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maxwell-grant · 4 years ago

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Brazilian character review: Jose Carioca

I can't say I have too many strong feelings on Zé Carioca as a character, but in retrospective, I think the existence of Zé Carioca is very emblematic of the way Brazil is viewed overseas, and the contrast between this sort of idyllic postcard fantasyland version of Brazil that gringos see, and the reality.

The first thing that comes to mind when I look at Zé Carioca, other than he's a popular Disney mascot, is that contrast. He's intended to look like a carefree young carioca (a term we use for people that come from Rio), but he's perpetually dressed like a 1920s caricature, the kind you only really find in pictures of your grandpa, and attempts to modernize his look have robbed him of his charm. His name is "José", which is a common Portuguese name usually abreviated to "Zé", but in pretty much every media he shows up in, they always say his name the Spanish way, instead of the Portuguese way.

The Zé Carioca that people outside of Brazil know is a character that only exists in the context of an ensemble with Donald and Panchito, mostly defined as a suave, romantic party goer, the phlegmatic opposite to the choleric Donald and the sanguine Panchito (I haven't checked out the new Caballeros cartoon, although I intend to). The Zé Carioca that Brazilians know is largely defined as a charismatic scammer who keeps going to great lengths to avoid work, the joke being that usually he goes through a lot more work to do so than he would have otherwise.

It's based a lot on the stereotype of cariocas as lazy beach-dwellers who look down on honest work to instead cheat and take shortcuts. Every region of Brazil has it's own stereotypes, in fact, Zé Carioca in Brasil has a lot of relatives to embody those, but gringos treat Brazil like Rio is the only city in it, which is why this stereotype gets applied to Brazilians in general, and, well, it is a stereotype to begin with. It's a change that allows him to work as a solo protagonist, but it also leads to a disconnect where fans of Zé Carioca don't quite see eye-to-eye with most depictions of the character not made locally, because it's not really the same character.

I gotta stress that I don't dislike Zé Carioca, not at all, I do think the idea behind his creation was a good one. I can't think of any Brazilian character, either created here or just coming from Brazil, who was a popular name overseas during this time period (could be wrong though, but nothing comes to mind). He gets credit for that, if nothing else. He's a fairly cute character and I do like seeing him when he does show up. But Zé Carioca seems like one of those characters who is popular as a mascot, but not so much as a character.

I think the best way I can explain this disconnect between what Zé Carioca is by sharing this text I found, written by Gabriel Bayarri here, that I translated and post below. I think this kinda gets to the heart of how I feel about Zé Carioca, which is not a dislike, just a disconnect.

Brazil was the land of Zé Carioca, he who had shown the world in 1942, during WW2, a Brazil that seemed cordial and happy, a Brazil that valued it's mixed heritage as a symbol of national culture. The parrot presented to Donald Duck a city proud of itself, joyfully beautiful, where samba, cachaca, parties and romantic rascals all mixed together.

Now, he's watched, terrified, as his wonderful city embraced armed heroes, and took flight perplexed, trying to understand what had changed in a city he recalled painted in watercolor strokes. Zé Carioca flew to the heart of the tropical city, where spaces of resistance stood symbolized, straggling remnants of a democracy that he used to think was harmonious and shielded against the monsters that ruled it.

The parrot fluttered its wings between the hills, and rested its feathers in its beloved square in Cinelândia, and breathed its history, of which he only recognized the harmonious part: the square had become a central place for beginnings of the 20th century, representing the Belle Époque of Rio de Janeiro. Cinelândia acquired French features, so desired by the recent Brazilian Republic, and it tried to become a Tropical Paris. At it's center, slaves recently freed from plantations arrived, while the square acquired a cosmopolitan personality. This was all familiar to the parrot, who found in history a joyful account.

From abroad, the narrative of a happy and harmonious Rio de Janeiro recovered the idea of a cordial Brazil, without racism and without violence, promoted by Zé Carioca. In addition, this imagery of the city was promoted to foreigners as the period of a “Golden Brazil”: the drop in poverty rates, the increase in investments and the enormous influence in the Latin American and global context.

The bird breathed the chronicles of literary bohemians who populated the surroundings, and who built in their writings the characters who walked the square, its muses, its rogues, its carnival heroes or its capoeiristas. Authors built at that time a model of the “carioca people” that the parrot Zé Carioca repeated and synthesized in his image: a kind, cordial and warm character who crossed borders, transmitting to the world a image of Brazil harmonized and absent from conflicts and violence. It was that conception that, in Brazil, everything would tend to soften and adapt.

Cinelândia had begun to fill with cinemas, rooms of spectacle. Hotels, restaurants, night bars. The arrival of hotdogs at the Square was a revolutionary bridge, from North-American influences to the carioca lifestyle.

The parrot was proud of his city, until a woman approached him: “Our hot dog is carioca to the core”, explained the street vendor who was carrying a T-shirt with the face of Marielle Franco. Who was this woman who wanted to explain to him what was like to be brazilian: Who was this woman on her shirt? Where was Carmen Miranda, with the fruits on her head?

Then, the parrot listened in the square to the story of the murder of the councilwoman Marielle and her driver, and the new reports of violence on “carioca nights”, and its police conflicts against immigrants.

But Zé Carioca did not believe that his beautiful city was affected by these issues.

The parrot was aware that Cinelândia represented an image of the essence of what it was to be Brazilian, the construction of its own unique soul in a public space, the creativity and trickery and joy.

But he was surprised to hear that his happy and dancing people were also active warriors, who had used this square over the decades as a historical space for building demands, from The March of 100.000 against the military dictatorship, and the recent manifestations against the new president.

In one of its streets, the square bore the name of Marielle herself, the murdered councilwoman whose plaque had been broken publicly by the current governor of Rio, and whose death had become a symbol.

The parrot had Disneysified the image of his city, in a portrait of heroes, castles and tropical princesses, which made it difficult to understand now the political victory of monsters.

It seemed as if the history of Brazil was rebuilding itself before his eyes, and its people were now made up of activists, women warriors, LGTB+ collectives and anti-racism movements that defended civil rights and identity demands, of a Brazil that could not be pigeonholed, because it wasn't made for beginners.

What had happened to his colorful Brazil? – he asked himself nervously, replacing his straw hat and plucking his feathers.

Something transformed in the parrot's gaze, and after a brief disturbance, he decided to regain his composure. The bird spread its wings and took flight to Copacabana Palace, the place where it had been born from the hand of Walt Disney 77 years ago. He needed to reflect, think of the the gray tones of truth that splashed in his colorful costume, and seek new spaces to resist the monsters.

Perhaps the world had believed Zé Carioca's colorful report, in the palette of illusions that an emerging Brazil offered, and they had forgotten that, like every grown child, Brazil had nightmares. Kicking up at night over its racism, structural militarism, murderous violence, patriarchal inequalities.

Perhaps Zé Carioca had fallen in love with the exuberance of a land of fruit, sailors and smiles, and the world had listened to his account, a lovable sales pitch to tourists and sporting mega-events, and they had forgotten the voices of their people who watched helplessly the approach of a military parade from congress.

Zé Carioca's flight transformed the parrot, and in his old age, he went through a rite of passage to adulthood. After years of blindness to the violence of a post-colonial society and it's extended torture under jackboots, Zé Carioca opened his eyes, and faced the hidden part of a wounded Brazil.

A Brazil that had been dressed up in tropical colors and that now had to be sincere, with the world and with itself, in order to overcome the times of monsters.

#replies tag #disney ducks #jose carioca #zé carioca #brazil #BRASIL HUE PORRA #olha pra ser honesto eu nunca tinha realmente parado pra pensar no zé carioca na minha vida #mas tu quer um textão vai ter textão #não que eu ache ruim que o personagem seja meio antiquado #mas eu achei bem interessante a ideia de isso ser parte de uma história #em que o zé carioca é um simbolo de uma coisa que simplesmente não existe mais #e talvez nunca tenha existido #acho que isso pode ser uma ideia interessante pra explorar

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olderthannetfic · 3 years ago

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speaking of Racism in fandom, the absolute disingenuous antis who use racism to justify their hate. Not even to mention how racist fans tend to be when it comes to east asian media, but how anti-racist "action" is their excuse to bully. Proshipping is "white people behavior" and the highest crime one could commit is """whitewashing""" a dark skinned character. Most antis don't even know what the term whitewashing means, they think it's like taking white out to a black (always african american and never anything else) character's skin. Not only are their notions of race activism wholly American lib inspired, they're stupider than the average libs take too.

I can't help but wonder how their views work in real life. They do not know that the concept of whiteness is ever changing to keep a select few in power, they can't define whitewashing, the worst hatecrime they've had to endure is someone on tiktok calling them stupid. With the recent chinese femboy ban, the crazy ass Genshin Impact fandom said it was a good thing because then a popular mlm ship that antis hate would be banned. The Mihoyo devs don't ever want to stream in english because of how racist fans are in their chat. In the more broader anime fandom, supposedly 'pedophilic' and 'incestuous' ships are a product of the simple Asian need to fuck children, according to them. They're on the verge of saying slurs with #stopasianhate in their bio. This doesn't even mention that no one knows what the ethnic minorities in any east asian country are and they don't care to find out. I'll admit, I follow some antis, they're shit but art and writing is art and writing, and it's good to follow people you disagree with to keep the reason why I believe what I do fresh. I've never seen a single one of them talk about the Uigher concentration camps in China, even the Chinese Americans who weaponize their identity to lend credit to otherwise stupid ass opinions. They have no clue of Imperial Japan's legacy in Korea and China. They find the few black people in these countries and make them their martyrs without even knowing the history of anti-black racism in east asia.

It's embarrassing.

Don't get me wrong, there are fucking idiots on the proship side too. A rise of anti-communist sentiment in the wake of the femboy ban for one, exposing fake ass lefties. Those proshippers that are a hop skip and a jump from being an anti because they need their bad ships to be good and pure and politically correct somehow. General cultural insensitivity because why not, we're all American here. The tendency to have a stick up their ass and using their twitter therapist degree to say what does and does not constitute as a trigger- or using the fact that they go to therapy to give their opinion credibility.

I hate mentally ill people/s. Yes I am one. I'm like Candace Owens, just because I am this way doesn't mean I have to like it.

Anyway, just finished Word of Honor. What the fuck.

What the fuck is wrong with morons on the internet? Or what the fuck was that ending on WoH?

(Yes, agreed. It went from my new fandom to a big, fat "MEH" for me. I don't even want fixit fic. I just fail to care anymore. The drama pacing and pasted on nohomo ending didn't help, but the parts I hate most are from the book, so...)

The irony is that this kind of fan is not only a jerk and an idiot, they're a bad fan. Understanding those cultures is the key to understanding their media that everyone claims to love.

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infinite-xerath · 4 years ago

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Runeterra Retcons 4: Varus

Unlike the other Champions I’ve covered, Varus’s history is surprisingly straightforward. He was released all the way back in 2012 and, as far as I can recall, was the first Champion to ever receive any sort of major promotional material in the form of a short comic. He’s very straight-forward in both concept and design: a man willing to sell his soul, his very humanity, for revenge on the people who took everything from him. Given that this was before Kalista was added to the game, Varus had little choice but take matters into his own hands by bargaining with a vaguely-defined Eldritch being who would give him the power he needed in exchanged for taking over his body.

Original lore here

Varus’s lore is a very traditional revenge story, albeit with a slightly interesting twist in that he is the maker of his own tragedy. Varus opted to place his duty over the well-being of family and, in the process, was unable to even TRY to protect them while his village was being reduced to burning rubble. Out of grief and rage Varus turned to bargaining with the very entity he fought so hard to keep confined now that he no longer has anything to lose.

I and many others liked Varus’s story, and to be honest, Riot could have honestly just kept him more-or-less the same when they updated him post-retcon. Just remove the mention of the League and maybe better-define what the black flames were, and you’d be good. In fact, Riot technically did the former, as his second lore is basically identical save for removing any mention of the League of Legends.

Now, it’s at this point that things start to get a little more complicated. Now, if you want a more comprehensive breakdown of the Darkin and their history, I advise you go check out the part centered around Aatrox and his long and convoluted history, but tldr: the Darkin were a race of beings of whom only five remained, and it was later confirmed with Rhaast that they’re specifically a race of living weapons with the ability to possess whoever wields them. Now, while Varus was specifically possessed by an ominous black flame called Pallas, many drew parallels between him and the other Darkin characters, especially since Varus’s also seemed to be alive.

Given that the flames were never really elaborated on or given a proper origin story, Riot decided that it would probably be best to just go ahead and retcon Varus into being a Darkin as well, and nobody had any real qualms with this. It was a common fan theory for years, so why not? Just change the story a bit so that the flames were actually just a Darkin bow all along and boom, you’ve pretty-much done all you needed to properly fit Varus into the new post-reboot Runeterra.

Well, apparently Riot did not feel this way, as it was with Varus’s 2017 retcon that they decided to finally give fans a proper origin story for who and what the Darkin were. That origin story goes a little something like this.

Alright, so Varus is now an alien. They decided to make Varus himself the Darkin, rather than the man who would later claim the bow. OK, that’s fine. I mean, the whole alien thing is kinda weird and still very vaguely explained, but again, my full thoughts on the history of the Darkin as a whole can be seen in the Aatrox analysis. What I think is most important here is that Riot made an attempt, however sloppy, to explain who and what the Darkin were and finally give context to why Aatrox and Rhaast are such big threats to the world.

Now, it’s the next change that got a lot of controversy around it. Rather than just change the name of the Ionian guard who let Varus possess him, the guy who lost his family to the Noxian invasion, Riot decided to replace him with a pair of entirely new characters: Valmar and Kai, a duo of gay Ionian hunters.

Now, I’m just gonna get this out of the way: I’ve got no real qualms about gay relationships in media. Hell, we have a few LGBT Champions in the game already, and even some in the broader expanse of the world. My main gripe comes from the introduction of Valmar and Kai themselves, and how they’re just sort of these… Nothing characters. I mean, in the first lore, we knew who Varus was. We may not have known him well, but we could at least get a general sense of his character: he was proud of his skill, committed to the duty given to him even at the risk of his family, but ultimately succumbed to grief and rage when his decision caused him to lose everything he held dear. Varus was a good man warped by the loss of his home and loved ones, and that made him a fairly compelling character.

Valmar and Kai are… Two gay hunters. That’s it. That’s literally all we know about them from the bio alone. I mean, yes, Riot released a comic to further expand on these characters, but if your answer to the questions raised in your story are “go and read this extra supplementary material for context,” that’s… A problem.

On the topic of supplementary material, Riot also released a music video about Varus. It’s… OK. I personally don’t care much for the song but the visuals alone are really well-done. It’s supposed to detail the conflict between Valmar, Kai and Varus, but most of the context behind it is explained in the comic and short story.

Honestly, Varus’s retcon is kind of baffling. I mean, he didn’t receive a visual rework, his kit remained pretty-much the same as it’s always been, and he doesn’t even have any new voice lines in-game to indicate that he’s three different guys all stuck in one body. In fact, people who play him in-game without reading the lore probably wouldn’t ever be able to guess as much. Riot went to so much effort promoting Varus’s lore update with a music video, a new bio, a new color story, and a three-part comic, but they really haven’t changed anything about him in the game itself. They put more effort into him than they do for most ACTUAL Champion VGU’s. So… Why?

Admittedly, this is where I’m going to delve a bit into conspiracy theory territory, but I genuinely believe this is a case of Riot trying to push League’s first openly queer relationship. Seriously, Valmar and Kai are the first time a character in League has been confirmed gay IN THE LORE ITSELF and not just through a random tweet. Now, the word “pandering” gets thrown around a lot these days, and I don’t really like to use it, but it really does feel like Valmar and Kai were added JUST to have a confirmed gay couple in the lore.

The fact that they’re not even acknowledged IN THE GAME ITSELF really makes the whole thing feel like an attempt to just appeal to the LGBT crowd, though I’ve seen plenty of people in that community react… Less than positively to the portrayal. I mean, two gay guys are literally trying to hold back a corruptive, even influence with the power of love. I don’t wanna delve too much into the political side of things here, but that’s honestly about as cliché and stereotypical as you can get. Fans in general were extremely displeased that the man they knew as Varus, this genuinely tragic figure from the original lore, was replaced by two guys who’s only defining character trait is how much they apparently love each other.

Apparently, these complaints came through loud and clear, as Riot would update Varus one final time after deciding to retcon the whole alien plotline. So, let’s have a look at how his current, canon bio handles him.

Alright, well… Riot heard the complaints, but whether or not they fixed him is another matter. It seems like they tried to give Varus back his original origin story, basically making the archer we new from his first bio Shuriman. The problem is that there’s significantly less context for him now; we don’t know anything about his family, we don’t know why the temple he’s guarding is so important, and the story never even explicitly states that his family died!

I guess it’s implied because the Ascended acknowledged his “sacrifice,” though him being rewarded by becoming a demigod doesn’t quite have the same impact as exchanging his life and soul for a shot at revenge. On top of that, Varus seems pretty quick to give up on the whole “sacred duty” thing, despite the story claiming that being the thing he “he held above all else.” It all feels like a botched effort to mix his original bio with the new Ascended lore that Riot tied in with the Darkin.

Then, of course, there’s Valmar and Kai, who are… Still just gay hunters. They haven’t been expanded on at all. They helped drive the Noxians off from their home, Kai was apparently wounded, and Valmar decides that dipping his lover in an ominous pool of evil to save his life is a bad idea. Seriously, the bio states that they “inadvertently” freed Varus, but there was nothing accidental about it! There was no bargain, they weren’t tricked, it was literally just one guy making a stupid decision that got him fused with his lover and an ancient evil being.

Also, can we address the fact that Varus still wants to avenge the destruction of his race? Who does he want to avenge? The other Ascended? The Ascended who literally warred with each other for centuries? The same Ascended that HE FOUGHT AGAINST during the civil war for control of Shurima? Did Riot just… Forget that he’s not an alien anymore in that brief paragraph? They stated earlier that he was a cruel, merciless killer who just went to slaughter whoever he was told to slaughter, so for some reason I don’t feel like he’d care all that much about his “race” being felled. Oh, and there’s also still the unnamed warrior queen, who I THINK is meant to be a precious Aspect of the Sun? It’s never really stated in the bio itself.

Alright, enough ranting. Varus’s current lore suffers from one major fault: it is trying way too hard to tell several stories all at once. It tells the story of Varus as a human, Varus as an Ascended, Varus as a Darkin, the “story” of Valmar and Kai, and how they got fused with Varus. The writers tried way too hard to cram everything into a single bio and, as a result, nothing is elaborated on. Nothing is really explained, we don’t get to know the characters who are involved in the gestalt entities now known as Varus, and reason for his current existence AS a gestalt entity are just kinda silly, if we’re being honest.

So, how can we fix this? I admit: this was a tough one. There were a lot of different directions I could go when rewriting Varus’s lore, but I decided to take the Kayn approach, where the human host in the focus of the bio. Originally, I did have a whole bio written out for Varus and how he became an Ascendant, but I ultimately realized that I was going to run into the same issue Riot did: trying to cram way too much into a single character overview. So, instead, I chose to focus in more on the story of Valmar and Kai, and how the Darkin Bow was freed after ages of confinement. Without any further ado, please enjoy.

For years, the Darkin Bow has remained confined within the Ionian city of Pallas. The bow’s true nature has long been lost to time, though legends say it holds the spirit of an ancient god from a vast desert land. Others claim that the bow itself is something much older and viler than history itself dares to remember. Whatever the truth may be, the people have Pallas have guarded the bow for generations, choosing only their most skilled warriors from the task. Among them, none seemed better-suited for the task than Kai and Valmar.

Kai and Valmar were inseparable since they were children. Kai, a prodigy marksman, was known for his sense of humor and fierce resolve. Though infamous for his pranks, Kai would never hesitate to step in and defend someone in need, no matter how poorly the odds stood in his favor. By contrast, Valmar had trained in the ways of swordsmanship since he was old enough to grip a blade. Diligent and studious, Valmar was what many considered a model samurai in the making, yet he was also unendingly curious about the world and the many wonders it held.

At a glance, Kai and Valmar seemed near-total opposites, yet the two formed an unbreakable bond from the day they met. Kai would often accompany Valmar to explore the surrounding wilderness, only for Valmar to shelter Kai whenever one of his pranks went awry. As each boy matured, mastering the bow and blade respectively, their bond became something deeper than simple friendship. Valmar was a part of Kai, and Kai a part of Valmar. Neither was complete without the other, and so it came as little surprise that when Valmar was chosen to guard the Temple of the Bow, Kai soon followed.

Together, Valmar and Kai drove off many would-be thieves seeking to claim the cursed weapon’s power as their own. The two fought as one, each arrow from Kai’s bow in perfect sync with every swing of Valmar’s blade. Eventually, they came to be known as the Locust and Mantis, for the whirring of Kai’s arrows and the elegance of Valmar’s blade. It was believed that none could stand up to their combined might… Until the Noxians came.

From their post at the temple, Valmar and Kai watched in horror as the invaders stormed their home, setting fires and killing anyone who dared to stand in their way. For the first time, two warriors found themselves at odds; Kai wished to help defend the people of Pallas, but Valmar insisted on protecting the temple. In the end, neither had much choice in the matter, for the Noxians soon had them cornered on the temple steps.

Valmar and Kai fought for hours, their combined might slowly waning against the invaders’ onslaught. Kai’s strength was the first to give out, yet before death could reach him, Valmar stepped in the way to shield his partner from the blow of a Noxian axe. Kai watched in horror as Valmar fell to the ground, lifeless. Enraged, Kai fired all the arrows he had left before taking up Valmar’s sword, slaying the Noxian forces assaulting the temple. Even still, he knew it would not be long before more came, seeking to claim the forbidden bow.

In that moment, Kai heard a voice calling to him from within the temple. It promised him vengeance and the strength to fight back. Driven by rage and grief, the wounded archer let the voice guide him inside, just as more Noxian invaders began their ascent up the temple’s stairs. It was there, in the darkness, that Kai at last set eyes upon the cursed weapon he and Valmar spent years protecting: a bow thrumming with unearthly power. Kai hesitated for only a moment before grasping the bow, letting its power wash over him.

Kai’s mind was filled with images and thoughts not his own: a vast desert empire, a man made a god, betrayal, war, and finally, imprisonment. These were the memories of Varus, an Ascended being who devoted his life to serving Shurima, only to be abandoned in his time of need. His bitterness and hatred had summoned the Darkin Bow, granting Varus the opportunity to seek revenge on those who had wronged him. In the end, Varus was sealed within the bow, becoming one with it… And now, he would become one with Kai as well.

As Varus’s memories filled Kai’s mind, the Darkin’s power corrupted his body. Varus prepared to usurp Kai’s form entirely, but to his surprise, the Ionian’s drive for vengeance matched his own. Kai was prepared to give anything to avenge Valmar, his fallen half, yet he would do so with his own hands rather than entrust the task to a fallen god.

Even as their minds fought, the archers’ new, fused body moved on pure instinct. One by one, the Noxian forces in Pallas were felled by crimson arrows born of pure malice. Seeing the corpses of his kinsmen and the ruins of his home only fueled Kai’s rage, which in-turn empowered the Darkin in his grasp. Finally, the two archers came to an agreement as the Noxians fled: Varus would lend Kai his strength, in exchange for the Ionian’s body once Kai’s vengeance was complete.

Now on borrowed time, Kai has but one objective: to find and kill everyone he holds responsible for the destruction of his home and the death of his partner. To Varus, however, the destruction of Noxus is but the first step toward a much larger goal: revenge against the gods who betrayed him, and the world that sealed him away…

So, that’s my take on Varus’s lore. Now, the first thing you’ll probably notice is that I only have one of the lovers being possessed. Frankly, I felt that this was probably the best direction to go with; Riot still hasn’t updated Varus in any meaningful way to include Valmar and Kai in any of his voice lines, and something tells me that, being owned by a certain Chinese company, they probably never will. Given the circumstances, I figured it was probably best to give him a backstory more befitting of his in-game voice lines, which still portray Varus as a man on borrowed time who’s giving what little he has left in pursuit of vengeance.

Even so, I decided to try my hand at fleshing out Valmar and Kai. The first thing I did was change them from random hunters to trained soldiers tasked with guarding the temple. This not only harkens back to Varus’s original lore, but it also gives them more of a reason to stand their ground against the Noxian invaders. I also wanted to flesh out their personalities a little more, because I’ll be completely honest: I legitimately couldn’t remember which one was which even after skimming back through the comic. I forgot that Kai was the one who was injured in the original story, not Valmar, but quite frankly it matters so little given how poorly their characters are fleshed out.

Now, as for Varus himself… Well, like I said: I did have a whole bio written out for him that ties into the new Darkin lore I introduced in my Aatrox analysis, but I decided to focus the story more on Valmar and Kai and only have that backstory briefly alluded to. A tad disappointing, I know, but hey, it’s still more than what we learned about Rhaast from Kayn’s bio.

So, that was Varus, the Arrow of Retribution, otherwise known as Riot’s botched attempt at LGBT representation. He’s a far cry from what he started out as, and yet, hilariously, he’s really not on account of them still not updating anything about him in-game. In that respect, the Varus you play as in League isn’t really even the same character(s) presented in the lore. While I still firmly believe that his backstory never needed to be changed so drastically in the first place, I least wanted to present the potential that this direction held, and how badly the opportunity was squandered.

Oh well. At least the music video still looks nice.

#Runeterra Retcons #Varus #League of Legends

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marewriteblr · 5 years ago

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Traits And Quirks For Characters In Fantasy (list)

idk if I’m the only one, but when creating characters for my wips, I like to google lists of traits and quirks to give a bit more depth to them. and since I mostly write fantasy, I thought my characters deserved some more fantasy-related traits and quirks, so here’s a list of 150+ traits and quirks for characters in a fantasy setting!! hope it helps some of you too

has tattoos that keep changing

bad vision—takes magical potion to see clearly

addicted to magical food or drink

weird things happen when they laugh, sneeze, cough…

sees things that aren‘t there—or are they?

speaks in rhymes

has a wandering scar

has a wound that never stops bleeding

shows symptoms of a curse but pretends to not know how they got it

physical signs when lying, eg hair growing unnaturally fast

can summon any mythical creature easily

has a mythical creature for a pet

brings a slight breeze with them whenever they enter a room

was dead once

refuses to eat certain type of food for no specific reason as though it were amoral or inethical

obsession with a particular period in history

obsession with a magical creature/species

doesn‘t dance or make music because weird things happen

haunted by a ghost, their best companion

always has a candle lit (eg for their ghost companion)

can speak a mystery language only very few people understand

can turn the light of single stars on and off as they please

used to be part of a secret society

wears shoes with wings, no one knows if they actually work

can predict the future correctly for a ridiculous/bizarre reason

lives at court, no one knows why or where they came from but they let them stay

can only talk in questions or riddles

always seen reading spell books though they can‘t do magic

always seen reading books though they can‘t read. bonus if the reason for this is magical

tells everyone about the time they did something they‘ve certainly never done

tells everyone they used to be a dragon, is obviously lying

is actually blind, no one has noticed

never speaks, only talks to people telepathically, they’re used to it by now

has blood of unnatural colour, tells the weirdest stories of why that is—story changes every time

sacrificed 7 years of their life to magical creature who might claim them any minute

sacrificed a body part, determined to get it back

sacrificed their good looks

always learning spells by heart and seen using them the next day as though they’d prepared it for the occasion

has a secret identity, eg can do a certain type of magic and sneaks out to commit crimes/perform on stage/meet their companions…

keeps getting into trouble because people are convinced they have magic, but they don’t

belongs to a human/non-magical species but was kidnapped years ago and never went back

is actually a ghost

is immortal but doesn‘t know anything about history—can tell you all about the migration of dwarf antelopes on their continent throughout the centuries though

always corrects people on history/mythology facts with things they can‘t possibly know if they weren‘t there themselves

allergic to magic. bonus if they‘re a powerful wizard or deity

obsessed with knives and swords. you can fight them but they‘re more interested in the crafting of your blade

allergic to a certain spell and only that spell for no apparent reason

always has a certain item or food in their pocket in case they need to bribe a magical creature today

miscorrects others‘ pronunciation of spells and pronounces them wrong themselves (eg emphasis on wrong syllable)

talks in a fake elf accent to piss off elves

pretends to be a species they clearly aren’t judging by their appearance, and gets defensive when told so, calling people racist

gets themselves into trouble by trying to seduce nymphs when drunk. also an alcoholic

is cursed to never remember any names—has forgotten their real name a long time ago so no one can ever have that power over them

introduces themselves with a different name every time they meet someone

heavily worships an evil trickster god

ominously refers to themselves in third person

doesn‘t walk but jumps from roof to roof instead

predicts the future but is always horribly wrong

challenges people to a quest all the time

seems to know every person in the entire kingdom

seems to be enemies with every person in the entire kingdom

spends a lot of time in dimly-lit taverns seeking opponents for a strange board game

likes to look for bizarre monsters deep in the forest

talks to their dagger

talks too much during sword fights

gets involved in sword fights but only ever carries a paper sword with them

makes up crazy and hardly believable stories when asked about their past to hide their guilt

collects a particular type of item that can only be found on adventurous quests to dangerous places

has large horns on their head despite their species having no such thing, refuses to tell anyone why

never seen eating

never seen sleeping

takes every time anyone mentions something being hard or dangerous to do as a challenge to try it

wears an eyepatch solely for the looks of it

collects dangerous enchanted jewellery

random hissing

an excellent storyteller, like unnaturally excellent

politically involved and fights for giants‘ rights

has a finger that‘s mysteriously shorter than the others

is best friends with a demon

is nocturnal but loves sunlight

pretends to be completely resistant to pain

always sneaking around

has a tattoo that keeps dis- and reappearing

enchants people with their acting

has a wooden prosthesis

doesn‘t wear shoes

changes eye colour every day

wears gloves all the time and tells people it‘s for their safety

hears the trees talk to them

believes the apocalypse is near

pretends to be immortal

breaks into people‘s homes to steal food. no jewellery. only food

pins pressed flowers to their walls

believes that flowers grant wishes

has random visions of other people‘s pasts that aren‘t necessarily true but always get them into trouble

strongly believes in reincarnation

talks in a different accent every day

is convinced they are cursed

sees every minor conflict as a challenge to a sword fight

fights their battles using nothing but darts

is an archer and also blind or missing an arm

accidentally stabs themselves. a lot.

always carrying poison around „just in case“

is at fault for the fall of a mighty god

knows all about mythology

always up to date regarding drama and gossip between the gods

immediately scared they’re about to be cursed whenever someone raises their voice

still mourns over the death of a friend

whatever they touch breaks instantly

chews on their wand (definitely not a good idea)

always wears their hair tied up into a bun, is longer than rapunzel‘s when worn loose

brags they were good at picking locks but actually just hit it really hard until it breaks

accidental shapeshifting

still waiting for an ominous prophecy to foretell their destiny

makes weird/seemingly unnecessary bargains with strangers

has something slightly off about their appearance that makes people stop in their tracks to watch them

unhealthy obsession with cloaks

is a great fan of wizards. collects wands and hats like action figures

horses don‘t like them, they ride a wolf instead

sings the spells they use

constantly mumbling to themselves or someone others can‘t see

can duplicate themselves but can‘t do math so they‘re always a bit confused

has a leaf sticking to the back of their hand. don‘t ask them why

is a painter, travels very far to obtain a particular kind of paint

sketches their dreams in a book after they come to them at night

always seems to be charged with electricity

freckles on their cheeks dance when laughing or when light hits them

makes up prophecies and tells strangers about them

grows wings when high up due to fear of falling

gets arrested regularly for pranking nature spirits and deities

sneezes when using magic

insomniac, needs a particular spell or magical food/herb to fall asleep

magic makes them fall asleep (when they use it or when others use it nearby)

mixes the weirdest potions all day

can‘t eat spicy food, literally breathes fire

necromancy but only to revive their dead cat

turns the same colour of any food they eat

dreams of becoming a knight

horrible short term memory but can easily recite anything they read two centuries ago

makes their eye colour look white just to mess with people

can‘t remember spells for shit. says them incorrectly which always goes horribly wrong

terrible handwriting. bonus if they’re a messenger who has to send important letters on a daily, causing things to go very wrong

can correctly guess anyone‘s magical power on a scale from 1-10. is stupid enough to point it out aloud, too

wears cloaks that are way too long

carries a fake sword on their hip

carries way more weapons on them than necessary

uses their dagger as a toothpick

plays with dagger when thinking

supernaturally heavy sleeper

gets the different species mixed up a lot

tells everyone how many people they‘ve killed in their life

a die hard fan of a well-known assassin

a die hard fan of shakespeare‘s puck

desperately wants to be abducted by the fae

heavily affected by the phase of the moon

#this list will definitely be updated #but i thought i'd post it #since some might wanna use these #i certainly have already skskskk #writing resources #traits and quirks #characters #character development #worldbuilding #fantasy #top posts

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sweetobseesion · 5 years ago

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About Wang So :Did he deserve better?

TRIGGER WARNING IF YOU VEHEMENTLY THINK HE DOES *

Sweet ,serious ,intoxicating Wang So.One never gets enough of him do they ?

We all have our reasons for liking the character.I like him for his duality, whereas others seem to like him for various reason and sympathise with him on a deeper level.

I get that .Wang So was very much, from the beginning to the end of the drama “a political hostage”, only differing in various contexts. He couldn’t do what he wants or be with who truly wants to be because of “the throne”.

He went through abhorrent, extreme amounts of abuse.Both physically, from his hostage clan and emotionally, by loneliness and by being caught between his parents, one who favoured him and one who abandoned him.He was also caught between the feud of two rival clans .

He grew up,learning survival and sharpening his wit.All this is made very clear in the beginning of the drama.

Obviously, he never accepted his fate. Soon, he learned to kill ,hunt and wield his sword and excelled at it. He used his sword to save himself many times and it resulted in building him a savage , scary reputation.But he did not deny it, but instead he thrived of the fear and power it got him.

This is pretty much shown in his opening scene.

There has been hints of his “hunting tendencies” and his cruelty through the first episodes. Whether it’s what he says to Yeonhwa , or what people say about him and his “cruelty” to the members of his clan. He’s obviously very trained and experienced at both hunting and killing.

We see that when he assassinates the monks and sets the temple on fire.

The way he closes his eyes and lets his senses to do the work pretty much shows how skilled and experienced he is.

My points for deliberately emphasising on these aspects of his character is to point out that these are internalised parts of his character that he never loses,but doesn’t exhibit when he no longer has any particular need for it. I believe we tend to overlook it because the drama doesn’t show it much and it strategically begins the storyline from his entry into the palace,making his childhood nothing more than a tragic backstory for the audience to sympathise with.

Now ,enter Hae Soo. A modern woman with a heart of gold ,brute bravely and very modern,and in those times,unorthodox thinking and sensibilities.She has her own pursuit but she keeps butting into his and ruining his plans.

He doesn’t mind even threatening or raising a sword to her neck or going to duel with Wook to put an end to it.He’s very short tempered,emotionally explosive and has his feelings all over the place .

But she keeps going after him. And seeks him out even when he’s at his most deranged.

And even then,she spares him kindness and understanding,giving him exactly what he’s been craving for : Acceptance.

He takes his time,but he eventually understands and acknowledges his feelings and admits it to her.

She rejects him,countless times but he pursues her, relentlessly.His deep emotional attachment to her is no joke.But it’s also not a heroic ,epic form of love that should be held to a higher standard. Though I admire his ability to give her space ,respect her choices and seek her out whenever he can,I don’t appreciate how he blatantly disregards his own well-being or position to save her.As far as I am concerned,Hae Soo hates it too.In fact ,the two most “romantic” or “epic” moments in the series showcase this.

Though it’s safe to say that it did make Soo look at him in a different angle ,it also made Soo feel very guilty,as she starts to think he ends up where he is because of her.As much as I would like Soo to understand that everyone ended up where they are because of their own personal choices, I can’t deny the fact that she is partly right.

Given his already shaky position at court,him throwing everything away for the sake of a girl only makes him look irrational in the eyes of Goryeo society. From a prince who is savage and feared,he is now a prince who cares little about his position,throwing it all away for the sake of a Water Maid.If he had proceeded with a marriage,he would have looked like a buffoon and someone who’s clearly not suited to be King. They clearly would not have been very happy for long,because even if he’s stripped of his duties he would still be a prince by birth and thus be a target for whoever sat on the throne.

Besides ,him not being King would probably change history for the worst, as it would completely change the order of Kings,which would probably lead to change in the order of dynasties as well and the entire future of Korea ,maybe even Asia.

Many fans, still hold it that what Wang So got in the end was a very tragic fate and that he deserved better. But I will argue against that . For me ,it shouldn’t be a question of if he deserves better but what he deserves more?

The throne or love ? Its easy to conclude he needed love the most seeing how lonely he is. But the thing his being King is a lonely and paranoid Job. The show illustrates that very clearly by showing the lives of all three Kings before him. All of whom who died. lonely, miserable deaths.Even King Taejo ,who in the sense of the world ,had everything anyone could ask for: The power, the wealth, the Women, Children, friends and the woman he loves by his side for most of his reign, died a lonely ,miserable death.

We have very little idea of what truly went on between Court Lady Oh and King Taejo, besides how they ended and the miscarraige plot. We never Know if Court Lady Oh stayed truly due to her wishes or becuase the King refused to let her go. What we do see is ,the King being lonely and paranoid throughout the course of his life in the drama. But he only realises it after her death. Worse, he pretty much blames her for the way things ended and was probably, in denial of how miserable the woman he truly loves was for most of his life. There’s no guarentee So and Soo would have been different if she had continued to stay in the palace.

Most fans hold it that So is so different from his father, that he puts the woman he loves before anything else. But throughout the course of the drama, it doesn’t bring protection or comfort to Hae Soo, but puts her in danger and makes her more miserable than anything else. Because, in the political sense , Hae Soo is nothing more than leverage to be used against him. That has also been illustrated very clearly.

When she used by Yo & Wook to control So

When she was used by the Hwangbos to pressure him into marriage and to question his legitimacy as King

Even in death, her name is still used by Yeonhwa to hurt him. Making it clear, wherever she’s at, she will always be his weakness in the political sense. And his ability to put her before everything else, only makes him look like a weak, incompetent ruler in the eyes of the Goryeo society. As long as she stays, he would never fully concentrate on his duties as King and would never be able to rule the way he wants. Though its never said, it’s explicitly shown throughout the series.

Her leaving was a strategic move on her part, as it left him to do pretty much whatever he wants with the throne, and saved their child from danger. Though in the end, he may seem lonely and lost, it cannot be denied that in the eyes of the world, he has everything. Though it may seem like he has no freedom to do as he pleases, he has the freedom to rule as he pleases.

And it all comes down to the fact that he has no visible weakness or family. Though lonely, he used his power to enact laws no other King before or after him dared to. Though he was hated in his times,with his power and his work as King, he went on to become the most powerful King in history of Goryeo. Even Wook is forced to grapple with the fact.

Having the freedom to rule as he pleases is a freedom only few Kings can afford. Since this drama is focused on looking at him through the romantic lens , we pity him and say he has lost everything. I feel through that perspective, we are looking at it through a narrow spectrum, becuase once you look at the bigger picture, you will relaise how much he has gained than lost.

From being a lowly, absued political hostage that was hated and disrespected enough to be thrown stones at, he rose to become one of the most powerful king of Goryeo, all in his own merit. His rise in rank is clearly expressed through his clothes. Now everyone, who either threw a stone at him or abused him are under his mercy and there’s nothing they can do to escape it. From someone who’s life was controlled, he became someone who controlled everything. Though history is harsh, it isn’t free from the fact that he was a wise, capable ruler.

Which brings be back to my question of what he deserves more. From my perespective its obviously the throne, as only it had the power to reveal his true potential. Love is an an easy answer, but not a sensible one , becuase there’s no happy ending for them in Goryeo. As mentioned, he cannot escape his birth identity as a prince no matter how hard he tries, and politically, he will always be targeted by whoever sits on the throne. He would’ve gained very little if he were to choose that. Thus, I believe this ending is Karmic Justice, given the way the things turned out. And if this isn’t the most satisfactory underdog story to ever happen, I don’t know what is.

#ScarletHeartRyeo #scarlet heart ryeo #moonlovers #mlshr #Mlshranalysis #lee joon gi #mlshr:text #mlshr:characterstudy #Moonlovers:Scarletheartryeo #gwangjong #wang so

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mbti-notes · 5 years ago

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Hi mbti-notes, I hope you're doing well. I am an INFP young black American and the past few weeks have been such a nightmare. I obviously support the protests that have been taking place but I feel so hopeless at the same time. I've never been a fan of this country but the past few weeks have at least provided me with more clarity and conviction that there is nothing to be salvaged here. I have a friend who's also black but lives in europe and even we're at a loss for what to say to each (con't)

[con’t: other. I feel so angry and disgusted. I remember learning that as a part of anti-US propaganda during the Cold War, they’d show how black people have been treated in America and be like “this is how they treat their own people”. I’m not saying I support the USSR of course but it surprised me to hear that in the eyes of other countries, we’re as American as anyone else. It never felt that way. People can’t even protest police brutality without being faced with more police brutality. I’ve donated to bail funds, signed petitions, contacted my representatives about a piece of legislation that would help combat the issue of missing and murdered indigenous women but...I think the closest thing there is to a solution is for another Great Migration but this time, we just leave America. I feel bad saying that because obviously so many people don’t have the means to do so and it shouldn’t have to come to this but nobody wants us here. If the black panthers...]

It seems that tumblr disappeared the rest of your message, but I've read enough to detect some problematic thinking. It’s not about whether you’re “wanted”, it’s about the fact that you have a right to exist and be treated as human, equal to every other human under the law. It is beyond the scope of this blog to address politics and write political commentary. This blog primarily addresses individuals and how they cope with their circumstances. I won’t be able to understand all the experiences that you’ve had as a black American given such a short message from you. All I can do is bring to light your attitude and beliefs and how they affect your ability to cope and thrive in life.

Developmentally, irrational pessimism is always something that INFPs should be vigilant about due to Fi-Si loop and the struggle to develop Ne big-picture thinking skills. There is certainly lots of injustice in the world, but this doesn't mean that there isn't also a lot of good in the world. There are many good people out there doing good things, otherwise, you’d have nothing to donate money to. There are also a lot of decent people who understand that racism is a big problem but don’t know what to do about it. Yet your mind is only ever trained on the pain and suffering - this indicates Fi extremes. I have a longstanding habit of observing how different people respond to challenges in life. For example, I see some black Americans out there protesting, some are educating people, some are attacking people, some are sowing anarchy, some are running for office, some are giving up, some are hiding, some are writing, some are leading legislative initiatives. Black Americans as a group share the burden of racism, but each person handles it in their own way. What is your response and why?

You focus on the problems, drowning in negative feelings, and perhaps even look for evidence to reinforce the belief that everything is irredeemable (misuse of Si), which means that you lack a big picture perspective. For your own well-being, perhaps you need to make wiser decisions about how you spend your time, where you focus your energy, and with whom you associate. Otherwise, you are only ever a victim of circumstance, bending and breaking with every gust of wind. If there are things/people in your life that exacerbate your tendency to be negative, it's up to you to adjust your decision making so that you are not always surrounded by the negative. Just as you keep physically healthy by not eating crap food, you should keep mentally healthy by not feeding yourself a constant diet of emotional negativity. For example, people tend to be much more pessimistic when they spend too much time on social media or consuming political commentary that is designed to be emotionally provocative. Perhaps there are healthier ways to spend your time. Whether you followed this or that tweet is of little significance if it only ends up with you feeling miserable.

With respect to moving: There are a variety of methods to measure the health and well-being of a society, and it's natural to think about how your country stacks up against others. Different societies have their own character and excel at different things. However, it's important to remember that there is no society without problems. Some countries are better at hiding their problems than others. Europe is no paradise, as there have been long running problems with colonialist and xenophobic attitudes. American society tends to be very extraverted and media driven, so its problems are often hanging out there for all to see, which might make them seem a lot worse than they really are.

Each aspect of society, whether you think it is positive or negative, is the result of a trade-off. For example, people often respect the U.S. for its staunch commitment to free speech, which allows for marginalized voices to be heard. But the trade-off is that you may get a more noisy and toxic social environment, as all voices get elevated and amplified. The question for you, as an individual, is whether the trade-offs are worth it for the kind of life that you would like to live. With the example of free speech, I’d rather have free speech, so I’m willing to tolerate all the noise and accept it as the cost of doing business. Nobody can make these sorts of judgments for you, as you are the best person to decide what's best for you. Thus, I'm not sure what to tell you. I only remind people that the decision making process works best when you give proper consideration to EVERY side of an issue, as opposed to being myopic, extreme, or one-sided.

Right now, there is a lot of frustration and anger floating around. Being so emotional basically means being myopic, as you are hyperfocused on the things that make you sad or angry. This will blind you to everything else. When you lose sight of the positive, Ne might start to believe that the grass is greener elsewhere. There's no denying that the problem of racism against black people runs very deep in American society, all the way back to the founding of the nation on the backs of slaves. But are you denying that progress has been made?

When people use the word "progress" in relation to history, they mainly refer to how things changed for the better. I think people too often forget that progress almost always comes at a steep COST. Society doesn’t change because people miraculously get “enlightened” en mass. No. People suffer, things get mangled, blood is shed, and there is a period of intense pain and sacrifice - these details tend to get glossed over in history classes as hindsight and nostalgia take over. Creation and destruction are two sides of the same coin. Thinking that you can create something new and better without destroying what is old and obsolete is wishful thinking. To be clear, I'm not advocating destruction; I'm only saying that, in reality, you cannot escape destruction, as it is a necessary stage in the process of creation. If you are unlucky, you get to live during "interesting" times. But, viewed from a bigger perspective, it also means that you get to live during a time when you have a chance to make a difference and what you do matters. From this perspective, being alive right now is better than living during a time of being forced into accepting the status quo, is it not?

What is society other than the people comprising it? Societal problems are analogous to psychological problems in that they are deep-seated, long-running, festering, recurring, and difficult to resolve. I believe that there is a qualitative shift in attitude right now. It doesn't mean that racism will suddenly get fixed once and for all, but I've not seen such widespread attention and commitment to the problem in a long time. It actually gives me hope. I have older friends who've remarked that they suddenly feel transported back to the unrest of the 1960s. IMO, it means that another period of progress is on the horizon, but it also means that a time of intense turmoil is here. It seems that you focus on the turmoil and miss seeing the openings and opportunities for change.

Another thing that INFPs should always be vigilant about is a shaky relationship to reality and/or being unable to tackle problems in a realistic way (i.e. poor Ne and Te development). Reality contains everything, including the good and the bad, so it’s no use to try to pretend that one or the other doesn’t exist. You will always make better decisions by taking BOTH the good and the bad into consideration. Some INFPs get stuck in trying to wish away the bad, and some drown in the bad and disconnect from everything good.

Just as a child picks up a mix of psychological issues from their parents, as a member of society, your identity is forged through your relationship to your society's (problematic) history. I don't see how a "great migration" is any solution. Don’t forget that technology has made our world significantly smaller, so it’s a lot harder to distance from these problems. As long as you carry the scars of your home, no matter where you go, unresolved pain will continue to haunt you and hurt you. There is historical evidence that utopian thinking never leads to anything resembling a utopia. Utopian thinking is what people resort to when they are incapable of confronting the problems of reality. When it comes to human psychology, there is no way to wipe the slate completely clean without confronting and addressing the mistakes and sins of the past - this is what social unrest is meant to achieve. To believe that you can/should “start from scratch” is often a sign of Te grip in INFPs, as they want to violently wipe out the accumulated burdens of Si loop.

Perhaps there are benefits for you, as an individual, to move away, as you might find happiness in a different sort of life. But what happens when the advocates give up and walk off? At the societal level, good people moving away only leaves the bad actors to wreak havoc on the poor and innocent. Certainly, some individuals do move away and successfully build a better life for themselves. However, some people move away only to discover that they miss home dearly, and they end up roaming aimlessly, lonely, miserable, bitter, or disappointed. What separates the two groups? You will find a better life when you know exactly what you're looking for and you're realistic about whether the new place will meet those terms and conditions. You will NOT find a better life if you're merely running away from unhappiness, fueled by wishful thinking that the grass is greener "anywhere but here". It's up to you to be honest about what's happening with you.

#infp #si loop #te grip #politics #activism #pessimism #ask

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nutty1005 · 5 years ago

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Xiao Zhan: Heart of a Youth – Serenity, Ingenuous and Principled

Translator’s Note: I take a break from the acting analysis articles and bring you something more current... I hope all of us can draw strength from this!

Original Article:https://www.weibo.com/ttarticle/p/show?id=2309404480985398902834#_0 Original Author: 雪色烟波里

“He is but a child of 30 years old.”

Quite frequently, the phrase “He is just a child” had been used as an excuse by fans, and I am not sure since when this has changed to become a way of mockery. Even before fans uttered anything on this, “bystanders” would have started going crazy with “although he made a mistake, he is still a child! So we should not let this go!”. I agreed very much with this statement – no one should use the identity of a child to absolve his responsibilities as an adult, an adult should act as one. However, when they started using this phrase on Xiao Zhan, and added his age as a form of mockery, this started to stink…

I felt as though I was personally insulted, since I am a self-claimed young girl nearing the age of 30. Using someone’s age as an insult is very impolite, since no one escapes the fate of becoming a 30 year old.

Always realistic about his age, and his self-deprecating laugh when he speaks of his entry to entertainment business

To me, being of a certain age and yet having a heart of a youth is not conflicting. Some 18 year old could be methodical, sleek and boring, while others could be 80 and still retain their heart of a child, innocent and unblemished. As for Xiao Zhan, he had always positioned himself as an adult, and never used any excuses to shrink from his responsibilities, and therefore when his age was used as a weapon against him, and calling him a “30 year old child”, is definitely inappropriate. However, in the current darkness, I was able to see his heart of youth and his simplicity. And I would put this across with the following phrase.

A poem is always hard to translate, and therefore I give you the caption words instead. Serenity, ingenuous and principled.

SERENITY

“I always reminded myself, for many things, there is no need to openly display that on the screen, but you should just quietly do, and your efforts would always be seen. There is no need to fight for everything, and fighting for screen time would definitely be something not needed.” —- Xiao Zhan

The clip below was shot on 1 Feb 2016, when Xiao Zhan just debuted. Not vying or fighting might sound ridiculous in the world of adult, but this encompassed the entirety of Xiao Zhan’s acting career. No matter whether he was a side character, a supporting character or the lead character, he had always been quiet and low-key.

Moving automatically to the side for ”Joy of Life“ announcement press conference

In his group, he is willing to be on the sides and become part of the background, always all smiles but never speaking much, always wanting to do his personal best, but never looking for any rewards. In most of the concerts, he would be in the corner, running across the stage to get into position, but never skimping on his dance moves.

Xiao Zhan when his group was still active

Xiao Zhan during the Talent Show, as bright as the sun

I liked to watch Xiao Zhan’s stage performances very much. From a technical perspective, his dance skills were way off from that of a professional’s, but you could definitely feel his enthusiasm no matter how far off to the side he was. Instead of admirable skills, he utilized more of his ability to inject emotions into his performances, creating an atmosphere of joy and passion. He enjoyed every single of his performances with passion. No matter whether there were flowers or applause for him, he always gave his 100% to the stage. For one to understand his dancing style, gifs are not enough; I would recommend watching his fan focused videos to understand better.

Enjoying the stage with all of him

That infectious smile

As a group vocal, Xiao Zhan is quite decent – his high notes are clear, his tone clean and warm, and generally very unique. Personally, I enjoy many of his China themed songs, never tiring from songs such as Qu Jin Chen Qing [曲尽陈情] (Wei Wuxian OST from the Untamed) and the cover of A Laugh over the Blue Sea [沧海一声笑] (OST from the The Smiling, Proud Wanderer movie).

Recently, there were many who mocked at him for being an idol vocal but not knowing how to use an in-ear monitor, but they never thought about whether a vocal of a relatively unknown idol group would have the right to his own personal in-ear monitor. He had to borrow for his performances, and if he was not able to adjust in time, he would just have to bear with it, because he had no right to complain. After he attained some fame, he was able to finally get his own in-ear monitor, and he immediately started learning from his mentors, so what is there to mock? I only saw a person who was able to practice patience in adversity, work hard and progress in good times. By watching the entire series of “Our Song”, you would have a better understanding of his vocal skills.

Xiao Zhan during the rehearsal of Our Song

Xiao Zhan singing “My China Heart” on CCTV

After attaining some level of fame, Xiao Zhan did not let that get to his head, but instead clearly understood his current position, and that popularity could be temporary, only his works would be the basis of his career. Many of his colleagues would describe him as “hardworking and down-to-earth”. In terms of his career, he never slacked off any of his jobs, always prepared and went all out. In interpersonal relations, he was always polite and restrained, and treated everyone around him modesty and warmth. His attitude towards his acting was that he always had to do better than what he did previously. His sense of serenity was not limited to just himself or to his future, and this instead created endless possibilities for his future.

Always grateful

He never liked to claim credit, never cared about having commendations – when the host said that the Summer of 2019 belonged to Wei Wuxian, he replied that the Summer of 2019 belonged to The Untamed. When the fans were looking forward to his undubbed performances, he instead pointed out that the voice actors did plenty of value add. When the host asked him about that famous clip of him tearing up during script reading, he instead pointed out Xuan Lu and said that she was also tearing up but it was not captured on screen. You can understand how emotionally intelligent and humble he was just from a few interviews.

Humble, kind and sincere

Detailed and polite

He believed that hard work could change his fate, his faith almost like that of a fresh-faced youth – he did not care about everything else, except that if he did well enough he would be eventually rewarded. However, is the world really like this? He opened a path with his stubborn simplicity, and forced his way out, but now he has tripped and fallen. While everyone else is cheering and trying to add fuel to the flames, looking at this “entertainment business oddity” paying the price for not keeping to the “rules”, there may be just a handful of us reflecting on why it would be so difficult for a normal person to succeed. Does it mean that eking out a path on your own with just courage would only result in failure? This is something I refuse to believe. I will wait, and wait for him to stand again, to prove to the world that a person can create his own path with hard work, and we can follow every of his steps and not be defeated easily!

We will not be easily defeated

INGENUOUS

On why he did not change his Weibo account after joining the entertainment business:

“I did not change because there was no need to. There is nothing to hide from the others. In those times, in 2010, that was exactly how I felt, I’m very open, I feel that there’s really nothing. In fact, this proves that my personality is not what everyone thinks as “super nice”, I’m just a living person, I feel that no one is perfect, and I don’t want to be a perfect doll.” —- Xiao Zhan

Ingenuous

He did not change his Weibo account after 5 years in the entertainment business, he had always been a candid person. However, he overestimated the world’s tolerance and kindness, and all his personal inside jokes from his commoner days had been used to smear his and his friends’ reputation. Now, if you open Weibo, you would can see all the cyber-bullying against him, as though he had done a heinous crime, but the basis of all these were just some vulgarities he said 10 years ago. Is not the world ridiculous? Based on this, I could have been the most evil girl online, if whatever I said in Baidu Forums were ever exposed, since not only I used vulgarities, I also mocked posters who made a fool of themselves, but these history does not stop me from choosing to be a kind and upright person today. A person is ever-changing, and if we had to gauge a person’s current state on what he did 10 years ago, wouldn’t that be narrow minded? In fact, the Weibo environment 10 years ago is different from that of today, and it is ridiculous to impose current rules on something that was done 10 years ago. I respect all who are candid about themselves, and I would want to be such a person as well, and face the world with an open mind.

The cyber-bullying could be seen everywhere

This is overboard… and also something I rather not translate

Xiao Zhan did not deliberately create any persona, and his candid nature in handling himself is very obvious. He did not pretend to be someone he was not, did not shy away from showing his anxiety, and always used his true self to face everything:

During his Milan interview, he said excitedly that this was his first time to Europe.

During his time in X-Fire, on his first high speed rail trip, he was so excited that he recorded a vlog on it.

During one of their group activities, the organizers arranged for them to stay in an luxurious hotel, and he was so excited that he recorded another vlog on it, showing off the hotel as well as the huge bathtub.

When faced with a cat, he would smile in spite of himself. And he would play with random cats, be accidentally scratched by one and had to go for jabs.

His phone wallpaper had always been of “The God of Fortune”

His eyes would brighten up when he speaks or hears of money.

In fact, if you study him long enough, you would know that he is not perfect, but just a vivid, living person like each and everyone of us.

“This is my first time to Europe” “I just felt, wow, this is amazing!”

His excited face on his way to the high speed rail

His excitement introducing his hotel room, and whoever used this to spread rumors is just plain evil

An ingenuous gentleman, his heart pure and clear, he does not need to be secretive about himself, nor does it need to disguise himself. This is the Xiao Zhan I know, and I accept every of his imperfections, and I am willing to work with him to become a better person. I hope that when I am nearing 30 years old, I would still be exuberant when I encounter the first snows of that year.

And I hope that your heart will always remain clear, and your eyes forever starry

PRINCIPLED

“I feel that youth is that strength, just that strength, undaunted, undefeated by fate and fearless.” —- Xiao Zhan

In Everlasting Classics, Xiao Zhan sang “Bamboo in the Rock”. To be a person, one would strive to be a gentleman. To be a gentleman, one would strive to be like bamboo – unwavering against strong winds, and upright between the heaven and earth.

Relentlessly holding onto the mossy hill The roots buried within broken rocks Tough and strong despite endless erosion and assault Firmly against winds from all directions

Xiao Zhan said that his inner self is like bamboo, firm and tenacious. Many would scoff at this, and say that he did not do enough to control his fans. But is this really the issue of him not providing guidance for his fans? In fact, he has always been telling his fans, but this had been hijacked by the racket of public opinion.

“I can see that you say that studying is difficult, or work makes you unhappy, but growth is like climbing a mountain, the bigger it is, the harder it is, leave your grouses in your heart, when you look back at these problems again, you will realize that they were not difficult.” —- Xiao Zhan

“Actually, I want to tell everyone that no matter whether schooling or working, don’t forget to love life, to experience life and notice everything around you, love it!” —- Xiao Zhan

“There are both sides to everything, there are people who likes you and there will definitely be people who doesn’t like you, you don’t have to care too much about it. As long as we have good momentum, there will be more who will like us, and I will fight hard for those who likes us.” —- Xiao Zhan

Did anyone hear those?

“Idol and fans are actually symbiotic, we support each other and move forward together. When we live our respective lives well and continue to become better selves.” —- Xiao Zhan

“Hence I would say that my fans, I feel that you must first live your lives well so that you have spare time to like and follow the idol you like.” —- Xiao Zhan

Did anyone remember those?

“I am actually very careful, because now I represent not just Xiao Zhan, but my team as well, and if not for myself, there is no need to create unnecessary trouble. Frankly speaking, I haven’t met anything I can’t quite solve myself. But for many problems, others could only provide some opinions, give some directions, cheer you on, but they can’t really solve it for you. How to persist, how to endure, still all depends on myself, because only I know what really happened.” —- Xiao Zhan

“I feel that the ideal status is not changed by regrets. What is most important about life is making sure we live in the present and live well, and not regret the past. The present and future are the most important.” —- Xiao Zhan

Did anyone understand these?

He never stopped his guidance, but many were blind to them. Xiao Zhan’s firm attitude comes from being strict with himself, instead of becoming a nagging teacher disciplining his countless fans. A person could choose the person to like, but the person could not choose who would like him. Some people could not even be disciplined by their parents, how could this burden be instead placed on Xiao Zhan, who even has problems finding time to sleep? Is this not being difficult? If he had this ability, he might as well not be an actor, but become a professional educator.

He had always been providing guidance, but he definitely cannot control everyone

When large groups of anti fans overtook the “Secret Garden” in Sept 2019, spamming that post with the bad comments, his fans quickly counter spammed the post in fear that he might discover and read those bad comments. The unnatural spike in comments obviously alerted him, and he posted “I’m here, goodnight”. Those who took this out of context to claim that he was inciting more verbal war obviously did not see the entire comment.

The “shhhhh” emoticon is often left out when pointing this out.

In the storm of cyber-bullying, the only target is Xiao Zhan, because his Weibo account is the only one attached to a real name.

His personality is 100% firm and tenacious. His tenacity is in how he insisted to his doctor that he would continue to practice his dance steps despite inflammation in his knees; when his toenail fell off, he only asked if it would regrow. His tenacity is in how he would wear thick layers of period drama costume in the height of summer, and wear tattered rags in the deep freezing cold of winter. His tenacity is in shooting period dramas for straight 2 years, not knowing if they would actually be allowed to air. His tenacity is in how he would be fighting a lawsuit against his management, saying “Don’t look back, ever!”, while at the same time managing his endorsement deals by himself and plotting his own future. His tenacity is in how he would not give up despite not earning enough to support himself, and having to go to events by himself without any assistants.

He had survived one of the toughest period, so why should he admit defeat this time round? He would not, and his fans also have no reason to abandon him as well. He is faultless in this, and perhaps causing envy is his only fault here. Time will prove his innocence, falsehoods will not withstand the test of time.

Biting his air tickets, so that he has spare hands to carry his own luggage. We will not give up no matter how tough it gets.

We will accompany you through thick and thin

We will become better people together

And I will end this article with another poem from Zheng Ban Qiao (the poet for Bamboo in the Rock):

A bamboo, an orchid and a rock, with integrity, discipline and fortitude

In a room these oozes gentlemanliness, evergreen against the test of time

A bamboo, an orchid and a rock, with integrity, discipline and fortitude

Firmly against gales and snowstorm, they will bring the news of the spring breeze

#xiao zhan #sean xiao #xiaozhan #肖战

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saezutte · 4 years ago

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yuletide letter 2020

Dear Yuletide Writer,

Oh, hello again. I didn’t see you there.

This year, I have transcended earthly desires and struggled to find any fandoms to request. I want nothing. I wish my cat was nominated as a Yuletide fandom so we could all write stories about her life.

Nonetheless, I have some small requests!!!! I believe you can make me happy in ways I’ve never been happy before. I trust you. Happy end of 2020, the cursed year, I hope you are blessed with rest.

My AO3: saezutte

My public twitter: juncassis

My tumblr: here but I do not use tumblr much anymore, sorry.

Do Not Wants

[note: I have no actual triggers, nothing you can write for me will make me any more depressed or anxious than I already am]

Death (of major/important/beloved characters)

Suicide attempts, self-harm

Rape (outright; OK with dub con, manipulation, noncon short of violent-rape-for-violence-only)

Eating disorders, body shaming

Angst without a happy ending, really too much angst at all

Established relationship

Cheating

Actual Unrequited Feelings

Pregnancy (the actual process; breeding kink is fine)

Scat or watersports

Hard BDSM or any kink complicated enough that the characters would have to discuss it ahead of time

Homophobia as a plot device

Excessive attention to identity or politics, sometimes known as “issue fic”

Note on AUs: I am ok with the usual popular AU tropes but I do not want them combined, e.g. A/B/O is fine and coffeeshop is fine, but I don’t want an omega barista getting his scent all over the lattes he makes for some alpha lawyer who comes in every morning. (Ridiculous example, but you get the point.) For AU/modern settings of fandoms with magic, I often like it when the magic is still there in the AU setting. I also like AUs which maintain the general outlines of the character’s relationships, like if the characters are childhood friends in canon, I like to keep that intact.

General preferences:

I am a pretty basic bitch when it comes to fanfic: I like it when two clueless boys pine for each other through some shenanigans and then lock eyes/lips/dicks.

If you fed a neural net every fanfic written in Stargate Atlantis fandom between 2005 and 2010, the result would probably be some nonsense I’d enjoy.

I love many tropes. Tropes! Bed-sharing. Sharing an umbrella. WASHING EACH OTHER’S HAIR? Confessions where they are having an argument and then one of them yells “Because I love you!”

I love situations where characters are forced to spend time in close proximity and find themselves with feelings.

I love fakeness: fake dating, fake marriage, arranged marriage, marriage of convenience, fake lust induced by sex pollen or heats, aliens make them have sex, whatever.

I love porn, if you want to just write me some quick porn, that’s great. I do prefer (per the established relationship DNW above) that it be first time or get together porn. I know that can make it hard to just write porn, but I don’t need much to be convinced of sex.

Nirvana in Fire (TV)

Requested characters: Mei Changsu, Xiao Jingyan

Note: I also love Lin Chen so if you want to write some MCS/LC or LC/Fei Liu or LC/MCS/JINGYAN OT3??? go for it. I am also a Nihuang/Xia Dong shipper so if you want to put that in… somehow… my gay little heart would be happy. I also like Nihuang/MCS/XJY or MNH/MCS + MCS/XJY but I’d like the focus on the men in that case!

I watched this show because someone recommended this show to me as, like, Chinese Game of Thrones but good. I think it’s genuinely one of the best TV shows I’ve ever seen. I love plots and revenge and good people doing bad things for justice. Even the ending is good for me though obviously it left me unsatisfied on several points.

I am deeply into sickly doomed genius MCS and every time he got even more deeply ill, I fell deeper in love. Every time he coughs up blood, my heart would race. I love his terrible schemes and stupid self-sacrificing choices. I find watching this show very soothing because I knew he would always come out on top in his schemes. I trust him. I love handsome clueless Jingyan and how he’s just so good (it’s terrible.) I love his mom and how much he cares for her. I love him but he is useless, he needs his Xiao Shu and I need fanfic to restore him to him.

Note: So my limited research on this says that male/male sex practices were accepted and well-known in this time period in history, so I really don’t want them thinking “oh no what are these weird gay feelings.” There are other barriers to them being together, like a ruler or official being overly attached to one person was considered very bad. I am also a big supporter of the socially-approved polygamy of this time period, so I don’t need Jingyan to refuse to sleep with his wife or something out of loyalty to MCS—he has to do it! Or all their plans are ruined! And he can enjoy spending time with her or the concubines without affecting his feelings for MCS—you could explore that complexity in fic if you like.Prompts:

Mei Changsu isn’t dead, he’s hiding again, Jingyan searches for him

They start having sex during the series, the ending is averted [somehow]

Post-canon, MCS is alive and Jingyan hides him in the palace with his consort/concubines to keep him on as an advisor without anyone objecting

omega verse where MCS was an alpha before he “died" but an omega after he came back.

AU where male/male marriage is customary (maybe aristocratic men are expected to have one male and one female consort?) and so MCS decides the best way to influence and help Jingyan in the capital is by becoming his wife or one of his concubines

anything just get them together and happy.

Tokyo Babylon

Characters: Subaru, Seishiro

I read Tokyo Babylon as a child and I imprinted on it deeply, now I love politics, ghosts, stalking, age differences, magic. Within the CLAMP canon, I love TB for its episodic focus on smaller stories, the commentary on contemporary society, and Seishiro being an outright creep. I love onmyojutsu and exorcism and Subaru’s innocence getting ruined. I love the city of Tokyo (where I currently live! but do not be intimidated, I don’t know the city well because we’ve been in quarantine most of the time I’ve been here and won’t judge you for details.) I’m open to fics that comply with X canon or not.

With Seishiro/Subaru: It’s bad but I love that predator/prey dynamic where the predator ends up being hopelessly entranced/obsessed/in love with the prey. My read was always that Seishiro lost the bet and couldn’t admit it—he’s just, you know, killing twins to avoid dealing with his feelings! Relatable! (?!?!) Subaru, I love particularly in his evolution from innocent to adult in love to betrayed. I’d prefer post-TB fic to during-TB fic (so Subaru knows Seishiro’s deal and loves him anyway.) I am also a fan of Hokuto and you should feel free to bring her back to life to troll if you desire.

Prompts:

AU or reincarnation plot where they are Heian period rival onmyoji

Because this is such a heavily place-based series, if you are a writer who likes to play with details of real life locations, I’d be interested in versions of different “Babylons” if you have an idea for it.

Tragic first times post-TB lol

Seishiro is a virgin the first time they have sex

I’d probably love some fucked up dub con for this, however you want to play it

Honestly, do whatever you want as long as you don’t fuck me over like CLAMP did.

プリティーリズム | Pretty Rhythm

Characters: Hiro, Koji

Pretty Rhythm came to me at a weird time in my life. I lived in a house of spiders in Yokohama and did nothing for eight weeks. King of Prism cheer screening transformed my life and I didn’t even know what it was. Then I got weirdly deep into Rainbow Live and the Pretty Rhythm franchise overall. I am a scientist of prism theory. Idk why I like it, it’s just wholesome and crazy and there are penguins and DJ Koo. I love every TRF song because I’m a 90s gay at heart. It’s truly the end point of all media development. The prism world represents the fearsome power of virtual/digital+real hybrid life. Yes, I know I’ve lost my mind. I went to one of the real Prism Stone stores, the one in Harajuku.

Hiro Hayami: one time a fujoshi asked me to describe what types of anime boys I like and the first type I listed was “prince but bad” and my example was Hiro. Hiro is the crazy gay stalker disaster of my heart. He overcomes great hardship to achieve his dreams and foolishly falls in love along the way and he does everything wrong and Koji keeps leaving him. The moment when Hiro is crowned King of Prism in Pride the Hero was one of the top ten moments of my life. I made friends who don’t even know Japanese watch the movie unsubtitled with me on my birthday.

With Koji, I’m a bit guilty of “I want to give the character I love the most the character he loves the most” so I do like him less (it would be impossible to like him equal to how much I love Hiro). But he has many good points that make him perfect, like how he also sucks underneath his chill exterior. I love to see him go apeshit.

I also love everyone else in Rainbow Live, no exceptions. I love all the girls. If you do write the girls, I would prefer they not be paired with the OTR boys. I would prefer they be paired with each other, any combo is good.

Prompts:

this is the sort of pairing where I love fic where they split up and then 15 years later meet again as washed up has-beens but there’s still time for them to find each other

Canon-compliant companion piece showing the “background” of them getting together romantically over the course of the series.

AU where Koji is a prism world fairy sent to inspire Hiro but Hiro is kind of a mess

dirty, dirty porn… let Hiro get fucked

I have a lot of doujinshi with multiple copies of Hiro (a la the Mugen Hug jump) but I’d like something where Hiro gets overwhelmed by many Kojis

They start fake dating as a publicity stunt and have to keep doing it… especially good if it starts when Koji is at max hating Hiro level

Ring Fit Adventure

Characters: Dragaux, Ring

Keeping this one simple: I like to be encouraged to exercise by a storyline and a trainer that never mentions weight loss, lol. The world is fun and pretty and I love that buff dragon.

AND THEN THE PAIRING. I’m sure Nintendo has some market research that told them a certain subset of users are very motivated by enemies who seemed to once be lovers or best friends. I am that user.

What is up with these two? They were so in love! Now Dragaux is a horrible swole bro (not in a good bro way) and Ring is training me instead? I can’t compete with their love. It’s the only time the game makes me feel inadequate.

You can keep Dragaux and Ring as dragon/ring-like as you like. Obviously I’m down with dragon fucking but you can also make him a human fucker too. I play with Ring on the masculine voice setting for maximum BL vibes as I exercise, but, you know, it’s a ring, I don’t think it has gender. Feel free to incorporate the player or other random characters too.

Prompts:

AU where Dragaux and Ring owned a gym together and Dragaux sold out to a big chain of gyms

What happened between them when Dragaux was still captured, pre-game? Bondage… literally??

Ring is always bossing me to train, but I’m really doing all the work. Why doesn’t he fight Dragaux on his own for once?? (because the sexual tension is too powerful.)

Tragic flashback to their dramatic break-up ending with their present day reconciliation.

Player/Dragaux/Ring threesome??? I’ve unlocked the sexercises???

With all fandoms, you are free to disregard the prompts and do your own thing. If you’re not sure about me, you can probably dm seriesera on twitter, she knows what I’m into.

Well, I suppose that’s all for now. Please stalk me online to get more details on my bullshit. I hope you have a nice time.

Best,

Caitlin

#yuletide

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sweetsmellosuccess · 5 years ago

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The Best (and Worst) Films of 2019

In many ways, 2019 served as a crucible, and no more so, at least cinematically, than with the venerable superhero flick. After a deluge of big studio films on the subject of capes and spandex (the MCU includes 22 films since the 2008 release of Iron Man; the nascent DCU, running it fits and starts has seven), we saw the explosive close-out of the previous “phases” with Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame; as well as the rise of pseudo art-house comic book film, Joker, in the same bloody year.

The talk on Film Twitter — the living definition of ‘tempest in a teacup’ — was all about those films, and Martin Scorsese’s now legendary take down of the genre by referring to the super hero films, collectively, as “theme parks.” But in truth, there were many, many other films that came out during the year, some of them utterly brilliant, some of them ridiculously awful. Here are my picks for both, with some of what I wrote about them at the time in my review.

10. Avengers: Endgame

“There are so many small but noteworthy details -- opening the film with Traffic's "Dear Mr. Fantasy"; the name drops, and special shout-outs to comics' fans; the small character beats that allow each protagonist more than just a quip or two; the closing credits, which give singular notice to the stars who have been there from the beginning, and wisely do not use the signature Marvel trick of teasing out the next film, which gives the series, at last, a sense of real closure, if only temporary -- the film feels as if it has been created and calibrated with the utmost care. For a film destined to break the bank no matter how shoddy they might have made it, Marvel has poured enough genuine soul into it to earn its inevitable bounty.”

Full Review

9. Her Smell

“In some ways, the film takes on a sort of Raging Bull aspect, Martin Scorsese's classic film about a boxer's rise and fall, only to turn the ending on its head. In Scorsese's picture, we see Jake LaMotta, now fat and retired, attempt to break into showbiz as a comedian, the scenes draped in cutting sardonicism. Perry gives Becky a much less punishingly ironic turn, but instead a hero's journey, venturing away from the abyss into something a good deal less grandiose and realized.”

Full Review

8. The Last Black Man in San Francisco

“It's also a film about the versions of the stories whose ideas lend depth and valor to our otherwise nondescript lives, the things we hope make us the heroes of our own narratives. In this way, Jimmie's story is conflated with that of the city itself, and the palpable sense of loss he feels about his family's house is mirrored in the city's own loss of identity.”

Full Review

7. Under the Silver Lake

“Mitchell fairly stuffs the film with portents, symbols, and runes, some real, some imagined. Squirrels mysteriously fall dead at Sam's feet, a parrot in his courtyard keeps calling out something he can't decipher, a dog killer stalks the neighborhood, and graffiti strewn about the area calls out to him. Films are always encoded with symbolic meaning, utilizing visual language to instill emotion and establish significance for the audience (think of Spielberg's girl with the red coat in Schindler's List, or James Dean's red windbreaker in Rebel Without a Cause), Mitchell's film gives us so many options, almost everything can be read symbolically, which perfectly captures the paranoia his character feels, and the pointlessness of trying to make sense of it at all.”

Full Review

6. Marriage Story

“Noah Baumbach’s latest film, about the dissolution of married couple – played extraordinarily well by Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson – will no doubt get comparisons made to Bergman’s brilliant Scenes From a Marriage. But whereas that 1972 film concerned the relationship itself, its highs and lows and metamorphoses, Baumbach’s film is much more about the logistics, legal and otherwise, of ending a very much shared life together.”

Capsule Review

5. Midsommar

“Viewing Aster's films is a bit like walking into an art installation -- quite literally, as he populates his frame with stunning compositions and art-focused mise en scene, as with the beautifully designed wooden structures of the compound, or the exquisite murals and art displayed on the building's walls (a huge shout-out to his production designer, Henrik Svensson, and the art directing crew) -- but, as with Hereditary, behind all the sumptuous, hand-crafted beauty, there is a cruel, brutal core of humanity's continued savagery. If art represents the best sort of impulses of humankind, in Aster's hands, it becomes yet another facade, hiding -- or in this case, exemplifying -- our instinct for vicious barbarity.”

Full Review

4. Parasite

“By the end, as it swerves inexorably into blood-soaked violence, the film reveals to be a bit of a con itself, drawing us in with its enticing humor, then opening up into a much darker vision, before ending on an emotional note of surprising vulnerability. Through it all, Bong shows a mastery of odd tones, from the opening comedic salvo, to the final emotional beats.”

Capsule Review

3. Uncut Gems

“It’s one of those pressure-cooker films, where the steam builds more and more intense as Howard gets in and out of trouble through his ability to constantly shift the playing board. There’s a scene about midway through, with various aggrieved characters coalescing at once in his office, as he’s trying to have a speaker phone conversation with his doctor, that’s so stressful, you will want to avert your eyes and remind yourself of the exit signs.”

Capsule Review

2. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

“It's also an unexpected joy to watch the nonchalant swagger of Pitt match up with DiCaprio's more high-strung ministrations. Two of the biggest film stars alive playing mostly washed up TV actors may stack the irony, but both of them settle in so well into their characters, you can't help but admire the result. Rick is a dude whose ego has gone from tumescent to shriveled -- he parks his car miserably in front of one of his own old movie posters -- but beneath all his hubris and despair, he actually has a lot of talent. As always, it's pure joy to watch Pitt smoke up a screen, a middle-aged Redford speaking every line with a sinfully breezy smile, whose confidence extends around him like the golden hue of his deep suntan.”

Full Review

1. Knives Out

“More than the plot itself, an ingenious and kinetic thing that's as satisfying as a hot bowl of soup on a raw and windy day, there's the sense of joyous chaos from the cast. Those scenes where the family is all together, in the drawing room and continually at each other's throats are so delicious, they should come with a napkin. The interplay between vets like Shannon, Johnson, Curtis and Collette is filled with fractious energy, the characters revisiting age-old disagreements ("Your kid's a brat!" -- "Your kid is a Nazi!") with sadistic glee. Even when they band together, in moments, against what they believe to be a common enemy, it's clear the harmony between them is more Iggy and the Stooges than Beach Boys. In short, Johnson has devised a perfect ensemble of dreadful characters and set them all against one another in a narrative fishbowl filled with lye.”

Full Review

Other Worthy Mentions:

Amazing Grace, American Factory, Apollo 11, Bacurau, Birds of Passage, Charlie Says, Cold Case Hammarskjöld, Dark Suns, Dark Waters, Ford v Ferrari, Greener Grass, In Fabric, John Wick 3, Jojo Rabbit, Luce, Midnight Traveler, Ms. Purple, Pain and Glory, Rewind, Something Else, Terminator: Dark Fate, The Farewell, The Hole in the Ground, The Irishman, The Lighthouse, The Nightingale, The Report, The Souvenir, The Vast of Night, This is Not Berlin, Us, Varda by Agnes, Vitalina Varella

Best Upcoming Releases of 2019

The Personal History of David Copperfield

The Burnt Orange Heresy

Bad Education

First Cow

The Worst Films of 2019

5. Greta

“In short, Jordan turns Greta into a Michael Myers-esque boogeyman, everywhere and no place at once, almost a phantom, but for her high heels and French condemnation. In this way, the filmmaker loses his grip on his material.”

Full Review

4. Ma

“Apart from a truly absurd script, director Tate Taylor's film performs ungainly political gyrations -- asking us to root against a survivor of sexual abuse and humiliation for trying to gain (albeit misplaced) revenge on her attacker. Sort of a rape-revenge thriller set upside down, such that nothing makes any ethical (or emotional) sense. It quickly becomes an awkward mishmash of impulses, wanting to provide cheap scares while fostering a deeply schizoid sense of sympathy, while managing to fail mightily at both.”

Full Review

3. The Dead Don’t Die

“Jarmusch's proclivities have always leaned toward such lightly affecting material -- as if the act of actually generating emotion is somehow vulgar and unseemly -- which has also endeared him to his faction of fans. For everyone else, though, it doesn't leave much to look at. Filmed without fanfare (albeit with a few more special effects than usual, and a kind of cool splattering of sand-like mist when the zombies are beheaded), and with the intensity knobs all turned down to their lowest setting, he continues his sous vide-style of filmmaking. Whether you like the dish he's serving, or want to throw your hands in the air and go somewhere else for dinner is all in your temperament. Whatever you choose, you can be certain the same menu will be available the next time you venture back.”

Full Review

2. Dark Phoenix

“The clearest loss, however, is with the story itself -- its legacy struck deep in Marvel lore -- once again being studio nitpicked, and focus-grouped to within an inch of its life. If Endgame audaciously proved a superhero movie could rise toward an emotionally satisfying arc, this failed attempt proves the opposite is also true: Chronic incoherence, even if spread out among a multitude of titles over 20 years, just feels like a soulless money grab. Adding to the sense of this film's slapdashery, the trailer features lines and moments unused in the actual cut, which is never a good sign.”

Full Review

1. Lucy in the Sky

“The film is meandering and pretty much pointless, a major flaw that Hawley himself indicated in his introduction (“we work as hard on the bad ones as we do the good ones,” he told the audience in an example of supreme foreshadowing. Portman does her best, but the film sputters pretty hard, and is never able to justify itself.”

Capsule Review

Other Dishonorable Entries:

The Aftermath, The Curse of La Llorona, Gemini Man, Glass, Hellboy, Joker

Inexplicably Overrated: Joker, The Dead Don’t Die

Biggest Welcome Surprise(s): Ford v Ferrari, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Most Bitter Disappointment(s): The Lodge, Wounds

Film That Critics Got Wrong: Waves

Best Film I Saw Last Year, Period: Scenes From a Marriage

#sweet smell of success #ssos #piers marchant #films #movies #the best and worst films of 2019 #knives out #parasite #once upon a time in hollywood #uncut gems #marriage story #the last black man in san francisco #midsommar #avengers: endgame #under the sliver lake #her smell

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completelysubjectivereviews · 5 years ago

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Watchmen, Episode 1.01: It’s Summer and We’re Running Out of Ice

SPOILER ALERT FOR EPISODE 1.01 OF HBO’s WATCHMEN

Sooo... This is going to be a controversial show. Already, when you are doing a follow-up to one of the world's most notable graphic novels, you already must tread lightly so as to not be boycotted by the die-hard fans, and not alienating the general public who might have only seen the movie, or haven't heard of the story at all. But when you also throw in the heavy themes of race relations, white supremacy, and police violence along with vigilantism, you sit on a political powder keg. And how does the creator, Damon Lindelof, ease us into this tense, alternative history world? By throwing us right into the deep end, with one of the most brutal depictions of one of the most horrific tragedies in the early 20th century relating to race relations in our country.

And God Bless Lindelof for it.

The 1921 Massacre that the show opens on (and the scene that immediately follows it) both sets the visual tone for the rest of the series, and gives the kind of context this show needs for how race relations in our setting have been handled. It is shot in a brutal and horrifyingly honest light. By opening on the silent film of a black lawman vigilante, the series sets up early the dual-narrative structures that we will see throughout, the events and meanings of the main story intermingling with these vignettes seen on movie or television screens in-universe to flesh out the narrative. A young boy watching this film is grabbed by his mother and father who are desperately trying to make their way through the carnage outside in order to get to safety. And once they realize that they won't be able to make it along, they send the boy off with close acquaintances to try and escape. The boy, along with an infant that he finds along the way, will be the only prominent survivors of this horrific depiction. And immediately after this, we jump to the present day (of this alternative history, that is).

The first scene in the present day of the show does wonders to build up what the world is now. Police are forced to hide their identity; Technology has advanced significantly past where the real world is now, but not too much so; People have taken towards an Anti-Police/White-Supremacist movement, taking on the face of Rorschach from the original story, bastardizing his legacy. As the masked officer realizes the gravity of the situation and that the insignificant man he pulled over for this routine traffic stop to be a member of the aforementioned white supremacist group - The 7th Calvary - he tries to get authorization from his dispatcher to allow use of his firearm, but is too late in receiving his weapon and is shot, becoming the crux that begins our story. The main plot seems to center around how the police interact with the world around them in the modern age of this alternate history, and how they tackle the issues of fanaticism. But, as this is only the very first episode, it is hard to say for sure whether or not this will continue to be the primary focus. For the time being, our story focuses on two main characters, namely the Chief of the Tulsa Police Force, Judd Crawford (played by Don Johnson), as he tries to keep the peace while ending the violence from the 7th Calvary; as well as Angela Abar (played by the wonderful Regina King), a former cop injured in the White-Night (more on that later) who claimed to retire, but still works with the police as a vigilante dressed like a battle-nun, also known as Sister-Night.

Little details are sprinkled throughout the episode to further cement our setting, specifically how different our history is from that of the show. Opinions on the Nixon administration have drastically improved, and he is now on Mount Rushmore (likely due to his repealing of the 22nd Amendment and serving a third term in the comics, which allowed him to use Dr. Manhattan to win the Vietnam War). It is briefly mentioned that there is a live feed of Dr. Manhattan who has returned from the other side of the universe, and is currently building and destroying massive structures on the red sands of Mars. Most peculiarly, Robert Redford (as in the actual actor) has been President for over 30 years now, and has instated Reparations for victims of racial violence, which members of the 7th Calvary have not taken kindly to. Also, it sometimes will just start raining squids, and no one seems to really mind too deeply.

The main plot for the episode itself centers on a small base of the 7th Calvary being found by the police, who stage a raid and are nearly killed in a field of cows while being blasted away by a high caliber machine gun turret (Apologies to PETA for the fake cows who died in the collateral damage). This is our primary action set-piece for the episode, and with only a minor hiccup or two, the mission goes very well. Although they were not able to capture any members alive due to either cyanide pills, or being blasted out of the sky by what seems to be Police-Issued-Owl-Ships, they find that the fanatics were mass stockpiling synthetic lithium watch batteries. Whether this is for the 'cancer bomb' that the show mentions, or is merely a red herring to go along with their mantra of a ticking clock remains to be seen. After this scene, there is no big action follow-up, but there my favorite scene in the entire episode, and an exemplary feather in the caps of the writers.

The show has a masterful understanding of how to write extreme tension and uneasiness. Namely, the dinner scene near the end of the episode. There, we have our two leads, Angela, and our Police-Chief Judd having a nice dinner with both of their full families. It is already mentioned earlier that the "White Night" where cops and their families were targeted by the 7th Calvary (the event which led to police hiding their identity in the first place) occurred almost 3 years prior. Furthermore, this scene occurs after the police made a big win against the 7th Calvary, in a scene that almost seemed to go over too easily. On top of which, this dinner scene opens on a rendition of the song "Unforgettable", which was famously used prior to and during the death of the Comedian in the original story and film. As the camera slowly pans around the dining room, the set-designer shines as the audience starts to realize that the front door leads right into the dining room with the family, and there seems to be an endless amount of windows or easy access points surrounding them, setting up this sense of inevitable dread. Finally, as Judd is having fun with the family, singing his part from Oklahoma, the sound of a ticking clock, the mantra of the 7th Calvary, starts as an extremely slow mumble which just gets louder and louder. The scene is perfectly set up for horrific tragedy.

And then...

Nothing happens.

Not yet. We save the horrific outcome for a few minutes later, at the actual end of the episode, where we find Chief Judd dead, lynched, and our only suspect the now aged little boy from the 1921 opening. Our final shot for the episode being the golden sheriff's badge laying in the grass, with a single drop of blood falling onto it, a clear homage to the famous smiley-face button of the original comic.

All in all, this is an extremely strong start to the series, and I am extremely excited to see where HBO goes with the rest of this season. I also don't seem to be alone in this opinion either, as there is a general critical consensus that this show is like nothing else on television right now, and though the public reviews are still getting hit by the controversial themes of race and police relations, along with the die-hard fundamentalists of Alan Moore, I believe that this will turn out to be a wonderful series.

GRADES: Angela and Judd Hunting Down the 7th Calvary (A-Story) : +15 Adrian Veidt's Plans (B-Story?) : Still Too Early To Decide +5 Thorough World-Building : +25 Both Fun and Horrific Action : +15 The Dinner Scene : +18 The Horrifying Opening : +10 Over-All Story-Focus : N/a, As It Is The Pilot, We Don't Yet Know The Over-All Story +0 Completely Subjective Bonus : I Just Love Watchmen, Both The Original, Movie, All Of It. +5

FINAL SCORE: 93% Amazing start to what will hopefully be an amazing new series. Definitely Recommend.

#Watchmen #Television Series #SCORE: 93%#SCORE RANGE: 90's #93%#SPOILERS #HBO #Completely Subjective

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jamsque · 6 years ago

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Bitterness in the Age of Fighting

I was excited when the first episode of Fighting in the Age of Loneliness appeared in my youtube feed last Monday, I’m willing to watch anything Jon Bois puts his name on right now. Most of his content is centered around American football and basketball and baseball, which is great, those are all sports I have watched at least semi-regularly at some point in my life, but for the past few years I’ve followed Mixed Martial Arts more closely than any of them. Felix Biederman, the writer and narrator of the show, was a new name to me: I know Chapo Trap House by reputation but the most I have ever heard of it is a few clips out of context.

That first episode did some strong establishing work to set the tone and context for the series, and then got to work telling the fascinating story of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and the Gracie family. It’s a story I know decently well, I think Felix did a good job of picking out the interesting characters and especially the moments of class struggle, and of course his words are backed up by the datawave audiovisual stylings of Jon Bois that we have come to know and love. The political ideas were more familiar and less interesting to me than the bits about fighting but I was curious to see how the show was going to try to draw connections and parallels between the rise of MMA as a spectator sport and the socio-political environment in which that rise took place.

I was engaged and I watched each episode as it came out through the week and by the end of episode four on Thursday I was starting to turn a little on the series. In this era of Youtubers with healthy Patreon support and good microphones I’ve gotten used to clear, smoothly edited, well recorded voice work and for me Felix’s narration falls short there, especially for a project with a major media company behind it. More than that, though, I was no longer on board with where the show seemed to be going, and I was worried that it would end on a sour note. I found myself agreeing with Felix’s political commentary but disagreeing more and more with his thoughts on MMA and the way he was choosing to frame the history of the sport.

The final installment disappointed me more than I had feared it might, enough to motivate me to make some kind of response to or critical reading of the whole series. Re-watching it with that in mind I (unsurprisingly) found more things I disliked. Fighting in the Age of Loneliness does an excellent job of telling the story of the ancestry, birth, rise, fall, second rise and anticipated second fall of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, but along the way it makes some pretty big missteps and takes some positions that I strongly disagree with. I’m not going to break down each episode individually but I do want to lay out the issues I have with the series and in particular dig in to the problems with the last episode. Towards the end I think I might even call Felix Biederman a fascist.

First, I want to provide some context for my own thoughts about MMA, and make some inferences and assumptions about Felix’s history with the sport that I think go some way to explaining why we see it quite so differently.

I am absolutely not a long-time hardcore Mixed Martial Arts fan, until relatively recently I didn’t have any interest in combat sports at all. Growing up in the UK around the turn of the millenium I was aware of boxing but only from a distance, it was already well on its way to fading from the forefront of the popular sporting consciousness, and my pacifist socialist middle-class parents certainly weren’t watching Mike Tyson fights. The first contact I had with what I would later know as MMA was a grainy video I remember watching on some pre-YouTube video sharing site as a teenager: a highlight montage of a man wearing black, red and white shorts kicking various different people in the head in various different boxing rings, with the same concussive effect each time.

I became more aware of the modern sport of MMA when I started noticing the UFC in mainstream sports media headlines around 2014. Three names kept appearing in those headlines: Jon Jones, for running into things with cars, Conor McGregor, for running his mouth, but most of all Ronda Rousey, for running through every challenger the UFC put in front of her. I suspect that there are a lot of newer MMA fans who, like me, were swept up in the hype surrounding Rousey and McGregor during that time, and stuck with the sport after they finally broke their respective winning streaks and came back down to earth.

Three years later even though I watch MMA most weekends and even though I have become almost as fascinated as Felix Biederman seems to be with the history of the UFC, the people who have fought in it, and the things that they have done to each other, I still consider myself a ‘casual’ fan. This is at least partly because when I think of ‘real’ or ‘hardcore’ MMA fans, I think of people like Felix, who have been around the sport for a lot longer and are, at best, skeptical about the results of its most recent jump in popularity.

Felix doesn’t explicitly talk about the genesis of his interest in the sport but there are hints in the text. The general tone of the piece goes from being detached and historical in the first episode to personal and emotional in the last, which I think is both a deliberate choice on Felix’s part and a reflection of his own experience. The third episode, when his narrative reaches the mid-2000s, is when I think it transitions from learned history to memory, and it’s around here that Felix starts making frequent references to goings on in MMA fan culture. If I’m correct then Felix Biederman has been following MMA for at least a decade longer than I have really known what it was. He has had the time to become emotionally invested in fighters and even the UFC as an organisation in ways that I am not, and of course his initial views on the sport were formed a relatively long time ago. MMA fights in 2018 don’t look all that different than they did in 2005 but the UFC has certainly changed a lot in that time, as have public awareness of and attitudes towards a new generation of combat sports stars.

That decade and a half of change in the UFC is the real focus of Fighting in the Age of Loneliness, but it presents itself as something much broader. The first episode is titled ‘The Invention of Fighting for Money’ and in it Felix makes a lot of sweeping statements about the past that don’t hold water. He very much tells the winner’s version of history, the narrative favoured by the UFC and the Gracie family, who would have you believe that they invented not only the modern sport of MMA but somehow the very idea of fighting itself. Felix remarks on the marketing and promotional skills of Rorion Gracie in the second episode without seeming to realise quite the degree to which he has himself fallen prey to them, and he also comes across as having the slightly fetishistic attitude towards East Asian martial arts that has become common in the USA over the past half century or so.

As he transitions out of the prologue, Felix says “the true catalyst for MMA as a sport, business and spectacle go back to Japan”, and when he goes on to describe the spread of Jujutsu from Japan to Brazil he says “after hundreds of years, Martial Arts had finally broken containment.” At the end of the series he proclaims that the “fourth era of fighting itself” is currently beginning and that the previous two ‘eras’ only lasted a handful of years each.

These generalisations don’t stand up to even the lightest scrutiny. The history of Martial Arts or combat sports or fighting or whatever term you care to use goes back much farther than feudal Japan, and some of the other things Felix says imply that he is at least partially aware of this. As he is giving his starry-eyed take on the life of Judo’s inventor he says “As long as there are people, they will at some point want the ability to keep someone from kicking their ass, no matter how unlikely it is that they will ever get into a fight.” It strikes me as particularly American that his argument in favor of combat sports being inherent to human society is based on the concept of self-defence. I prefer a line of reasoning that is similar but based on competition: As long as there are people, they will at some point want to test their wits and skill and strength against each other.

Indeed, the story as we know it of unarmed combat sports is as old as recorded history: there are images of wrestling in four thousand year old Egyptian tombs, and the classical Greek Olympics included an event called Pankration, which could be roughly translated as ‘fighting with all of your power’, that had an almost identical ruleset to early Ultimate Fighting Championship events.

Felix oversimplifies the history of fighting as a whole, but even if we just look at what he says about Mixed Martial Arts he gets it wrong. In episode one he says “The entire sport of Mixed Martial Arts owes its existence to Mitsuyo Maeda” and then in episode two he alleges that “A world where proto-MMA existed outside of gymnasiums in Brazil seemed pretty unlikely in 1976.” A corollary of my earlier statement might be that as long as there are people testing their wits and skill and strength against each other, there will be other people who think they can do it better. People have been pitting different schools of fighting against each other and amalgamating them long before the Gracie clan existed.

A decade before the date when Felix claims that mixed martial arts were confined to Brazil, Bruce Lee was blending Wing Chun with other styles to formulate Jeet Kune Do. A decade before that a Japanese Karateka was devising a ruleset which would eventually become Kickboxing to facilitate competitions between karate and Muay Thai. In the 40s the Kajukenbo school was founded in Hawaii with the goal of rigorously testing multiple fighting styles against each other to determine which elements of each were the most effective. In the 30s a Czechoslovakian Jew was refining the boxing and wrestling he had been taught in gyms into Krav Maga in brawls against anti-semitic thugs.

In Victorian London the Bartitsu school taught gentlemen a blend of five different fighting styles from around the world, while in the music halls exhibition matches pitted boxing against Savate. Savate was itself developed over the preceding century by efforts to find a middle ground between the heavy-booted street fighting style spreading from French ports and the Queensbury rules boxing that was popular in England.

Even the legend of the birth of Muay Thai, a fighting style which has had arguably as much influence on the modern sport of MMA as Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, is a story about mixed martial arts: when the Konbaung Dynasty of Burma captured a famous fighter during their battles with Siam in 1767, they offered him the chance to win his freedom if he could demonstrate the superiority of his Siamese boxing style against the Burmese school, which he promptly did by knocking out ten Burmese opponents.

Felix contradicts himself on this topic in the first episode when he describes Jigoro Kano studying western wrestling and sumo to augment his Jujutsu training and develop Judo. In the second episode when he says “In 1993 no one knew anything, and most people still thought that if you did karate the right way you could blow up somebody’s heart” he is obviously being facetious but he is also projecting his own ignorance outwards. There has always been fighting, all over the world, and there have always been evolving schools of thought about the best ways to fight and the best rules for fighting as a sport. The story of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and the Ultimate Fighting Championship is captivating but it is not, as Felix presents it, the only story about fighting. In this regard, as with others, he seems to have internalized the some of mystique that the UFC has cultivated around itself and its history.

Once the history lesson is over I think Fighting in the Age of Loneliness hits its stride and Felix’s passion for the Pride FC and UFC fights and fighters that drew him into the sport shines through in the writing and the narration. His criticisms of the ways that the UFC continues to underpay and otherwise mistreat its fighters are spot on and if anything he could have gone into its anti-union policies in more depth. Before I get to the final episode, there are a few smaller criticisms I want to get out of the way.

Firstly, I would like to have seen more about modern women’s Mixed Martial Arts in the show. I largely chalk this up to the difference in perspective on the sport between Felix and myself: a female fighter was what drew me to watch the UFC in the first place so my image of the sport is one that has always included women, whereas Felix got his start watching Pride, which had no female fighters, and an all-male era of the UFC. There were women competing in MMA at that time and a few exclusively female promotions but if Felix ever watched any of them he doesn’t mention it. In the end, Ronda Rousey gets a minute and a half, Joanna Jędrzejczyk gets about 30 seconds and Cristiane Justino gets a name check.

Rousey is the only female fighter to be mentioned outside of the quarantined WMMA portion of the show, and she comes up during a rather odd accusation of nepotism that Felix levels at Dana White, one which I have heard from other longer-standing UFC fans. I am no supporter of Dana’s and I’m not seeking to defend his character, but it seems far more likely to me that the reason the UFC put so many promotional resources behind Ronda Rousey and Conor McGregor is not, as Felix supposes, simply because Dana White personally liked those two fighters, but rather because he saw the opportunity to make a lot of money off of them, which he did. Dana is a fight promoter, he is notoriously fickle in his affections and the warmness he displays towards any given fighter is directly correlated to their ability to drive pay-per-view buys for his promotion.

I also think that there are some more straightforward explanations for the UFC’s success than the poetic ones that Felix understandably focuses on. The ideas of the UFC as a refuge for outcasts and the alienated, both as fighters and as fans, and the honesty of single combat in an age of uncertainty are clearly very thematically important to Fighting in the Age of Loneliness as a project. For me the series places too much importance on the role those things played in the current popularity of the sport and doesn’t put enough emphasis on, or even mention at all, some more mundane but more significant contributing factors.

The vacuum at the top of combat sports that was created when boxing all but collapsed under the accumulated weight of decades of corruption and promotional malpractice, and the brief but significant success that the WWE had with a grittier presentation of professional wrestling in the late 90s both set the stage for the rise of modern MMA in the USA. That rise was helped along by things like the value of the walk-off head kick knockout and the fourteen second armbar victory in the age of the highlight clip and the animated GIF, and the mix of astuteness and good fortune that led the UFC to put out a reality TV show featuring actual physical conflict at a time when programming was being dominated by reality shows based on exaggerating and continually re-hashing interpersonal squabbles.

At the end of episode four, titled “As the world fell apart, the only magic was in the cage”, Felix’s rhetoric about the things that happen during UFC fights reaches its most florid, mythological heights. Against a montage of post-fight embrace photographs he says “The magic that we wish we saw everywhere else was in the cage [...] At least there was one place where unthinkable things actually happened, at least if you put two weird people with incredible abilities in front of each other their combined experiences and opposing martial abilities would create a beautiful, maddening story.” I am not criticising Felix for being more captivated by the emotion and passion of fighting than I am but the praise and reverence which he lavishes upon his favourite period of the sport’s recent history at the end of the fourth episode clashes brutally with the way he starts the fifth.

“No-one is ever content to just like something, especially not nowadays”, he says. “We’re not just fans of things any more. We declare our media consumption habits to determine the types of people we are [...] now if someone doesn’t like something we like they hate us” These lines and the visuals that accompany them are presented as a barb aimed at the legions of TV personality and pop star fans bitterly defending their territory on social media. Although there is a hint of self-deprecation about this segment I don’t read much self-awareness here, mostly just old fashioned middle-class punching down at the popular culture of the working class.

In the way he frames what he views as the best period of the UFC’s history, Felix is himself engaging in, as he puts it, “battles that our millionaire entertainers will probably never give a shit about or even find out about”. He has taken to the field of the culture war to defend his memory of a past version of a massive, sinister entertainment company against the changes that he perceives to be ruining it.

Here is where the bitterness begins to creep in, and build. Felix starts talking about the insecurity of modern MMA fans and the sport’s image problem, but then he abruptly dispenses with those concerns and starts arguing that MMA should remain insular and niche. A this point he also waves a huge screaming red flag by describing Jon Jones as a “weird person” who is “actually pretty fascinating once you get to know him” and who has “more depth than most would know”, but we’ll get to that later.

“Who gives a shit if we don’t have hundreds of millions of people watching with us every time, and why do we care if people think we’re fucked up or weird for watching it. We know what our sport is, and we know who we are [...] It’s our stupid violent insane spectacle sport for freaks and assholes that’s as legitimate or illegitimate as any other sport in the world. Well, at least it was ours at some point.”

I recognised this argument the moment I heard it. It sounds almost word for word like an insecure gamer defending video games as an art form and as a hobby that is just for real nerds and not the masses. I know that argument very well because I have been that insecure gamer in the past. In complaining that MMA is not “ours” anymore he has jumped from “if someone doesn’t likes something we like they hate us” to “if someone likes something we like for the wrong reasons they hate us”.

This is the tone that Felix adopts for the entire final episode, and he proceeds to decry three recent changes he thinks the UFC has made in an effort to bring the sport into the mainstream, changes that he declares as already being “to the detriment of the viewers, the fighters, and ultimately, [the UFC] themselves”.

The first is the Fox TV deal, of which his criticism is that it has led to too many fights and therefore too many fighters, but he doesn’t present any reasons why more fights has been a bad thing. He talks about how poorly the UFC compensates its rank-and-file fighters, which is a great argument for better fighter pay, but is not an argument for fewer paid fighters or fewer fight cards.

The second is the UFC’s apparel deal with Reebok, which he accurately assesses as a disaster for their fighters.

The third is drug testing, and for me this is where Fighting in the Age of Loneliness goes completely off the rails. The first thing he says in this segment is probably the only part of it I agree with: “the vast majority of your favourite athletes use steroids.”

Felix is right that the UFC asked the US Anti-Doping Agency to start testing its fighters more to provide an image of legitimacy than because they actually care about fair competition, but his main problem with the policy is that performance enhancing drugs are in fact cool and good. Earlier in the series he celebrates the way that Pride FC’s “loose medical oversight” and “pro-steroid policy” allowed its fighters to “consistently break laws of god and man,” now he gleefully exclaims that “Steroids are actually kind of amazing.”

“The human body is absolutely not designed to fight for 15 to 25 minutes, but steroids help make it work”. Felix provides no justification whatsoever for this claim, and it’s a ridiculous one that springs from the same myopic view of the history of combat sports that he expresses in the early episodes. To present just one counterexample, fighters in classical Greece did not have the benefit of modern nutritional science and training methods, let alone anabolic steroids, but the only time limit on Pankration bouts was sunset. Fights that last more than 25 minutes might not be the most fun to watch but they’ve certainly been happening since long before the steroid era.

Felix doubles down on this position. While he acknowledges that steroids “have their side effects” he asserts that “it is impossible to compete at the highest levels of fighting without some chemical help.” This is another absurd claim, he does try to back this one up but in doing so he immediately undermines it: “Talk to any retired fighter, and they’ll give a number anywhere from 75 to 90 percent of their former training partners juicing.” Rather than proving his point, this statement suggests that it is not at all impossible to compete at the highest levels of fighting without chemical help because at the very least ten percent of fighters are doing it. This scaled-back version of his original pronouncement does make the prospects of success seem pretty bleak for clean fighters, but Felix doesn’t care. He is happy to accept that if most fighters are doping then fighters need to dope to compete and therefore it is OK for fighters to dope.

USADA testing in the UFC has, in Felix’s opinion, fucked things up. There are a lot of very valid criticisms that he could make about the inconsistent way that the policy has been applied to different fighters or the odd ways it has conflicted and overlapped with state athletic commission testing policies or the lack of fighter engagement in the process of rolling out the program leading to confusion and uncertainty about the rules, but he doesn’t. Instead of talking about the massive unregulated supplement industry in the USA and the habit that some supplement brands have of ‘accidentally’ slipping a bit of the good stuff in their products to make sure that their customers get the gains they crave, he complains that fighters are being punished for “by-products of over the counter substances”. By-products and contaminants are not the same thing, I’m not sure if Felix just misspoke here or if he genuinely doesn’t understand the problem he is talking about.

He goes on to moan that the punishments for breaking the rules of the sport are longer under this new program. He doesn’t say why the longer bans are bad, just that the UFC has been ‘capricious’, and it seems obvious to me that the reason he disagrees with the longer bans is that he thinks PED usage is a good thing. Let’s address that idea.

There are two main reasons why I think performance enhancing drugs should be banned in almost all sports. The first is that PED use is bad for the long term health of athletes. We know that there are permanent negative effects associated with the use of anabolic steroids, and there are scores of other widely used PEDs that simply haven’t been around for long enough for the consequences of their use to be properly understood. It is possible to argue from this position for the regulation and standardisation of PED use in sports, and although I disagree with that line of reasoning I do think it has some merit, but there is no hint of this argument in Fighting in the Age of Loneliness.

I think the most practical way to prevent athletes from being incentivised to gamble with their future health for short-term gain, especially in a sport like MMA which already carries so much physical risk, is to ban the use of PEDs and enforce that ban with testing. Felix talks about steroids helping fighters to recover quickly from serious injuries, but I don’t think that is a worthwhile tradeoff to ask them to make, and I don’t think it would be a bad thing for the health of fighters if less prevalent PED usage meant that fewer of them had to endure the accumulated physical toll of fighting four or five times a year.

The second reason is a purely sporting one. The rules of all sports are arbitrary, but they usually constitute an attempt to delineate a competition that tests one particular set of skills and abilities in its competitors and excludes others. Chess is not designed to be a test of split-second reflexive reactions, 100 meter sprinting is not supposed to challenge your ability to predict the strategy your opponent is going to employ and prepare a counter-strategy, and as far as I am aware there is no sport that seeks to test its competitors ability to improve their bodies through medical intervention. I want the sports I watch to be fair competitions that are about what they are about, and Felix does too: he repeatedly praises the “truth” and “honesty” and “earnestness” of “what goes on in the cage,” but he fails to see how this contradicts with the idea of allowing the outcomes of fights to be heavily influenced months ahead of time by means of one fighter having access to less scrupulous, less restrained doctors than the other.

There is some nuance here around where you draw the lines between sports nutrition, necessary medical assistance and doping, but again Felix does not adopt a position so sophisticated. It’s been demonstrated in almost every popular sport that athletes with the help of an organised and scientific doping program have a significant advantage over clean rivals with similar levels of experience and training, and that’s not a contest I was ever interested in watching. Fighters shouldn’t use steroids any more than match sailors should use outboard motors, it is contrary to the very concept of the sport.

Felix isn’t just mad about USADA testing because he thinks steroids are nifty, though. He’s also mad that they took away one of his favourites. “At the absolute highest level of the sport, no-one was derailed by this as much as Jon Jones” This is another part of Fighting in the Age of Loneliness that emphasises the gulf between Felix Biederman’s perspective on the UFC and my own. He watched Jon Jones’ rise through the ranks and his multi-year reign as the consensus best fighter in the world, and was apparently completely captivated by it. In describing him Felix returns to the hagiographic tone of the third and fourth episodes, describing him as “a giant, freak athlete who did moves that he learned off of youtube to humiliate fighters we grew up with”, comparing him to Napoleon, calling him “a genius who can destroy world champions with stuff he saw in a movie, the equivalent to those savant kids who can hear a song once and instantly play it on a piano perfectly”

By the time I was starting to watch the UFC, Jon Jones had already sabotaged his career fairly comprehensively. I don’t know Jon Jones as a legend or a genius or the greatest fighter in the world because I’ve never seen the fights that earned him that reputation. Here are the things that I do know about Jon Jones, things that have happened or that I have learned about since I started following the sport:

Jon Jones is a homophobe. In 2012 Jon Jones crashed his car, plead guilty to driving under the influence, and received a slap on the wrist. In January 2015 Jon Jones tested positive for cocaine in an out-of-competition test and was issued a token fine. In April 2015 Jon Jones ran a red light and caused an accident involving two other cars that left a pregnant woman with a fractured arm, then ran away only to turn himself in after an arrest warrant was issued and eventually plead guilty to fleeing the scene of an accident, receiving 18 months of probation. In 2017 Jon Jones was given a one year suspension after testing positive for banned hormone and metabolic modulators, which turned out to be contaminants in an erectile dysfunction pill he had been given by a training partner. In 2018 Jon Jones tested positive for an anabolic steroid and was suspended again for 15 months.

On the front steps of courthouses Jon Jones is humble and apologetic, and in the immediate aftermath of being caught doing something he shouldn’t have he often talks about how hard the experience has been for him and how much he has learned from it and grown as a person. At all other times he acts as though the bad things that happen to him or around him are never his fault, that he has no responsibility to ever change or even reflect upon his own behaviour, as though in all these struggles he has been the victim of cruel circumstance and conspiracy.

The Jon Jones that Felix describes is not someone I recognise, and the way he describes him is concerning. “As we got to know Jon more, we saw his personal foibles, like his DUI arrest and rivalry with Rashad Evans” I don’t think that having a heated rivalry with a competitor is comparable with drunk driving at all, and in framing the incident this way Felix trivializes it. He does this again with Jones’ hit-and-run conviction, mentioning it in passing but quickly moving on to quip about how awesome Jones got at powerlifting in his year off. He calls Jones “a person with failings who sometimes acted like an asshole, got pissed off and said incredibly cutting things to his opponents”, reinforcing the impression that Jones’ main character flaw is simply being too fierce a competitor, instead of calling him, say, a person with failings who sometimes acted like an asshole, took drugs he shouldn’t and crashed cars.

Felix is constantly making excuses for Jon Jones in this part of the episode. When he gets to the second failed drug test, he says Jones “got popped by USADA”, a turn of phrase that subtly reinforces Jones’ own narrative of victimhood, especially since Felix has already established USADA as the bad guys who are fucking up the UFC. He wraps up the Jones segment with a ‘boys will be boys’ defence couched in another appeal to the glory of days gone by: “It used to matter less if you acted like an idiot. Everyone was a bit of an idiot in one manner or the other in life, but god forbid you now embarrass the sport”.

From here, Fighting in the Age of Loneliness whines to a messy conclusion. The segments get more disjointed, it’s at this stage that modern women’s Mixed Martial Arts gets all of two minutes of consideration, and then there is a rather reluctant summary of the UFC career of Conor McGregor, who Felix seems not to like. He certainly doesn’t describe him with close to the same kind of exaltation that he deploys earlier for fighters who had similar trajectories like Mauricio Rua, Anderson Silva and Jon Jones.

After that, Felix goes back to behaving like a fan of an indie band that has started making top 40 hits. He doesn’t like that the one of the UFC’s new part-owners is an asset stripping firm, even though in his golden age one of the UFC’s part-owners was an Emirati war criminal. Back in the first segment of the first episode he references “this modern era of fighting, where all of the things that used to make the sport unusual are mostly gone,” and now he returns to that idea and calls the supposed new “fourth era” of fighting “sanitized and oversaturated,” contrasting it with the “honesty of a fist-fight” and the “cultural haven for strange people” that the UFC offered ten years ago. He complains that there aren’t enough knockouts any more. When he brings up the recent long-anticipated fight between Conor McGregor and Khabib Nurmagomedov he says “sometimes the dam of normalcy breaks and we get momentary bursts of how things once were,” which strikes me as a rather ‘what have you done for me lately’ attitude to take about something that happened the month before this video series came out.

Things drag closer to an end and Felix keeps returning to his golden age. “What was once a weird refuge for those who needed it is now eroding into just another thing that’s as formless and indistinct as everything else. Fighting has rid itself of so much of its magic. It does not transcend the world any more.” The way that he constantly makes references to a bygone era when everything was simple and pure and good and as it ought to be, and wishes dearly that we could return to that era instead of continuing to face the injustices of this current moment in time, reminds me a lot of an ideology that has has a big resurgence in the USA recently.

The episode wraps up with one final spasm of bitterness. “This will happen to everything that you love. Nothing you like will remain untouched, and it will get further and further monetized into meaninglessness. This isn’t just our problem in our idiotic bloodsport. You’re fucked too.” He’s not wrong about the commoditization of entertainment and sports-as-entertainment but he sounds once again like a whiny gamer stereotype or a disillusioned popstar fanboy of the kind he mocks at the start of the episode.

And then the episode doesn’t actually end. The sort-of epilogue about Donald Cerrone fighting Nate Diaz seven years ago is a good little segment, but it doesn’t do anything here. It doesn’t serve to illustrate or emphasise any of the things Felix has been talking about in the minutes leading up to it, it doesn’t follow from them in any kind of narrative. It feels like a piece that some combination of Felix Biederman and Jon Bois just liked too much to cut, even though they couldn’t find a place to put it, so they stuck it here at the end. Maybe it is intended to provide some sense of denouement after Felix’s angry ranting. Regardless, it comes at the end of such an unpleasant half hour that its attempt at poignance failed utterly on me.

Felix Biederman likes different fighters than I do, he has a perspective on the sport of Mixed Martial Arts that often seems parochial and outdated to me, and I am puzzled by his obsession with the idea that combat sports athletes are all strange, broken people, but none of these things would bother me if Fighting in the Age of Loneliness did not present itself as an authoritative, comprehensive history of fighting, instead of what it is, which is the story of Felix Biederman falling into and out of love with the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Together with Jon Bois he certainly tells that story well, their collage of tales of societal fracture and political indifference with images of single combat is a powerful one, but in pursuing its thematic goals the series fails over and over to justify or interrogate the positions it puts forward.

If the UFC disappeared tomorrow, or if it had never been created in the first place, fighting would still exist, Mixed Martial Arts would still exist, the “one two path of a punch to a guy snoring on the ground” that Felix claims to adore will still exist. Fighting is exactly as magical and exactly as mundane today as it it always has been and always will be, even if Felix Biederman doesn’t enjoy watching it as much as he used to.

#Fighting in the Age of Loneliness #Felix Biederman #Jon Bois #SBNation #UFC #MMA #Chapo Trap House #Jon Jones #PEDs #Fighting #Combat Sports #Ronda Rousey #Conor McGregor

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merrylittlehogwartsrp · 6 years ago

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Happy Holidays, Emily! We are thrilled to “invite” Dean Thomas (fc Keiynan Lonsdale ) back to Hogsmeade for a little forced Winter Cheer. We particularly liked how Dean was set up for growth in this application--not necessarily launching a career post-Battle of Hogwarts and still learning about himself. Dean’s roommate is: Harry Potter!

OOC DETAILS:

NICKNAME: Emily

AGE (must be 18+): A grandma in the rp world

PRONOUNS: She/her

ACTIVITY ESTIMATE: I work on political campaigns and there is a race I am starting in January which kills my time immensely, but right now I have ample free time and can lurk/plot the whole time!

CHARACTER DETAILS:

FULL NAME & NICKNAMES: Dean Allen Thomas

BIRTHDATE: October 1st 1979 Dean is a FIRM Libra. “"The balanced beautifier of the horoscope family, Libra energy inspires us to seek peace, harmony and cooperation. The essence of Libra energy is charming, lovable, fair, sincere, sharing, beautiful and hopelessly romantic.“

BLOOD-STATUS: Half-Blood, although he grew up believing he was Muggle-born

* GENDER IDENTITY: Cisgender male (although I would like to eventually explore a world where Dean could be more open to referring to himself as agender or gender fluid)

* GENDER PRESENTATION/PRONOUNS: Fairly masculine, he/him

* SEXUAL ORIENTATION: Dean is bisexual, although he very only recently fully came to terms with this.

* NOTE: this does not have to correspond to canon, or to the temporary pronouns in the bios!

CHARACTER SITUATION:

OCCUPATION: Dean works at a sporting goods store near his house and while it is not his ideal job, it does leave him with plenty of time to focus on his art. This is the main way he copes with the last three years.

HOUSING: He lives in a tiny, tiny flat in Clapton. It’s about a thirty minute train ride to his home, and while he would like to stay at home, there simply isn’t enough room now that the girls are growing. Not to mention, he quite enjoys his alone time away from the chaos of his family occasionally.

SOCIAL STANDING: Dean still can’t believe that he is in The Order of Merlin, First Class, thank you very much. It’s a bit of a wild title, especially for someone that people consider Muggle-born. Dean is known as a friendly face, and will always be a friend to those who need it, but his name usually doesn’t garner recognition. And frankly, he prefers to keep it that way.

CHARACTER CONFIGURATION:

TALENTS/WEAKNESSES +Artistically inclined + Athletic, which made him a great addition as a Chaser on the Gryffindor Quidditch Team -Potions. He could never get the portions right, not to mention he thought it a dull subject -Not a strong leader

STRENGTHS/FLAWS + Bright; always knows just what to do or say to cheer someone up + Huge empath; keen ability to improve others moods + Loyal like no other person, whether that be to people or sports teams. He is your #1 Fan - Terrible at making decisions, which causes him to go with the flow a lot of the time -Self-less, which can lead to putting himself second and the needs of others first. Also causes a bit of a self-confidence issue

CHARACTER HISTORY:

FAMILY BACKGROUND Being raised by a single Muggle mother, Dean learned early on to dislike his father, Alexander, with every fiber of his being. His parents had married young, and he always blamed their split on that. Alexander was too young, he got cold feet. Couldn’t handle a baby anymore, let alone being a father. While Martha never gave him an outright reason to dislike his father, Dean was the one acting out about it. Looking back, it was probably because he was compensating for his mother’s own nonchalance on the subject. Why wasn’t she upset? Why wasn’t she screaming? He later realized that her spending hours in front of the television set alone was her own version of screaming.

They had been fine. Martha and Dean had built a life together, just the two of them. They lived in a tiny flat and ate tiny meals and wrapped each other in tiny blankets and only each other could feel the warmth. The introduction of Graham Richards into Dean’s life was not a welcomed one. They met at his produce shop, sharing casual flirtations down the turnip aisle. Nothing made her laugh as much as those cabbages.

As Graham started spending more time in their flat, Dean started coming to terms with the idea that maybe he wasn’t all that bad. He had shit taste in sports, sure, but he was a great cook. And he made Martha happy. Damn, did he make her smile.

It took him eight years to propose to Martha, and by that point it came as no shock to anyone. They were already basically married, having moved in together years ago. Graham was basically already Dean’s father, having helped him through a break up and always supporting him in his art projects. Veronica and Bridget were already welcomed additions into the family, and shortly after baby Sam was no different.

Soon his tiny flat became a spacious three-bedroom. His tiny meals became three-course dinners. The blankets became shelters for movie nights and a home for Dean’s stories from school.

Since his father’s death, Dean harbors serious regret for his treatment of the man he barely remembers, mainly because of memories he lost and resentment he held. He wants to tell his father he is proud of him. That he understands all that he did in order to protect his family. That he would have done the exact same thing. While he can’t look back on many memories, he will always wonder what if.

LIFE DURING THE WAR: Not being able to return to Hogwarts for his final year was devastating to Dean. He loved his friends and he loved Quidditch and he loved the charmed sugar spoon that he used each morning in the Great Hall for breakfast. The fact that he was Muggle-born should not have affected his ability to attend school, but he quickly learned it was for his own good. He would stay up late and write letters his father would never be able to read. In those letters, Dean promised he would get through all this. He promised that, eventually, there would be happiness for at least one of them.

Dean wasn’t keen on having to fight in a war in his home away from home, but like a true Gryffindor, he pummeled himself headfirst into the throws of Battle. Finally, he felt welcomed again in this world. Perhaps it was the rush of finally seeing his friends after all this time (physically there, if mentally in pieces) and seeing Harry—his old friend, his sole source of hope when no one would believe that there was a reason to hope anymore—do what’s right that continued to propel him forward after all this time.

LAST THREE YEARS

Dean chose to fully immerse himself in the Muggle world. In the Muggle word, they can’t force him to run away from his friends and family. He loves being a wizard of course, but his last year on the run really took its toll on him. He still wakes up with nightmares when a neighbor makes too much noise. He is constantly afraid of being alone, as he was alone for most of his Final Year. Dean doesn’t want to think about life in terms of goals because, to be quite honest, he really has no idea what he wants to do after Hogwarts. A small part of him didnt even think he’d make it this far. Instead, he has a lot of different interests and ideas, but nothing that is jumping out at him right now. The Ministry of Magic is urging those in The Order of Merlin First Class to follow the career path of an Auror. And there is a part of him that feels he could make a great Healer or Auror, and another part of him that longs to be a Quidditch star, and somewhere inbetween there is his desire to paint and draw for a living. The more he thinks about it the more overwhelmed he gets, so he conveniently chooses not to think about it. His goal right now is a lot simpler than that–if he is forced to come back to Hogsmeade, enjoy this festive Holiday celebration before he can’t anymore.

HOLIDAY DETAILS:

The Thomases were never big Christmas-celebrators in the whole Navity-set-and-going-to-church kind of way, but they do spend copious amounts of time watching Holiday specials that come on the telly and they have a tree with an unhealthy amount of tinsel. Dean’s step-father is a fantastic baker and Dean has a competition with him and his younger sister that involves cooking competitions and ginger snaps. His mother always ends up declaring it a tie because she can’t decide. He always valued coming home for the holidays simply because he recognized the traditions he was making with his half-sisters and knew that he wanted to be as involved as he possibly could. Being away from these traditions is enough reason for him not to want to go back to Hogsmeade, but he felt like he couldn’t say no. They crammed in as many of these traditions as they could before sending Dean off on his own.

OOC SUPPLEMENT:

SHIPS: I will not lie and say that Deamus makes me weep because clueless best friends to lovers hits a little too close to home for me, but I am also open to alternatives! Especially when Chemistry and Drama are thrown into the mix! Also super interested to flesh out Ginny and Dean’s past relationship, as I feel like that was not explored enough.

CHANGES: This is a very tiny tiny change, but I do think Dean will be excited to go to Hogsmeade. I always kind of thought of him as that guy who would actually want to go to a high school reunion of sorts, and I think it’s because he just loves his friends so gosh darn much!! He was robbed of a proper “Senior Year” and spent most of that year on the run. As a result, I think that he is spending a good portion of his life making up for lost time. Also because the kid loves a party, and a distraction.

FACECLAIM: Truly having a tough time debating between Keiynan Lonsdale and Alfie Enoch. I would not be mad with either!

#merrylittleapp

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sheikah · 7 years ago

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An Excessively Long Con ofThrones Recap Post!

Hey guys! I haven’t been active for about a week so I hope everyone is doing well. I am just getting home from an excellent long weekend at Con ofThrones 2018 in Dallas. I had a great trip there and thought some of you might like to hear about it :D

This was my second trip to Con ofThrones and definitely my favorite experience there yet. Last year the Con was in Nashville at the Gaylord resort, and this year it moved to Dallas and took place at the smaller Hyatt Regency. I think the smaller setting was a good thing for the event, condensing the panels closer to one another and creating a more communal feel for all of the attendees.

Perhaps the best thing about this trip was that I got to spend it with one of my best friends and favorite people, Jenn/ @dracarysqueen. We spent the whole week leading up to the Con together in New Orleans so I was a bit wiped out by the time we got to Dallas. But sharing this experience with someone I met THROUGH the Thrones fandom really helped to keep our excitement and energy up.

On the first morning, Jenn, my husband Alex, and I had a pretty exciting moment. We met one of GRRM’s friends at breakfast! We were sitting at the hotel eating and discussing the show when an older man next to us struck up conversation. After a few minutes he pulled out his phone, said, “Since you’re being nice I’ll do something for you guys,” and showed us a contact in his phone. It was George!!!! He explained how he met him and kind of recapped their relationship, saying that George was actually SUPPOSED TO BE AT THE CON! He wasn’t going to be an “official” guest but he had planned to go and sort of observe what he could, but was suffering from diabetes complications and couldn’t make it. Anyway, this friend of George promised to get Jenn and I signed copies of ASOIAF the next time he sees George, and told us some cool stories about their friendship. He also said this, verbatim, which I was pretty excited to hear: “George has more involvement and creative control than many people seem to think.” And David and Dan “are doing a great job” at writing plot points that we don’t yet have in the books. In other words, he basically confirmed that George has told him that the show up to this point is doing what he wanted it to do and that major plot points are, in fact, the same. This was definitely one of the highlights of the trip and if anyone is interested in this conversation and things he said about George I can elaborate :D

We were also thrilled to meet up with Yara/ @oadara at the Con. We had three of the founding Jonerys fandom folks all in one place and I couldn’t be happier to have met these lovely ladies and spent some time with them in the flesh.

On our first day we attended some great panels from both cast/crew and fans. The first was a panel on “Targaryen Politics in Post-Dragon Westeros.” There were some interesting ideas presented from the panelists and some great laughs from those who frequently circled back to Aegon the Unworthy and his remarkable reign. Everyone had a good chuckle discussing his disastrous attempts to transport wildfire that ultimately led to the burning of half the kingswood, as well as his impressive virility--he impregnated three women in one night. Overall the panel seemed to come to the conclusion that many of the Targaryen monarchs could not effectively enforce their policies without dragons. But I think that the aforementioned Aegon’s mistakes, culminating in the later Blackfyre Rebellions, might be more to blame for this than the lack of dragons.

After that we went to the interview with Sibel Kekilli, who portrays Shae in the show. She was an absolute delight to listen to and had the audience laughing the entire time. In particular I was pleased with what she had to say because it was so apparent that she was every engaged with the show and with her character. Sometimes when I watch commentary with the cast, like with Peter Dinklage for example, they give the impression that they aren’t very connected to storylines outside their own scenes. In other words, they don’t necessarily spend a lot of time watching the show or thinking about it outside work. But Sibel had a relatable and endearing take on the plot and is clearly still very emotionally invested in Shae’s arc and the show as a whole. She praised Peter as being lovely to work with and told a heartwarming story about D&D that really stuck with me. Apparently when she got the part of Shae she initially turned it down because she was worried that she couldn’t execute it correctly because of her English and some other things that worried her. She then received a long and heartfelt letter from D&D telling her how much they valued and admired her, and how much they believed in her abilities and her work. She said she still keeps a copy of it to this day, in a drawer next to the necklace she wore in her last episode. She also maintains contact with GRRM and celebrates Thanksgiving with him :)

After Sibel’s panel we went to another fan-run panel called “Game of Threads.” This was my favorite fan panel of the entire con. It was run by Hogan McLaughlin, a fashion and costume designer, who was very knowledgeable and gave a really interesting presentation of the costumes from the most recent seasons. He explained the symbolism of all the costumes, with particular emphasis on Cersei and Dany, and how their dramatic wardrobe changes in season 7 signal a shift in their personalities and motivations. He showed close-ups of the most interesting costume details and was obviously (like all of us) a huge fan of Michelle Clapton’s work. He read out some quotes of hers (many of which I’d already heard because I’m a nerd :P) discussing how Dany’s costumes are a nod to her Targaryen roots and how the fur-lined dress shows a closer allegiance with Jon and the North. Cersei’s outfits, obviously, show her growing darkness. The masculine details on her dresses and even her hairstyle are, according to McLaughlin, “militaristic,” which I agree with and think is an interesting observation as Cersei enters a war not only with the Night King but with Jon and Dany as well.

From there we went to a Jonerys panel entitled, “Daenerys and Jon: Ice and Fire United.” I went into this panel armed for some negativity but it was mostly pleasant. The panelists, for the most part, seemed like pro-Jonerys people. But some of the same critical comments we in the fandom have been hearing for a year did come up. One of the panelists said she saw “no chemistry” between Dany and Jon, while another said that the incest was “icky.” Interestingly enough, it was the two men on the panel who seemed the most defensive of the ship, and Luka Nieto from Watchers on the Wall admitted that he, like the shippers, was happy that Jonerys went canon and wished that we got a better boatsex scene that wasn’t spliced with Jon’s big Targ Reveal. Another panelist mentioned something I’ve been saying myself for quite awhile. The incest “issue” in Jonerys is in reality a non-issue. One thing he mentioned is that it would take generations for genetic problems to surface from Jon and Dany’s union if it were in the real world. But of course, they’re magical people (Targaryens) so we don’t even know if genealogical issues would be a thing at all. What he said (and I agree) is that incest becomes in issue in stories not because of genetic concerns but because of relationship concerns. It’s unsettling to people when a close, trusting, family relationship turns into incest. He actually used Jon and Sansa as an example since they believe themselves to be half siblings. But, as he pointed out, Jon and Dany don’t even know they’re related, so it’s different, and would still be different even if Targaryens didn’t already have a history of incest. He shared my belief that the bigger concern in season 8 will be Jon’s identity, and not the fact that he and Dany are related while also romantically intimate.

Everyone in the room readily acknowledged the inevitability of a Jonerys baby, and seemed excited about it. While there were a couple dissenters, most people also seemed to agree with that and that a possible resulting marriage would prevent Jon and Dany from ever feuding over who has the better claim to the Iron Throne. I was happy to see some panelists acknowledging that it would be wildly out of character for Jon to WANT the Iron Throne, much less to place himself at odds with Dany to get it.

The only thing I really didn’t like was that all four of them seemed convinced that either Jon or Dany would die. One girl cited Azor Ahai/Nissa Nissa as the reason for this, speculating that Jon would have to sacrifice Dany to destroy the Night King. When Yara pointed out that the words “Azor Ahai” and “Nissa Nissa” have never been mentioned in the show, and that TPTWP and Azor Ahai could very well be different, she seemed to reconsider it. I also mentioned the analysis I read of season 7 comparing Dany’s campaign to Azor Ahai’s forging of Lightbringer. First he tried to temper it in water, and it shattered. Next, he used the heart of a lion with the same results. It was only when he tempered it inside Nissa Nissa, his true love, that he was successful. I brought up the popular theory that Dany’s dragons, or possibly just Drogon, are the new Lightbringer, created with the sacrifice of Drogo and Rhaego. If this is true, we can see Dany using her dragons in her conquest as her own attempts at tempering Lightbringer. First, her forces face resistance in water--the Greyjoy/Martell sea battle with Euron. It’s a failure, just like Azor Ahai. Then, her allies contend with the heart of a the lion’s forces--the Lannisters sack Highgarden and wipe out the Tyrells. Another failure. But Dany’s alliance with Jon, who she loves, and her sacrifice of Viserion to save him, could be what she needed to come into her own as the chosen savior of the realm. The panelists liked this analysis and agreed that it would be too neat and tidy for a direct parallel between Jon/Dany and Azor Ahai/Nissa Nissa. Overall I was glad to see some Jonerys-positive folks, but this attitude that either Jon or Dany (and more likely Dany) has to die, prevailed all weekend in almost every panel and really bothered me.

After this we went shopping in the marketplace where I picked up some great stuff. I got a Game of Thrones subscription box with a great shirt, a Jaime’s hand oven mitt (lol!), a Tyrell planting pot, and some other goodies. I also picked up some t-shirts from Watchers on the Wall. I want to support my favorite Thrones fansite, after all :) Lastly, I purchased some fanart from an awesome artist who was there selling her stuff on site. The first print I bought probably won’t surprise you...

That’s right, I picked up this gorgeous drawing of boatsex! >:)

But what yall might not know about me is that I’ve got a major and enduring crush on Iwan Rheon. I readily acknowledge that Ramsay is absolutely vile and horrible, but Iwan Rheon in costume is uh... my aesthetic. So I also purchased this snazzy drawing to hang in my office!

This artist actually had several drawings of Ramsay, and even gave me her card with AO3 info to read her fanfics haha. I loved getting to interact with other fans in person this way :)

As we were leaving the marketplace we were lucky enough to run into Sam Coleman (aka Willis/Young Hodor!) and get a photo. He’s really nice and a hilarious guy to talk to as well.

We ended the day with a live debate of the “Most Consequential Death” in GoT/ASOIAF. It went off the rails a bit so I didn’t stick around until the end, but there were some intriguing and some funny candidates. I think Lyanna was one of the more compelling answers, as was Shireen (without whom we arguably would not have Jon’s resurrection!! “Only death can pay for life,” of course) but the frontrunner seemed to be “Todd Stark,” aka the man who was turned into the Night King hahaha.

Our next day started off wonderfully because the first item on our agenda was a photo op with Joe Dempsie. He is, without a doubt, just as handsome in person. Whoa. Like, I’ve looked into the eyes of god and survived ;)

From there we went to listen to a panel from Miltos Yeromelou, who plays Syrio Forel. He’s an incredibly charismatic and fun person to listen to, and he’s had a really unique life in almost every sphere or performance or entertainment. He’s also extremely personable, outgoing, loud, and funny. He kissed every panelist on stage on the mouth at one point and was constantly standing up and demonstrating things throughout his talk. One of my favorite tidbits was the fact that he and Maisie made a pact together when they met and started filming Thrones. Apparently when most actors have sword-fighting or other combat scenes, they don’t even bother learning the difficult choreography and leave it all to their stunt doubles. But Miltos said that he and Maisie agreed to learn their choreography and practice with their swords so that they could be as involved in the scenes as possible. Of course, this absolutely paid off and I love the finished product of all of their scenes together. To this day they are some of my favorite Arya moments!

After that we sat on the panel with Esme Bianco, the actress who played Ros. This was a fun panel and I was excited by her enthusiasm. She remarked, and rightfully so, on the ridiculousness of her costumes--mostly just a belt here or there--and on her costars and more difficult scenes. She was upset that Ros’s death took place offscreen and described how in the shot where her body is revealed (the slow pan across Joffrey’s chamber), she caused them to have to cut and redo it a few times because she kept acting out a death moment when the camera got to her. It was hilarious to hear her describe this haha. She also mentioned Alfie Allen and said that he was one of her best friends on set, which was a good thing considering the nature of their scenes together. She noted that her sex scene with Alfie and the way Ros is sort of funny and has a cocky attitude is something that she’s proud of.

From there we watched Joe Dempsie’s panel, which was probably my favorite cast panel. He was very down to earth and funny, and he talked about his viral tweet of Gendry rowing that later became the biggest meme in the fandom. He also discussed training with the hammer that he wields in season 7, and what it was like building strength enough to swing it. He said that he would practice swinging a sledgehammer in his garden and probably scared his neighbors because he was doing it shirtless. (Me listening to this: ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) )

He said that he is done filming for season 8 and talked about how emotional it was finishing up on the show, even though he’s been off of it for years. I couldn’t get a read on how he feels about season 8 (no one would really reveal anything, of course) but he did say that it was very sad to finish up, not just because his scenes were over, but because he was watching others wrap for the season as well and everyone is very sad to be finished.

The only thing that I didn’t like in his panel was when he was asked about Gendrya. Don’t get me wrong: I ship it. And he explicitly stated that he would be open to working that way with Maisie now. But he was clearly very uncomfortable when asked how he felt about the ship because, as he reminded us, he was in his early twenties and Maisie was 14 when they were filming together. I just wish it hadn’t been brought up because it was the only time he seemed reluctant to answer a question. But he did admit that he sees why people ship it and that he’s open to it :) So I’d say that bodes well for their season 8 relationship :D

The night wrapped up with the cosplay contest, and I wish I had photos. But I was too busy drinking and cheering for all that. The winner was a couple cosplaying as Jon and Dany. Their costumes were beautiful, and I especially loved the detailed embroidery on their outfits. Jon’s cape had an incredibly detailed and gorgeous new sigil that combined the Targaryen and Stark sigils! There were also some really creative ideas like someone who cosplayed The Wall and another who was the Harpy of Meereen. While the girl pictured below didn’t win, her gorgeous Myrcella was one of my favorites of the weekend!

Don’t mind that orange bit--that’s just the lanyard for our Con badges. But I love the details on her dress, which she made herself, and the nice touch of the blood from Ellaria’s poison.

Our last day was a little less eventful. We kicked off with Hannah Murray (Gilly)’s panel. It was a good one, and she gave some great insight into Gilly’s character. She said that for early seasons she made a conscious effort not to smile because Gilly didn’t have anything to smile about. But we can see as the seasons progress that she begins to feel more comfortable with Sam and Little Sam, and to feel more confident in herself. She said that one of her favorite scenes is the one where Gilly and Sam are plucking a goose, and that in that moment we can tell that Gilly is truly happy. She also discussed the scene in season 6 where Gilly and Sam are at Horn Hill and Sam sees Gilly in a dress for the first time. She said that D&D wanted it to be a “She’s All That” moment in which Gilly is beautiful and stunning as she appears in the dress. Hannah said that would be strange and not like Gilly, so she planned to play the scene differently. Conveniently, the shoes she was given with the dress were hard to walk in, and the dress didn’t fit well as it was supposed to be one that was made for Sam’s sister. So the wobbling in the scene that we see was partly genuine. Hannah says she and D&D like the scene better this way because Gilly isn’t flawless and stunning but Sam says, “You’re beautiful” anyway. We get to see that this is how Sam truly sees Gilly, no matter what. I basically cried when she said this haha.

She was asked if she was honored to be the one delivering the Rhaegar/Lyanna marriage reveal line and she said that she was, and that she did not expect the huge fan reaction that took place after the episode aired. This naturally led to more questions about what that revelation meant, and what other ships she liked in the show. She said that Gilly doesn’t care about anyone else and that she would not care at all about what was going on with Jon and Dany. I laughed and I have to say I agree, even though in my AU fic, Gilly and Dany are friends. She was also asked if she ships Jon and Sansa, to which she made a very confused and disgusted face and said nothing at all. She also said that she thinks that Dany’s relationships with her dragons are “one-sided” haha, so she’s got some pretty strong opinions. But I love Hannah Murray and her performance both as Gilly and as Cassie on Skins and it was awesome listening to her.

Next up was Tommy Dunne’s panel. He is the weapons designer for the show, and has also done the weapons on many other shows and films including my personal favorite movie, Gladiator. He was a lovable and HILARIOUS Irish man who immediately stole my heart. There are too many cool things from his panel to mention but some things that stuck out: He has done a few cameos on the show, most notably as the man shaving Jon, Robb, and Theon, in that infamous shirtless scene in season 1. He apparently is still made fun of for this cameo hahaha. He also referred to D&D and “the two lads,” and all of my followers should be told that henceforth I will only be referring to them as such lmao. Perhaps the most interesting moment of his panel was the revelation that his favorite episode of the series thus far is one from season 8! I can’t wait to see it :)

From there we attended a fan panel on spinoffs in which we discussed the most likely possibilities for the spinoff series and what will be most successful if done correctly. Most of the audience agreed that it will be something involving Targaryen history. Aegon’s Conquest, The Dance of Dragons, and the Blackfyre Rebellions were the most popular ideas. Someone also pitched Nymeria and the Ten Thousand Ships, which I would personally love to see. But I think Aegon’s Conquest would be my favorite possibility and the most likely one since there wouldn’t be AS MANY dragons to CGI as the Dance of Dragons, but it is still a big enough plot to capture the audience in the same way that Game of Thrones has, and offers many possibilities with the POVs of both the Targaryens themselves and the people they conquer. While most agreed the Targs will be involved, many people, including one panelist, expressed their distaste for this. I was once again annoyed by the persistent Targaryen hate I see sometimes in the fandom, and a guy on the panel pulled out a train whistle, blew it happily, and said “All Aboard the Targaryen Hate Train.”

Unfortunately this seemed to continue into my last panel of the day, which was about Jon and how his story fits Campbell’s 12-part story of the hero. The panel was extremely interesting and detailed and I really enjoyed it for the most part. I also got a kick out of the panelists inviting “Con Snow,” the resident Jon cosplayer, to the stage during their talk. He has many Jon cosplays but his interpretation of Night’s Watch Jon is my favorite. He looked fantastic.

At the end of the panel, the panelists opened it up for speculation about how the 12 steps can help us predict Jon’s future. At first this led to some interesting discussion. But then, inevitably, we turned AGAIN to rampant speculation that Dany will die. Some of the audience members seemed delighted by this possibility, asserting that she should never be queen, “has only ever wanted power and nothing else,” “has never made sacrifices,” and is less deserving than Jon. The oft-repeated idea that Jon deserves the throne most because he doesn’t want it was seized upon by the crowd, and at this point I got up and left. I’m tired of this idea. It’s frankly the same one that got Trump into office. Why do we believe that people with no interest in politics or leadership would make the best leaders? Experience is a good thing. Passion is a good thing. Dany now has both in spades. And so I suppose the only thing I ended the Con disappointed with was the continued attitude in some sects of the fandom that ambitious women like Dany are a threat. I say ambitious women, because many of the people critiquing Dany’s supposed thirst for “power” (which I disagree with anyway) are the same ones who are still die-hard Stannis fans. So it’s okay for him to make a military bid for the throne, but not Dany. It just felt a bit sad to be someone who supports and enjoys Dany when surrounded by a lot of folks who are either convinced she will die, or simply want her to. I am happy to say that there were some people who spoke up and offered alternative opinions, and for the most part (with a few exceptions of course) everyone was civil and kind.

Overall the tone of the Con was fun, inclusive, loving, and exciting. I’m happy that I went and hope that I will be able to afford another visit to Con ofThrones 2019, and of course another chance to hang out with Jenn and Yara. In fact, we’re already planning a panel for 2019 :D Being there reminded me again of why I love this story and this fandom, and I hope to create some more content for you guys in the coming weeks as I feel nice and inspired!

#personal #i recommend it for any fellow dorks #if any of you suffered through this whole huge post #then thank you lmao

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