#and its actually the first part of a prisoners analysis of themes--but the visuals were too clearly inspired to pass up lol

[emblazons]

STRANGER THINGS x PRISONERS (2013)

“It was taking that idea of a missing child and combining it with the more childlike sensibilities that we have. You know, can we put a monster in there that eats people? Because we are nerds and children-at-heart, we thought it was the best thing ever." - The Duffer Brothers, on how Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners inspired Stranger Things (x)

stranger things inspirations series: 1 / ?

[botwstoriesandsuch]

Hi I was hoping to ask for your advice on writing. I’m trying to write from headcanons to little short fics (like one shots) from the readers pov but I’m finding it difficult to do so smoothly. Any idea how to do the transition without it coming out as a fanfic readers worst nightmare?

Well, I cannot guarantee the quality of my “advice” but I will give it a shot! 

Apologies for you folks that hate my big essay length posts, but I do love infodumping about the writing process :P 

So just click “J” to skip the post (if you’re on mobile...sorry just exercise your scrolling finger a bit more)

- - - - - - - - - - 

So I’ll start with the distinctions between a headcanon and a fic. On one hand, you got simpler sentences, that summarize a broader idea or scene. You might have visualized the entire thing in your head, but at the end of the day all you do is write down a few sentences or pieces of dialogue that give the broader basis of an idea and/or scene. That’s not to say writing headcanons is easy, but it is, bluntly, the simpler method.  

Writing, obviously, is more complicated. Not only are you trying to convey a more abstract idea to your reader, but you’re doing so with more layers and complexities, given that what you are trying to write is generally more detailed. You have to not only account for what your basic premise is, but the method in which you convey it. So, in a “good” fic, it typically doesn’t just focus on the basic “what is happening right now” in a scene, but can give subtleties and intricacies with its tone, themes, point of view, connotation, foils, imagery, symbolism, sentence structure, diction, context, figurative language, narrative, foreshadowing, setting, irony, character arcs, and the thousands and thousands of other layers that go into constructing story. 

And I say “story” there deliberately, as I think the best way to summarize the differences is that a headcanon is a plot, while a one-shot is a story. Your one-shot has the ability to tell different messages, details, and themes, and give several points of interest to your reader, while your headcanon is limited to the structure of its initial premise.

[And before you English nerds bash me for my definition of story and plot, please know that I am using my film teacher’s old definition, which (to quote this quizlet I found) is “Story is all of the elements of a narrative that are involved, both shown and un-shown on screen. Plot is only all of the elements of a narrative that are shown on screen.” So yeah, it theoretically could be rewritten as a headcanon is a scene, and a one-shot is a story, but I’m just nitpicking at this point half of you don’t care and want me to move on anyway, apologies!]

So how do you transition between them? Well, in honesty I don’t exactly have a sure fire way for you, saying I do would be very hypocritical. However, what I can do is point out the “gap” between headcanons and fics, and perhaps from there you might be able to forge your own path..? 

Chances are, if you’re already familiar with writing headcanons, you’ve already knocked out half of the work. See in a story, specifically in our case, fic, you have eight elements that construct it. You’ve got

Plot

Setting

Conflict

Character

Point of View

Tone

Style

and Theme

With a headcanon, (assuming it’s slightly more specific than “Headcanon that this character likes peaches!”) you’ve already got plot, setting, conflict, and character down. 

Plot: being the actual premise of your story. What happens, why things happen, how other characters react, the beginning and ending, etc.

Setting: Being the location and time of your scene/plot. The setting might be a contingency to your story, such as a prison break that takes place in prison, or maybe it is the time that is essential for your High School AU fic

Conflict: Typically goes hand and hand with your plot, although not always (obviously, plot and conflict aren’t essential when talking about fics, *winks at the nsfw side of tumblr*) But if your headcanon does have a basic plot, then it probably has some sort of conflict whether external (The Calamity kills everybody) or internal (you’re character is going through grief)

Character: This whole aspect is practically already done for you. Whether by canon from the video game or media you got it from, or perhaps by fanon, with the collective fandom agreeing on certain traits about your character(s) in question. Obviously, if you got an OC, that’s another thing, as you have to create their traits, and construct a believable way that that character reacts and makes choices throughout your plot, depending on how you characterized them

So congrats! In writing up your everyday headcanon, you’re now halfway there to making a full on fic! Obviously, 50% is still a lot, which is probably the reason you were seeking advice in the first place, so now we should move on to the other half, and arguably it is this other half of elements that give the entire distinction between a headcanon and a one-shot. So in theory, if you get these elements down, you’re on your way to writing that much faster!

Quick additional note: Another way to think of your headcanon is as an outline. While not in every case, a good way to jump from your headcanon to a fic is to stick with the major elements of your headcanon, and weaving your writing style in between. Think of the headcanon as your skeleton, and the story being the meat and muscle. Idk if that makes sense, blame my old English teacher for the metaphor

Alrighty, so for demonstration purposes I’m gonna use the very first headcanon I’ve ever written as a basis. Bear with me for a moment:

“Zelink Headcanon: Zelda Just Wants Some Snacks

Everyone always jokes and adores about how Link eats so much and cooks great food in the game (he’s gotta carbo load guys, he walks like 9 miles everyday!)

However I propose, equally hungry and feral Zelda

After Link and Zelda defeat Ganon, one of the first things they do is stop by the nearest cooking pot and eat

She hasn’t eaten for 100 years!! She’s gotta be starving!

Link just cooks up some meat skewers

“…wait I forgot the Goron spice, gimme a sec…”

But Zelda just immediately snatched it off the fire and eats the whole thing in two seconds

Link keeps trying to go out of his way to make really nice food but Zelda is just like “I DON’T CARE RIGHT NOW PLEASE LINK”

So yeah, their first date is basically just Link cooking Zelda a buffet until his inventory empties out”

Again, this headcanon has already given us half of the answers. 

We got our plot: Link, a talented chef, is cooking food which Zelda scarfs down without fear and hesitation

Setting: They are by a cooking pot, perhaps in the wilderness, away from the prying eyes of nosey villagers. This takes place sometime after the initial defeat of Calamity Ganon.

Conflict: Link keeps trying to cook “good” food, but despite the Princess’ royal upbringing, she has no care for the whole “show” of cooking with spices and garnish. She is starving, willing to eat anything

And Characters: Link and Zelda. You know... (Today unfortunately is not the day in which I construct a thorough character analysis of the two...perhaps one day...)

So, now that we have this, we start adding the meat and muscle of our story with point of view, tone, style, and theme. These elements, could be summarized as your writing style. Yes, writing style is more intricate than those four elements alone, but they do fit in with its broad definition. 

So, in essence, a way to transition between headcanon and fic is to find out what kind of writing style you’re comfortable with. 

How do you do that? Well... shocker, I know, you gotta write. 

Write first, plan the elements of your one-shot later!! 

Allow yourself to write complete utter garbage. I know you said that you don’t wanna create a “fanfic reader’s worst nightmare,” but if you become more concerned with the quality of your content before you even start writing, you will never ever ever get anywhere. You’re gonna be stuck in writer’s block for eternity, so just let the garbage and nightmares out and write. You’ll never improve if you don’t have something to improve from, you feel me? 

So, now that your mind is open and ready to write anything, whether garbage or gold, let us dive in to the parts of your writing style. 

Point of view: Do you prefer writing in third person? First? Second? Each have their pros and cons. Second person is good for your “x reader” inserts. First person is good for your narrator’s characterization. Third person is good for describing elements of your surroundings that might not be inherently obvious to your characters or audience. There are hundreds of other pros and cons to the different POVs that you can search up online, but it’ is ultimately up to you to decide which method you like best. 

When you find the method you like best, make sure you use it to it’s full potential! Use foreshadowing with your third person POVs. Use connotation, and diction to further characterize your narrator in first person. Elevate the mood and senses of a scene when in second person.

Tone: Now, this element is often confused with another literary device, mood. The difference being that you as the author have more control over the tone, than the mood. The tone, is the attitude that you as the author (or as a character/narrator, depending on your POV) have towards something. For example, your tone might be suspenseful if you withhold information from your reader, or if you have a certain choice of diction. It is typically better to look to the type of genre you’re writing for to identify what kind of tone you want. 

Mood is the feeling that the reader experiences from your writing. It’s really much more simple, a beloved character dying give a depressed mood. A cute couple hanging out will give the reader a happier mood. This is your angst and fluff feelings, if you will. (Although, please remember than mood and tone are not a binary thing, it is a spectrum, as broad and diverse as the capabilities of human emotion)

Style: Ok yes this is a bit meta, me explaining how to use style to help you construct a writing style. Blame the bendable definitions of the writing world. So just think of this as the face of your writing. The more obvious and apparent part that is unique to you and your personality. 

Think cake. Your story is a delicious cake, it is a chocolate, Zelink cake. Now, your style is the way that you present this cake. Pink frosting? Yellow? A full cake or just a slice? Chocolate ice cream cake? Chocolate lava cake? Five tier cake? Cake pops? These possibilities are the infinite ways your style will present the story.

Style, sometimes called voice, is the combination of your use of tone, mood, POV, syntax, diction, and other literary device that you commonly use in your writing. This isn’t something you learn, it’s just something you do naturally when you write. It’s what readers will like about your fics, because they like the way that you use this or that, or the way you describe this thing or that person. It’s something that can change and improve over time, but in essence, it’s what readers can read and identify as you, without even looking at the username.

Style isn’t something you have to remember, per say, like other literary devices, but it is something to be aware of as you should try to keep it consistent through your whole story. Sometimes have people have different writing styles depending on their own mood, or what they’re writing about. That is fine, so long as you keep it consistent through your whole work. A good trick for this is to listen to music that fits with the style of your writing. Use that one catchy love song whenever you’re writing cute headcanons or fluffy one shots. Use that anime opening theme for your adventurous fics and fight scenes. This way, you are keep in a consist atmosphere and your brain will be in the “Oh! It’s time to write ____ stuff!” mood. 

So just be aware of when you’re in a descriptive style, a narrative style, argumentative, or whatever style you like using. You style might even derived of the way you already create headcanons!

Theme: This is a big one. Have a cohesive theme can easily bring any story from good to great! I like to think of it as you’re story’s destiny, or reason for existence. 

Theme is an outlier for the other elements in that not only is it not necessary for your fic, it is also not necessary for your writing style either. It’s really not necessary... at all. Yet, people always use theme in their writing, even accidentally. 

Theme is your story’s underlying message, or lesson. Yes, yes, if you paid attention in your basic English class you probably already knew that, but this is a big pet peeve of mine. 

The theme of your story isn’t “true love,” the theme isn’t “innocence”, or “failure”, or “trauma”, or whatever. Theme isn’t a broad idea, it’s a specific question and an answer. 

For example: The theme of Breath of the Wild isn’t “exploration” or “time”. The theme is there is always something to seek and find, so long as you have the curiosity and courage to find it. The theme is despite the eternities of time, we still found each other. 

Your theme shouldn’t be a broad, one word answer. What about love are you trying to convey? What specifically about failure are you saying?

Theme is the entire reason why the entertainment medium exists, because artist found a way to create something compelling and interesting while also connecting them to real life things. 

When you give your reader something to really chew on, even days after they finished reading your fic, then you did a brilliant job. Essentially, you want to use theme in your story because it is what will stick with our readers even years after they’ve read your work.

While that’s all sentimental and sappy, that’s still not your biggest problem, is it? You still need to practice, you still need to learn how to use the things you’ve learned to actually write. So, a summary of what I advise you should do.

Look over and improve your old headcanons, and keep making more! Keep making headcanons and litte prompts, and let them grow bigger and bigger, and more desprictive. This could help you ease into actually writing paragraphs a bit more

Find out what you like to write. Yes, you probably already have a fandom in mind, but think back to those first four elements. What types of plots are you comfortable with, what settings, characters? Genius is only the work of enthusiasm, if you don’t like what you’re going to write, you’ve already failed

Write, write, write. Practice, practice practice. Let yourself write complete and utter garbage and nonesense. Then read it over. See what you don’t like about it. Then change it and write again. I MEAN it when I say you should write garbage. Write a completely terrible, nightmarishly cringe scene. See what you don’t like. Then rewrite it again. Repeat, repeat, repeat. In fact, it doesn’t even have to be a scene or something from your fandom. Let it be your description of a shirt, let is be some cringy poem from 7th grade. Just write and learn how you like to write. It will be so much easier in the long run

Read stuff. The stuff you read usually seeps into how you write. When you get used to reading things a certain way, you usually unconciously try to imitate it when you write. So, got a favourite fic writer? Read their stuff over and maybe even analyze the elements you like (again, think back to those eight elements I talked about) and hey, writers like it when you analyze their stuff so maybe even hit them up and talk? We like book reports we swear, most of us don’t bite. 

When you finally think you’re comfortable with your writings, maybe think about what kind of themes you’re into, or what kind of messages you want to say. It doesn’t even need to be that complex. Could be as simple as “I love this ship because it shows that you can still have flaws and be loved” Again, themes are the rEASON for eVERYTHING in the entertainment world

For further demonstration purposes, I’m going to come up with further elements for a hypothetical fic I would write based on that Zelink headcanon. So I’ve got the plot, setting, conflict and theme down. Hmm... I’ll probably use a third person POV as that is what I’m most comfortable with. With third person, I can better highlight the descriptions of Link and Zelda’s surroundings taking in the atmosphere and the aromas and and tastes. The tone will be more happy, focusing on the fun of Zelda and Link’s banter, I’ll try to create a mood in which the reader is laughing along with them, and enjoying the scene. My style will be more descriptive, again with the tastes and smells and other senses of the scene. However, I might go into a more narrative style for Zelda and Link’s banter and dialogue. While typically some people don’t want to use two different styles, I am personally familiar with the styles and know how to write them so as to blend them together more seamlessly. I might have a hint of angst at the end of the fic, as a little climax, given that the setting of the fic is after the defeat of the Calamity. I might through in some themes about how it wasn’t the material power of Hylia or the Master Sword that saved Hyrule, but the courageous and wise bond between Link and Zelda. Then...idk, a little romatic kiss for resolution because this is a fic and I can throw in some fanservice because my writing my rules. 

Babam! I just converted a headcanon to a fic.

So yeah, go write your headcanons. Then maybe next a paragraph. Then next a scene, and then you’re well on your way to one-shots and chapter fics. Happy writing and good luck!

[the-desolated-quill]

If You Don’t Like My Story, Write Your Own - Watchmen (TV Series) blog

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. if you haven’t seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)

If You Don’t Like My Story, Write Your Own feels like a tale of two episodes. One has well written characters, emotive storytelling and exciting possibilities, whereas the other contains ham-fisted, painfully obvious subtext and annoyingly long infodumps told to the audience with all the grace and subtlety of a brick to the face. 

Let’s start with the positives. At the beginning of the episode, we’re introduced to the character of Lady Trieu, played by Hong Chau, who buys a farmhouse from an Oklahoma couple by offering them a genetically engineered baby. I love this scene so much. It’s by far the most tightly written and engaging scene so far this series, and serves as a perfect introduction to a genuinely interesting character.

Lady Trieu is a Vietnamese born trillionaire industrialist who absorbed Adrian Veidt’s company after his disappearance and seems to take heavy inspiration from him, even going so far as to have a gold statue of him in her complex. It’s unclear whether she knows about his involvement with the squid (how could she possibly know?), but she clearly shares his vision of making the world better. 

Or... does she?

That’s precisely what I love about this character. Trieu is clearly the secret mastermind behind whatever is going on here (more on that later) and it would have been easy to just simply have her be a carbon copy of Veidt, but she isn’t. There’s a subtle, but clear distinction between the two. In my review of Look Upon My Works, Ye Mighty, I talked about the paradox of a liberal capitalist and how it’s often not enough for Ozymandias to simply save the world. He needs to be seen to be saving the world. He wants something with spectacle in order to appeal to his own vanity. This is true of Trieu as well, except, despite all his flaws, Ozymandias clearly at least wanted to help people, albeit in an incredibly flashy way for his own aggrandisement. Trieu doesn’t even want that. She just wants the attention and the good will. 

The opening scene is a perfect illustration of this. Giving that married couple their own DIY baby was one thing, but all the crap with the hourglass and the silly monologue and everything, there was no need for any of that. And lets not forget, she didn’t give this couple a baby out of the goodness of her heart. She did it solely because she wanted their land so she could claim a fallen object from space. The same is true of this Millennium Clock she’s building. I’m pretty sure its purpose isn’t just to tell the time, but that’s not the point. It’s described by her daughter as not the Eighth Wonder of the World, but rather as the First Wonder of the New World. Plus, of course, she is a trillionaire. If she just handed out even a small portion of her vast wealth, it would make a huge difference, but then there would be nothing in it for her. Nothing to gain. Unlike Veidt, Trieu is a character driven by pure cynicism. She has no interest in saving the world, but rather the attention and adoration of the world around her. She wants the world and the people around her to rely on her to save them. Basically if Ozymandias is an altruist tempered with narcissism, then Lady Trieu is a narcissist tempered with altruism. It’s a beautifully realised character and one I’m most excited to see more of in the episodes to come.

I also like the connection she has with Angela. Both were born and raised in Vietnam, except Trieu’s mother was a native to Vietnam before the US invaded and absorbed the country, turning it into the fifty first state. This puts Angela in an interesting position. Being an African American, her family obviously has history of being the victims of colonial oppression, but in this alternate history where Vietnam is part of America, Angela is also now in the role as one of the colonial oppressors. A settler in a country stolen and plundered from the natives. It’s an interesting position for her character to be in and I’m very curious to see where the show takes this.

After taking a backseat in the previous episode, Angela mercifully gets to take the lead again this time around and she’s great. With the FBI breathing down her neck, Angela continues to get to the bottom of the mystery involving her grandfather, the murder of Judd Crawford, and the Seventh Kavalry, and I really like where this is taking her character. She privately confides in Wade about what she has learned, even asking him to hide Judd’s Klan robe. This is the kind of character stuff I wanted to see in the previous episode during the funeral. How do you react to the knowledge that one of your closest friends was a hateful bigot? And from the looks of things, it seems as though Angela is doing her level best to protect Judd’s memory, at least until she gets to the bottom of what the fuck is going on here. I love this because it feels totally believable.There’s still a part of her that doesn’t want to accept Judd’s racist ties to white supremacy and clinging onto the idea that he might be misunderstood or that there’s something else going on underneath. This is an excellent internal conflict that has so far been handled exceptionally well. You don’t think less of Angela for not wanting to accept the truth because it’s totally understandable and believable.

Also I just want to briefly talk about what we learn about Wade, aka Looking Glass, in this episode. The man’s a doomsday prepper, living in a bunker in his back garden, preparing for another squid attack. I LOVE this so much. It makes total sense in the context of Watchmen and, like with Lady Trieu, it serves as a really nice inversion of an existing character. Like Rorschach, Looking Glass is a paranoid conspiracy nut, but unlike Rorschach, there’s actually some truth and logic behind his paranoia. Again, it’s a subtle distinction, but it’s enough to allow the character to go off in his own direction.

Here’s the thing. The bits I like about this episode, I really like. Unfortunately the bits I don’t like, I really don’t like.

Let’s begin with Laurie. What is she even doing here? Not only is she so utterly divorced from the character in the graphic novel, she doesn’t even contribute anything meaningful to the plot, other than to bicker constantly with Angela (which, considering this is the first time in Watchmen that we’ve had two female characters together interacting with each other, it feels immensely disappointing that this is the best the writers can come up with) or to spout gratuitous fanwank and pop psychology. The pop psychology in particular irritates me because it simply doesn’t gel with the tone and themes of Watchmen. I’m really hoping all that stuff about trauma and wearing a mask to hide the pain doesn’t in fact apply to Sister Night, otherwise I’m going to be extremely annoyed. Not only is that cliched beyond belief, it also stands directly against the whole point of Watchmen as a concept. Alan Moore’s intent was to scrutinise the reasons behind why someone would put a costume on and fight crime. Some just want the attention, others want to compensate for their own inadequacies, and some just want to live out their own violent, hedonistic fantasies. Only Rorschach fits the trauma model proposed by Laurie, and even then it’s not really accurate. Rorschach uses his trauma more as an excuse than a motivation. Watchmen serves as a deconstruction and criticism of superhero archetypes, so to potentially give Sister Night an obligatory tragic backstory would feel like a grave disservice to the source material.

The pop psychology also represents another problem this episode has. It seems to spend an awful lot of time telling its audience about its themes and commentaries rather than just showing them. One of the things I loved so much about the second episode was that it respected the audience’s intelligence. The connections it was making between the police and mob psychology, the superhero genre and its roots in US propaganda, and the KKK and the moral absolutism of most comic book heroes were apparent in the episode’s visual language and symbolism. It didn’t try to highlight them in fifty foot high neon lettering, instead trusting the audience to make the connections themselves. Here, however, completely the opposite. At numerous points, it feels as though the episode is sitting me down like a naughty school child and straight up telling me the plot, rather than trust that I’m a grown man who is perfectly capable of following this by himself, I pinky promise.

Take the whole subplot with Adrian Veidt for example. By watching the previous episodes, you can deduce that he’s trapped in a prison of his own making and is trying to escape (although admittedly it turns out that the clones aren’t in fact his creations, which is a pity because I think that’s less interesting, but still). Awesome idea. Love it. But showrunner Damon Lindelof is clearly worried that the idiots sitting at the back of the class didn’t get this, so Adrian spends his limited screen time here just explaining his subplot to the audience. It’s really annoying.

Or what about the Millennium Clock? The Seventh Cavalry are clearly in league with Trieu for some unknown reason, and in their video message to the police in the first episode, they say ‘tick, tock’ a lot, which is clearly a reference to the Clock. All a bit goofy, granted, but do you know what’s even goofier? Will getting up out of his wheelchair, staring dramatically into camera and saying ‘tick, tock’ for no fucking reason whatsoever other than to spell out the connection for the slow people in the audience who didn’t make the link. Dude, I promise you, we are following this. It was just pointless. But not nearly as pointless as...

Good God, do I hate Lube Man!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against there being humour in Watchmen. The original graphic novel had moments of dark humour, but there’s a time and a place. It just feels weird and kooky just for the sake of being weird and kooky. And again, it serves as a less than subtle reminder to the audience of the themes of the show. The police are abusing their powers and letting smaller crimes fall by the wayside, but rather than let that come up naturally in the story, we get a random excerpt from the Silver Slider here. All I can say is Lube Man had better play a vital role in the episodes to come, otherwise I’ll be pissed.

See, when Good Lindelof is writing the scripts, I’m enjoying this show immensely. When Bad Lindelof takes a turn at the keyboard, however, that’s when I start to get worried. 

[hypeathon]

RWBY & Meaning in Cinematic Techniques, Part 2 - Volume 5′s Merits

If there was anything to take away from part one of this blog article series, it would hopefully be that RWBY has more going on with its visuals than just being prettier through an upgrade in animation software. Since volume 3, various scenes centered on various characters have used a combination of stage direction, camera framing, and even interesting use of transitioning shots to better depict the subtext behind one’s thoughts and intentions or at the very least be left open to interpretation. But so far, only examples through volume 4 of the long-running web series have been referred to. This then brings into question what about the cinematography of volume 5?

To say that the fifth volume of RWBY’s story had faced a large number of criticisms within its fanbase would be an understatement. Since even before it ended and the hiatus started, more people have poured out their frustrations and disappointments on a regular basis through Youtube videos and threads on forums and the RWBY sub-reddit. It’s gotten to the point that after lots of back-and-forth flinging of arguments regarding whether the director and writer, Kerry Shawcross and Miles Luna respectively, should be criticized harshly or not, has just utterly exhausted some fans. To be vividly clear, the goal of this blog article is not to be the end-all-be-all counter-argument that shuts down what has been uttered by critics. Nor is it meant to even imply that volume 5 is void of flaws. Rather, the intent is simply to help shift and refresh the discussion about volume 5 by centering on how its application of cinematography is one of its merits.

With that said, in what ways did volume 5 apply cinematic techniques? The answer to that actually depends on the character. To start, let’s refer to the chameleon-based faunus character, Ilia Amitola and her scenes with Blake. Ilia has a strong, yet misguided sense of justice where she believes in needing to be as aggressive as possible. In shots with her and Blake in volume 5, she positions herself at a greater height which makes sense considering she’s actually shorter than Blake. Even the volume 5 opening theme featuring their bout illustrates this. While opening themes in anime are generally known to excite viewers into a title they’re about to watch, they can also tease a story and its layers through snappy camera shots and imagery. To see how true this usually is, I highly suggest watching Geoff Thew, a.k.a, Mother’s Basement’s “What’s in an OP” video series on Youtube, who has provided thorough analysis on openings to anime like Death Note, both Fullmetal Alchemist series, Re:Zero, Spice & Wolf, Your Name, and the seasons of My Hero Academia to name a few.

Switching gears back to Blake and Ilia’s scenes in RWBY, the latter believed that fear is the only way to gain results and by standing taller than the former, Ilia’s ideals are seemingly stronger. But when Blake manages to finally pin Ilia down in their fight in chapter 10, Blake hammers as much sense into Ilia as she could and gets her to admit that she doesn’t know any other alternative. 

With all that said, there’s another trait at play between Blake and Ilia’s scenes that needs to be mentioned. To do that, we need to first talk about a department in RWBY’s production that, like camera & layout, was also established since volume 3: the lighting team. In volumes 1 & 2, every scene with some attempt at lighting and shadow was actually faked, as there were no lighting artists yet. Even the scene between Roman Torchiwck and James Ironwood in chapter 12 of volume 2 had animator, Austin Hardwicke, use a trick in Poser to fake the shadow in Torchwick’s prison cell. But by volume 3, a lighting artist named Erica Burroughs was recruited to provide the rays of sunlight the lighting of green flames from the torches in the Beacon Academy vault, among other moments of lighting effects. By volume 4, a single lighting artist evolved to a whole team with Mark Osborne credited as the lead lighting artist. This helped contribute to making scenes more enticing to look at with each passing volume. Even volume 5 introduced a rim shot lighting on characters, which depending on the setting, such an accent can add to giving RWBY a more enticing aesthetic.

Lighting doesn’t just help make the show prettier-looking though. Depending on the context, it can also help better communicate the story visually-speaking. And Blake and Ilia’s scenes are the biggest examples of this. It goes without saying that the color black is Blake’s motif. But it can also extend to how the color represents her story arc when associated with lighting or rather lack thereof. Every scene where Blake confronts against the White Fang in previous volumes have been in settings with lack of light, be it in the middle of the night or underground at Mountain Glenn. In volume 4 though, lighting as a visual story element provides an interesting twist to scenes with her parents, being either in broad daylight or in a bright, warmly-lit room. With Blake, there’s this awkwardness when communicating with her parents, as welcoming and forgiving as Ghira and Kali are. In chapter 8, she hesitantly stays stares the outside of her father’s office in the dark, only to hesitantly step in and eventually pour out her deep guilt towards her father. She wants to be more open in the light, but is far too scared to.

The motif of light and darkness can also apply in relation to Sun Wukong. In chapter 3 of volume 4, Blake refused to explain why she kept distance from everyone including her teammates at a scene at night. But in chapter 11, not only is she forced to admit her reason after Sun got injured in the daytime, but the latter in response criticizes her way of going about her problems. This is complimented by some framing between the two and the large Menagerie painting in the background. What all of this has to do with Blake and Ilia is that the former in volume 5 is framed to be associated with bright and natural lights while the latter is associated with darkness and shadows. One of the major exceptions to this is in both character’s speeches in chapters 3 & 10, providing an interesting contrast. Ilia in chapter 3 is vocally fighting in Blake’s domain in broad daylight whereas Blake in chapter 10 argues back with her own speech in Ilia’s domain at night.

Though Blake and Ilia’s scenes were greatly emphasized by certain cinematic techniques, their characters weren’t the only ones with scenes affected in that sense. Other characters throughout the volume had techniques applied to their scenes to varying degrees and Ruby Rose was one of them. It’s not a secret that the inconsistent focus of the main protagonist of this web series has fueled the fandom’s frustrations this volume. And while the following can’t alleviate it, her scene with Oscar in chapter 5 is worth mentioning. It’s minor, but when Ruby is given the time to explain her optimistic demeanor to Oscar, there’s an interesting framing with her and the interior. In certain shots, she’s seen surrounded by the entrance to the training room where the outside is nothing but forests at night. The forest setting, especially at night, is a recurring setting with Ruby’s character as made evident in both her character short and in the volume 5 opening. But it’s also a setting with meaning regarding the story of the character she’s inspired by. One interpretation of a few variations of the Little Red Riding Hood story is that the forest serves as part of the character of the same name’s transition from childhood to adulthood, partly due to the forest being unknown and potentially dangerous territory.

What Ruby expresses to Oscar about what she’s afraid of can also be a callback to Oscar expressing to Ozpin how scary it is venturing out on his own in the forest for a cause beyond his comprehension. But where he has struggled to overcome his anxiety, Ruby has a firm-enough grip of it to stay motivated on her objective. The framing between her and the open entrance with the forest in the background, while just one simple cinematic technique, is also arguably effective at helping present Ruby’s mindset. The training room scene is also a good opportunity to talk about cinematography applied to Oscar’s scenes. In volume 4, chapter 7, his scene made him treat Ozpin as an invader of his mind and livelihood. The shades of brown and red and dim lighting makes Oscar feel utterly disturbed, overwhelmed, and unwilling to accept Ozpin’s words. But their scene in chapter 5 changes that. The interior in comparison is much brighter, bigger, and even with more shades of green, which is representative of Ozpin’s color motif. As a result, he no longer feels mentally tense by Ozpin’s presence and even trusts him for a little insight.

There’s also another small scene with Oscar in chapter 11 of volume 5, where he faces Leonardo Lionheart. Although brief, there’s an instance where as he steps up, the camera is framing him at a low angle, indicating that he’s more resolute. The motivation itself could be due to either slowly accepting his role in the story or to follow Ruby’s example. Speaking of Oscar and Lionheart’s face-off, now is where the latter’s scenes can be visually deciphered. The Haven academy headmaster has certain scenes that support the Cowardly Lion theme that he alludes to. In earlier-mentioned scene, Lionheart expresses his intentions after realizing that Ozpin had already been reincarnated. Note the long, overhead shot followed by a closer overhead shot of Lionheart looking up. The camera is utilized the same, exact way as with Tyrian’s Callows’s shots in volume 4 of chapter 7 . This is not necessarily coincidental when you consider who both of them refer to: Salem. Despite not much yet being known about her, the camera communicates how both Tyrian and Lionheart see Salem, albeit for nuanced reasons. To them, Salem is omnipotent and even omnipresent, and her will and desires are absolute, which leads to them expressing how they share the need to please her.

Next is the matter of Yang and Weiss’s scene in chapter 8. What makes this scene fascinating is how it combines two other scenes in past volumes. The first is Blake and Yang’s scene in chapter 6 of volume 2 and the other is Team RWBY’s dorm room scene in chapter 8 of volume 3. One applies a similar daylight lighting while the other frames the beds and initially, the two characters the same way. This helps indicate the shifting of roles with Yang and Weiss’s characters. Yang goes from being the one needing to get through to Blake by explaining a piece of her backstory to being the one who needs to be emotionally connected through by Weiss about Blake through her own backstory. Meanwhile, Weiss went from being negatively knee-jerk reactive to Blake’s hesitantly believing Yang in the dorm room scene to be more comforting and concerning in response to Yang’s prior overreaction. 

The last character to highlight who has been associated with her own set of cinematic techniques in volume 5 is Raven Branwen, specifically in scenes she shares with Yang. In their scenes, a few techniques come to mind. The first is of shots where Raven faces the camera when she talks about Qrow, Ozpin, and Salem in chapters four, six, & fourteen. She puts on a very serious expression to the viewer, but doesn’t face her own daughter in these instances. By itself, these shots may not mean much. But if they were to be complimented by another technique, the medium shots of Raven and Yang facing each other in two of the same chapters, then there’s more depth behind her character.

In chapter 6, Raven faces Yang eye-to-eye and then stoically turns her back towards her. But in chapter 14, Raven submissively let’s Yang walk past her while being shoved aside. Between these shots and the previous sets mentioned, this suggests that Raven has been too unwilling to admit her fears to herself and to her daughter. In turn, Yang expresses the willingness to confront her mother’s arguments and be strong the way she could not. But there’s also a layer of frustration underneath with Yang. While the phrase, “mother of the year” is appropriate to sarcastically describe Raven, bear in mind that she’s a character whose mystery has lingered in Yang’s mind since she was a child. She had very vague ideas of why her blood mother would leave her family. As much as she hardly respects someone like that, she can’t help but want to better comprehend such a character. When Raven does finally accept that she’s too scared to face the Salem’s overwhelming presence, she let’s Yang shove past her and weeps a tear, apologizing over how flawed she has been before continuing to do so as she flees.

Viewers may respond with, “good riddance”, but the above shot depicts a different response. When Yang turns around after hearing her Mom flee, all she sees is a feather drifting down. With the opened door to Spring Maiden vault framed to be behind her the way it is, it shows that Yang is immediately feeling isolated. The anger and frustration she harbored has been converted to depression. Yang by this point now knows everything she needs to know about her mom. Raven admits she’s a coward, but she’s also too much of one to properly stay by her daughter’s side, which makes Yang feel isolated and thus saddened that this is the reality.

All in all, volume 5 has managed to carry on the matter of using cinematic techniques in various ways as volume 4 did. As said before, none of these examples are expected to sway an entire fandom’s response to RWBY’s most current volume as of the time this blog article is posted. But hopefully after reading all of this, some credit can be given where it’s due of how one aspect of the show’s production and presentation has been given more thought and attention over time. Here is also hoping that said-aspect will be maintained in future volumes.

[claystripemovieblog]

Kingsman: The Golden Circle Review, a.k.a. The Ones You Love Hurt You the Worst

Kingsman: The Secret Service remains one of my favorite films of the last decade. That’s neither hyperbole nor an astericked claim with an assurance in the footnotes that I merely meant “favorite genre flick”, “most fun movie”, or “personal guilty pleasure.” Matthew Vaughn’s 2015 action comedy was, to me, a Tarantino film without delusions of high art. That intellectual honesty actually allowed the first Kingsman to deliver biting commentary on class and masculinity without ever getting preachy, all while telling a fun romp about super-spies in well-tailored suits. Add to it some pitch-perfect performances from Colin Firth, Mark Strong, Samuel L. Jackson, and new leading man Taron Egerton (who, two years later, still has yet to get the roles he really deserves), and you’ve got a movie I saw six times in the theater and countless times since.

You also got a movie that I never really wanted to see a sequel to. Not only did the original tell a completely self-contained story (and its ending would make continuing that story a convoluted undertaking at best), I knew deep down that I didn’t want this world and these characters to be ruined for me. In the modern age of cinematic universes, Star Wars prequels, and JK Rowling’s Twitter, I’ve learned too well that returning to the well inevitably taints the waters. Still, the stellar ensemble cast, the return of Vaughn at the helm, and the idea of wacky American cowboy spies mostly assuaged my fears. 

Sad to report that I should have stuck to my initial misgivings.

Kingsman: The Golden Circle is not a bad movie. There are still impressively filmed sequences, a few clever ideas, and the actors are all as good as ever. But I have not been this annoyed, upset, and bored in a theater since Avengers: Age of Ultron two years ago, for much the same reasons as that film. Golden Circle squanders a great cast, world, and style on a story that is utterly divorced from any of the characters’ arcs and that clearly lacked an editor with the confidence to make cuts in service to the film. It is a slog to get through, as you find yourself willing the story to get to the next creative setpiece as much as you try to will yourself feel for characters that you loved in the last movie and to laugh at jokes that never quite seem to land.

If you wish to read more of my descent into despair as I try to dissect this picture and understand why it didn’t work for me, with spoilers aplenty, I’ve included my complete thoughts past the ‘Read More’. But here’s the best way I can sum up just how disappointed I was by Kingsman 2: It has a scene where Elton John dresses like a peacock and flying kicks a man in the face while winking at the camera, and I couldn’t even muster a chuckle. That might be the most depressing sentence I’ve ever written. 

The Themes

Normally, I would try to avoid judging this movie against its predecessor and try to assess it on its own merits, but since Golden Circle so shamelessly copies from the story and iconography of Secret Service, I feel like I must explain why that film worked so well for me while this one decidedly did not. It’s simple, really, so much so that I’m baffled that no one involved in the production, which was nearly identical for both films, understood it. The second movie tells a story with good characters, while the first tells the story of good characters.

The conflict of Secret Service was, on paper, stopping crazy Richmond Valentine from murdering all but the “best” people on Earth. But the heart of the story was young hero Eggsy becoming a “gentleman”, not by completely reshaping his identity to fit in with a bunch of upper-class pricks, but by becoming his best self and dedicating his life to saving others. His arc is central to the plot and themes of the film; his struggle to assert his worth as a Kingsman in spite of his origins makes his fight against the elitist Valentine personal and relatable. When Eggsy defeats Valentine without the help of his mentor and defeats those who thought themselves to be above the rest of humanity by merit of their wealth and power, it is emotionally satisfying, not just because the bad guy’s been stopped, but because it shows that Eggsy has become a great man on his own terms.

The conflict of Golden Circle is not, as the marketing might suggest, the culture clash between the US and UK (which would have been fun and mildly interesting). Instead, it’s the War on Drugs. That’s not done through metaphor or anything- Julianne Moore’s 50s housewife/cartel leader Poppy explicitly seeks to end the War on Drugs and become a legitimate businesswoman by holding millions of drug users hostage, while evil President Bruce Greenwood plans to kill all drug users and unburden society. While the original film benefited from keeping its themes general and personal, this choice for the conflict exposes the movie to a much more complicated world of politics than it seems ready to tackle. The problem does not lie merely in moral ambiguity- the first film made good use of the fact that Valentine was essentially right in diagnosing the Earth as overpopulated and doomed to environmental destruction. That added pathos to his character and made Eggsy and Merlin’s violent defeat of the one-percent hypocrites who were just as guilty of exploiting Earth’s resources all the more satisfying. However, while Vaughn and Jane Goldman’s first Kingsman script had a basic message- “class doesn’t matter”- this script has nothing to say.

Vaughn seems unwilling (or perhaps unable, given the film’s funding by 20th Century Fox and its extensive use of Fox News personalities for plot exposition) to actually acknowledge the causes and effects of the War on Drugs. Nobody in the film is seen doing any hard substances that might be harmful to themselves or others. We never see anyone overdose or be addicted to any of Poppy’s wares, implying that the only thing wrong with her exploitative business is her personal megalomania and sociopathy and that drug users are more-or-less guiltless of any wrongdoing. More troubling, the film fails to acknowledge that the main thing setting apart the film’s visuals of a military police force caging up dying drug addicts from the reality of the American prison system is how many of the prisoners are white. The president’s juvenile jubilation over “winning” the War on Drugs by killing all the “slackers” flies in the face of how drug laws are actually enforced in this country and how they actually do disenfranchise and ruin people as much or more than drugs themselves, particularly and disproportionately the poor and people of color. Perhaps honestly confronting a major social issue is beyond the reach of a mainstream American blockbuster, but then why feature it in your movie if you have nothing meaningful to say?

The biggest problem with Golden Circle’s themes is not its politics, however, but how they’re not tied to the main characters’ goals in any significant way. That’s not to say they don’t try to show how drug use affects Eggsy’s life. The film gives us no less than four morality pets whose lives are threatened by Poppy’s virus. But, again, they’ve only been threatened by this fantastical plot, not the affects of actual drug addiction. They need help, but they might as well be trapped in a burning building for all it adds to the story. It’s important that Eggsy saves their lives and the millions of others threatened by the disease, but that could not have anything less to do with the arc (or arcs) they try to give him (we’ll get to that later). Their peril is only a motivation to get the protagonists from setpiece to setpiece. Speaking of which...

The Plot

The movie begins with an action scene, showing clearly from the get-go where the film’s priorities are. No set-up, no reintroduction to the characters, no analysis of how the destruction of the one percent from the last movie did or did not change the world (which is all I wanted from a sequel to a movie where all the world leaders’ heads exploded). Just a thrilling brawl through the streets of London. It’s great stuff, but all it accomplishes amusing the audience for five minutes and setting up how the villain can later eliminate the other Kingsman. Contrast that with the opening to the first film, which succinctly establishes Harry’s character, motivation, and connection to Eggsy without excessive bombast, and you quickly see where this movie is going to fall short.

We get to catch up with Eggsy before everything goes down the shitter, and it’s the best part of the movie. He’s still hanging out with his friends in London, keeping him refreshingly grounded. He’s even dating Princess Tilde from the last movie, in a pretty refreshing turn. While the controversy over how Secret Service ended with Eggsy having anal sex with the princess of Sweden as a “reward” for saving the world honestly never bothered me too much (I saw it as a joke directed at the egregious male gaze of the original Bond movies and further knew that young people have sex for lesser reasons all the time), this film’s decision to give Tilde more of a presence beyond a sex object and to make Eggsy into an anti-Bond (a decent human being who actually tries to build a relationship and be a loving partner) is a good one, and one of the few parts of the film that seems really creative. I mean, it shouldn’t- just having your male escapist protagonists not be douchebags should be the norm, I’d think- but it’s still worth appreciating. That said, Tilde never gets to do anything beyond being Eggsy’s supportive girlfriend who wants to get married someday, which ends up making her subplot one of ten in this movie that could have been cut and barely changed anything.

This new relationship is not the only one neglected by the film. The early death of Roxy, a character who played a small but integral role in the first movie, removes the only active female protagonist from Golden Circle way too early, turning her into just another motivating factor for Eggsy’s actions. The destruction of Harry’s old house and the death of JB is sad, but feels unearned because the villain has no actual connection to the Kingsman. The subsequent scenes of mourning with Merlin are great, but then the fallen Kingsman are almost completely forgotten so the plot can get to introducing the Statesman.

The Statesman were central to the marketing of Golden Circle and offered a great opportunity for the film to distinguish itself from the original, but they’re barely in the movie. Channing Tatum has effectively one scene where he tussles with the protagonists before he is put into a coma, and he could easily been removed from the film. Jeff Bridges and Halle Berry are good in their roles but likewise contribute nothing to the progression of the story. Only Agent Whiskey ends up getting much screentime, but even he gets the shaft from a development standpoint, making the whole trip through America feel like a waste of time beyond providing an overly elaborate way to bring back Harry (who's role in the story we’ll get to later when we look at the characters).

A lot of this movie feels like a waste. You feel that 141 minute runtime. There’s another water room sequence, another “shoot the dog”, as if someone at Fox is requesting they “play the hits” even when they don’t impact the narrative at all. They recreate the iconic bar fight from the first movie for a third time. There’s at least three Fox News exposition montages. There’s two separate scenes of Poppy inducting a new member into her gang whose only contribution is being killed after doing drugs with Elton John. Oh, yeah, Elton John’s in this movie, playing himself. And not just in one cameo scene. He’s in the movie longer than Channing Tatum, seemingly just for the hilarious joke of him being Elton John in a Kingsman movie. Add all that to Harry... When you look at a film and know that you, a Joe Schmoe off the street, could cut out twenty minutes of it without changing anything, you know the director just had nobody who could tell him “No”.

Yet despite all of this padding, the movie also somehow manages to have a lot of scenes and arcs that come out of and go nowhere. The evil president is not introduced until late in Act 2, robbing his villainous turn of any impact. Agent Whiskey’s motivation comes straight out of his ass at the end of Act 3. Merlin’s death is especially jarring, as he dies saving Eggsy from a landmine he stepped on for no reason beyond uncharacteristic carelessness. It’s just lazy writing, diabolous ex machina. Merlin’s also given a random love for John Denver’s “Take Me Home Country Road” totally absent from the first movie without any real explanation for how that love informs his character in any way, seemingly just to make his death a little more memorable. His death really struck me as a disservice to a great character.

Poppy’s plan is much more ludicrous and obviously preventable than Valentine’s (beyond the fact that she has nothing after the delivery of the antidote to ensure an army wouldn’t come looking for her, surely her consumer numbers would plummet when non-addicts realize their producer willingly gave them a horrific, deadly illness for business reasons). But I can forgive it, if only because Moore sells the crazy Bond villain thing very well. The final fight in her Cambodian temple/50s kitsch mashup base is one of the more enjoyable part of the film, but it’s also a victim of its own excess. The sight gags are funny, the camera tricks are fairly impressive, and I can even acknowledge the obvious CGI as serving a cartoonish style. But it only hits the same beats as the church scene and final battle of the first film without doing any of them quite as well, making the whole affair seem rather redundant and pointless.  

The movie ends with a whimper. Harry’s Galahad again, Channing Tatum becomes a Kingsman and gets a dumb hat after spending the whole movie in a coma, the president is impeached by someone who definitely doesn’t look like Hilary Clinton (GET IT?!?), and Eggsy steps down and gets married to Tilde. Wait, where did this come from? How old are they supposed to be? What year is this? Does Eggsy have any angst that three of his close friends are dead now that he’s got Harry back? Is this the only scene Eggsy’s mom and sister are in? Who cares, film’s over folks.

Oh, also, there’s a scene in there somewhere where Eggsy fingers a girl to put a tracker in her vagina. It’s deeply unnecessary, and I don’t want to talk about it beyond saying "gross”.

The Characters

That summary of the plot problems of this bloated film actually left out quite a lot of the story. Didn’t notice? That’s because I mostly ignored the role of a single character that shouldn’t have been in the movie in the first place. We’ve got to talk about Harry- specifically, why his presence in the film not only makes it worse, but makes the last movie worse, too. (Sorry, Colin Firth, you’re still great.)

Harry’s return was revealed with the announcement of the movie itself and was the first sign to me that things were in trouble. The loss of the mentor is important for every hero’s journey, because as long as they’re around, the hero’s accomplishments seem more achievable and less important. Imagine if Obi-Wan came back and helped Luke beat Darth Vader. Harry was a badass, yes, but he served the function of starting Eggsy on a path and then emphasizing how formidable Valentine was as an adversary with his death. We didn’t need to learn more about who he was before being a Kingsman, and that subplot doesn’t even go anywhere. The flashback scene early on with him teaching Eggsy dining etiquette was great, but only because it emphasized how meaningful their relationship was. There’s nowhere for the plot to put Harry when he returns, which means that much of the second act has to be wasted on a side-conflict to try to restore his memories in order to give him something to do. When Harry’s memory is restored, he’s then relegated to tagging along to help out Eggsy for no reason other than Eggsy wanting him to, with the plot swapping back and forth between hindering him to further extend the runtime or making him such a badass that he overshadows the story’s hero. I spent much of the film wondering how they were going to tie it all in, what lesson Eggsy would learn by getting his mentor/father figure back, whether the actual conflict of the drug war was going to tie into it in any way like the conflict of the first movie. It doesn’t go anywhere. Both characters are in the same place they were in the last movie, besides, you know, Harry not being dead.

Even though Eggsy functionally doesn’t grow at all, Egerton remains fantastic, and there’s some scenes where he emotes so much with those puppy dog eyes that he elevates the material. If only the movie had him smoke some of Poppy’s weed while hanging out with his friends, enhancing his personal connection to the plot by putting his own life in danger from the government’s neglect and making him less of an invincible superhero? And then maybe if the film had his mother (who, again, only has a brief background cameo) still struggling to overcome a crack or heroin addiction that also puts her life in danger, emphasizing that other drugs should never be sold and that those who sell them actually do put people’s lives at risk? So then, you know, you care about Eggsy’s role in this story? Just a thought.

The cast really is the saving grace of the movie, and they’re doing the best they can with a bad script. Julianne Moore is amazing as always, and she’s delightfully weird and threatening as Poppy, making it all the more frustrating that the film keeps her in her base the entire movie with barely any interaction with the other characters. Edward Holcroft can still play a great smarmy jerkass, and I was glad to see him come back with a cool robot arm. Pedro Pascal is super fun as a cowboy and gets some great fight scenes, but Whiskey doesn’t get any real chance to sink his teeth into being a morally ambiguous traitor, again because his motives are revealed only a minute before his death and because the script seems afraid to use the Statesmen for anything interesting. It’s all such a waste.

Conclusion

Again, this movie was not the worst flick I’ve ever seen by any stretch. There’s not much you can write about a truly awful, uninspired movie. It’s films like this- like The Lost World or Age of Ultron, films with endless potential that still end up being below average- that hurt the worst. And this movie hurt me, man, and not just because I spent nearly forty bucks to see it in a VIP theater on premiere night. There’s great performers here, creative visuals, a superb soundtrack. It’s a shame they ultimately were put to no good use.

There’s so many obvious ways to fix this movie. Tie the characters closer to each other and to the movie’s central themes. Allow the old characters to continue to grow. Give space for new characters and ideas. Make the movie about something more than fights and quips. Keep Harry dead. I know the people working on this movie know how to do this, because they did it two and a half years ago.

So, yeah. If you couldn’t tell, this movie really got under my skin, so much so that I decided to not just write a several page review and analysis, but that I finally got around to making a dedicated film Tumblr. I doubt anyone’s gonna read this full thing, but, hey, thanks if you made it this far.