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timeagainreviews · 2 years ago

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“The Power of the Doctor” is a mixed bag

Psychologist Barry Schwartz once said, "The secret to happiness is: low expectations.” His reasoning was that if a person approaches everything in their life with either low or no expectations, they leave themselves open to being pleasantly surprised. Last night’s episode “The Power of the Doctor,” had me thinking about that quote a lot. In my previous article, I mentioned I only had the faintest of hopes that now former showrunner, Chris Chibnall, could end his era well. The bar was so low that I really only dared hope he would not make yet another controversial change to the mythology. Anything beyond that would be icing on the cake. It would seem that after a five-year period of shoddy writing, my expectations were low enough to leave me pleasantly surprised.

Those of you familiar with this blog will know that my number one consideration for every story of Doctor Who is simply- did I have fun? While “fun,” is a rather subjective concept, it’s really why I love Doctor Who. I have a lot of fun watching it. Mind you, I don’t apply this to every piece of media. Some media isn’t meant to be fun. Some of it is meant to be challenging. Even Doctor Who can be more like a medicine than a treat. While theme and character development are important, sometimes the heart wants what the heart wants. Sometimes we love something in spite of its flaws. It was actually in Nash Bozard’s review of “Revelation of the Daleks,” that I first heard anyone take this stance. After ragging on about the absurdity of the story, he had to admit that when it was all done, he wasn’t bored. “The Power of the Doctor,” is by no means perfect, but it was fun.

As many great stories begin, this one starts with a train heist. I was reminded of the Capaldi era’s “Mummy on the Orient Express,” and also to some degree “Time Heist.” The Doctor and her crew aren’t able to pilot the TARDIS directly into the speeding train so they have to improvise with what is one of two ladders in this episode which must be dropped down from a less-than-ideal height. The fam tucks and rolls but gets a little too close to death for Dan’s comfort. Upon entering the train, they discover a group of Cyber Masters attempting to hijack a sort of coffin which presumably holds someone or something important. In what turns out to be one of a number of fake-outs on Chibnall’s behalf, it is revealed that it’s a mere child within the coffin. I say fake-out because it was my and everyone watching with me’s dreaded assumption that this little girl was the infamous Timeless Child.

Chibnall continues to utilise these types of fake-outs throughout the rest of the episode. You get the feeling that it’s his little way of nodding to the story he would have liked to have told under different circumstances. Coronavirus may have been a factor, but ultimately it felt a lot like a mandate from the BBC. While his era is not without its fans, it has been hugely controversial. What’s funny then, is that while a lot of this feels like Chibnall being restricted, it oddly makes him seem like a better writer. In having to hint at the story he wanted to tell, it allowed for subtlety that a story like “The Timeless Children,” lacked. When Vinder and the Doctor part ways, you could almost imply that he is her father by the knowing look he gives her. They even hold on this look for a moment in order to highlight its implied significance. I like being able to wonder if he’s her father. Just as I like to wonder if the woman from “End of Time,” was the Doctor’s mother. With room to wonder, there is mystery, or as David Lynch puts it- room to dream.

Dan leaves the show almost as quickly as he joined it. After breaking open his space suit during their mission, Dan decides life with the Doctor is too dangerous and leaves the TARDIS, presumably to end up with his love interest Diane. It was interesting to me that an episode that re-introduces Tegan Jovanka says goodbye to another companion for very similar reasons to her own when she also parted ways with the Doctor. The violence and death became too much. Speaking of re-introducing characters, how could I go any longer without mentioning Ace? As you may recall, Ace was my biggest worry about the centenary special. After seeing her in promotional photos, I worried they were going to make Ace a boring old woman with her business suits and fancy job, but I was pleasantly surprised by her portrayal. I’m sure it doesn’t hurt that Sophie Aldred has continued playing the character in audio format for the last two decades, but it was reassuring nonetheless.

The introduction to Ace and Tegan is a bit of a head-scratcher. Somehow, over the years, they have come into contact with one another and frequently work together on their Sarah Jane Smith-esque adventures. Ace is investigating a series of missing paintings, while Tegan is on the other side of the world tracking seismic activity. For no reason whatsoever, they assume these two instances are linked, and for no reason whatsoever, they’re absolutely right. After being recruited by Kate Stewart to help with official UNIT business, it is revealed that the Master has been adding himself to priceless works of art, something which never comes up again. It’s weird then that they dedicate so much time to this aspect of the story. They even rent out a gallery where Ace investigates a digitally removed painting. Seriously, there’s some weird cropping going on in that scene that prompted me to ask a curator friend what was up. According to her, it’s entirely plausible that they may not have had the budget to move the painting and therefore it would have been cheaper to remove it digitally. This somewhat begs the question why they didn’t just build a set or choose a different location, but whatever.

The Master appears in many different forms in this episode. So many that I might suggest they lose track of things a bit. We first see the Master in St Petersburg at the Winter Palace, posing as the mad monk Rasputin. Sacha Dhawan’s beautiful dark eyes are hidden under milky blue contacts which really sell the look. While I was collecting my notes about this episode I came to one puzzling question- why was the Master posing as Rasputin? It’s implied at the beginning that he may be the catalyst for the Russian revolution, but what that has to do with the rest of the story is anyone’s bet. I asked my friends and I skimmed through the episode on iPlayer, and nothing. I genuinely don’t know why he did that. While it gave us the opportunity to watch the Master gyrate his hips to Boney M’s “Rasputin,” the only reason I can think they chose Rasputin is that it looks cool.

When the promotional photos of Dhawan as Rasputin were released, I figured Chibnall was going to incorporate the bizarre (if not slightly embellished) account of how he died. According to some accounts, Rasputin proved to be notoriously difficult to kill. He was shot, poisoned, beaten, and drowned. It would have been a fun thing to incorporate into the story, as being a Time Lord would make the Master equally difficult to kill. Oddly this never comes up, and from what I can tell, he really only wants the Winter Palace as a base of operations where he and the Daleks and Cyber Masters can enact their grand scheme.

As grand schemes go, the Master’s Dalek plan doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Basically, the Master lures the Doctor in by holding the Earth hostage with stock footage of volcanoes poised to erupt due to Dalek intervention. The Master’s TARDIS has also merged with a planet that has been fully cyber converted. The planet hangs in the sky like a second moon harkening back to the Earth’s twisted double- Mondas. The little girl from the beginning turns out to be an energy being that takes the form of something you want to protect as a survival technique. The Master harnesses its power in order to bring his Deathstar-like monstrosity to life. The problem with most of this is that a lot of these elements exist purely to look cool, which is a continual problem of Chris Chibnall’s- great ideas without much exploration. The Doctor as a Weeping Angel looks cool. A guy with teeth in his face looks cool. The Master as Rasputin looks cool.

Another version of the Master that we see is the Master in the present day, giving a twisted lecture on plate tectonics and magma to a room of academics who have all been murdered by his tissue compression technique. UNIT comes and takes this Master away and he spends the rest of the episode giving Tegan, Ace, and Kate a hard time. The Master reveals that his tissue compression can be reversed and as he does, it is revealed that a small figure of the Lone Cyberman is actually a sort of Russian nesting doll full of Cybermen. This whole sequence was weird as the Master could have just used the Cyber Masters as he had been the whole time. I guess Chibnall wanted to see Ashad return. It’s fine though because the Master remarks how glad he is that he took the time to clone him down to every last detail, including battle damage! The line was about as shoehorned at Yaz saying “I love you,” to the Doctor at the beginning of the episode.

Speaking of shoehorned love, Thasmin is somewhat in effect, but I imagine not enough for the shippers out there. There’s no great kiss between the Doctor and Yaz, though there are implied moments of romance. More than the show ever implied before. Seriously, why pander to shippers? Have you seen some ships? They come out of nowhere at times, like this one. People want to see the Doctor and Yaz fall in love, so they invent a romance in their head. What I do like is that in this episode, Yaz is forced to view her own importance to the Doctor after seeing the number she did on both Tegan and Ace. We’ve seen it before with Rose and Martha. They’re not the Doctor’s first and they have to rectify that. Luckily, Dan has fucked off so the Doctor and Yaz get lots of downtime to partake in lesbian processing.

Did I say Dan fucked off? I meant to say the role of Dan will now be played by Graham. Now, if you thought the sudden appearance of Vinder was out of nowhere, just wait until Ace finds Graham inside a volcano! The episode shows us numerous times that there are multiple volcanoes set to explode, yet somehow Ace and Graham run into one another at the exact same time under one of many multiple volcanoes. Graham is down there doing his own Sarah Jane Smith-esque adventures. It’s sort of implied that this is what companions do after traveling with the Doctor- they continue her work. Fair enough, but still a bit too convenient. I’ll excuse it though because I rather like Graham, and watching him and Ace blow shit up with nitro nine is all I ever really wanted.

In a somewhat cheeky fashion, Chibnall has the Master comment on just how messy and disparate his plan sounds. It felt like a moment of fourth wall breaking where Chibnall acknowledged some of the criticism his work has faced. That and the Master saying the words “The Master’s Dalek Plan,” made me smile. It takes guts to do such a bad pun. I was glad to see him having fun on his last outing. It’s odd that in his final moments, Chibnall finally seemed to be enjoying his role as showrunner. It felt more like a love letter to the things he admires about Doctor Who and less like a chore thrust upon him by the network. Part of me had wondered where this guy had been hiding for the last five years.

The Master manages to capture the Doctor in a Dalek. No dodgems jokes though, it’s all business. Luckily Yaz witnesses everything and begins to recruit a posse. The Master has amassed his new “fam,” and the Doctor has hers. Thus we reach the title of the episode as we learn that the real power of the Doctor is the fam we made along the way. Or as Davros would put it- she turns her friends into weapons. But this isn’t about that. New year, new me. And it’s a very new Doctor as the Master’s real plan would have it. Using his cyber planet as a source of power, the Master force regenerates the Doctor into himself.

Ok, let’s get this out of the way- it’s a bit John Simm. It’s a bit of a callback. I think that’s fine because it’s great to watch the Master parade around as the Doctor. It was fun to watch Missy do it, and it’s still fun now. The bit where he pulls out the recorder of the Second Doctor made me warm and fuzzy. The Master playing an eerie rendition of the Skye Boat song was mad and forlorn. Great imagery. You really get a sense that Sacha Dhawan’s performance is channelling a kind of deep melancholy. He sort of sits there like a pot about to boil over. He possesses a demeanour which causes one to wonder if he were to lunge at you, would it be to kill you, or to kiss you? He may just break down and cry. He seems constantly on the verge of a nervous breakdown and I really like his take on the character. I wouldn’t want to be him either.

What’s strange, however, is the Master once killed off the Time Lords within the Citadel all because he found out he might have a little bit of the Doctor in him. I kinda wish the Doctor had called him out on his own double standard. But that’s the Master. He is a contradiction. Plus he’s also actively profaning the Doctor’s name. In the Master’s own twisted way, he’s living his truth. Reclaiming his body as his own by taking over the Doctor’s. Sure, a big problem with the Thirteenth Doctor and the Spy Master has been that it often ends with him pontificating while she’s tied up, and that’s still present. But the Master’s arc as a guy who is disgusted by his new truth to a guy who creates the next truth is a complete character arc for him.

As the Master reeks hell with Yaz in tow, a plan begins brewing, though I largely am not sure how. Vinder stows away on the TARDIS unbeknownst to the Doctor. I rather liked him in this episode. He had a badass moment where he puts the Master in his place. To borrow from Mike Tyson- “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” Or in this case, shot in the shoulder. Where I am most confused is where the Doctor’s AI comes into play. I’m assuming it has to do with the static charge, but I’m not exactly sure how it worked. I thought maybe it was a “Day of the Doctor,” scenario where over a course of years the TARDIS AI system makes a facsimile of the Doctor’s consciousness for the purpose of its use now? Is that what happened?

What really matters is that none of that matters because we’re now at my favourite bit. Everyone quiet down. Alright, get this- David Bradley, Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy and Paul McGann all showed up. I mean, they were nearby, but they’re here… sorta! It was very much a Five-ish Doctors scenario. Sadly Tom Baker couldn’t attend and Madame Tussaud said no. Also, I think Shada’s canon now. The Thirteenth Doctor is also there, natch. She’s not quite crossed the rainbow bridge yet and the Doctor’s consciousnesses are here serving Missing Adventures book cover vibes in their matching red and black robes. All except the Eighth Doctor who looks suave as fuck. Love that for them.

One issue I feel has persisted throughout the Jodie Whittaker era is the BBC and the show’s desire to make her share the role of the main character. It’s incredible to see our favourite Doctors in one place, but even in her swan song, she’s forced to share the role. She doesn’t even get to have her own comic book, she has to share it with the Tenth Doctor. It’s like when Marvel used to try to sell books by throwing Wolverine in. I wish on some levels we could have gotten Jo Martin before or after Jodie. Part of me held out hope that she would regenerate into her in the end. I get that this isn’t just a regeneration episode, this is 100 years of the BBC, dammit. But still.

We did finally get to see Jo Martin do more and I couldn’t be any more excited about it. Somewhat surprisingly, and someone expectedly, they do not give her mystery away. What they do give is a lovely little bit of her coming in and being a chilly renegade, straight putting the hurt on the Master. What they did was leave me wanting more. More of her please. I’ll take one spin-off, thanks. I said it in the comments the other day that I was waiting for this episode before I could really take the entire era for what it was. Now that I know the Fugitive Doctor is to remain a mystery, I feel I know more about her, oddly. I mentioned last time that I was frustrated by the way she was written. Now I can quantify her character in my consciousness better.

Thanks to her friends and her AI selves, the Doctor gains control of her body once more. To stop the volcanoes from destroying the planet, the Doctor needs both her and the Master’s TARDIS. The Doctor gathers all of her friends around her TARDIS console like a remix of “Journey’s End.” By linking her TARDIS in tandem with the Master’s, they manage to jump the cyber planet forward to modern times when the volcanoes are erupting. The various stock footage shots of erupting volcanoes made me yearn for a bit of the RTD era which always felt like an invasion was happening everywhere. It wasn’t just the Doctor meeting Cybermen, they were showing up at your front door! Where are the people abandoning their homes and frantically rushing to leave the vicinity of their local magmatic spire? It seems small, but this involves the audience more than the knowledge that volcanoes erupt seemingly across the world at the same time of day. There aren’t time zones, silly. That’s why this episode wasn’t simulcast, it’s 7:30 pm everywhere!

The Doctor frees herself of the Cyber Masters. Ace and Graham have dispatched the Daleks in classic fashion, and Tegan and Kate prove themselves quite capable at demolition. Though I must say, I really need to know how 69-year-old Tegan Jovanka managed to drop into a dark hole and climb out unscathed. I’m 39 and I would have spent the next week in bed saying “Don’t touch me, I’m baby.” It’s the kind of discontinuity like Yaz and Dan seeing two old people get cracked like eggs by Weeping Angels and then appear in the next scene having somehow escaped. It’s not even that this is discontinuity, it’s that seeing Tegan with a serious limp would have ratcheted up the tension. Janet Fielding got some great moments that were very true to her character, but they missed a trick there. Imagine the next scene with her starting instead at the bottom of that lift shaft. Her leg is broken. She has to tie a bit of cable and rebar around her leg like a splint. She drags her way into the next room and still manages to save Kate from cyber conversion. It could have easily been more, but instead, it’s nothing.

The scenes which paired Ace and Tegan up with their respective Doctors left me feeling overjoyed. As a big fan of the Ace years with the Seventh Doctor, I was happy to see them get a proper emotional goodbye. Not just a voiceover done in post. It’s weird how natural it felt seeing them back together as if no time had passed. Both pairs. Having the Fifth Doctor say “Brave heart,” and Tegan say “Rabbits,” was fan servicey as hell, and I would have been upset if they hadn’t done it.

In a last fit of rage, the Master declares that if he doesn’t get to be the Doctor, then neither does she. The Master turns the floaty timeless child energy spider (I said what I said) and swipes the Doctor with it’s energy beam before collapsing. Yaz is forced to carry the Doctor back to the TARDIS like Kevin Costner in the Bodyguard. She then carries her over the threshold which I guess counts as the first Doctor Who gay marriage. The Doctor and Yaz are registered at John Lewis for anyone curious. Yaz takes everyone home like a good designated driver and later the Doctor wakes up from her blackout like “Whahappen?” She realises she’s regenerating so the Doctor takes Yaz on one last adventure- a bit of ice cream atop the TARDIS.

Whether or not you ship it, Mandip and Jodie are giving their whole ass in these scenes. I can count on my hand, maybe, the number of times we’ve seen the Doctor cry. Nine in “The End of the World.” Ten when the Master refused the regenerate. And the Eleventh Doctor when he’s pleading with Idris not to die in “The Doctor’s Wife.” It’s fitting then that the Thirteenth Doctor shed a tear for her oldest friend and semi-love interest. Both Jodie and Mandip left everything on the soundstage that day. It was a fitting goodbye for both characters. After Yaz gets dropped off, we learn that Graham and Dan have formed a sort of “friends of the Doctor,” support group. I liked this because it was more than a cute way of some great cameos (William Russell! William Russell!), but it was also an interesting take on the role of companion. Being the Doctor’s companion would leave scars, both physical and emotional.

The Doctor decides she needs to regenerate alone. She goes to Durdle Door, a picturesque vista overlooking a large body of water. She keeps her final moments short and playful, a bit like her. She tags the next Doctor in and braces for impact. Now, I know you probably all knew this was coming, but she regenerates into what BBC and Titan comics have always wanted- David Tennant. It’s always great to see Tennant, but I found myself strangely morose watching him appear. Seeing him in the trailer only compounded that feeling. Leading up to “The Power of the Doctor,” I had mostly ignored behind-the-scenes stuff other than what I saw on social media. It was a point of stress for me. But the David Tennant and Catherine Tate stuff I had absorbed a few months ago. I felt like I had gone from new Doctor Who to an older episode. But even more, I felt a tinge of regret at the state the show had gotten itself into.

Part of me wonders what Chibnall may have done given more time and less restraint. Part of me shudders to think it, but part of me sees that his story was unfinished. What happened to Lenny Henry’s character? Who were the Division? What was up with that Irish cop? What was the weird house? What was the whole point of the Grand Serpent? Who put the universe back after the flux? Didn’t the Daleks and Cybermen get genocided by the Doctor at the end of that story? What happened to the future Master? Was he crushed in that building alongside the Cybermen? Chris Chibnall once said that no showrunner adheres to what came before them. I can see why he said that, he doesn’t even pay attention to his own stories.

Perhaps waiting til the last episode to help me square away this era was naïve. If I hadn’t enjoyed the era by then, it was pretty apparent I still wouldn’t. Maybe it was a sort of morbid Halloween Michael Meyers deal when I need to see the body to know he’ll never be back. I need to see the life leave his eyes. In hindsight, I find myself still feeling about the same, but maybe a little more open to revisiting the episodes at some point. I don’t suddenly like bad writing because it has an ending. It does, however, give perspective. It is now a definite thing. The Chibnall era has a beginning and an ending. I had fun watching the final episode, which is more than I really hoped to ask for. Regardless of how much I may or may not have softened to the show, one thing remains a constant- I can’t forgive giving a brown man up to the Nazis.

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pynkhues · 4 years ago

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(1/2) Hey, I'm the anon from the last request. Just have a few follow up q's if you're alright with that (dont have a tumblr to message directly rip)? With Gerri, its strange that she's Shiv's godmother yet both Shiv and Roman dont really know her in the pilot- was there a prior schism? Also did not know about St Andrews, if its not a military school then do you think it adds another layer to the dog kennel story?

(2/2- sorry!) I get what you mean when you say he also coddles Roman but to me its the emotional detachment thats striking. Like in the car post-slapgate, its obvs awks from the slap but they also don't seem to have natural connection or conversation vs Logan and car scenes with the others. There's also the references to him beating Roman (not to say he didn't beat the others but its only Roman mentioned). I think in s3, his new status as fave son might bring up some old wounds for Roman.

(x)

Hey! Ooo, these are really great follow ups, thank you! I hope you don't mind me breaking them into sections!

Is it strange that Shiv and Roman don't really know Gerri well in the pilot?

It is strange, but I also think it's just the result of a few things being shuffled around post-pilot. Pilots are usually shot months if not a whole year before the first season is as the point of them is to sell the network on the show. In that sense, they're effectively proof-of-concept tools and so it's common for things to change. I'm not sure if you're a crossover anon, haha, but I talk a lot about Good Girls as well, and the pilot of that even had a completely different lead actress they had to do re-shoots around for 1.01.

Jesse Armstrong, the Succession showrunner, has said that a few things were shuffled around after the pilot – one of the biggest things for instance is that Roman wears a wedding ring in the pilot and Grace is supposed to be his wife (she's even listed as Grace Roy in 1.01 on IMDB!) and Isla their daughter together. They changed that after the pilot though because they thought it worked better with Grace as just his girlfriend, and Isla as Grace's daughter, not his.

I think Gerri's role in the show really bulked up between the pilot and episode 2, and that's why there's more distance between the Roy kids and Gerri in the first couple of episodes than there is later in the season. Gosh, even the fact that she's not at Logan's 80th birthday party in the pilot feels so weird now with how much they've shifted her role in the family, haha.

Rest of the answers under the cut!

Does St. Andrew's not being a military school when Roman attended add another layer to the dog kennel plot?

Yeah, I think it does, but I also think more than anything, it's reiterating what's already there. That entire subplot is really steeped in how Kendall, Roman and Connor all have different memories of this same game. For Roman it's formative, for Kendall it's just a memory of a childish game, and for Connor, it's seen as through older eyes and, more than anything, an insight into their father, not an insight into Roman and Kendall.

In a lot of ways, Roman stressing that St Andrew's was a military school when it wasn't undermines his own memory of the game, just as Connor telling him it wasn't dogfood it was chocolate cake does, just as Connor telling him he asked to be sent away does. Does that make it any less real for Roman? I don't think so. It's obviously something he's remembered as traumatic, and it resulted in a very real, tangible removal of him from Manhattan, where Kendall and Shiv stayed and went to school. Regardless of whether or not it was military school, it was a boarding school, and I think that feeling of distance and isolation was likely very real.

I'm really curious though about Connor's different stories to Kendall and Roman. He tells Roman that he asked to be sent away, and Kendall that their dad sent Roman because you separate fighting dogs and you send the weak one away so that everyone knows the hierarchy. The interesting thing though to me is that I think Connor was telling the truth in both instances, but the former does make the latter read differently.

If Roman wanted to go, it undermines Connor's memory of Logan, because Logan was not only giving Roman what he wanted, but he was giving Roman greater freedom, greater independence, greater agency at an outdoorsy boarding school that wasn't actually a military school at all. So does that mean that Logan saw Roman as the weak dog, or Kendall? Who he kept close and on a short leash in the comfort of home?

Kendall obviously takes Connor at his word, but I'm not so sure that we're supposed to as an audience. I think the story can be read in a lot of different ways, and more than anything, I think it can be read as Logan understanding that Kendall and Roman were not (and are not) the same, and needed different things as children. How that can be spun though is anyone's guess.

Are Logan and Roman emotionally distant?

That's an interesting point about the emotional distance there. I think there is and there isn't? Logan obviously dotes on Shiv and pendulums between coddling, controlling and bullying Kendall, but I think both of those things are more just indicative of really different dynamics. Roman's clearly got a 'class clown' sort of personality that Logan obviously doesn't appreciate and struggles to deal with, particularly given he's a pretty humourless guy (gosh, I think a lot about the fact that one of the only times we've seen Logan actually laugh was when the kids didn't want to see their mum, haha).

In that sense though, I think Logan doesn't understand Roman. It comes back to what I said in the other post – I actually do think Logan sees Roman's strengths, and the fact that Roman doesn't utilise them is, I think to Logan, unforgivable. Logan had to claw his way out of abject poverty through whatever it was he could get, and while Shiv, Kendall and Connor lack, I think Logan looks at Roman and sees waste.

It's why he doesn't have a stomach for the jokes, or the immaturity, and I think contributes to this failure to connect emotionally because he doesn't understand Roman in the way that he understands Shiv's rebellion and Kendall's foibles.

The aftermath of him hitting Roman is interesting too, because I actually think Logan's not trying to create distance in the aftermath, I think he's trying to re-write history to preserve his sense of self. He offers the untruth to Roman as an opening – a map for them to navigate unstable and uncertain terrain, and Roman takes it and follows his lead because he doesn't know how to navigate it either.

Does that make it right or forgiveable? Absolutely not – Logan hit his son, and trying to make everyone pretend that that never happened is an awful example of gaslighting – but I also find it really indicative of the cycle of abuse. We know that Noah was horrifically abusive to Logan, as seen by the scars on his back, and I actually get the impression that Logan tried not to be abusive to his children, but sometimes was because of his temper and his health.

Like, I think when he struck Iverson in the thanksgiving ep it was the first time he'd ever raised a hand to one of his grandchildren, especially given the reaction of people, and even hitting Roman summoned a pretty huge reaction from people, and seemed not to be something Roman was prepared for. It also I think stems back to that point of Logan not knowing how to handle Roman (or Iverson!) and resorting to violence he very quickly regrets because for a man who runs the news, he very rarely utilises words.

Logan was raised in violence, and I think it's a language he's both fluent in and has tried to reject, but one he falls back on when he can no longer communicate.

It's wrong, and awful, of course, but I think it's really interesting because I think it's deliberately a part of this broader theme with the Roy's about how fractured their communication with one another is. They don't know how to connect or talk to each other, and so frequently that breaks down into violence, whether to each other or themselves or to the collateral damage - the NRPIs.

I totally agree though that I think some Thoughts around all of this is likely to resurface for Roman in season 3, especially as Logan no doubt starts to lean on him as the new heir.

#these were v meaty questions to answer haha #i've been thinking sooo much about the communication on this show it's f.a.s.c.i.n.a.t.i.n.g.#roman roy #logan roy #logan + roman #gerri kellman #kendall roy #connor roy #shiv roy #hbo succession #succession 1.08 #succession 2.06 #welcome to my ama

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nagirambles · 3 years ago

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I agree with you that we should have seen more of their magic. While Milanna and Sho's magics are simple, they could have easily been used more interestingly then what we saw. Wally especially could have been used in so many more ways given his magic's premise. Pulling yourself apart into blocks that you have control over and rebuilding your body into new, functional forms has so much creative potential in what you can make out of yourself. That and all the odd stuff he can do like teleporting.

Riiight? But I guess you could apply these to any character in the show, honestly. There's a ton of wasted potential all over the place, and it's generally the factor of difficulty in juggling so many characters. Oh well...

I honestly would've liked to see more to Milliana than her tube robes. Like-- she's kinda just a cat-themed dominatrix for fan service. Like-- Paulie from One Piece had better utilisation of his rope-based powers than this girl, and he didn't even have the nullification part that made Milliana's ropes strong.

And Wally was literally Minecraft. I love him.

I think I've heard it said before that they were planned to come back, but there was no narrative segue for them to come in, so they never ended up returning to the story. It makes me sad, but at least we got to see Milliana again.

#it's an ask

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sciralta · 5 years ago

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Okay so since I’m doing pretty well with theories for Blades here’s my grand unified theory for the finale and the sequels that I figured out while talking with @bertrandseyebrows

Perhaps the biggest theme in Blades of Light and Shadow is the upheaval of accepted societal truths. We’ve seen this throughout the book. The elves will lament over the loss of their great advanced empire, but neglect to mention that it was built essentially on the slavery of humans and the complete eradication of other peoples. It was also the elves’ lust for power that gave rise to the Shadow Court. The orcs hold nature sacred and are at one with the sea, but they only became nomadic seafarers because they stripped their ancient homeland of natural resources and rendered it completely uninhabitable. Human nobility acts as if they are inherently better than commoners, yet they will gorge themselves on food and drape themselves in finery while the poorest are left cold and starving on the streets because it’s “just how it’s done”.

But I think another theme that will come up is the theme of balance. The way it will unravel is through the magics of the Light and the Shadow.

In this poster for Blades, the MC is holding the shadow blade made from the four Onyx Shards, but also a light one. If you look closely, the hilts and pommels of the two swords are identical. This makes me think that they are twin blades; they were always crafted as a pair—one of light and one of shadow to keep balance. People have theorised that book 2 will have us trying to find the shards and make the blade of light to combat the Shadow Court, and I agree, but not for the exact same reasons.

I think that this is where the subversion of accepted truths will come into play again. I think we will discover that the power of the Shadow isn’t inherently evil. We see something similar with its opposite, the Light, in chapter 13/14. The High Priest of the Temple of Light attempts to horrifically murder a group of Whitetower citizens by using all their Light to cleanse the Onyx Shards. This scene shows that just because someone worships and uses the Light does not make them pure or good. They can be just as evil as anyone else. The reverse could be true for the Shadow. Just because someone uses the power of Shadow does not necessarily make them evil. The Light and the Shadow are neither good nor bad, they are simply two universal forces that oppose each other. What matters is how their magic is utilised.

This will be how we get Nia back from the Shadow Court (most likely in the finale of book 1). Somehow, the Dreadlord—whether by Nia using the combined powers of Shadow and Light or by other means—will be exorcised from her body and she will return to us. However, she will forever be changed. Now she’ll have the ability to use Shadow magic. This is another little subversion: the Shadow Court and their master, the Dreadlord, perverted the awesome power of Shadow for their own terrible ends; Nia will use its power for good. Where the Shadow Court used the power of Shadow for domination, Nia will use it to save the world.

But you cannot fight shadow with more shadow, and that’s why in book 2 the party will travel around the world in search of the light Shards to make the blade of light: a potential source of Light magic that possibly won’t require someone to sacrifice their life force to use.

So to summarise, here’s my theory:

In the finale, Nia will be saved from the clutches of the Dreadlord, but will be irrevocably changed—now able to use Shadow as well as Light. The party escapes the Shadow Realm but the Court uses the portal opened by Aerin to advance their forces into the world.

In Book 2, the peoples of Morella, Undermount and Flotilla are vastly outmatched and outnumbered by the surge of Shadow Court troops, necessitating the need for a powerful new weapon to combat them. They learn that just like the Onyx Shards were put together to form the blade of shadow, they can use the other scattered Shards to make their Hail Mary: the blade of light (perhaps Nia finds out about the shards while her consciousness was merged with the Dreadlord). The party travels all around the world in search of them, and we’ll possibly see the far-away dwarves and/or the mysterious bird-people. Along their journey, Nia struggles to come to terms with her transformation and her ability to use Shadow—having still not fully rejected the doctrine of the Temple. MC may learn Shadow magic from her. We end Book 2 with the formation of the blade of light, and possibly somehow collecting the blade of shadow too.

In Book 3 (god I hope we get a third), it all ends. This is the final culmination of the war against the Shadow Court. We return to a Morella decimated by the Court. At the midpoint of the story, the Dreadlord manages to break through into the world. Together, the MC (using the incredible powers granted to them from the twin Blades of Light and Shadow) and Nia, (using her own unmatched powers, which may have grown to almost god-like proportions) slay the Dreadlord and end the Shadow Court. Peace, and the balance between Light and Shadow, is restored to the world.

Anyway if any of this comes true I retain the right to be That Bitch and brag for all eternity.

#playchoices #choices #blades of light and shadow #choices bolas #choices blades #nia ellarious #long post

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rochey1010 · 5 years ago

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Hi guys 👋

Just wanted to make a post to add to the discourse in the tag. 😄 it's about Maya and her decisions/behaviour.

I also wanted to draw attention to the intentional Elu/Mayla parallels that are all over this season and...actually i might do a post on that and how Eliott more than most is essentially a prism for this season and his story, actions, emotions, passions are reflective in 3 key areas (Lola -female Eliott, Maya, Lamifex) and he is being used to set up and hand off to this new generation e.g. Elu (21:21) and mayla (22:22) aka old gen- new gen.

Anyway the parallel here is S3 E5. So Maya is now getting attacked by fans just like Eliott did when he made his decision to do what he did in that episode.

Eliott's conundrum was bipolar. His great SKAM being his mental illness. His fear is huge and rooted in it.

Maya's is Alcoholism and her father driving drunk and killing himself and the mother, leaving young Maya as the only survivor with the dandelion scar as rememberance.

Both have been confronted with the pain from the one they want most, and how involved they are in their SKAMS. Lola directly involved with abusing the vices that traumatised Maya. And Lucas indirectly involved with mental illness, being on the periphery of it with his mum being mentally ill. Both have trauma because of it with Lola an addict and Lucas scared of it because he was raised in it.

There is a moment that again parallels S3 E5 but this time another scene. That scene is the reveal of the SKAM to the one you love. This time at the school Lucas reveals Eliott's SKAM to him and breaks his heart as well as scares him away with his feelings about mental illness "because i don't need crazy people in my life" Eliott can't hide his pain and bleeds out for us to see. He makes his decision to do what he does next.

With Maya it's when Lola reveals her SKAM to her in her home "i'm an addict" and Maya comforts her but is already emotionally distancing herself from her based on this information. Maya then has another scene to help her when she sees bitter Lola drinking and then gets hurt by her words in the restaurant. Maya leaves seeing essentially her alcoholic father all over again.

Max/Char in this case is basically Lucille. Eliott's talk was off screen and he alluded to Lucas in the kitchen scene the morning after their reunion that Lucille made him think it was better if they stayed together. Max her emotional Lucille in this scenario tells Lola himself what he has said to Maya. "I told her she was falling in love with you, and that you're toxic for her"

Now Maya is scared and reliving trauma just like Eliott. Eliott's being he's not worth loving, and can never have what he wants most (Lucas) that he will always have to settle, and it was wrong to leave his dark world. Maya's being her seeing this happen before and the chaos and destruction that is left behind (2 dead parents and one orphan) in the pursuit to love and help a self destructive person.

So Maya turns to Char. Her physical Lucille, as she isn't in love with Max. So this is the scene where Lola/Lucas are confronted with Maya/Eliott leaving them. With Lucas it was immediate self destruction and a hurricane of pain. With Lola who likes to twist the knife slower into herself. It will be a slow build up to her eventually going back to her vice of choice. Alcohol i suspect as of right now (Eliott and the movie being the buffer and positive influence she can focus on) but eventually and sadly, drugs and a final bender.

But as Mayla and Elu are paralleling each other. What eventually happens is that like S3 Eliott ends it and thinks he can let Lucas go and settle for what he always has done. He realises he's in too deep and can't stop loving him. This time Maya hasn't started it but will realise that she is indeed in love with Lola and can't let her go. Char like Lucille will be gone very soon.

Just remember how much you love Eliott and how he suffered from what Lucas said to him, how he hurt (raccoon drawing behind the wall) how he was misunderstood (raccoon trying to write a letter but binning it) and how he pined (sculpture hug pygmalion reference and Woolf quote) on his insta (his narrative) and now think of Maya and the horrible pain of losing 2 parents to the self destruction Lola is regulary engaging in right now. To being an orphan and having to relive an alcoholic father again through loving Lola.

With Lola she hasn't taken responsibility. She goes on benders based on how she feels. She is not reliable and just a week ago was bitter and drunk spitting insults at Maya. She told Eliott she doesn't even know if she wants to change. And was high as f last week and had to be helped by Eliott. She told Daphne that even after everything she still has the urge to go back to the dangerous predator Aymeric for a fix. And now understand why Maya has distanced herself. So far Lola has pulled in people she cares about into dangerous and uncomfortable situations. Eliott with violence, Maya with alcohol and being drunk, Daphne with the cutting predicament. Now Lola is getting a taste of what's it's like being on the other side of her self destruction. And this is good, because it means the addict behaviour of blaming the world for your bad choices is beginning to change. As she is building a support network around her she is developing empathy for others suffering and pain, as for a long time her anger and learned helplessness in being a depressive has blighted her.

Just to clarify i'm not attacking Lola. This is an objective view. She is an addict and she is choosing to make bad choices based on how she feels. She is constantly 1 step forward and 2 steps back. And one week she could be sober and the next high. Change is consistent, and maya sees that Lola isn't. Maya is doing what is right for her well being and Lola must do what is right for hers.

Lola just isn't in a place to be in a relationship right now and this is why her and Maya are a slowburn situation. This is first and foremost about an addict developing the right tools for healing and building a wide support network. With themes of addiction, self destruction and mental illness. Romantic love is just one part of that puzzle this season, so i do suspect it will be a Sofimane situation and Lola and Maya will become official towards the end.

Just, guys, compassion for Maya too. This time we are seeing the Even side of the equation as Lola is female Eliott and Eliott and Daphne are blocked so Lola was created as the link to explore these blocked characters. For Eliott especially, Lola has a very Eliott type of narrative. Meaning if Eliott had his season we would be seeing very similar issues and tone.

So remember compassion for Maya too. We may see her pining on her insta. The only disappointment though is the mental/emotional state on both instas aren't being utilised in the great way they were in S3. Eliott's was so well developed that we got an Eliott narrative through his private insta journal. Sadly we really aren't getting that with Maya and even Lola. It's more a general theme of breakage/destruction for Lola's and environment/feminist Maya. The depth is lacking there i must say. Like Eliott's would link up to the clips and his emotions, and we'd see Lucas on screen but through Eliott's insta feel Eliott. I'm hoping they show Maya's confusion and pining through her insta just like we saw Eliott's. But i'm not counting on that or Lola's TBH.

Right so as i said i'm planning on doing a post on Eliott and Lola's friendship and how well it's been developed. So see ya soon. 😚

#skam france #skamfr #eliott demaury #lucas lallemant #lola lecomte

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elixir448 · 5 years ago

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Good Girls 3x04 and 3x05 Disorganised Monster Post

Apologies in advance for the absolute mess this is going to be. I’ll start with 3x04 and try to keep it organised but it just...won’t be. And yeah, I made all the Dean sections about Beth and Rio. Bite me.

Mick

I. Am. In. Love. With. This. Man. I’m sorry but when he rolled down his window and said “good morning”, my jaw hit the ground. His voice is unreal. Does everyone in Rio’s gang have an amazing voice? Is it a requirement for joining? What is this sorcery?

I also get a kick out of the fact that he is so polite and charming with people that he doesn’t really know, just like Rio. I can’t help but think that they must have grown up together to be so similar in that way. Also, Mrs Karpinski and Mick. I would like to see more of them.

Beth and Dean (Did I make this section all about Beth and Rio? I may have.)

I think @pynkhues has already mentioned this and I totally agree with it. That Dean just works as a character so much better in humourous scenes, like when he’s purchasing a gun. I think the last time I laughed so much at a scene with Dean in it was at the end of 2x07, when he’s interacting with the krav maga instructor.

The moose analogy was hilarious and, I’m not gonna lie, I hope Dean sticks around in the story just so we can get more outsider POV of Beth and Rio’s relationship, because it is genuinely one of my favourite things in the show and to read about in fanfic. And Dean, Rio does not “have his way” with ‘your wife’; she wouldn’t be such a pain in his ass if he did. He did this in 3x05 as well, where he referred to Beth as “something you love”. She’s not an object that people can love or have their way with.

I am convinced that Dean’s gun will be utilised within the story at some point, although whether it will be used by him is up for debate.

When he walks into the house with the gun and ignores Beth’s questions about about it, only answering when she becomes more insistent, I was struck by the childhishness of Dean’s character.

Let me articulate this for a second.

Let’s compare this scene to the way Dean acts in 2x07, when he refuses to watch the kids after Jane’s dance show and immaturely lashs out at Beth saying that he’s going to book club. It’s not even about putting her in her place. It’s simply petty and it’s childish because their is no goal aside from temporarily annoying her. Just like in this scene. He walks into the house with a huge gun on his shoulder, in a clear attempt to seek attention but then ignores her questions and it comes across as petty and childish; in both scenes, he is akin to a child who can feel that the attention of their parent is wandering and so seeks attention by being as loud and annoying as possible.

There is no back and forth in Beth and Dean’s relationship at all. When Beth dumps cash on Dean and tells him that he doesn’t know her in 1x06, when she ignores his questions at the beginning of 1x07 and tells him to take the kids to Disneyland, she was putting him in his place because, really, he deserved it. When she took away his power in the dealership and he became a house-husband, she was putting him in his place after finding out about his multiple affairs. When Dean takes her kids from her, he was trying to put Beth in her place, essentially saying See. I know you. You’re nothing without our children.

This is all very different from the back and forth in Beth and Rio’s relationship. Importantly, even though Beth and Rio are always trying to get a leg over each other (metaphorically and often physically haha) and even though they do try and sweep the rug out from one another, it’s less about wielding power over the other person than it is about wielding power over each other (I know what I mean in my own head lol). It’s that they enjoy it when the other person gets a leg over them, they enjoy the heated looks and even enjoy the gleefulness from the other person. It’s all a part of their process. Even when Beth and Rio seek attention from one another (Beth taking the pills from the cars and Rio mailing her body parts), it’s less about the end result of having the other person’s attention focused on them or having power over them; it’s more about imagining how they they will look, how they will feel, how they will react when they find out. All of it’s important. It’s all foreplay.

Also, it was one bullet Dean. Not a full clip.

Before Dean kisses Beth, he says “We were so good with him gone.” Honestly, that line felt like the 100th nail in the coffin haha. Dean just doesn’t get Beth and he doesn’t understand that there is a lack of emotional intimacy in their relationship. He hasn’t picked up on the fact that she’s actually experienced a regression on a personal level; she’s wrapped herself up in the comfort of her familiar life, with her kids, her house and her husband only after Rio’s death. The only reason he felt they were good was because they were having sex, even if it was for all the wrong reasons on Beth’s part. Even then, he classes it as good because it was sex with him.

The reality is that all this matters less than the simple truth, which is that Rio isn’t gone anymore. He’s back. And Dean knows, as stupid as he is, that it’s only a matter of time.

As for the scene where Dean kisses Beth. Here are all the ways it contrasts Beth and Rio’s kiss in 2x09 (all the ways I can think of anyway). Sorry. Not sorry.

I’d like to point out that Dean walks exactly 3 steps towards Beth, before stopping and taking her jacket from her. The same number of steps that Beth took towards Rio in her bedroom. The same number of steps that Rio took towards Beth. And notably, the same number of steps that Beth did not take towards Dean in this scene.

Yes, Beth kissed Dean back and participated in the kiss itself. But she did not participate at all in the lead-up which is, arguably, just as important. When Beth kissed Rio, the mutual nerves, tenderness and affection were a huge part of the scene. In other words, the lead-up was just as important as the kiss itself. That was very much lacking here. I suppose one could argue that this is not Beth and Dean’s first kiss but it certainly is their first on-screen kiss and presumably the first kiss they have shared in a long time. For all intents and purposes, it should be like a ‘first kiss’ because it’s their first kiss after all the betrayals, lies and disdain.

This scene, like Beth and Rio’s, takes place in daylight but, it’s different in basically every other way. Dean grabs Beth and sort of positions her head to directly face him. When Beth leaned in to kiss Rio in her bedroom, he angles his head just right and very slighly inches his head closer. For her. Beth doesn’t even do that for Dean. He leans in and kisses her and she doesn’t actually do anything to make that easier for him, nothing to indicate that she wants him to.

The music also sounds very...young, for lack of a better word. Almost high school. I think that was a very purposeful choice, given that this is the first on-screen kiss between Beth and Dean. In this scene, I definitely saw them more as they probably were when they were in high school, before they got married. There was a notable lack of any music in the scene where Beth and Rio kiss. Honestly, the scene just didn’t need any.

Christina was amazing here. After Dean releases her, her head kind of just disappointedly falls away and she opens her eyes and looks a little bit...defeated. Perhaps because she didn’t feel more or enjoy the kiss. Because it was Dean. And god, then the scene cuts to Rio coming into Paper Porcupine and the most sexually loaded, non-sex scene in the history of television....although every one of Beth and Rio’s scenes feels that way to be honest. The fact that the episode ended here, on a climactic note when Rio scrutinises the money Beth finishes making, says a lot.

The Hills (including 3x05)

I LOVED this storyline. It’s such a great way of exploring the way that Ruby’s guilt over committing crimes has gradually transitioned into a lack of guilt for the crimes that she has become ‘used to’, i.e: robberies, lying. It’s also such a great callback to a common theme in this show, “All this stuff you think you’re keeping from them. You’re not”. The fact that this was said by Ruby in season 1 and is once again coming full circle is peak writing. Also, this means that another one of my hiatus wishes has come true, that the kids would find out more or be suspicious of their parents. I wondered if it would be Kenny, Sadie or Sara who would catch on. Looks like it’s Sara. Lidya Jewett was the perfect one of the children to explore this through because she is such an amazing actress and Sara’s already had an introduction to this arc, due to Stan being arrested in the last season and her having to grapple with the fact that he did indeed commit a crime.

And look, I am the last person who wants to see Ruby and Stan fight. But I think it’s such an important arguement for them to have. Not the fact that Ruby’s committing crimes but the fact that she seems so comfortable with it now and that this is potentially becoming a model for learned behaviour for their children. The only people they love more than each other are their children.

Lidya Jewett did such a great job portraying the audaciousness and the brattiness of a teen when they are confronted by a parent calling out their behaviour. The tit for tat between Sara and Ruby was amazing. Like nuh uh, you may be right about the shady ass stuff I’ve been up to but I’m still the queen in this house. So now you owe me.

I also love the idea that Beth and Ruby have learnt so much from crime-ing. In 3x02, Beth taught Annie a lesson about how they had to deal with the mover ASAP or all the criminals in Detroit would know that they were pushovers. In this episode, Ruby teaches Sara that when you lie once, you need to know that you’ll be lying a dozen more times just to uphold your original story. It’s never over.

In 3x05, I was like why u do dis? I love this storyline and I don’t think that Stan will leave Ruby but god, the idea that Ruby is so terrified of it in Beth’s van, and for good reason, is actually scaring me. The stills from 3x07 and the hints Reno gave that we would find out how Stan feels about Beth have me shaking. I’m so excited but scared at the same time.

Annie

This is probably the first episode where I felt as though Annie’s therapy storyline really found its feet. I’m going to ignore the fact that retinoblastomas mainly only occur in children. Aside from that, it really found its feet haha.

I also just loved the humour of Annie’s scenes in this episode. Mae Whitman is amazing and her delivery is always fantastic. I genuinely think that her long-winded speech in the pawn shop about how she spent her night is one of my favourite comedic moments of the season so far. What a great callback to Annie’s gazelle run when she’s chasing down Mary Pat!

Oh god. When she was asking Dr Cohen about what was going on between them, I was physically cringing because I knew she was going to smash into a brick wall. It was painful to watch. Stop gal, stop.

It was also painful to see Dr Cohen ruthlessly lay out Annie’s psychological coping mechanisms in front of her, partly because it was coming from a place of genuine concern and care and she knew it.

Beth and Rio (Will I ever write a reasonable amount in this section? Nope.)

Gosh, the entire scene leading up to Beth and Rio in the bar and that scene in itself was peak television. Suspenseful, intense, a good back and forth between characters with unbelievable chemistry. I genuinely think that this is one of the scenes in the show that best depicts the ‘dark’ in dark comedy and the ‘drama’ in dramedy, which are usually the genres used to describe the show.

I don’t know what everyone else views as their favourite ‘dark’/’dramatic’ moments in the show? Their are many scenes which I feel really capture the themes above but some of them are:

1. 1x04 - When the girls hear a thump from the bedroom Eddie’s recovering in and they run upstairs only for him to confront them with a gun.

2. 1x06 - Boomer plants drugs in Annie’s locker, Beth dumps bags of cash on Dean.

3. 1x07 - Rio and his boys confront the girls in Beth’s house.

4. 1x09 - Beth and Rio’s first break-up scene in 1x09.

5. 1x10/2x01 - “If you wanna be the king, you gotta kill the king.”

6. 2x07 - Beth and Rio argue in the alley.

7. ....you get the point. Maybe I should write a separate post all about this?

Now this bar scene (3x04) and the entire sequence with Rio, Lucy, his boys and the girls at paper porcupine and outside the van (3x05) are included on my list of amazing ‘dark’/’dramatic’ scenes.

I’d also like to acknowledge the piano music in this scene, which is also present during the scene in Paper Porcupine in 3x05, while Rio waits patiently for Lucy to complete her counterfeit money design. It’s a stunning piece of music and it adds so much suspense to the scenes. I hope it’s released at some point!

First of all, we have Beth and Dean lying in bed. Everything about this screams that Dean is intruding, from his loud snores, to the way he’s leaning so far into her side of the bed, to the way that Beth is looking out of her French doors, away from him, and clearly thinking about what she’s going to do with regards to Rio. I spoke about this in my 3x02 thoughts post but ever since Beth and Rio began orbiting around one another, ever since their fascination with one another began (god, basically from the beginning), Dean has been consistently displayed as intruding on their relationship, despite the fact that he and Beth are still technically married and he’s always ranting about how Rio is wrecking and ‘intruding’ in on their lives. Beth and Rio have always had a tangible intimacy that’s unbelievably loud in their relationship, even before they slept together. It always feels like any voices aside from their own, any person besides them is an intrusion when they’re together or thinking about eachother.

Beth lies in bed, next to Dean, and thinks about Rio before running away from her husband and her house to see him under the cover of darkness. It feels intimate and loaded with implications. It’s absolutely driven by fear and her desire to survive but the set-up of the scene is inherently romantic. It’s akin to someone sneaking out to see their lover whom they’re having an affair with.

I could wax poetic about how much I love this scene in its entirety. When Good Girls is good, it’s fucking good. The way that Beth is frightened and then annoyed with Mick for saying something behind her when she’s the one running around at ridiculous o’clock, the imposing figure he cuts as he smokes, the way he considers her. Just. All. Of. This. I love all of Beth and Rio’s scenes, including the ones that take place during the day. But gosh, there’s just something about the scenes that take place in the dark that I find dangerous and addictive.

Rio walks into his bar, briefly nods at the bartender and greets Mick. But as soon as he sees Beth, he can’t look away from her. He doesn’t look at Mick as they clasp hands, his lips part and stay that way as he looks at her AND if you look closely, for a brief second, he stands taller and very slightly pushes his shoulders back before walking towards her.

While they are sitting at the bar together, Rio is depicted as exhausted and conflicted. This shot is stunning:

Their conversaion is so well done. Rio sceptically eyeing Beth’s finished drink and only suggesting that she slow down when she asks for a shot of tequila, his hand gently coming down on top of hers, the way he looks at her as he waits for an answer. It’s such a stark contrast to the way Dean treats her. Even now, after everything.

“One for my baby daddy here too.” SCREAMS. OMG BETH. I adore her.

God. The acting. Beth’s face when she looks at Rio after saying “I lost it”, a sort of confused and hesitant realisation that he looks affected by it, by her words. I still waver on whether or not Rio believed that Beth was indeed pregnant. To sum up what I think is going through Rio’s mind in this scene:

1. He has no reason at this point to doubt the words of Rhea’s OBGYN. In other words, it’s entirely possible that following the appointment, he grappled with the idea that Beth was pregnant with his child, conceived during an encounter fraught with emotions in her bedroom and before she shot him three times. It’s possible that he forced himself to be pragmatic, process it and accept it, only for Beth to suffer a miscarriage. There’s a feeling of mourning in the way that Rio regards Beth with his hand over his mouth, the quiet, sensitive way in which he asks when it happened, the way he looks at his palms on the bar counter, the way he tosses back the shot of tequila.

2. The loss of the pregnancy ultimately means that he’s lost the one reason, the single excuse he had to keep Beth alive. I don’t doubt that he could have killed her in the moments when he first saw her again, after the time he spent simmering, plotting and remembering. But now she’s under his skin again. God, she never even left but now she’s probably curled up somewhere inside of him all over again. It’s so obvious in the way that he says “nothing good” that he doesn’t want to kill her, that he’s tired and doesn’t want to even think about it anymore.

Following this, the writers did an amazing job with the back and forth between Beth and Rio in this scene. Beth is desperate and yet so audacious in suggesting that Rio needs money, that he should take another chance on her. I love her when she’s like this, when she’s clawing and doing her best to survive. And the way that Rio huffs an unamused laugh through pursed lips, almost as though he’s thinking, shit I’m doing this again aren’t I? I’m letting her talk? Except we all know she’s not talking him into anything. He’s just looking for an excuse. If anything, to me, he seems unamused with the traitorous part of himself that is listening to her for the sole reason of avoiding the necessity of killing her.

“You couldn’t afford it.” What a backhanded compliment. Rio can’t place a price on Beth’s head because even he struggles to deal with what her personal worth is to him, what she actually means to him, so I love that he ultimately just caves and throws out an arbitrary $100K which is much less than he has previously requested from her. I also love that Beth just focuces purely on the money and ignores the true implications of what he’s saying because it’s too much, it’s too loaded and neither of them have ever been able to contend with whatever’s between them, this thing that is indescribable.

As for the final scene of the episode. I don’t know if I can rationally articulate my thoughts on this but I’m going to do my best.

First of all, I love the idea of Beth and Rio watching each other when the other person isn’t aware of it. So when Rio enters paper porcupine and slowly walks towards her while Beth is rifling through items, unaware that he’s behind her, it just does something to me. I love it.

Also, I love the way they almost circle one another until Beth stops on the other side of the table in between them. They are so often depicted to be standing across from one another. Forever waiting for the day where they stand side by side against a common enemy.

When Rio alludes to Beth doing some custom-printing for him and she immediately catches on, she looks at him with her big, blue eyes and her voice is so feminine when she says “I don’t know what you’re talking about”. God, you can’t convince me Rio isn’t into that.

I’m not going to talk about the music too much just because this is getting too long and the fandom is already obsessed with the song anyway. The lyrics are a complete revelation and the song was, of course, purposefully chosen. I loved the entire song and the implications for Beth and Rio’s relationship but one part I particularly love:

“Though we sleep in different beds You still keep me up at night”

God, Beth lay awake next to Dean, thinking of what she was going to say to Rio, before running away to see him. There’s no way Rio doesn’t lie awake at night and think about Beth. I. Just. Can’t. This is already getting too long.

The youtube video that went up for this scene sums it up pretty well. Rio really does look pretty mesmerised by Beth in this scene. She looks at him apprehensively because she’s afraid of him and fearful for her operation but she keeps doing it because he makes her nervous, because she likes looking at him, because she likes it when he watches her, because she feels something for him and it’s all just too much because he’s watching her, just like he always has but she’s never gotten used to it. GAHHHH.

I also just love interpreting this scene after watching 3x05, when Dean says twice that Beth is “something you (Rio) love”. Beth refutes that at the end of the episode, saying Rio loves money. But here we have all three things, Beth, Rio and money in one scene. And yes, Rio’s watching Beth make money but he also can’t look away from her.

Just look at this shot. Beth and Rio facing each other, as they often do, at equal heights, with the money symbolically positoned between them. It’s not just something that separates them though. It’s something they share if that makes sense. It’s something they both care about but you can care about more than one thing.

And looks like Rio found another excuse to keep her alive. I mean, he had already found one, by demanding 100K but this is now something he can directly participate in and benefit from. Something long-term that keeps them tied together, rather than a one-off payment. He just can’t help himself, can he? They can’t let each other go.

I don’t know where else to put this. But seeing Beth wearing glasses was...life-changing.

Moving on to 3x05.

The Opening Scene and Mick

STOP SAYING GOOD MORNING AND STOP TALKING. DON’T SAY ANYTHING. I CAN’T DEAL WITH YOUR VOICE MICK.

Ahem. We also met more of Rio’s boys which means another one of my hiatus wishes came true. I’m really curious to meet Rio’s bosses, who Manny has said we will learn more about in this season, and what the debts he needs to repay are, which he alluded to in the sneak peek from 3x06 (THE ANGST). I’m guessing it has something to do with the fact that we was out of the game for so long or maybe because people have found out that he fed Turner names, or both?

I love smart Beth. Taking the plates used to make the counterfeit money as a precautionary measure was really important but also just...kind of tragic. I’m going to talk more about this later (see Paper Porcupine and the Shooting).

Also, how freaking loaded was that scene where Beth tries to pay Mick to buy more time? When she said “what if I made it up to you?”, my jaw dropped. Not even exaggerating. And when he said “it’d be a huge order”, I straight up scream-cackled. This 100% backs up the idea that Beth is legitimately the most oblivious person in the world and would totally get into a bunch of awkward situations just because she’s misunderstood somebody else or because she’s said something sexual without even realising it. I. Require. All. That. Fanfic.

I completely agree with @foxmagpie here. I just don’t think that Mick has or will betray Rio. 100K is a relatively small sum of money, given the context. We know that Rio only asked this of Beth because it was an excuse to avoid killing her. For Mick, this is nowhere near enough money to risk his life or his position as (presumably) Rio’s right hand man. And let’s be honest, in the crime world, who are you going to place your bet on? Beth or Rio? I know who I would choose.

Annie

I freaked when I saw Kevin again because I didn’t expect him to show up after 3x01 but there you go! I genuinely love this though because I didn’t think he was homeless and it just shows you that you really can’t know what’s going on in someone’s life until they tell you. It really hit me hard when he said “I’m experiencing homelessness” because it could happen to anyone. It really reminded me of a news article I read about, about individuals who are homeless but aren’t necessarily sleeping on the streets; instead, they are couch surfing or sleeping in their cars but they feel as though they have no stability, no place they can call their own and as though they have been forgotten about by society.

This show is so good at introducing tertiary characters!

Dean, The Fish and “Something you love” (Did I make this about Beth and Rio again? You’re goddamn right I did.)

So, I’m assuming the three dead fish are symbolic of Beth, Ruby and Annie. The fact that Dean was responsible for killing them is, I feel, more symbolically indicative of the consequences of him breaking the plate in this episode alone. I actually think that when Beth says “How much did you feed them?” and Dean replies “Too much”, this is more indicative of the over-arching plot for the season and really the whole show. The idea that greed, money, and for Beth, the rush, are going to be what ultimately hurts them and potentially lead them to their ruin.

Dean really pissed me off in this scene. I was clutching my head and cursing him. Every little thing pissed me off, from the way that he slammed the drawers shut, to the way he held the plate higher up, to his slighted masculinity when he said “he didn’t waste any time, did he?” Even though he knows that Beth has been willingly involved in crime, he continues to completely underestimate her. He just assumes that Rio offers up opportunities and Beth can’t resist. He cannot wrap his mind around the concept of Beth coming up with ideas and executing them; if anything, it’s Rio who can’t resist.

I gasped when Dean said “something you love”. I think this has been very controversial in the fandom. @foxmagpie answered an ask and wrote a brilliant analysis here, which I would highly recommend reading. Following the season 2 finale, I answered an ask here about Beth and Rio’s feelings for one another and I feel a little bit vindicated write now, not because I think I’m right (their feelings are so complex and completely up for interpretation at this stage) but because I agreed with my initial assessment.

I think some people might be tempted to write off what Dean said as inaccurate, simply because it’s Dean who said it. Dean is often an unreliable narrator when it comes to Beth and Rio’s relationship. His view is tainted by jealousy, misogyny and the need to take ownership over Beth as his wife again. However, he did manage to catch on to the fact that Rio treats Beth differently (Rio flaunting the relationship he has with Beth in front of Dean in 1x10/2x01), that Beth slept with Rio and was using him as a poor replacement (2x06), that Beth and Rio have a relationship that is more than just sex (before Beth brutally emasculated him by saying she just really likes having sex with Rio in 2x11). In season 2, he did eventually see that, fundamentally, Beth and Rio are addicted to one another. So, I don’t think we can write off what Dean is saying in 3x05.

As for whether or not I think Rio is in love with Beth.

I need to explain the way that I view love, in the capacity that we use it to describe the feelings that an individual can have for another person. I find myself consistently surprised by the number of people around me who talk about emotions as being incredibly complex but then act as though you either love something or you don’t or, when it comes to romantic relationships on screen, if it isn’t love then it can only be lust or desire or an obsession. Personally, I view love as a spectrum emotion and I actually think most people view it in the same way, that you can feel varying degrees and intensities of it. It sounds obvious and that’s because it totally is. As an example, I think it’s absolutely possible to be a little bit in love with someone.

So, there’s a diagram I remembered from one of my lectures and I think it’ll help me articulate the way I view Beth and Rio’s feelings for one another. The short answer is that I thought they were a little in love with one another in the second half of season 2 and I actually still agree with that but I think it’s been buried under an avalance of trauma and betrayal.

Of course, I’m not going to include the original image from my lecture (which depicts the spectrum and crossover of mood and psychotic disorders) but here’s a stock image that depicts a similar idea:

Now, I think the obvious way to look at this is to stick love on one side and hate on the other, as they are classically considered to be ‘opposing’ emotions, and then something neutral like indifference in the middle.

Personally, I agree with the idea that indifference is the opposite of love and so I’d like to place indifference on one end, hate in the middle and love on the other end, especially when it comes to considering Beth and Rio’s relationship. I’d justify placing hate in the middle because it is an intense emotion, whereas indifference is literally nothing and these two have never been indifferent towards one another, no matter how much time Rio spends on his phone when he’s with Beth. The way I see it, Beth and Rio rapidly slide up and down the part of the spectrum between love and hate and those emotions never have time to settle so that they can be acknowledged as one or the other.

(sorry this is so bad)

I guess what I’m trying to say is that, even at this point in their relationship, the majority of viewers cannot point to the middle of this spectrum and say that Rio definitively hates Beth or vice versa. Nor can we point at love and say the same. I don’t even think we could point vaguely in between. I’d personally be continuously sliding my finger up and down the spectrum between those two points.

I think Manny worded it perfectly in his interveiew, “They hate each other but want to be each other. They hate each other but want to be with each other.”

Lucy, Paper Porcupine and The Shooting

I’m going to just put this in here because this scene was so dark (and very well done in my opinion). But Rio is such a little shit! Look at his face after antagonising Beth:

God sake. Check yourself Rio. Your boys, Ruby and Annie are all watching and it’s so obvious that you’re like straight up thinking about your crush.

Even though I loved the fact that Beth thought ahead and took the plates, upon rewatching the episode it all felt so futile and painful. It really felt like so many of the Beth’s actions took Lucy to that moment. I know we’re all thinking the same thing, that Dean unknowingly triggered all of this when he broke the plate. But the reality is that even if Dean hadn’t broken the plate, it’s likely that Rio would have eventually gone straight to the source of the design. From the moment Beth chose to bring her into this, Lucy’s fate was sealed. It’s heartbreaking.

I absolutely agree with @sothischickshe when she said that Beth knew that something was going to go down. She looks at Lucy so much in this scene, with fear, with guilt but also with an almost intuitive grief. I don’t think she knew that Rio was going to kill her but I do think she had a feeling or a thought clawing at the back of her mind, that something terrible was going to happen to Lucy.

Rio orders Beth to go with Lucy, telling her to “be smart”. He still has Ruby and Annie with him and he knows that Beth would never abandon them. He makes her choose between Lucy and Ruby & Annie in this scene; when she chooses not to ask Mrs Harris for help, when she chooses to beg Lucy not to finish the plate rather than telling her to run out of the store, she is essentially choosing Ruby & Annie.

So much of this scene was about Rio punishing Beth for what she has done, by taking what she had built, ordering her to go with Lucy and forcing her to share in the responsibility of what was about to happen. Because he hasn’t been able to kill her and he knows he’ll never be able to. But I also think it was about proving a point to Beth and here’s why.

Beth shot Rio for many reasons but a lot of it was about the situation she had been placed in and the pressing need to just do something in the ‘heat of the moment’. She has never been able to kill any of her rotten eggs when she had time to plan how to do it. Even when she hit Boomer in the back of the head in 1x01, it is was in the ‘heat of the moment’. She is bound by the moral barrier that separates a murder (i.e: intent, sometimes premeditated) from voluntary manslaughter (i.e: when provoked, in the moment.) I know Beth shot Rio two more times after the initial thought and I may write another post all about that. But now is not the time. For all intents and purposes, Beth cannot kill someone after definitively making that decision in advance.

Something that I’m so struck by with the sequence in Paper Porcupine is how long it is. It’s obviously this long to build tension but it really highlights to me the length of time Rio had to consider his options and decide what he was going to do. Even the scene outside the van was long; he had time to back out of killing Lucy but, unlike Beth, he did not balk. And because of that, he proved to Beth that he can do it all.

He’s basically saying look, I can kill someone before they even have the chance to go rotten.

Obviously, we know that Beth is Rio’s rotten egg and Rio knows it too (that’s why he’s punishing Beth in this scene). But Beth has never allowed herself to believe it. She thinks it’s all about the money.

Oh god. Don’t even get me started on the implications of Rio grabbing Lucy’s hand to help her into the van and looking over at Beth as he says “ma girl”. Yes, we get it Rio. Beth’s your girl.

@pynkhues pointed out that Rio has a kind of honeytrap language that Beth is starting to recognise and you can just tell from the way that Beth closes her eyes that she knows the situation is escalating and that something is imminently going to happen.

This scene is so interesting when you stop and pause and just look at Beth and Rio’s faces. Because Beth is desperately trying to justify why Rio should keep them alive. She keeps looking at his face and then prompting Ruby and Annie to speak and answer her questions, so she can prove their worth. And then, at the very end, she sort of tacks Lucy on as an afterthought and it’s just tragic. It was over for Lucy already but, even so, Beth basically gave a speech about their value vs Lucy’s value.

And I totally agree with everyone else. Rio did not look like he was being convinced by what Beth was saying at all. I mean, he definitely had heart-eyes (haha, they’re both idiots) but he didn’t look like he was really considering what she was saying, rather he seemed more like he was impressed by what he was seeing, almost falling into the habit of staring at her as intensely as he always has. He was definitely just letting her talk so he could put a bullet in Lucy and deal with someone in front of his boys and the girls.

Rio

We already knew this but Manny and the writers have really doubled down on how charming, personable and downright sinister Rio can be as a character. His smiles come easily when he’s questioning the mover in 3x04 and interacting with Lucy, he jokes around with them and exerts an effortless control over both situations. Perhaps even more importantly, his smiles are real in these moments. It’s become very obvious that Rio enjoys it all. It’s fun for him. Just like Beth, he gets a kick out of crime and is pretty unhinged.

As for him shooting Lucy, a completely innocent woman whom he knew Beth had dragged into this. Well, I agree with what a lot of people have already said; I think it was in character. I mean, this is the man who sat and messed about on his phone while his boys waiting on the order to kill the girls in 1x02. This is the guy who killed Eddie, somebody he presumably knew well considering the fact that Eddie only called his mum aside from Rio. This is the guy who shot Dean, who we as an audience hate but who really had nothing to do with Beth’s plot to have Rio arrested. This is the guy who didn’t just have Agent Turner killed but a slew of other FBI agents. Interestingly, of all these characters, the only one aside from Lucy who was unwittingly brought into the crime world was Dean and Rio still shot him. I don’t think this was an attempt on the writers’ parts to make us hate Rio because let’s be honest, the vast majority of us will continue to love his character and they know it. This is who he is and none of us can lie to ourselves anymore. I think that’s good.

The Ending

I loved it! Annie seeking comfort from the people they love, the people who support them. And Beth not being able to do that. God, she looks exhausted and two seconds from falling to pieces in that last scene and Dean is such a narcissist that he can’t see it. All he cares about is Rio, not the effect all of this is having on Beth.

When Beth says that she also really hates being around Rio again and Dean questions her, “really?”, it’s the only thing he can focus on when it comes to her. Like once Rio stuck his dick inside Beth, she wasn’t just her anymore, she was only a person with relation to Rio. Ewwwww Dean. Go away.

Also, it’s so telling that Beth couldn’t repeat herself when Dean questioned her. God, even after Rio ordered Mick to shoot Lucy, she can’t lie about it. She’s such a good liar but, in this scene, she’s so exhausted that she can’t even put in the effort.

God, Christina was amazing. Her watery blue eyes, her forced smiles and pained expressions. I felt like I had been stabbed in the heart when Max said “except for you” and that Beth was Lucy’s only friend. I feel terrible for Max and completely agree with Lucy! He is totally awesome.

#nbc good girls #i'm sorry this is so long

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marjanefan · 5 years ago

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‘Dead Line’ and ghosts in the machine

This review will contain extensive spoilers for the episode (and A Quiet Night In) so only continue if you have watched the episode. It also contains spoilers for ‘The League of Gentlemen’s Apocalypse’

Along with ‘The Twelve days of Christine’ ‘Deadline’ is one of the most discussed and analysed episodes of ‘Inside no.9’ with numerous vlogs and blogs dedicated to it. There are even several affectionate pastiches on Youtube. There is much in the episode that is worth discussing so I hope I can bring something interesting to analysing this astonishing episode.

I will be referring to both Stuart Hardy’s (Stubagful) and Inside an Mind’s vlogs about this episode so and the Q and A with Barbara Wiltshire (who directed the episode), Adam Tandy, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith at the BFI in April 2019 here are links to.

Stubagful’s review

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrlU9jaMP2k

Inside a Mind Analysis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUN6zqCHh18&t=58s

BFI event

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4RgjPJKNkI

Both Stuart Hardy and Inside a Mind explore the importance of experiencing this episode as a live experience on October 28th 2018 (the date of broadcast). As someone who did watch it live all the way through on broadcast I can confirm that it was a very rewarding experience to watch live that could never be replicated. There has also been considerable analysis of how Pemberton and Shearsmith utilised the process of pre broadcast publicity (such as their interview on the One show a few days before broadcast) to set up the misdirection and theme of the episode. However this is an episode that stands up to repeated viewings (as does every episode of Inside No. 9). The episode can be enjoyed as a ghost story with a very modern sensibility and as a meta commentary on the nature of television. There is an underlying message that allows this episode to retain its power.

The very title of ‘Dead line’ hints at obsolesce and broken down technology and communication. Under the surface of both the Arthur Flitwick storyline and the actual story of the episode we see the voices of the dead come back to avenge themselves on the living who have failed to respect them. You ignore them at your peril. /p>

The ostensible story of ‘Deadline’ -Arthur Flitwick’s fateful finding of a mobile phone is worth looking at in more depth. The story is run through with references to aging and mortality. Arthur lives alone in what may be either a retirement community or sheltered housing for older people. The classical music radio station he listens to aims its adverts at older people. We see Arthur get annoyed at a radio advert for a will writing service yelling ‘We’re not all one foot in the grave!’ (possibly a reference to the long running BBC TV series). Moira refers to the fact that Elsie and herself are apparently widows. It is worth noting that Stephanie Cole who plays Moira is well known for playing Diana Trent in the long running comedy series ‘Waiting for God’ which was set in a retirement home. Arthur and Moira are dealing with the fact that they are nearing the end of their lives and the particular forms of loneliness that affect the elderly. Arthur’s eventual breakdown and murder of Rev. Neil reflects his anxiety about the intentions of younger people toward him and his generation and his isolation(it says something that he choses to befriend a ‘ghost’). This also links this plotline to the main plotline as like Arthur, Alan Starr believed he was hearing the voices of the dead. This eventually drove him to suicide.

Rev. Neil is dealing with an ever aging and dwindling congregation. The physical disrepair of his church (referred in the second clip from the Arthur Flitwick story) symbolises this decline. (Is this also a comment on the decline of the influence of organised religion?) He makes a quip about his church always being on the lookout for ‘new blood’ which can be read as being about the graveyard where Elsie is buried. This links back to the main storyline of the episode being filmed in Granada studios which is apparently built on the site of a Victorian cemetery. (The ghosts recruit the ‘new blood’ of the unnamed continuity announcer, Stephanie Cole, Steve and Reece to their ranks).

One of the most interesting things for me about the ‘Arthur Flitwick’ section is the fact that the mobile phone Arthur finds is an old style Nokia phone. This type of mobile phone has been out of fashion for several years being overtaken by smart phones. This type of phone cannot be used to access the internet or online services such as TV streaming services. It could be a nod to a time where there were no streaming/catch up TV services and where social media was not prevalent. Television was experienced very differently and as Stuart Hardy noted in his review was more of a collective experience. ‘Dead line’ is almost a comment on what has been lost for audiences and those who work in television in the age of television on demand. The pleasure of watching a programme along with millions of others and being able to share simultaneous reactions (and not spoil the programme for others!) has been more or less lost.

The first reaction of Reece and Steve to the apparent break down of the show is to reach for their smart phones to try and find out what is going on. We see Reece moan he cannot connect to his smart phone via WIFI until Steve shows him the password (there is a joke about Stephanie Cole being able to connect to WIFI while Reece cannot). Steve uses his phone to research the history of Granada studios for clues as to what is happening. Reece uses his phone to check the reaction on Twitter, getting angry at people asking if ‘the breakdown’ is part of the twist (playing on his twitter persona). It is no accident that later in the episode Steve is so engrossed with his phone that he both fails to notice Stephanie kill herself on camera or ‘Alan’ advancing toward him in the mirror, commenting on the fact that people have become so engrossed at looking at their smart phones they ignore what is actually happening in front of them.

Steve gets Reece to post a tweet asking people if they are live on BBC Two at that moment. This tweet both proved that events were happening live and comments on the way that social media has changed how audiences interact with television shows and those involved with them. For better or worse platforms like Twitter has changed this permanently. Both Stuart Hardy (Stubagful) and Jamie (Inside a mind) discuss the importance of the Twitter reaction to the show in helping build the experience for the audience during broadcast. Steve Pemberton continued this, posting a photo of himself on Halloween itself looking none the worse for his adventure bar an apparently injured arm (from apparently being electrocuted duing the show)- however a 'ghost' seemed to still be following him! (he also joked if ghosts were going to take over the episode of 'The Apprentice' that was due to be broadcast that night)

https://twitter.com/SP1nightonly/status/1057690095996858368

Many people have discussed the influence of the 1992 drama ‘Ghostwatch’ on ‘Dead Line’. Pemberton and Shearsmith acknowledged its influence at the BFI screening of the episode. Ghostwatch was itself intended by its writer Stephen Volk as a commentary on the direction of television at the time, with the growth of docusoaps and reality TV, and how audiences perceived what was presented to them on TV. It made use of the methods of viewer interactivity of the day with its live broadcast/phone in format. There was a dedicated telephone line for viewers to call into (they were supposed to get a message that ‘Ghostwatch’ was a drama). This is echoed in ‘Dead line’s use of social media. ‘Ghostwatch’ itself references the past as it was in part inspired by the story of the Enfield Poltergeist and its coverage. Television programmes referencing back and paying tribute to earlier programmes is nothing new. It helps to build continuity and tradition in what is still a relatively new format, and helps to show that television can produce work that is lasting and worthwhile. Indeed ‘Dead Line’ helped to create interest for a new generation in ‘Ghost watch’.

Pemberton and Shearsmith decided to set ‘Dead line’ in Granada studios after researching alleged hauntings of the studio. This is referenced in the ‘Most Haunted’ episode that ‘Dead line’ includes clips from. Pemberton mentioned at the BFI that it was this episode that inspired the plot involving ‘Alan Starr’, the technician who killed himself after been haunted by the voices of the ghosts of Granada studios. The original plan had been to film the episode at Granada Studios itself but at the last minute this was not possible, so it was filmed at Maidstone Studios instead. The archive material included in the show is not just furthers the story of the apparent haunting but refers back to the studio’s important status in UK television. Granada Studios had been closed for a number of years before the filming of the episode. Even if it is not actually physically haunted, it is now a dead space which carries the memories of the programmes that were filmed there and the people who worked on them. The television industry may have physically moved on, but the programmes made there remain. I wonder if this was part of the appeal for Pemberton and Shearsmith in setting ‘Dead line’ there.

It was also not the first time that Pemberton and Shearsmith had used meta commentary or included themselves as characters in their own stories. They had of course both played themselves (or versions of themselves!) in ‘The League of Gentlemen’s Apocalypse’ film. At least one podcast noted this and how the ‘Reece’ and ‘Steve’ we see in ‘Dead line’ are similar to the ‘Reece’ and ‘Steve’ of the film. They have great fun in playing themselves as arrogant and self-centred. This is in part self-mocking and self-depreciating but also shows an awareness that in order to be successful in the entertainment industry you do require a certain level of self-confidence and self-centredness to get your vision realised. ‘The League of Gentlemen’s Apocalypse’ was an attempt by the various members of the League to explore the legacy of the League and what it meant to be the creators of this very specific world and characters at a point where they were beginning to develop their own separate careers away from the League. ‘Reece’ and ‘Steve’ die in ‘The League of Gentlemen’s Apocalypse’ as they do in ‘Dead Line’. This represents them acknowledging that the work and characters they have created have a life beyond them and that they will outlive them. The use of ‘A quiet night in’ in the episode also comments on how creators can recontextualise their work to give it a very different meaning. Indeed some fans of the show joke that they cannot watch ‘A quiet night in’ the same way since watching ‘Dead Line’.

As mentioned at the beginning, the episode has much to offer those who have not yet seen it beyond it being a ‘live’. It certainly got a great deal of publicity for the show with several UK newspapers discussing and praising the episode and complementing Pemberton and Shearsmith for how they pulled off the twist. Inside a Mind's analysis of the episode has had over three million views. WeeLin in her Youtube analysis suggests showing the episode to someone who has not seen it each Halloween. Reece Shearsmith still gets regularly asked on Twitter if the BBC has ‘fixed’ the apparent technical faults or if they plan to try and do the episode live again. There are still people who started watching the episode on October 28 2018 or who began watching on iplayer who stopped watching after ‘the breakdown’ who are discovering or yet to discover that they need to continue to watch beyond the ‘breakdown’ at nine minutes. People are also still discovering this episode. Steve Pemberton discusses how this is part of the narrative of the episode in the Q and A after the BFI screening. The number of affectionate homages to the episode that appeared on Youtube in the months after broadcast testify to the fact the episode has a very distinct feel and structure that makes it stand out. It has become one of the most acclaimed and beloved epsiodes of the series

#Inside no.9 #Dead line #reece shearsmith #steve pemberton #ghostwatch

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mrs-evadne-cake · 5 years ago

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I think the Griswold family group had a lot of potential, but compared to Eagle's Nest and Scoops Troop i think they had the disadvantage of having too many characters just clumped into sharing screentime together? I read your recent post about Lucas being in the scoops troop and i agree that they could've improved in so many ways if they had reshuffled the characters or sub groups differently and utilised the characters better. Lucas being in the Scoops troop is just one example.

Agreed! Some people are upset about them adding new characters but I honestly think the issue is less about volume than efficiency.

Like, let’s do a quick shuffle.

Lucas, who doesn’t have much to do in the main cast goes in the Troop where he has an actual character arc important plot with Erica (for both of them).

Dustin who doesn’t have much of an emotional arc in the Troop since it’s more focused on Steve and Robin’s growing friendship goes in the main group, tying the two together while also adding someone trying to fruitlessly keep the peace and echoing how he did it successfully when they were 12 but no one is listening anymore, adding to the ‘we’re not kids anymore’ central theme.

Also I love ‘you die I die’ but I would give it up in a second to have the moment where Dustin realizes that Lucas and Steve are still alive and not part of a meat monster after worrying for two days.

Reduce the redundancy of the Hopper and Joyce’s and Nancy and Jonathan’s separate investigations by combining them up to a point. Mirror the issues the two...well, one and who are we kidding- couples are having. Bonus points Murray has a chance to actually be legitimately funny if all four show up at his house.

Now with it streamlined you can focus the main group on the driving core conflicts and shifting dynamics of El and Max’s friendship and Mike/El, Mike and Max, and Mike and Will butting heads and forgiving each other AND since you’re not crowding everyone into every scene you have the time to let the characters dwell on things and have introspective moments instead of just dropping emotion to make room for action and New Coke commercials. Hell, maybe they’d even have time to toss a scene of Billy not being a total piece of shit to Max canonically in there before he gets flayed so my soul could feel anything but rage.

Totally with you @pusheen1802

#asks

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fnlrndcllctv · 4 years ago

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Tekken

In our Soundtrack Sunday series, we take a look at the music of fighting games, track by track!

For the fifth instalment, Shaun Eddleston takes a look at the music of 1994’s Tekken…

(For the purpose of this article, only the Arcade version of the game’s soundtrack is being covered).

In 1994, 3D fighting games were still in their infancy. SEGA’s first fighting game experiment in the form of Dark Edge and the boundary-pushing Virtua Fighter had barely been out for a year, and games such as Battle Arena Toshinden were still just around the corner for the next generation of home consoles such as the Sony PlayStation and SEGA Saturn.

Namco wanted in on the action, so enlisted the talents of Virtua Racing & Virtua Fighter game designer Seiichi Ishii to help develop 3D fighting game of their own, based on a hardware demo that was initially developed to show off some fancy new graphics off to investors. What started off as a game called “RAVE WAR” would eventually go on to become not only one of the most successful and longest-running fighting game franchises, but one of the biggest selling video game series of all time; Tekken.

As the technology was still somewhat limited at the time, Tekken’s stages were a simple affair. A seemingly infinite scrolling plane placed in front of some parallax backgrounds to give the impression of depth, each of these fighting arenas required a little bit more oomph to push forward and create a suitable, varied atmosphere in which players could beat each other up.

That’s where the music comes in. As Tekken was such an early entry in the realm of 3D fighters, the soundtrack played a considerably larger role in establishing how the game felt than in later entries.

So, how does the original soundtrack holdup today?

Let’s find out…

The game’s introduction is fairly non-eventful in its 20-second runtime, but it does make good use of the game’s stereo mix by panning left and right to create a more immersive effect, and reminds me a little bit of elements found in the PlayStation startup jingle.

Tekken’s character select music is a loop of what initially appears to be a fuzzy, overdriven funk bassline over a simple drumbeat, but to me personally, there was always something about this version that didn’t sit right with me. Upon listening closer, I think I’ve figured out what it is.

Behind the upbeat bass that is designed to get players pumped up before a fight, there’s two droning chords being played in the background that elicit a very serious, uneasy tone. Its a strange sensation that’s also present in the PlayStation version of the soundtrack (although it’s not as strong, thanks to better quality remixing!)

“Marine Stadium, Japan” is where the soundtrack has the most fun with the stereo mix, creating a dizzying effect by throwing samples at the listener from all directions in the left and right speaker. Once the track gets moving, there’s a call & response going on between many of the tracks separate elements, running a fine line between being a disjointed mess and a brilliantly cohesive piece.

Luckily the rhythm section and background pads do a great job of keeping things in check.

Definitely one of my favourites in the game.

“Chicago, USA” is probably the grittiest track of the OST, and is probably closer to what a lot of the game’s music sounds like in the modern era than the rest of the tracklist.

The fuzzy bass tone of the character select screen makes yet another appearance here, and immediately starts to make each of the “verse” sections feel incredibly busy and muddies the entire mix straight away.

The chorus, although very brief, saves the song in a big way. The soaring keys, accompanied by some fun percussive claps, make this one of the most enjoyable songs that still holds up really well today.

On a related note, the arrange version found in the PlayStation port is flawless.

The most immediate thing I noticed about this track is just how loud and distracting the bass is. It rumbles throughout the majority of the runtime, and almost ruins the whole experience for me, that is until the bass drops out and allows listeners to focus in a bit more on the tracks other elements.

Once you get past the overpowering synth bass, this is actually a really fun track. Utilising samples of traditional Chinese stringed instruments and gong hits, it’s a high energy track that perks up the players fighting in the mountainous stage.

Imagine a hard-hitting techno remix of Chun-Li from Street Fighter II’s music and you’ve got the right idea.

“Angkor Watt, Cambodia” is probably the closest that the game comes to an industrial sound, and I mean that in a literal sense. The drums and bass is accentuated with what sounds like stylised machinery interspersed with synth leads for the whole track. This robotic selection is an odd choice to use for a stage that’s based on the real life Angkor Watt (i.e. a complex of ancient temples in Cambodia, NOT a factory filled with heavy machinery).

The track also ends before it has the chance to build up into anything really interesting, and remains as a bit of a teaser for me.

“Fiji” is unlike anything else in the Tekken soundtrack, and is arguably one of the series’ most iconic pieces of music (it gets revisited a handful of times throughout the franchise’s long history). The track dials things up into party mode, with steel drums and a catchy salsa beat that really makes you feel like you are on holiday on a tropical island, with a bassline that you’d expect to hear in a bustling nightclub.

A true highlight of the soundtrack, and most definitely the biggest earworm of the whole tracklist.

With “Acropolis, Greece”, we steer into something with a much more dramatic mood.

While the drums and bass for most of the song leave a lot to be desired in terms of differentiating themselves from damn near every other song in the soundtrack, its the the chorus that saves the whole composition. Backed up by some choir keys that remind me of Angel Dust-era Faith No More (the best era, by the way!) and some military-style drumming that’s sprinkled throughout, it builds up to something pleasant, even though it doesn’t quite reach the majesty of the location’s namesake.

“Kyoto, Japan” follows in the footsteps of “Sichuan, China”, in that it utilises samples of traditional instruments from the location’s culture.

This is another track that makes great use of the stereo mix, with the instruments constantly in flux from the left to right speaker (and vice versa). The song does feel a little choppier than the rest of the soundtrack in places though, and the constant “un-tiss-un-tiss-un-tiss” drumbeat mixed together with the percussion samples of blocks being hit makes the song sound like something from the Samurai Shodown games if they were all on ecstasy.

“King George Island, Antarctica” is one of the more interesting items on this fighting game menu, as the song is driven forward by something outside of the simple drumbeat and funk bassline. Instead, it’s powered by an ongoing drone sound hidden in the background. While not quite in Sunn O))) territory, it’s something that makes the track feel unique to its peers, even though it largely contains a lot of the same elements as them.

This one took me by surprise.

Most of the runtime of “Venezia, Italy” sees the music simmering away comfortably, then once the chorus hits, it erupts into a slightly operatic, adventurous display of strings and choirs. Not only that, but for the latter half of the brief chorus, the drum beat instantly shifts into a jazzy offbeat section that definitely threw me off in terms of where I was expecting the music to go.

It’s a gamble that ultimately pays off, and it’s one that results in one of the more underrated tracks in the collection.

“Windermere, U.K.” is where the quality of the game’s music takes a hard hit.

Everything in the song sounds like you’re listening to it through a wall, with the individual instruments being drowned out by the overblown bass and frankly dull drum loops, and even then, the synthetic saxophone sections of the song don’t sound very interesting either. It’s a couple of minutes that holds the entire OST back.

At least the Arrange version in the following year’s PlayStation port was an improvement.

From the game’s weakest track, we head straight into one of the best moments in the entire OST.

“Monument Valley, USA” is one of the most ominous, evil-sounding stage themes that you’re likely to encounter in any fighting game. Just over a minute of harsh windy soundscapes, thunderous gongs, grandiose strings and monk chants that feel more like a summoning of an ancient demon than an actual song. It’s such a deviation from the rest of the music in Tekken, almost to the point where it could be from a totally different game altogether.

The PlayStation version of this song is rightfully in my top 10 favourite fighting game tracks of all time.

Tekken’s final credits music is an absolute pleasure to listen to. In just a couple of minutes, it effectively melds together all of the different vibes of each stage in the game without resorting to just clipping them together as a cheap montage.

Besides, it’s just a relief to have something relatively soothing after dealing with the horrid AI of Heihachi as a final boss.

Overall, the soundtrack to the very first Tekken game is pretty far away from people may be used to from the high intensity of the modern entries in the franchise.

Instead of punishing dubstep and songs you’d expect to hear from a harder-edged Dance Dance Revolution game soundtracks (is that even a thing?), the music selection here is much simpler and way more subdued.

Tasked with trying to represent the various locations from around the world, Namco Sounds did an admirable job getting the vibe right for each stage. From the absolute party of “Fiji” and the sports broadcast jingle of “Marine Stadium, Japan” to the gritty club beats of “Chicago, USA” and the windy soundscapes of “Monument Valley, USA”, the Tekken soundtrack is a varied, interesting mix that not only gives each landmark and setting more personality, but also attempts to set the bar for a series that has since become known for its great music.

Now, time to try and get “Fiji” out of my head until Tekken 2’s edition of Soundtrack Sunday…

The soundtrack is available on vinyl here.

Are you a fan of the original Tekken’s music? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

#Tekken #Namco #Soundtrack #1994

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obaewankenope · 5 years ago

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Stegosawns and Time - Good Omens, Absconding with Harry verse ficlet

@murderandjam asked for me to write something with dinosaurs involved so, like a champ, I’ve done my best. Hope they, and ya’ll, like it.

//.//

Harry doesn’t particular care about dinosaurs, not really, but he’s a thirteen-year-old boy and dinosaurs are sort of A Thing for thirteen-year-old boys to be interested in. Well, according to Miss Hale, who runs the local corner shop with her husband of thirty-five years, at least.[1]

So, of course, Harry has to at least be interested in dinosaurs otherwise Miss Hale will make comments about his Uncle’s and Harry will want to cause a bit—a lot—of chaos in her shop, even though she’s very nice to him and only makes snide comments on Tuesdays.[2] It’s less because Harry wants to impress Miss Hale with his dinosaur knowledge and more that he wants to have information he can utilise against someone who seems to like making Comments about his Uncle’s lifestyles.

Harry is well-aware that he can be a petty child, but he does limit his pettiness to people who deserve a bit of Petty Childishness thrown in their overly opinionated faces. Thus, it follows that Harry learns the basic facts about dinosaurs, recites a couple to Miss Hale, adds a few titbits about the quantity of homosexual relationships in the animal kingdom and how there were probably queer dinosaurs—enjoying immensely the way Miss Hale’s smile freezes on her face at that—and that, if Harry were to choose a dinosaur to be, he’d choose a Psittacosaurus because “it looks really cute but I bet it can do a predator a whole lot of harm with those little tusks”.

Oddly enough, Miss Hale hasn’t asked if Harry is interested in things anymore and doesn’t seem interested in suggesting research topics for Harry to try and make a hobby out of.

Strange that.

[Keep Reading on AO3]

But, when Jurassic Park is released in the UK on 16th July 1993, the interest Harry has in dinosaurs reaches a more expected level for a thirteen-year-old boy to possess; basically, he becomes obsessed with dinosaurs that eat people.

Though, not quite in the way Miss Hale probably ever expected Harry to be interested in carnivores. Apparently, spending thirty-minutes ranting about dinosaurs being denied access to enrichment like zoo animals ought to have is not the “correct” response on the forum dedicated to All Things Jurassic Park.

When someone tells him to “read the book, dumbass” Harry has to log off and go for a fly on his broom. Cursing someone who lives on the other side of the planet for being obtuse and all-round rude isn’t something he should do; even if he really wants to.

The pulava dies down after a few weeks of Harry reading everything he can find about dinosaurs in the bookshop—strangely, Uncle ‘Zira’s collection on dinosaurs and palaeontology is quite limited—and the library, Harry heads back to Hogwarts with Hermione and Ron ending up being unwitting victims of his diatribes.

Well, Ron is an unwitting victim. Hermione looks like Christmas has come early and she doesn’t even celebrate Christmas except at Hogwarts.

“I know!” Hermione exclaims, nodding vigorously at what Harry’s saying on the topic of how dinosaur DNA just couldn’t survive that long without totally degrading. “It’s really obvious if you think about it, even my parents said the same and they’re dental hygienists, but the boys who live by my house ignored me when I told them.”

“Idiots,” Harry replies and Hermione smiles at him. “Frog DNA is really picky as well, like, you definitely have to be careful with it; not just randomly add it to some ancient DNA and expect everything to be all hunky-dory! How do people not realise this?”

Harry shakes his head. “I know it’s fiction and Hollywood magic,” he continues, “but really, it’s a stupid plot to have such awful mad science stuff.”

“The book is much better than the film,” Hermione says and Harry nods. “Though, I do like the actors and—if I ignore the inaccuracies and deviations from the book—it’s not an awful film. I just prefer the book.”

“Same.” Harry pauses.

“The T-Rex scenes were pretty great though, weren’t they?” he asks and Hermione nods.

“Oh Morgana, yes!” Hermione agrees, grinning. “I really enjoyed the car chase.”

“Me too!”

“Also, that nasty lawyer—”

“—oh yeah! He totally got what he deserved!”

Ron, throughout this entire rant and later gush-fest regarding Jurassic Park and dinosaurs, is silent until he finally can’t take it anymore; judging by the way he all-but bellows at Harry and Hermione.

“What the bloody hell is a dinosaur?”

It’s probably The Worst question Ron could have asked but Ron obviously has no idea what Harry and Hermione are going on about; and Ron has never liked not knowing what’s going on. That’s probably because he grew up with six brothers and a little sister and had to deal with so much happening that he didn’t have a clue about. Being out of the loop is something Ron doesn’t handle very well when it comes to his friends and that means Harry and Hermione have an Obligation to educate Ron on the subject of dinosaurs.

He’s probably going to regret asking, Harry thinks, but at least he’ll know something other purebloods won’t.[3]

By the time the train arrives at Hogsmeade, Ron has a basic understanding of what dinosaurs are; ancient lizards that enjoyed being ancient lizards eating things and being eaten. Mentioning Jurassic Park during the Education of Ron sends them off on a digression that sees Ron being very, very confused by DNA, genetics, theme parks, and corporate environments. This drives Hermione to promise to borrow Ron her copy of the book, citing that it’s much more in-depth than what Harry and Hermione have told him, and to write a list of things that he doesn’t understand when reading so she and Harry can help him understand just why theme park monsters are Bad.

Dinosaur-related learning falls to the wayside as term starts and things Happen throughout the year, but Harry still finds the chance to ask various purebloods about the topic; feeling very vindicated every time a pureblood looks at him like he’s a madman—which, to be fair, he is—or throws a bit of a wobbler at the prospect that muggles know something a pureblood doesn’t.

When Harry asks a Slytherin who is somewhat amiable to students in other houses, he’s surprised when they actually do know about dinosaurs; right up until he realises that they’re a half-blood and hiding the fact. That Slytherin turns out to be pretty delightful and Harry makes no comment on the fact that they use terms that only muggles use. He’s never known a single pureblood Slytherin to use the word thermos when referring to their coffee cup and he just knows they picked that up from muggles.[4]

Unfortunately, Harry doesn’t find out until later that Hermione wisely went and asked the Ravenclaw purebloods about dinosaurs and discovered a whole host of them knew at least something about them and palaeontology too. In the end, Harry loses the bet with Hermione and ends up knitting a whole load of hats for the House Elves—which are used as hats for the teapots rather than the Elves themselves, much to Hermione’s mild annoyance—which isn’t so bad and he at least learns a knew skill in the process.

Throughout all of this, the two come to a sort of unanimous decision that Hogwarts needs better education on non-magical things. Even if witches and wizards might not ever really need to know the names of carnivorous dinosaurs, it’s still useful to know stuff that muggles do so they can better blend in when they’re older.

The fact that it will also reduce the division between magical and non-magical is something neither quite realise until they’re much, much older.[5]

Arranging a sort of study group with students from all the years to get them to learn about things Not Related To Magic is less of a challenge than either of them realise; especially when Ron snorts and tells them to make out the whole thing is “too good for those stuck-up purebloods”. Spite and pride, it turns out, are really good motivators for learning things just to Prove You Can.

Even the Slytherin’s show up.

That leaves Harry and Hermione, and several other muggleborns and half-bloods, with the job of explaining evolution to a bunch of witches and wizards. It sounds like it should be a doddle, but there are certain purebloods that seem intent on making it beyond difficult.

Oddly enough, Malfoy isn’t one of them.

“That doesn’t make any sense, though!” Stephen Cornfoot—a Hufflepuff—says and Harry doesn’t roll his eyes, but it’s a near-thing.

“Environmental changes happen all the time,” Hermione says calmly, though the way her eyelid twitches slightly tells Harry—who’s stood right next to her—that she is definitely not calm. “Physiological adaptation is natural response for a creature. Humans have evolved from previous versions to what we are today, and we’re still evolving. What is there to not understand?”

“A lot, apparently,” Harry mutters under his breath and looks away from the glare Hermione throws at him. “You can change how you act to stuff, right?” He says, raising his voice to be heard by everyone in the room—all forty or so students. “I know a lot of have broken school rules before, and I also know a good number of us have avoided breaking them after the first time we got caught. Or broke the rules better and not got caught. Well, same sort of principle applies to evolution. But it’s a much, much longer scale of time. Instead of us learning to break the rules better and teaching the students after us—or our children, if any of us end up being parents—an animal can evolve over a hundred million years to become a better hunter, or avoid being hunted.”

“Newton Scamander even noted that magical creatures potentially underwent some evolutionary changes in their own history,” Hermione points out, and Cornfoot looks more convinced from that alone which, Harry will admit to himself, is pretty annoying. “You don’t think Kelpies have remained the size they are currently? Or as specifically adapted to marine living?”

Harry knows Hermione’s questions are rhetorical but the way Cornfoot blushes in embarrassment makes him reach out and place a hand on Hermione’s arm. He’s a little concerned she might hex Cornfoot for actually believing Kelpies haven’t evolved.

He’s not certain how he’s supposed to stop her from actually committing murder when Cornfoot—and others—seem to not believe in evolution as though they’re the most resistant of Christians, but Harry figures that so long as Hermione doesn’t do it in public and doesn’t get caught then it’s not something he needs to really worry about.

Probably.

They split the students up into groups that each of the volunteer muggleborns and half-bloods who are willing to Educate The Noble Purebloods About Basic Things take. Whilst this enables Harry to keep Hermione away from Cornfoot and his very strangle-able throat, it however, leaves Harry with Malfoy to deal with.

The things Harry does for his friends.

Uncle’s Crowley and Aziraphale show up about an hour into the Educating of Purebloods and, unfortunately, derail the entire thing with a very casual comment regarding the veracity of palaeontology.

“You’re telling them about dinosaurs?” Uncle Crowley asks and snorts. “Dinosaurs aren’t real.”

“Of course they are!” Hermione says in the sudden silence Harry’s uncle’s words have caused. “There’s over a century of detailed records and expeditions to look for new fossils. How can you even say otherwise?”

“Because they’re a big ol’ prank,” Uncle Crowley answers. “She made them that way.”

“She?” A Ravenclaw asks from Dean’s group.

“You know, God.” Harry’s uncle looks very unhappy to be explaining this but since he started it, Harry doesn’t feel the slightest bit sorry for him. “Thought it was a right laugh, I’m sure.”

“Okay, okay, I’m going- you know what? Fine, fine,” Hermione rambles and she looks a little frazzled; the way she does sometimes when Ginny’s friend, Luna mentions some creature from the Quibbler. “Have you any proof of this claim?” She asks in a measured tone.

Harry has a feeling that this discussion is going to get Nasty.

“Well, my memory, I guess,” Uncle Crowley says and points at Uncle ‘Zira. “And his.”

“You’re memory,” Hermione says flatly.

“Yep!”

“The Earth hasn’t existed long enough for dinosaurs to exist, anyway!” Uncle Crowley exclaims and Harry’s sure Hermione’s eyelid just twitched. “Only been around for six-thousand-years!”

“I see.” Hermione, if anything, manages to sound even flatter than she did before. “Right, that’s what you believe. Nice to know. But actual scientific research tells us the Earth is actually four-point-five billion years old, not six-thousand. And,” she continues, “dinosaurs lived as recently as sixty-six million years ago and as far two-hundred-and-forty-five million years ago. That’s based on intense, rigorous scientific experiments which are much more reliable than a heavily revised book written and re-written over the last two-thousand years.”

Harry doesn’t leave the room but he sure wants to. Judging by the expressions on a lot of the students in the room, they want to flee too.

“That’s part of the joke,” Uncle Crowley explains with a smirk. “Thought was right funny, She did. Bit unfair of Her, really, expecting you lot to ever figure out She punked you all with dinosaurs but—” he shrugs “—not a surprise, really. She’s like that.”

“Well, how do you know God made them as a prank?”

Harry looks across the room, eyebrows raised in surprise because that’s Malfoy.

“Huh?” Uncle Crowley looks at the Slytherin with raised eyebrows himself. “Whadya mean?”

“Well, if your memory is what you’re going on, then did you have a conversation with God about dinosaurs and time and all that other stuff Potter and Granger have been going on about?” Malfoy elaborates. “Did you actually ask… Her if dinosaurs are a joke or did you just assume based on something you thought you know?”

Harry has never seen Uncle Crowley look so very stumped about something and, although it’s probably a little—a lot—bad of him, he really enjoys the sight of it. Judging by the way he seems to be smiling a little at Uncle Crowley’s expression, Uncle ‘Zira enjoys it too.[6]

“Well, obviously not,” Uncle Crowley says. “I learnt it the hard way that asking Her stuff ends painfully. Just figured it was a joke because this dustball hasn’t existed that long.”

The amusement on Uncle ‘Zira’s face disappears. Uncle Crowley’s State of Affairs isn’t something Harry asks questions about but he can tell it’s not the greatest thing, bringing up their statuses as angel and demon.

“But how do you know Earth hasn’t?” Malfoy presses and Harry’s actually sort of impressed. Malfoy has been strangely strange the past year or so. He’s still a twit and a bigot, but he’s better than he was in the first year, for sure.

“We were there when She made it.”

Malfoy rolls his eyes. “And when did She make it? What date, exactly? What existed before She made Earth?”

“Six-thousand years ago, I’ve said this kid,” Uncle Crowley replies. “Four-thousand-and-four-BC. She made it after Heaven and Hell got set up. It was Her big thing. Caused a lot of ruckus up in Heaven when She announced it.”

“Wasn’t Hell created when angels fell, though?” Terry Boot asks, frowning. “I’ve read the Bible and the Torah and Qur’an. I’m pretty sure Hell came after the Earth was made.”

Uncle Crowley waves a hand. “Semantics, really,” he says, “time wasn’t a thing before Earth got shoved into being so Heaven and Hell both existed before and after this little dustball and solar system got set up.”

“If time ‘wasn’t a thing’,” Malfoy says, smirking in that smug way the Slytherin does that makes Harry want to hex him. “Then how do you really know how old the Earth is, or dinosaurs, when you’ve literally just said time didn’t exist before the Earth was made? I mean, what if God was making it for a long time before She just made it real? Like when performing alchemy; we don’t just make gold straight away; we build up to it.”

“No, no, no, that’s not what I said,” Uncle Crowley snaps and he looks annoyed now. Harry thinks it’s pretty amusing that he looks annoyed because he definitely said that.

“That is what you said, actually,” Hermione says and honestly, the fact that she’s siding with Malfoy really says it all. Uncle Crowley has lost this argument and should probably just concede now. “The only way your argument could be valid would be if time existed before Earth did and Hell after and only after. Since you’ve said that isn’t the case, then it can be assumed that time has been applied retrospectively and that means that, technically, dinosaurs did live between two-hundred-and-forty-five and sixty-six million years ago because time is a measurement used to determine change.”

The room is silent because Uncle Crowley isn’t responding to Malfoy or Hermione and Uncle ‘Zira has been content to stand back and let Uncle Crowley do the talking. Harry is content to just Not Get Involved.

“Maybe the joke isn’t for humanity, maybe it’s for you,” Luna Lovegood says into the silence. She sounds like she usually does; like she’s more interested in Other Things that other people know nothing about. She reminds him of his Uncle’s sometimes, the way she just zones out and seems to be listening to something Harry can’t hear. Right now, however, Luna doesn’t remind him of his Uncle’s; he doesn’t know what she reminds him of, only that it’s something Big and Important and Beyond Him. “Or perhaps it’s a test.”

Harry would like for this whole conversation to end now please because the whole afternoon is getting away from them and he really did want to go flying on his broom before it got too dark to see in front of his face. Unfortunately, like most things lately, that plan is now in shambles and he’s stuck in this sort of painful situation of watching his Uncle’s quietly—or not so quietly, in Uncle Crowley’s case—question everything they thought they knew.

Existential crises happen even to celestial beings, apparently.

“Who cares!” Ginny’s voice echoes around the room, loud and a little startling. The room at large sort of looks at her; she’s doesn’t appear to be bothered by that. “I want to know about these Stegosawns, Hermione mentioned; they sound wicked.”

That—Harry notes—breaks whatever strange tension has been steadily filling the room since his Uncle’s entered and the students start to mutter amongst themselves; obviously they agree with Ginny and would really like this conversation to end now, there’s way more interesting things to learn about, thanks.

Harry is all too happy to oblige.

“Stegosaurs, or Stegosaurus,” he corrects, giving Ginny a smile, “were herbivores that had armour-plating on their back and spikes on their tails. Definitely not something a predator wanted to fight if they were weak or injured. They probably weighed as much as a dragon and were probably as big, depending on the breed of dragon.”

“Woah, wicked,” Fred or George say and there’s a general murmur of agreement amongst the students. “Imagine running into one of those when out for a walk.”

“I think I’d prefer the dragon, actually,” a fourth-year Ravenclaw remarks to a smatter of laughter.

Harry sees his Uncle’s slink out of the room—well, Uncle Crowley slinks, Uncle ‘Zira just walks—and resolves to visit them later tonight. He thinks they might appreciate him there to distract them from whatever Thoughts Malfoy and Hermione have given them about their purpose and stuff. Gods know, Harry would appreciate the distraction if he were in their place.

But, for now, he has dinosaurs to talk about with some purebloods who seem much more enthusiastic about learning about giant lizards the size of dragons. He wonders how they’ll react to the Brontosaurus; it should be entertaining, at least.[7]

[1] To understand the expectation people, have for teenage boys to be interested in dinosaurs, you have to consider the fact that dinosaurs are viewed as something of a Violent and Bloody Topic fit only for Boys and Men. Why? Because society loves to treat girls like their only worth is to be found in looking pretty but being stupid and vapid. A girl with a personality or a brain must in want of a husband who can put her back into society’s True Woman Mold. Harry, thanks to his Uncle’s, isn’t in the slightest bit impressed with this tripe and, as such, takes great delight in learning about things Boys Shouldn’t Be Interested In as well as pushing Hermione and Ron’s sister, Ginny, to learn things Girls Shouldn’t Be Interested In. It’s very entertaining as well as educational.

[2] Why Tuesdays is anyone’s guess really, but it does serve to ensure that Harry knows what day of the week it is if he ever spontaneously forgets that Tuesdays exist.

[3] Harry places a bet with Hermione—ignoring her huffy comment about how she doesn’t “bet” even as she places said bet—that not a single pureblood at Hogwarts will know anything about dinosaurs. Hermione thinks Harry’s assumption regarding pureblood education simply must be wrong since there are magical creatures that could be living dinosaurs considering how old they are.

[4] The fact that Harry is only right about the Slytherin—Arnold Renard—being a half-blood rather than a pureblood is less because Harry possesses excellent deductive reasoning skills and more to do with the fact that he’s rather good at just guessing stuff about people. If he ever sat down and really thought about how he knows this stuff, Harry would discover that he actually does have good deductive reasoning skills but a rather poor working memory when it comes to recognising such deductions consciously.

[5] The realisation that they can quite literally affect the entirety of the British Wizarding World by talking about dinosaurs, science, astronomy, heck, even yoga is something of a revelation for the two. The long-term impact on pureblood rhetoric is most apparent by the next generation of magical children; and the impact is wonderful.

[6] Aziraphale enjoys the sight of Crowley looking so stumped but the actual topic of conversation is one that will bother Aziraphale for a long time to come. The idea that they don’t know exactly what She has planned. The idea that a child can ask such a question and reveal that they, angels and demons, are assuming so much; it’s terrifying because it means they could be wrong. Being wrong sounds like a dangerous thing to be when one is an angel, afterall.

[7] It is.

#Good Omens #GOmens #Harry Potter #Absconding with Harry verse #Dinosaurs #Jurassic Park references #Listen if I can't give some existential crises to Crowley and Aziraphale #Then what's the point?#Lol

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jemimaboultonmessagesmultiverse · 4 years ago

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Ransom note style collaging

Today I created some compositions in a ransom note style by cutting up articles and writing, changing the order of the words and what they mean, before developing onto these with different medias for a mixed media outcome. The inspirations for this task are “Tomato” (a design collective including John Warwicker and Karl Hyde), Linda Zacks, Meg Hitchcock and Steve Mccaffery. Another source of inspiration for how to start these compositions was David Bowie’s “cut up technique” which he used to write songs.

By using words in this way within our art the messages we are trying to communicate can be in plain sight without people realising.

“Tomato” John Warwicker and Karl Hyde

Tomato is a design collective made to “support individuals on their exploratory journey”. The particular pieces I am focusing on today are from John Warwicker’s collaboration with Underworld, where he visually responded to the content of the music to produce album covers and artwork which portrays the themes and sounds of the music in a visual format.

To achieve this he replicated some of the techniques used in the music into his art, such as layering many elements, which can also be heard in the album. Another important part of the music to tie into the art was to make the art almost indecipherable, as Karl Hyde’s music is also indecipherable in ways from the sounds used being enigmatic to his “stream of consciousness vocal poetry” which he pairs with it.

The art is all monochrome and typographic. This works really well when paired with Underworld’s music as they have a very electronic industrial sound which has so many elements but overall a cohesive sound, so by using black and white throughout but then having many elements within, it visually shares the messages of the album.

The black shapes on the front cover of the album remind me of the “threshold” technique I have used previously in photoshop and therefore it is something I could possibly implement in my photoshop lessons. I really like how distorted and mysterious most of the imagery is in this and how you can’t really tell what they are of and they appear more as misshapen objects. I could use this in the future in my own work to display glitches and hacking.

I also really like the way all of the type is duplicated and overlapped in this part of the cover and I was heavily influenced by this in one of the pieces I created. My favourite element of this is where the text “30 feet above” gets cut up and squashed with lines as it reminds me almost of an elevator as you see yourself go past all the lines which are different levels. The use of different fonts is also something I am heavily inspired by as it adds lots of intrigue and could represent all the different sounds and stories that Karl Hyde is trying to communicate in this album.

Linda Zacks

Linda Zacks is a contemporary artist who’s visual storytelling uses many different mediums to create compelling, vibrant mixed media outcomes. She describes her work as “part paint, part poetry” and sends her messages on a usually large scale, making installations in cities or working on very large canvases to maximise the mediums and details she can add.

I really like the use of colour within her work especially where she sticks to one colour and uses many different tones of it to create her composition, and I used this in my own work in areas to try and replicate some of the use of colours I saw here.

Zacks’ work contains many layers and textures which I really enjoy as there is always more to notice in her work. It appears that she starts with a base layer of colour before adding type and illustration on top of it which is something I tried to do in my work. Her work makes me wish I had stencils as her use of them works in a way I really enjoy as it contrasts something uniform against the scratchy hand written words in what is presumably oil pastel.

I also like how the words in this piece are all black and white on their colourful backdrop, as that could be to emphasise the message of the piece. The piece to me seems as though it is highlighting the control that places and the government have on how we live our lives, telling us “no” we can’t do things. The colourful background is counteracting the serious words and voices we have to put up with on a daily basis.

As said previously, I really like how this piece only contains one many colour and uses many tones of it. I really like how colourful the silhouette is and how the type within it can share the message of the piece. The bright red which is paired with the pink could be to share the violence in the city and how living in a city can aggressively affect your life and perception of the world. The text “boxed in” can be seen which could be Zacks’ way of communicating her feeling towards cities to her audience.

In my own work I tried to create some mixed media outcomes similar to Zacks and I tried to make my words appear as different textures to communicate something within my message.

Meg Hitchcock

Meg Hitchcock is a text based artist who works with sacred texts as part of her lifelong interest in religion, literature and psychology. In her work she takes texts and cuts them up letter by letter to rearrange them into a pattern and abstract shape. She mainly uses curved, flowing lines and creates her work in such a way that the trail of letters is one continuous line. The messages in her work could be perceived as religious due to the words being that of actual religious passages, but could also be perceived as very anti religion, as you aren’t typically meant to “destroy” religious passages like this. She spends hours cutting and sticking to produce “visual matras of devotion”.

Personally, I see her art as a respectful visual presentation of these passage which still tells the audience the original message, just in a different form.

I really like the way she cuts up the letters to create new compositions with them, and I attempted to use this in my own work but it didn’t work very well or as I intended. The scale in which she works sometimes is extremely large and the intricacy that she achieves is phenomenal. I think the way she makes these letters swirl and curve is extremely captivating to look at and follow. I also like how she manages to create smooth curves with small rectangles and straight lines.

The way her shapes chosen are influenced by the passages she uses are very interesting to me, as the piece above contains many words about direction and guidance, so her choice to make them centre of the composition a spiral may be so that the piece has a direction.

The piece above is a small extract from a composition which contains so many curves and is very large. By the way that the words are arranged it looks as though the words are almost crushing eachother, like the words on top are weighing down on the words below. this could be Hitchcock’s way of send the message that the passage chosen for this piece is very heavy and not a joyous read.

Steve McCaffery

Steve McCaffery is a poet who uses typography to create abstract typewriter art that captures the concept of the poem in an abstract way. He sticks to a black and red colour scheme with a white background throughout all his pieces, and he uses many different scales of type and repeating letters. A common occurrence in his pieces are circles or semi circles of type of a single word, highlighting the importance of this word in the overall message of the typographic compositions.

The pieces contain the poem along with additional letters overlapping and producing new shapes and additional elements to the page which help to push forward the message McCaffery is communicating. I like how he uses this artistic format to emphasise and display pats of the poem in a way which isn’t just reading it from left to right. An example of what i mean is above where text says “coral reefs and later a land bridge” it is in a wave shape, not a straight line, to visually represent the coral reefs and bridges mentioned.

I was very inspired by the repetitive use of “O” within this piece and it reminded me of binary code so I used that within one of my compositions about robots to send the message of technology and robotics.

I really like how he repeated words and shows them facing directions which aren’t the way words typically face. I also like how he joins the verses of his poetry together by overlapping them, as that way they keep their original message without being cut up but still create a new appearance and this creates some darker areas within the composition. Another thing I took inspiration from in this piece is how there is one area where all the ink and type is concentrated, and everything builds off of that until the edge of the page where there is little to no type. In my own work I tried to have areas where there was more type that then gradually built out to nothing, but it was not as effective.

David Bowie’s “cut up technique”

David Bowie utilised a technique when writing songs which is similar to this art as he would cut up words and phrases and put them back together to make some abstract lyrics unlike any others at the time. It was this technique which would bring him some of his most famous songs and deem him unforgettable in the future. He would take is weird and wonderful thoughts, write them down and put them back together like a puzzle to see what fits and sounds good and what doesn’t. The more bizarre the better, at times.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1InCrzGIPU

The technique was originally made popular by William S Burroughs, a French poet who would cut up and rearrange his text to create a new one. In my own work I cut up text in a similar way to this to create out of context pieces of text that I could then put into context with the art I chose to apply on top of it.

My ransom note collages

In my own ransom note style pieces I took inspiration from all areas of these 5 artist’s ways of working to create my own pieces relevant to my news articles.

To start with on this piece I decided I was going to use one colour along with black and white in a similar way to McCaffery, however I put the the black and green in the background and made the white the foreground. I really like the texture I created by using a dry brush to spread the ink as it is similar to some of the textures seen in Zacks’ work. I didn’t want the background to be entirely black and green so I left some of the white of the paper, but in hindsight that wasn’t the best idea as you cant see some of the type I added as it is white on white. I chose the colour green as green and black is a colour scheme commonly associated with spies in the media (for example, it is used heavily throughout “The Matrix”), and therefore the message of spies is instantly recognisable as I chose to focus this first piece around my article about the CIA creating robot fly spies.

Before I added type I added some cut up extracts of the article I was representing to add to the image, in a similar way to Meg Hitchcock. I created the shape of eyes with these people so that they would stand out and send the message that the fly is watching you. I don’t particularly like how this turned out as I don’t think the representation of eyes is very understandable, I wish it were more obvious what it is.

I also don’t like the elements I added after this. I tried to make the fly out of binary but it isn’t very obvious what it is due to the lack of detail added. I also added some type in a binary font but the white in the background makes it unreadable.

If I was to do this again I would make sure that the background was slightly more saturated with colour and I would make the fly the only focus so I could add more detail to it. I would also make this on a larger scale for the same reason.

For this piece I was heavily influenced by John Warwicker’s work on the album cover for Underworld and the way David Bowie would use the cut up technique. I cut up my article into fragments which made little sense without context and arranged them in a way which I thought would represent a corrupt file, as the article I worked with for this piece was also a technology based one, this time themed around robots displaying human emotions. To create the look of corruption I staggered the lines of writing and also left extremely large gaps between parts of it to make it look out of the ordinary.

When adding the type on top of my article cut outs, I decided to pick out words and phrases from the composition that were already there and enlarge them and duplicate them. I also added some black areas on the page and wrote on them with a white pen. which I think worked really well to add some deepness to areas of the composition which I felt were unbalanced. I also really like the area where I created a mirror image of the type of “artificial faces” as I feel it could send the message of how these robots are mirroring our facial expressions but are not real, just a reflection of how they have been produced.

I am much more happy with this piece than I was the previous one as I think it works well as a representation for the article and it highlights the important phases to communicate the message. I also am really glad I chose to leave white space and I didn’t add any colour as the lack of colour and harsh contrast between black and white acts as a communication of the difference between human-like robots and real humans.

For my 3rd piece I made the subject of my composition the article about mammoths being resurrected by scientists. I started by applying colour to the background and brown in the rough shape of a mammoth. I tried to keep my brush dry so that some of the texture could be seen, in a similar way to Linda Zacks’ work. I chose the blue as the background as mammoths were alive in a cold climate and blue is usually associated with freezing temperature.

To represent the scientific element of this story and also to show that the mammoth could be living, I collaged a simplified anatomical heart and I used the news article to create a skeleton for the mammoth. The idea to use the words for the ribs was inspired by how Meg Hitchcock and Steve McCaffery create shapes with their words to illustrate the meaning behind them.

I was inspired by Zacks’ style again when adding words as I tried to use different medias to create words in different textures. The dark blue words have a more calm feel to them since they are written in ink and therefore aren’t scratchy, whereas the words in blue and white are scratchy due to them being done in acrylic paint very quickly. I wanted to have this effect to communicate the time period that mammoths are from as they could represent cavemen’s inscriptions onto walls and other writing forms from a long time ago.

Overall I am extremely happy with how this piece turned out and I think the mixed media approach I took to it worked very successfully to emphasise all the elements I wanted and included many textures within.

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javic-piotr-thane · 6 years ago

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TW One: Latter Days - the VORTEX article on the upcoming audio!

THEY’RE BACK and it’s all about the team (unless you’re Yvonne Hartman and then it’s very much all about you !)… We return to Canary Wharf in London to meet the team at Torchwood One for a third box set of adventures in Latter Days. Tracy-Ann Oberman is back in the heels and business suit of Yvonne Hartman, and Gareth David-Lloyd reprises his role as Ianto Jones.

In this box set of three tales we meet Yvonne’s mother; see Torchwood through the eyes of one of its cleaners; and Ianto finds himself trapped inside the retirement plans of Tommy – the head of Alien Acquisitions.

The set opens with Retirement Plan which was written by Ianto himself, actor Gareth David-Lloyd, and features a character we first met in box set one – only now, Tommy is retiring. But there’s something very wrong in the idyll of El Cielo, and it’s going to kill Ianto. There are spies, guns and snowmobiles, a secret base – and definitely piranhas!

Gareth says: “I’m a bit more familiar writing for the characters than I was the first time around when I had to go back over the first series of Torchwood One. I did some more research on Yvonne’s character for this one, but I know her and the others much better this time.

“I wasn’t given too much of a detailed brief – just that it was all to do with retirement – and that was it! The central character in this one is Tommy played brilliantly by Tim Bentinck who was in the first series of Torchwood One. Unfortunately, death is the way most people leave Torchwood – either that, or they are retconned! But Tommy has some ideas about retirement within the constraints of working for Torchwood and he’s planning an alternative. He’s been secretly pottering away on his own retirement dream but he needs Ianto’s help to realise it.”

As well as writing the adventure, Gareth is enjoying playing a different facet to Ianto’s character, having established himself as a firm favourite with listeners through his work at Torchwood Three in Cardiff.

He confirms: “It was great fun to play a different, more innocent side to Ianto in the first series, and to come back and write for him has been a great pleasure.

“The whole idea of Ianto living out his fantasies as a secret agent has been in my head for some time. Ianto and Yvonne get trapped in a James Bond world – it’s a bit risqué.

“When I was writing there were some moments where I thought Tracy-Ann will either love me or hate me for this – the reasons for which will become evident! “Yvonne is a great character. At least you know when you work for Torchwood that you are sort of being looked after by Yvonne – as long as you do exactly what she says! She can be very unforgiving if you stray from her agenda.” When you’re writing a script that features the character you play, do you ever consider giving yourself all the best lines?

Gareth laughs: “Ianto always gets a couple of nice dry one-liners, though there wasn’t any temptation to give myself the best lines – I definitely wanted to make the story about Tommy. Ianto has some fun interjections but Tim has got such great comic timing I wanted to utilise that as best as I could.”

A MYSTERIOUS FORCE is wiping out Torchwood in Locker 15, by Matt Fitton, the second story in this set, and the only person who can save London is a cleaner called Dave.

Matt explains: “The Torchwood One stories are all about office life, in a way. I just wanted to look at how Yvonne runs things, and what it is like working there for her. Yvonne likes to know her staff but she can be incredibly ruthless, to get the job done.

“The first box set was about the new person coming in to work at Torchwood and seeing it through her eyes; volume two was about business as usual and the day to day work. Series three is about what happens when you retire, and we’ve various stories about people coming to the end of their Torchwood working lives and their different ways of leaving.

“In Locker 15 they uncover a problem in the offices of Torchwood One and need the help of an old employee who used to be a cleaner and has been retired for a few years, as he might know something about what’s going on.”

Although Torchwood as a series features fantastical ideas, there’s always been an element of the real world to it. As the original publicity for the television series said, it’s The X Files meets This Life.

Matt explains: “Even though Torchwood are dealing with weird and wonderful aliens you’ve got to remember they still have an office to run – with people to empty the bins, refill the paper tray and fix the photocopier. Would someone who has done that at Torchwood need to be retconned when they leave, and what would the longer term effects of that be?

“Just what happens when someone retires from Torchwood? There’s a high mortality rate among its agents, but what about the cleaner? That’s when we meet Dave Cook, who Yvonne and Ianto find in a care home, and they try to prise information from his memory.

“In the past, we’ve likened Torchwood One to the TV series Archer which features a dysfunctional group of spies – here we have a dysfunctional office, which just happens to be full of alien hunters.”

THE EVENTS of the Torchwood team’s domestic lives come to the forefront in The Rockery by Tim Foley. Anne Hartman has retired to the country, which comes as a surprise to her daughter. Has Yvonne met a problem even she can’t solve?

Tim says: “This is probably the first Torchwood story I’ve pitched completely from scratch. I was watching the recording of 9 to 5 (from the previous box set) and Tracy-Ann squared up magnificently against Jane Asher. Yvonne’s dynamic with a figure that was older and equal to her was so electric. So I got in touch with James Goss and asked, ‘Are we ever going to meet Yvonne’s mother?’ Hint hint hint. He got in touch with Russell T Davies who really liked the idea, and then we found ourselves working out how we could meet Anne Hartman, what she was like and what she’d think of the daughter she’d raised. It turns out that the themes worked really well for the next Torchwood One box set, so I leapt at the chance to write it!

“Yvonne’s mother has retired early and Yvonne isn’t happy about it. Anne Hartman moves to the countryside and we see Yvonne bouncing back and forth between her life in the city and her mother’s new life in Shropshire. It’s a story of a strained relationship, with love and pain and things unsaid and strange plants at the bottom of the garden.”

For Tim, expanding on Yvonne’s personal life was something of a joy. He says: “This is somebody retiring who has never known Torchwood… and never wishes to know it. It would be very easy to write a character that was effectively Yvonne senior, but we found it far more interesting to imagine Yvonne as her father’s daughter (I obliquely referred to Yvonne’s dad in a previous Torchwood story since we decided he’s mentioned as working in security in a certain 1970s Doctor Who!).

“Who, then, is Anne? I’m really excited for listeners to meet her. Unlike her husband and her daughter, Anne has always tried to live a quiet life. But with Yvonne back in the picture, there’s hardly going to be much of that…”

Tracy-Ann adds: “There’s so much love for Yvonne. Whenever I’m on tour, people bring her up and say how much they love her in Big Finish.”

Matt Fitton and producer James Goss have previously told Vortex that their writing for Torchwood One has been partly inspired by bad office jobs they’ve held in the past. Has there been anything from Tim’s own working life that’s fed in to this story?

He reveals: “I mainly work in theatre, and this script is the most play-like I’ve written for Big Finish (that’s something James Goss noted as well, I think he called me out for using act breaks!). It’s three characters navigating what it means to be human; it’d work well on stage. I adore the fact that Torchwood as a show can be this flexible. Some days I get to write about the end of the world, and on other days I get to write about a lonely woman tending to her rockery. When I retire myself, it’s a time I’ll look upon very fondly!”

TASKED WITH bringing the trio of tales to life was director Barnaby Edwards, who tells Vortex what he thinks makes Torchwood One so special: “We only got a glimpse of Yvonne Hartman on television before she met her well-deserved cybernetic fate. And yet those brief minutes during which she lit up the screen with her ruthless, camp, solipsistic effulgence were enough to make us thirst for more. Similarly, we never got as much Ianto as that character merited.

“So, for me, what makes the Torchwood One adventures so special is expanding our knowledge of Yvonne, the black widow spider who is the master brain at the centre of Torchwood’s web, and Ianto, the loyal puppy who is very much the heart of Torchwood.”

Barney – who also directed the first two box sets of this series – particularly enjoys working with the series’ two main leads. He says: “Tracy-Ann and Gareth are two of my favourite performers. The partnering of cynical Yvonne with the exuberant, innocent and utterly loveable Ianto is what makes these stories such a joy to direct. They’re the best double act around.”

And were there plenty of memorable moments during the recording days? Barney grins: “Many, actually. Hearing Ianto’s James Bond fantasies, finding out what makes Tommy (Torchwood’s Q, played by the brilliant Tim Bentinck) tick, and – of course – meeting the only woman more terrifying than Yvonne Hartman: her mother!”

#latter days #big finish #torchwood #ianto jones #yvonne hartman #for everyone who (like me lbr) prefers to read almost everything on one website #ur welcome! :)

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steve-rogers-new-york · 6 years ago

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“Gift Dressing” — Early 20th Century Gift Wrapping

Because today is my birthday, I thought I would do something vaguely birthday themed for today’s post. And seeings as I’ve already covered cards for Valentines Day, I thoughts a look at how gift wrapping looked in our time period would be interesting.

History

Victorian Beginnings While gift wrapping in one form or another has long existed throughout the world, in the west, the practice as we would recognise it got its start during the Victorian era. Initially, in the UK specifically, it was employed by the upper-class as a show of status and wealth, and the wrap was made from wallpaper material — dense and difficult to work with. The act of wrapping was an extravagant affair with elaborately decorate papers, ribbon, and lace.

Wrapping at the Turn of the Century — 1900-1920 Over time both the material used and the intention behind the practice shifted. By the beginning of the 20th century, the paper used was light with bright colours — tissue paper was common for the first decade or so. More cost-effective manilla papers were also used at this time by stores to wrap purchases, and by the middle-class as a less ostentatious material with better coverage for gifts. This time also saw a shift in the British motivations behind wrapping — rather than showing wealth, wrapping was used to conceal the value of the gift from anyone but the recipient.

Advent of Modern Printed Gift Wrap — 1917 In America, the first company to supply gift wrap was Hy-Sill Manufacturing Inc, however, a change in materials happened in 1917 with the accidental discovery by the men who would become the Hall Brothers, and later the behemoth Hallmark. During Christmas that year, the brothers’ stationary store sold out of the then staple wrapping material of mono-colour tissue paper — gasp! Looking for a substitute to meet demands, they found in their inventory a stack of decorative “fancy French paper”. This paper was generally used to line envelopes for decoration, not for wrapping, but at 10c a sheet it was a hit with their customers and returned the following year to the same success. In 1919 the success of this new approach to wrapping paper saw the brothers producing and selling their own prints and the rest is history.

World War II Wrapping paper was one of the few exceptions to paper rationing towards the wareffort. It was decided that not rationing the material would contribute to keeping up morale. During this period, sales of wrapping paper incready by some 20% as a result.

Materials and Techniques

The materials used have expanded and come in and out of favour over the decades. Some of the materials that were available (if not necessarily popular) during the interwar period included:

Tissue paper: Most common material for the first two decades of the 20th century. It would come in single colour options, typically festive colours like white, green, and red.

Printed paper: By the beginning of the 1920s, the Hall Brothers were producing their printed paper to customers and it proved a popular option. In 1919 they sold it for 25c for three sheets. The designs on printed paper changed in the 1930s and 1940s with the growth in Art Deco style — out were the florals and cherubs, and in were the repetitive and geometric patterns.

Manilla paper: A cheaper option, this plain brown paper was a favourite of stores to wrap purchases, and a viable option if the more fancy papers were out of your budget.

Newsprint: Admittedly, I didn’t see this mentioned in many of my research sources, but I feel it would be remiss not to mention it. As people still resort of newspaper as a wrapping material today in a pinch, I highly doubt that it wasn't utilised in the early 20th century.

Fabric: A wrapping style long used in Japan, this was another cost-effective way of wrapping a gift. I, again found little mention of its use, but in a pinch, it does need like an obvious solution to wrapping a gift. Where our boys ever employed it, I’ll leave to your best judgement.

Cellophane: Introduced in 1912, cellophane was used for wrapping candy, and grew substantially in popularity from 1928-1930 after it was made moisture-proof. It was used both alone and together with other wrapping materials.

Gift bags and boxes: An alternative to paper wrapping, and also reusable.

Beyond the types of material used for the wrapping, also worth noting are the products used to secure any wrapping — because scotch tape did not make an appearance on the scene until 1930!

Ribbon: An obvious staple of wrapping, even today, but prior to adhesive options, ribbon was more than just decoration. Ribbon was used to secure the paper and ensure that the gift remained securely covered. There is a particular skill to this.

Twine and rope: A less fancy alternative to ribbon, these served the same function.

Adhesive Seals: These were small, gummed seals that could be applied to wrapping paper. They worked in the same way as stamps, requiring the user to lick the back-side before applying it to the paper. From this description, they were tedious to use and had a limited life-time.

Wax: The same as one would use a wax seal to seal a document, they could also be used to secure gift wrapping, this it is a very fancy option. So fancy.

Hall Sheen Ribbon: A product produced by Hall Brothers in the 1930s to accompany their printed paper, this was a ribbon that stuck to itself and gift wrap when moistened.

Adhesive tape: Scotch Cellulose Tape was invented in 1930 by Scotch brand, which was a game changer when it came to gift wrapping. Prior to this, Scotch as introduced their adhesive masking tape for painters, but the 1930 product was the first waterproof, clear adhesive tape. It would be worth mentioning that the skills and knowledge needed to wrap without tape would have still been around long after tape became available, and would likely have been seen as a luxury, especially to anyone on a budget.

All the other embellishments: The fancier you wanted to go, there were also other adornments one could add to gifts, including bows, tassels, decorative seals and stamps, etc.

So how much would these items cost? While it wouldn’t reflect lower-cost retailers, both Loesers and A&S printed prices in Brooklyn Daily Eagle papers, which gives an idea of how much higher-end products would have put you out of pocket.

And then, there was always the ever-present option of getting a department store to wrap for you!

Brooklyn’s Abraham & Straus department store (and likely Loesers as well) offered gift wrapping services — at ‘a small charge’. Obviously, this was intended for customers, but tell me you don’t believe Bucky could charm himself some free wrapping.

Image Sources

Woolworths ribbon, 1930s | Source Woolworths ribbon and wrap, 1930s | Source A&S and Loesers Price ad complilation | [1] [2] [3] A&S Wrapping Service ad compilation | [1] [2] [3]

This post has been sponsored by Patreon supporter Joanna Daniels —longtime, and beloved follower. She and I would like to dedicate the post to the loving memory of her mother Joan Daniels, who sadly passed away this past year and who is sorely missed. Spring has hit us and the days are getting sunnier, don’t forget to get out and enjoy it!

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