodies on 7 October, rather than highly trained soldiers from the army? One possibility is corruption. As both a member of ZAKA and the Home Front Command, Haim Outmezgine may have arranged for ZAKA to be deployed to Nova, Be’eri, and Kfar Azza to ensure the organization was at the center of events, and able to gain media attention and millions in donations. However, another possibility is that higher-level officials in the army, intelligence services, or Netanyahu’s cabinet wanted ZAKA deployed to these sensitive sites to make any investigation into the hundreds of Israeli deaths there as difficult as possible. This was crucial because it was the Israeli army itself that killed large numbers of its own civilians.

... This raises questions of whether ZAKA ... is a cut-out used by the Israeli army and intelligence services to justify Tel Aviv's massive military campaign in Gaza that many view as genocide, rather than an authentic volunteer rescue organization. Such a view is strengthened by the fact that, as Brad Pearce notes, ZAKA’s long-time Chief Operating Officer, Mati Goldstein, says on his LinkedIn profile that he is a 25-year veteran of the Israeli army, a current commander in the reserves, and someone who 'took part in many major undercover missions,' meaning he has been a trained spy. This connection could explain the praise ZAKA receives – despite its past controversies – from top levels of Israel’s military and political class, which positions it strategically in obscuring the truth of the 7 October events."

#palestine #press #library

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electronickingdomfox · 1 year ago

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"Devil World" review

Novel from 1979, by Gordon Eklund (same author of previous TOS novel "The Starless World"). It's a very short novel, and could have been an episode of the series. Well-written, and the central mystery is interesting enough, but the story isn't anything special as a whole. In fact, at core is a very similar story to that of the previous novel. Kirk's characterization is also off, specially at the end.

But at least Chekov tells a funny bullshit story about why there are no Russian bears in Russian zoos. In the other novel from Eklund, it was McCoy who told a story to Spock, so it seems to be a thing with this author.

Spoilers under the cut:

Kirk, Spock and McCoy are watching a magician's show while in shore-leave. Spock is like "this is crap". And I don't know why Kirk and McCoy (who regularly get disintegrated in a transporter) are so excited about that old trick where a woman is apparently sawed in half, but they are (maybe they drank too much). Then, the magician starts conjuring some devil creatures that seem all too real. And the beautiful, beautiful woman who was sitting in the table next to them, starts screaming suddenly, accusing the devils of taking her father away. Then she faints.

It turns out, the woman is the famous artist Gilla Dupree, whose father (Jacob Kell) is missing. As Kell is a suspected traitor to the Federation, and presumably hiding in a quarantined planet named Heartland, (and as Gilla is so pretty), Kirk is authorized to use the Enterprise as a taxi for Gilla to reunite with her father. Gilla is a Jain, though I don't know enough about that religion to judge whether her depiction is accurate or not. She can only eat a few vegetables, since all life is sacred for her, and blames malnourishment for her frequent faints. An insipid romance develops then between Kirk and her, and it takes too many pages of an already short book. I mean, there's nothing essentially bad about Gilla as a character; she's just so... boring? The romance is also a clear indication that Gilla's doomed by the narrative.

Once in Heartland, the crew plus Gilla meet a hermit man who's been living alone for forty years. He's the last of the human colonists, who was left behind when they evacuated and quarantined the planet years ago. The other colonists had all gone mad, but not this one. He doesn't want to get any close to the native aliens of Heartland, the Danons, but says that Kell lives among them. The Danon village has a compelling eerie atmosphere, and there's something Lovecraftian about the great stone tower in the middle of the central square. Kirk and the others find themselves suddenly surrounded by all the Danons of the village, and Kell is among them. The Danons look exactly like naked Christian devils, so the crew is really xenophobic towards them (haven't they seen stranger creatures in the galaxy? oh well). Kell is very unfriendly, and orders them to leave Heartland at once. Nonetheless, the Danons allow the crew to spend the night in their village. And one of them even plays poker with the redshirts (Spock doesn't want to play poker since he's too good at it, because Vulcans have the perfect "poker face", yeah). But the next morning, the redshirt who got too close to the Danon during poker is missing. They find him naked and completely mad, his mind as if it was wiped clean. They leave McCoy with crazy, naked dude, but he can't do anything for him.

Then Kirk and Gilla run to Kell, to demand answers from him, and at last he explains what's happening. It turns out the Danons are all part of a single mental entity, which can claim people as part of the whole. But only the strongest ones can become assimilated; those that aren't ready, simply lose their minds. Kell was a deeply broken man ever since he spent a month alone in space, drifting with just his spacesuit after an accident. He couldn't live with people anymore, nor did he find help among the Klingons (the reason why he was branded as a traitor by the Federation). Only in Heartland, after uniting with the mental presence, he found some relief. And I don't know why, at this point, they can't just leave this poor old man alone. But Kirk still insists on taking Kell to the Enterprise. Only that now, they discover that the entity just won't let them leave the planet. Spock does his Spock thing, and tries to mind-meld with the mental presence. And then we get crazy Spock (but he's no redshirt, so McCoy says he'll recover in time).

In the end, the hermit reveals the whole truth. The entity is actually a super-computer that fills the whole core of the planet, and the entrance is located under the mysterious tower of the village. The Danons built the machine as a planetary defense long ago. But their species is dying now, so the computer wants to assimilate humans to have some company, once the Danons disappear. The hermit convinced the other colonists to try and fuse with the machine, but he was too cowardly to follow them. Gilla disappears, and soon Kirk suspects what she's doing. She has exchanged herself for her father, and Kirk finds her, too late, connected to the computer.

Back in the ship, Kirk is totally depressed and neglects his duties after losing Gilla. And this is quite out-of-character for him, since duty always comes before love for Kirk (save in the case of Spock in the third movie). McCoy comforts him, revealing that Gilla was actually dying from a tumor, so she had nothing to lose anyway (and maybe, McCoy, you should have told this to Kirk before, since he was so emotionally involved and all...). I was left wondering what was the deal with that magician at the beginning and his devils, and why Gilla knew about them. But that's never addressed (an abandoned plot line?).

Spirk Meter: 1/10*. It's almost nothing, but at one point Kirk reflects about how comfortable he is in Spock's presence. So comfortable than they can both be in silence without it being awkward.

Also, this author seems to have something for Kirk/Scotty, as it happened in the other novel. Kirk compares him to an angel, says that he's looking forward to see Scotty's smiling face again... And Scotty gets super-protective of Kirk when he wants to beam up the last, even though there's no immediate danger in the planet. ????

Apart from this, Kirk gets crushed by a horde of naked (mostly male) devils, that tear his clothes as usual.

*A 10 in this scale is the most obvious spirk moments in TOS. Think of the back massage, "You make me believe in miracles", or "Amok Time" for example.

#star trek tos #star trek novels #novel review #spirk #k/s

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speedfreak01 · 1 year ago

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now that you CLOWNS, you JOKERS have got me thinking about the tarn identity reveal, man that was a really shitty reveal huh

like first off, yet another james roberts villain who has a disability (the physical and social disability of empurata, as well as the pre-existing disability of tarn's transformation addiction, which we as an audience are meant to see as some sort of indicator of tarn's vice and indulgence) and becomes the joker, like there aren't already a hundred of those in the damn book

but it's also a really unsatisfying way to conclude the dying of the light arc because it doesn't have anything to say. i've mentioned this before in other posts, but the reason that so many plot twists and narrative beats from mtmte season 1 work is that they tie back to an over-arching motif of emotional honesty, of saying the things that are uncomfortable to say, answering or addressing that central theme in a way that encourages its audience to think more deeply about them, and facilitate character development along those lines.

but dying of the light? you can clearly, CLEARLY tell that jro was writing this just to get people to say OH MY GOD THAT WAS SO SHOCKING AND UNEXPECTED AND BRUTAL on twitter, so he could termsearch and lap up their reactions, so it's all shock and no substance. the scene where megatron kills tarn with his super special black hole piss beam or whatever implies that the theme we were supposed to be picking up on was "evil people dress their cruelty up in grand narratives to disguise and justify it, but evil is in reality banal", but nothing else in the story serves that theme whatsoever, because the story is at this point uninterested in exploring any sort of theming.

in fact, the supposed thesis of dying of the light is directly invalidated by megatron himself, who has consistently dressed his cruelty up in grand narratives to disguise and justify it without being challenged by the story, and indeed continues to do so throughout the rest of the comic's run, and we as an audience are supposed to just take him at his incredibly constructed and carefully-crafted word!

but also!!! also!!!!!! jro somehow managed to pick like the one character that would make the plot beat of "oh he's just some guy" fall the flattest. because glitch ISN'T just some guy!!!! we know him!!!! even just a little bit!!! but at the same time we don't know him enough for the revelation to have any kind of impact in the other direction

too known to be a nobody, too much of a nobody to be shocking, clearly just intended to be WOAH COMPLETELY OUT THERE AND LEFT-FIELD for the sake of ~subverting expectations~

absolute scenes. a complete omnishambles

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sincerely-sofie · 8 months ago

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(ASimpleArchivist here!😊Returning the askbox love! You may have answered a question about this before, and if so I apologize haha)

What was your main inspiration for Ark’s personality/background for TPIAG? I totally get you mentioning that he’s the character you kind of focused on bc I’m that way with Dusknoir—most of the plot for my fic has been centered and/or woven around him (as well as Grovyle, can’t forget my other beloved boy), so I wondered if you kind of “worked backwards” in that sense for Ark, too, if that makes sense? Like I plotted everything around giving Dusknoir the biggest emotional impact with the canon storyline in mind.

Also…who out of your cast would be the best cuddler that you personally would want to snuggle? My Grovyle would be my vote bc I headcanon him as a touch-starved cuddle bug looking for anything remotely warm so he can get some real rest not having to worry about looking over his shoulder all the time😊

Thanks for the ask! I haven't answered either of these anywhere yet, don't worry about it.

The main inspiration for Ark's personality was essentially this: the idea that people start out good people, and their experiences in life and their interpretations of those experiences can either solidify that goodness or warp and distort it— and that no matter how twisted you are compared to what you once were, even if you can’t remember a time before you were bent and broken, you can return to that goodness.

As much as I focused on Ark, the central point of the fanfic as I developed it was always Twig. I wanted everything I wrote at the time to reflect on her in some way. This was how Ark became Twig's narrative foil. They were designed to parallel each other. Ark was mistreated by someone he relied on and it made him very angry and bitter at the fact no one (as far as he knows) stood up for him. Twig was mistreated by someone she relied on and it made her very angry and bitter, but instead of being angry at the world like Ark, she became angry at herself. At different points in their individual recoveries, they briefly flip-flop— Twig finds herself angry at the world and Ark becomes angry at himself (though neither of them feel angry to the same extent as they did before starting the healing process, thankfully). They're narrative foils through and through.

Basically, Ark was designed to reflect on Twig as much as she reflects on him (and also to be a semi-self-insert, but that's the case with literally everyone in the TPiaG cast, right down to Team Skull. Ark’s not special that way).

As for my personal cuddling choice… uh… Hm. One of the traits of mine that Ark inherited is being the world's worst recipient of physical contact. Twig would probably be my preference because she has experience handling people clamming up when she gives them hugs, and pays attention to when they get overwhelmed? It'd be a coin toss as to whether I'd be freezing enough to enjoy this or my long-COVID fevers would kill me upon contact.

#I’ve had other projects where I worked backwards from a desired emotional impact #but this wasn’t the case with TPiaG— or at least with Ark.#I’m realizing it might be a fun little behind-the-scenes post to share all of the sofie traits that I’ve injected into the PMD cast…#I might have to write that up.#transforming characters into vague self-inserts is the best part of writing for me hehe!#the present is a gift au #pmd darkrai #pokémon mystery dungeon #pokemon mystery dungeon #pmd explorers #pmd sky #pmd eos #pmd2 #pmd #sofie answers asks

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intuitive-revelations · 1 year ago

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I'm so glad we FINALLY have (some) acknowledgement of the destruction of the Flux.

(For a moment I even thought it was going to be a bigger part of the plot of this episode, based on the emptiness on the edge of the universe setting, before I remembered RTD suggested it was a relatively small part of the story.)

Even as someone who genuinely loved series 13 (and I did!), I felt even at the time the way it was wrapped up was by far the weakest part.

Like, it's insane that this would be all that remains of the universe? You can literally see the individual spiral galaxies? While it's not at the exact centre, at least spatially, I'm pretty sure that the main spiral galaxy visible is the Milky Way. That's only like a few local groups wide, and even that's stretching it, going more by the density of galaxies than their relative distances. If we were doing the latter we'd be lucky to even squeeze in that.

At best, we can maybe imagine the map is logarithmic or something, but even then you can see galaxies quite close to the edge proving it's not scaling that quickly.

And remember this is before the 'final flux event'! The universe is probably even smaller by the end of the series. Thankfully we know it wasn't spreading evenly, so it reaching Earth in the finale doesn't necessarily mean it wiped out the rest of the galaxy around it.

However, even if we're really generous, and assume the CGI isn't representative of the narrative, "half the universe" is still likely understating it.

The universe is basically dead. The Flux pretty much succeeded.

(And you thought the entropy wave in Logopolis was bad?)

The only reason the DW!Earth isn't in chaos right now is that it's still got the incoming light from the destroyed universe, since the flux event itself happened in the modern day and not retroactively like the reality bomb.

Like... sure most of the stuff we care about as viewers remains, since a lot of it was in or near the Mutter's Spiral / Milky Way (Earth, Gallifrey, Mondas, Skaro and Sontar in satellite galaxies etc. - although even then some sources disagree on most of those), but anything else? Basically any other galaxy (eg. the Isop Galaxy) and any planets that we don't already know to be local to the Mutter's Spiral are gone, with all the potential retcon ramifications that comes with.

Sure, it was implied that it could potentially be restored, based on the whole 'compression' thing, but the Doctor was never actually able to do this. We didn't see her do so, nor were ever told so.

The fact the next two specials also included space-time being weird (seriously what was up with those constellations in Legend of the Sea Devils?!), gave me hope that restoring/'regenerating' the universe would have been a part of the central plot of Power of the Doctor, but that obviously didn't end up being the case...

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addictedtostorytelling · 3 days ago

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team graveyard gsr reveal reactions: lab rats, morgue workers, & ecklie

part iii of this series.

hodges obviously, the show gives us nothing from hodges with regards to the big reveal, so in the absence of any evidence, i’d like to think he maybe has a hard time with the news of gsr at first, not for any reasons having to do with the relationship itself but rather due to the way grissom and sara go about conducting it.

on the one hand, hodges so hero-worships grissom he probably wants to view grissom’s actions in concealing his and sara’s relationship as justified and even romantic™, but on the other hand, hodges is such a rules-hound he may in actuality have a hard time reconciling grissom’s deception with his perceptions of grissom as the ultimate good guy, and this discrepancy between what he might want to believe vs. what he cannot help but actually feel could lead to some really interesting moments of cognitive dissonance for him.

for example, i can imagine a lab rats scene in which maybe wendy and/or henry might question how someone in a management position like grissom could willingly compromise the integrity of the lab for such a long time, seemingly without thought for the work of his subordinates or even justice itself, while hodges tries to rationalize how grissom went about doing things in the best way he knew how to, though the more he talks, the more obvious it becomes he doesn’t fully believe what he’s saying, until finally he just kind of blows up about it and storms off, because, yeah, the truth is, he secretly feels let down by grissom, too.

that we don’t get to see any of those kinds of reaction from hodges in canon is just a doggone shame! the writers could have really done some interesting character work with him, had they wanted to.

in any case, i imagine after hodges’s initially conflicted reaction, he eventually realizes—perhaps with some prompting from wendy—for all his brilliance, grissom is also human and therefore fallible, but the fact he is doesn’t make him a bad guy. hodges likely comes to accept he did what he did for love.

—at which point i think his main reaction going forward is to pivot the way he thinks not just of grissom but also of sara.

as i talk about here,

of course, the real breakthrough in [hodges and sara’s] relationship seems to come during the events of episode 07x24 “living doll,” when hodges, like the rest of team graveyard, learns for the first time that sara is the love of grissom’s life and finds himself in a position to help save her from the miniature killer. while we don’t see hodges learn the truth about gsr on screen—he’s not in the layout room when grissom drops his famous “only person i've ever loved” bombshell on the rest of the team—one can imagine that the news does a lot to shift his perspective. by this point in his development, hodges not only seeks grissom’s approval because grissom is the boss but because he genuinely admires the man and views him as his mentor and friend. grissom is his hero, so if sara is grissom’s girl, then that makes sara important™ in hodges’s view. from here on out, sara comes to play a more central role in hodges’s internal narrative. certainly, hodges would have worked hard to save sara from the miniature killer regardless—because, as expressed above, for all of his posturing, the truth is that hodges does actually care about other people and is fond of the members of team graveyard (if secretly and in his own way)—but knowing that sara is grissom’s everything does add an extra dimension to the case for him, building on the mythology and imbuing the events with extra meaning from his pov. while hodges never speaks to this new sense that sara is now marked as special because she’s special to grissom, he is noticeably nice to her once she returns to work following her abduction (see, for example, their interactions in episode 08x04 “the case of the cross-dressing carp”).

of course, since hodges is hodges, once he knows the truth about grissom and sara’s relationship and has gotten past his feelings of resentment toward grissom for his conduct, i have to believe, even given the dearth of evidence in canon, he becomes somewhat insufferable about the whole thing, insinuating to his fellow lab rats he actually knew about gsr all along even though such is very much not the case, making obnoxious “we’re two of a kind, as romantic rulebreakers”-type comments to grissom (a la what he does in episode 06x21 “rashomama”), asking invasive questions probably mostly to sara about her and grissom’s sex life, etc. on a more serious note, he may also do some quiet reflection on his own relationship with wendy in light of grissom and sara’s conduct, wondering if perhaps, lab rules be damned, he should take a chance on having a relationship with her, as she, like sara is to grissom, may be his one shot at true happiness.

wendy and the other lab rats again, in the absence of any evidence, i think, for the most part, the other lab rats—wendy, henry, mandy, archie, and bobby—probably react to the news of grissom and sara being a couple with an admixture of shock (because who would have thought?) and minor disgruntlement at the rules infraction, on professional grounds.

in particular, wendy may feel a little miffed, because while she is herself no stranger to having feelings for a geeky, silver-fox coworker, she, unlike sara, has so far denied herself of them out of deference for departmental policy.

they are probably also just generally curious about the nature of grissom and sara’s relationship itself, because—as relative outsiders—they don’t really see the appeal from sara’s perspective, in particular. i can imagine, specifically, henry and mandy maybe speculating, in a lurid way, over lunch about what kind of “daddy kink” weirdness they assume must be going on. the lab rats probably all also collectively play the game of thinking back on any previous exchanges they may have witnessed between grissom and sara over the years which in retrospect might indicate their attraction to each other—with hodges pretending to have known all along, while everyone else rolls their eyes at him, because of course he was just as clueless as they. of course, since the lab rats tend to operate on a different frequency from the field mice, neither their displeasure regarding grissom and sara’s deceptive conduct nor their fascination with the sexual politics of their relationship likely makes its way back to grissom and sara or the rest of team graveyard at any point.

particularly since sara starts working a different shift upon returning to the lab—meaning they see her less than before, and especially less than before with grissom—their curiosity likely dies down soon enough anyhow, until it’s just back to work, as usual.

the morgue workers

i think doc is probably a little surprised, as he seems to be of the opinion grissom has little interest in romance overall (see episode 06x23 “bang-bang”). however, given doc is generally an openminded person, he probably doesn’t have objection to the relationship itself or even much care about the way grissom and sara have chosen to conduct it, as the goings on of the lab proper are outside of his purview. he also probably would never have guessed grissom would go for a woman so much younger than himself because he wouldn’t think of grissom as being “that way.” however, he likely also recognizes there are many parts of grissom he doesn’t know very well. meanwhile, i think straitlaced super dave is more astonished on the grounds grissom and sara would break the rules—he’s a supervisor! and she’s so serious about her work!—however unwilling to be judgmental of them, particularly as he understands wherein lies the attraction for grissom. though he, unlike greg, is long past his crush on sara by s8, he still gets why a guy might want to “wear a clean coat” for her (see episode 01x17 “face lift”), grissom included.

ecklie

ecklie is one of the few characters who does get to show a reaction to grissom and sara’s news on screen, and i think what we see from him in episode 08x02 “a la cart” is pretty much what we get. he’s obliged to insert himself into the situation as an administrator and dole out consequences—by switching sara to swing shift—though in his heart of hearts, he doesn’t want to (and wishes grissom and sara could have just been forthcoming about their relationship from the beginning instead). for the first little while after they come out, he likely is holding his breath, waiting to see if there will be any legal fallout due to their improper conduct. he is also probably swamped with extra work, having to review their old cases and make sure everything there is above board. because he’s ecklie, he almost certainly has also got some incorrect views of the whole thing, and not solely because grissom and sara themselves give him the runaround where the timeline for their relationship is concerned. for one thing, i think he erroneously believes the primary attraction for grissom with sara is her youth. were he in grissom’s place, for him, to be with a woman fifteen years younger than himself would definitely be an ego thing, so he wrongly assumes such is the case for grissom, too, supposing he also is the kind of guy who wants “arm candy.” he probably also incorrectly assumes a) grissom hired sara solely due to his attraction to her, and, b) grissom may have allowed sara to keep her job following the events of episode 05x13 “nesting dolls” because they were already by that time sleeping together. for another thing, he also probably wrongly assumes, on the sara side of things, she’s got grissom henpecked (see his comments to her about knowing where grissom is at all times during their interview scene), as well as that she is interested in grissom for his status. he undoubtedly fundamentally misunderstands the nature of their relationship not only due to his own misogyny and poor romantic instincts—remember, this man has been divorced three times—but also because he doesn’t have a good grasp on who grissom and sara are as people. he ultimately believes their reasons for keeping their relationship a secret are a lot tawdrier than in reality is the case. going forward, i believe he is maybe somewhat smug, because now he has proof “st. grissom” isn’t ethically unimpeachable. for all grissom’s talk about the sanctity of the profession (see episode 01x07 “blood drops”), at the end of the day, he—in ecklie’s view—seduced his much-younger subordinate and carried on a torrid office affair with her for however many years, putting the lab’s reputation in jeopardy for his own selfish reasons. his actions prove he’s human after all, and i think ecklie takes a little bit of personal satisfaction in that “tarnish” on grissom’s character. he also probably, like many others at the lab, carries with him some poorly-concealed fascination about grissom and sara’s relationship dynamics themselves, curious as to what their dynamic is like, as well as what the truth might be concerning the actual timeline for their relationship.

conclusion

suffice it to say, while the show largely glosses over the issue of how grissom and sara’s teammates react to their coming out, i think reactions to both them as a couple and the fact of their deception probably run the gamut from placid acceptance to bitter resentment to deep curiosity to tacit professional disapproval. though generally the earlier seasons of the show do a better job at characterization than the later ones do, this area is one where i think the early writers really dropped the ball, as they not only failed to tell us any stories about how the members of team graveyard react to this potentially earth-shattering news but also, even more bizarrely, tried to pretend there were never any stories to tell to begin with, making out like everyone on the team would respond in the exact same way and on the exact same timescale to both grissom and sara’s relationship and their years-long efforts to cover it up (i.e., by being neutrally accepting of the whole matter by the time grissom and sara returned to work in october). despite having foreshadowed some potential disgruntlement from various team members at the news, they never followed through. my guess is they maybe opted not to due to the looming wga writers’ strike—by october 2007, they may have already realized there was a good chance their season would end up truncated (which did eventually happen)—and jorja fox’s imminent departure from the show causing them to feel as if they “didn’t have the (narrative) runway” to explore any kind of complicated reactions from the team, for fear of not being able to then resolve them before sara was off the show/by season’s end. however, regardless of their reason for not “pulling the trigger” (to speak in term’s of chekhov’s gun), i still feel like opportunity was a missed one, as having such a uniform nonreaction from the team has the probably unintended result of making grissom and sara look silly for ever fearing there would perhaps be negative consequences to them coming out to begin with. if everyone was ultimately just going to be fine with their relationship and even the administration could have in theory accommodated them had they just been forthcoming up front, then why did they ever go through all the trouble of lying to everyone and going to such great lengths to conceal their relationship from their coworkers for over two years? shouldn’t they have had some sense this situation would just be a “slap on the wrist before a pat on the back” kind of deal? but i digress. as should be clear from all of my speculation in this post, i do think not everyone would react in the same way to the big gsr reveal, and i wish we could have seen some more exploration of their various reactions in canon. there was a lot of wasted narrative potential there, i think. anyway, thanks for the question! please feel welcome to send another any time.

#answered #camilaar85 #asks: csi #**#my meta #meta: csi #meta: hodges #meta: ecklie #meta: production #csiverse #season eight #let's talk shop #tgyr

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