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sweetshelluvaau · 5 months ago

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World/Lore Building - Overlords

The first half of my of my Part 2 of the Seven Rings (p2 focusing on Pride) is basically about finish but before I clean and finish it up, I want to focus on the Overlords being my Pride post talks about them for a bit so I wanted to make a deeper dive on how they work in my rewrite/AU.

Putting under the cut being this will be a bit long.

Okay to reblog, feedback and criticism is welcomed.

Part One: How they work in Canon (or the exploration of why worldbuilding is a big deal and something you need to consider and not just throw shit at the wall and hoping it sticks)

Sorry I have to be a bit of a snarky shit.

So, I do have questions on how Overlords as a whole work in Hellaverse because it isn't really fully explained what they are outside of being 'sinners with power'. I'm assuming they are the ones that are the real leadership over Pride considering how Lucifer and Charlie don't really do anything in regard to running the ring? idk?

Why are Overlords as powerful as they are? Why do they have powers, let alone power in general? How did they gain those powers? Granted, a lot of this also has to do my feelings in regard how Sinners are so high up the caste ladder to begin with to even out ranking Hellborns but but I do think these questions like these matter regardless how big or small they are.

I think we take worldbuilding for granted sometimes being this blog really made me rethink how important it is for your story's universe is to have rules on how things work and why they work the way they do. I'm not asking for the story to stop every second and give us a long exposition lore dump before moving on, visual storytelling is a great way of exploring the world the characters are in and just small details can leave just as much of a big impact of portraying what a story is trying to say about it's surroundings. Hazbin is the kind of show that really needs to take time to breath and not speed run everything suppose to letting us the audience take it all in. Honestly, Hellaverse in general really could have benefit from having a story/lore bible before production ever began suppose to just throwing things at the wall because everything is a mess.

Sorry, I went on a tangent here, but these things do bother me not just as a writer but as a viewer as well but I digress.

Anyways, enough of me ranting, lets dive into my rewrite:

Part Two: So, Overlords huh?

I didn't know what to name this section lol

I kinda talked about this here that I decided that Overlords are both Sinners and Hellborns in my AU and are more close to gang leaders/business owners that gained influence though backstabbing/manipulation/killing their competition and raising though the ranks but they also gain power due to various activities in trust and talent as well. Basically: Anyone can become an Overlord if they have the influence and resources to do so! Even an Imp or Hellhound, even though rare.

Sinners also can't use magic (Alastor being an outlier) in a way most Hellborn could, and not all Hellborn can cast it either (They mostly use it though artifacts such as a Transversal Crystal or Stolas' grimoire just for examples). This makes it a bit more tricky for Sinners to rise up the ladder in power putting aside them already being the lowest caste in hell. They'd have to work up a lot of connections and good will from their Hellborn counterparts which can be hard due to not all Hellborn Overlords look kindly on Sinners. And that's on top of the whole gaining influence in general thing.

Overlords are in almost every ring of Hell but Sinner Overlords are often exclusive to Pride, but there are some cases where a Sinner could make it big in another ring such as Greed or Sloth. There's also the case of the Lust Ring where Overlords kinda play an ambassador role representing Sinners taking matters to Lust's leadership but that's a topic for another day.

Overlords are often more seen in the Rings that more 'lax' in rules/leadership, Pride obviously due to it's title of 'The Wild West of Hell' but they are also big in Greed, Sloth and Wrath. There's a few in Gluttony and Envy as well with Lust being a bit of an outlier in regard to handling Overlords being for the most part they're 'regulated' to the point they're completely a different thing despite still carrying the name (see above).

Part Three: Blood Pacts

This may be a me thing, but I'm not a fan of the fact that Overlords in the show can own souls and the 'contract' thing. Granted this has to do with the sinner issue I already addressed with Hellaverse along with the worldbuilding deal I also mentioned. I'm not gonna repeat myself being I said my piece in part one.

In my AU, Overlords cannot create/form Soul Contacts. Only The Sins and a few powerful demons can own someone's soul physically however Overlords do have an equivalent to them. Enter Blood Pacts!

How they work: Basically, they collect a drop of blood from the person giving up their 'soul' to them and put it into a glass vial lanced with magic that bounds the soul to the owner. Overlords often do this in both a power sense and a way for the soul to pay their 'debts'. Ordinally Blood Pacts were pitched as a way for (un)fortunate souls who in some shape or form got into whatever fucked up thing they landed themselves into that they may need help getting out of or they ended up wronging an Overlord in some way that they choose to make it up to them by working under them for as long as is required (this could be for a good few decades to basically a long time where you might as well say that they own them forever unless one of them kicks the bucket) of them before being set free. Some more 'honest' Overlords do obliged to this once their debts are fulfilled and even fewer don't engage in practice, but most of the time they never let go of there power over there victim and some make it mandatory if you choose to just work under them just because you needed a job so you can never leave (popular tactic used by the Vees).

Because these glass vials are fragile and could easily be broken if one isn't careful or if there victim gets any ideas of choosing to free themselves, these vials are kept in a safe place that only Overlords are given access too. Basically, it's a huge vault, a 'blood' bank if you will where these are sorted and carefully handled so no one can tamper with them and their 'ownership' of their souls are safe. These vaults are secretive, even to Overlords who aren't so high up in the food chain.

Part Four: Notable Overlords

I'm only going to do an overview of some of the overlords here that will or may play a role in my AU/Rewrite being I don't want to go into full descriptions right now. Whenever I get to redesign these characters or just want to talk more about them is when I'll go in more deeper details.

Zestial:

Zestial One of the oldest, if NOT the oldest Hellborn Overlords still alive in this day and age and rumored he's been around before Lucifer's Fall and what Hell is today. Zestial controls The Old Town Historic District (you'll learn about it in my Pride Ring post) and is the creator of the the 'Blood Pacts'. He's basically the same in the show personality wise but Hellborn suppose to a sinner.

The Vees:

The Vee's (all sinners) are the Overlords that run The Red Light district, along with various business and ventures regardless if you have a say in it or not. They're basically the same in the show expect Val is taken more seriously and Velvet has nothing to do with fashion in my AU. She works closely with Vox with fueling the Social Media side of Voxtec and feeding the propaganda machine though the media via mind control thing that Vox has going with him, but Velvet is a popular online influencer in her own right. She's also the youngest Overlord, dying in the 2010's.

Carmilla Carmine:

Carmilla Carmine (sinner) is basically the same character in the show personality wise. She doesn't own a district but is a big player in smuggling, producing and experimenting with angelic weapons. Her engineering and weapon production quality is second to none which alone has gartered her infamously and influence.

Crimson:

A small time Hellborn Overlord from the Greed Ring, as well as Moxxie's father figure (not biological father. I plan on going though Moxxie's backstory once I get his re-redesgin done) who 'inherited' and owns a successful sinner smuggling operation along with plenty of other completely legit businesses you guys in Greed and some influence in Pride as well. I'll talk more about my take on Crismon in my AU another day.

Alastor:

Ah yes, the tumblr sexy man edgelord Radio Demon we all know and love (???). I'm still working on the direction I want to take with his character but he's one of the few Sinner Overlords that has powers (not Voodeo. They're more Lovecraftian in nature and the symbols he uses are radio ones) that he may or may have not made a deal with a demon when still alive that came with him into the after life for some reason. Alastor hosts his radio show at his station in Uptown (where the Happy Hotel also is) every morning (along with the screams of the lives and souls he's taken ya know for shits and giggles). For most, he's an enigma and no one knows what his true goals and where his alliances lie. Even Charlie doesn't understand why he's so invested in helping the hotel if he's not the slightest bit of interested in redeeming himself despite accepting his help. But regardless who you are, what walk of life you're from, hellborn or sinner; he's feared by all.

Anyways, I'm gonna wrap up this post here. Next one will be my Pride Ring post which the first part is basically about done just need to do some last second editing! Likely will post it up Friday...

#here goes sweets off her bullshit again #sweets helluva rewrite #hazbin hotel rewrite #helluva boss rewrite #I.M.P: Immediate Murder Professionals #Hazbin Hotel: Redemption Arc #worldbuilding rewrite

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twistedtummies2 · 1 year ago

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Top 12 Ghosts of Christmas Yet to Come

It’s funny how Christmas Eve sees us covering arguably the scariest and most unnerving of the Three Spirits of Christmas, at the end of our journey through some of the side players for Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.” The irony is almost hilarious. I speak, of course, of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, a.k.a. The Ghost of Christmas Future. The Third Spirit is interesting in that he’s arguably the most well-remembered and exciting of the three ghosts: he’s the dark and brooding payoff on Scrooge’s journey, and getting through his section of the tale - the most gut-wrenching chapter of the entire story - is a challenge for the audience, especially for younger viewers or readers. While the black cloak the Ghost wears in the book symbolizes the shadow mystery of the future - emphasized by the fact the Spirit never speaks, and only the tiniest gestures and nuances give away any indication of its thoughts or feelings - it has never been lost on anyone that the visual representation very closely resembles the iconography of the Grim Reaper. What’s interesting about the Spirit of Christmas Yet to Come is that they have honestly changed the least out of all three Ghosts in how they’ve been visually represented over the years. While there have been some minor changes here and there, most versions of the character stick with the same visual basics of a dark figure in a black hooded robe, with only their hands - or even just one hand - visible. Yet, at the same time, along with Christmas Past, the Spirit of the Future is one that artistic people LOVE to toy with in various ways, from more simplistic to more wild concepts, which creates a sort of paradox. You can always tell which Spirit is meant to be the Future in every good take on the Carol, but it’s always fun to see the little additions and changes each rendition brings to the table. There’s not much more to say (fitting for a typically mute character), so let’s just jump right in: in honor of Christmas Eve (still ironically), these are My Top 12 Favorite Portryals of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come!

12. Charlie B. Barkin, from An All Dogs Christmas Carol. (Purely for the sheer INSANITY of this one. That, and the song he gets is catchy…yes, he sings. I told you it was insane.)

11. Czeslaw Konarski, from Scrooge (1951). (While simplicity can be used to great effect, I feel this one is a little TOO simple, hence why he takes a lower tier. But he’s still quite impactful.)

10. D’Arcy Corrigan, from A Christmas Carol (1938). (This version has such a great entrance, just for a start.)

9. Robert Hammond, from Scrooged. (Further proof this movie is basically “A Ghostbusters Christmas Carol.”)

8. Tim Potter, from A Christmas Carol (1999).

7. Paddy Stone, from Scrooge (1970).

6. Pete, from Mickey’s Christmas Carol.

5. The Version from Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol.

4. Jim Carrey, from A Christmas Carol (2009). (Really cool concept having the Spirit act as Scrooge's literal shadow. They did something like that many decades before in the 1935 version, but it's way better here.)

3. The Version from The Muppet Christmas Carol. (Puppeteered by Don Austen and Robert Tygner.)

2. The Version from A Christmas Carol (1971).

1. Michael Carter, from A Christmas Carol (1984). (I love the detail on how, as the sequence goes on, the ghost gets closer and closer to Scrooge, symbolically showing how his future is getting ever nearer.)

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mahuhumaling · 1 year ago

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why this silent moment from EP. 12 is one of my top 5 fav bbs scenes

EXT./INT. SIRIDECHAWAT RESIDENCE — NIGHT

so we open with Dissaya bringing Pran's bedsheet onto his childhood room.

i think it was Charlie Gillespie who said that there's something actors do that never gets talked about by viewers: they act out the space that they're in.

this means that to fully inhabit a character, not only do they have to pretend that they've known their whole lives the scene partners whom they're merely acquaintances with (because they play as their family), but also the physical location.

they have to pretend that the built sets or shooting locations are places they've lived in their whole lives, and the way P'Ple and Nanon act inside the Siridechawat House is a perfect example.

not once do we get a feeling of unfamiliarity in their body when they interact with the objects in the rooms.

there's a great sense of nostalgia in Dissaya's eyes and smile.

it's clear she hasn't been in this bedroom for a while, but it also shows that she has made a lot of memories with Pran here. here is where she raised him. she feels proud of how far he has gone and what kind of person Pran has become.

her little moment gets interrupted by Ming's noise outside, and we get a glimpse of the pink line again that is, by the way, SUCH a great little motif. a visual line that has literally divided the two houses.

here comes my favorite part. the PAUSE that Ming takes as he contemplates CROSSING the line to get to Dissaya's house. honestly i wish there was a wide shot of this instead, as Ming crosses the frame's left to right side so we can really feel the step that he takes and see it visually as a whole.

but ohhh boy, here's the real kicker: the way Dissaya looks at him. she observes first, watching and waiting, scrutinizing as if it's a challenge of "what are you going to do, huh?" you can feel the weight of the history behind that face. how much hate has seeped into years of their old friendship.

but when Ming puts the letters into their mailbox, Dissaya's face dissolves to almost a sense of relief (?), because she has kept her guard up for so long that she's so used to the default of petty fights masquerading the real animosity between the two of them, that she almost couldn't believe that Ming would be man enough to let one kind gesture pass by. or that he's even still capable of doing so.

the hate has clouded her judgment, it's obvious, though we can't fault her for it.

but here, in a few seconds, it clears.

lastly, it cuts to a picture of young Pran, reminding Dissaya that on top of the betrayal and the hate and the anger, what matters most is her love for her only son.

the past few episodes have also emphasized Pran as an only son, and there's a special connection and bond they share that I'm sure a lot of only children relate to.

no dialogue, no internal monologue to show what Dissaya is thinking.

just pure performance, and music.

music.

we all know that it (represented by the guitar) is the ultimate metaphor for Pran's love for and relationship with Pat, right?

so naturally, Ming's little act earlier created a sort of domino effect: Dissaya brings out the guitar from when she overheard her husband and Pran talking about where it was hidden. she takes it out herself and leaves it on the bed for Pran to notice, a silent understanding between parent and child. (...very Asian parenting. add in some sliced fruits, why don't ya?)

Dissaya's love for Pran outweighs her hate for Ming. in fact, it heals.

[x.]

MY TOP 5 FAVORITE BAD BUDDY SCENES

(In no actual order)

3 - Broken Bus Stop Redesigning

5 - Fight in the Dorm Parking Lot

10 - Pran Sings "Our Song" Draft

10 - InkPa in the Darkroom

12 - Dissaya Watches Ming

#bad buddy #bad buddy series #bbs #bad buddy the series #ming jindapat #dissaya siridechawat #uranus #commentary

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infinity-cantos · 6 months ago

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FIREBRAND

{{ Just a long dabble regarding one of my characters. I've mentioned him a couple times before, he's Siegfried. I might make him a muse or not, who knows. }}

Katie Killjoy shrieked with laughter, as the crowd joined in on the cue. The man sitting across from Katie was not laughing.

He was old. Old when he died and came down here to find a common cause. Yet, he exudes energy, a fiery charisma matched by few.

He was not laughing.

Goat-like, his blueish grey fur was matted and wily. The face was marked with scars, wrinkles and suffering brought over from the past life. The horns stretched back and curled, black and marked with past acts of violence. He was a fighter.

He was not laughing.

Katie calmed down, as she reached for her glass of iced water. She didn’t take her guest seriously. Yet, she took ratings as religion. That Katie understood that is what she was pursuing with her guest. Just attention. Just viewers tuning in to see him and laugh.

She speaks with that faux cherry attitude and false politeness. Just hiding the bitch underneath the makeup and lipstick.

“So, you plan on running for Governor? A position with no real purpose. No real FUCKING power. Not only that, but you also EXPECT to beat out the incumbent. Whose been endorsed by Lucifer, fifty years running.”

With any luck, it might be just as good as Charlie. Only her guest came with a plan. A speech tailored for the emotions of the crowd. The speech will have to wait for just a little bit.

Easing in, he takes a drag on his cigarette. Blowing the smoke, he was relaxed, in control of the situation.

“Yes. I do intend so. I think anyone could see how terrible our . . . representatives are. How out of touch. Out of order. Out of date.”

The cameras stayed on the man, who was known as Siegfried. He arrived in 1975, his sins being abuse and prejudice. Hell had plenty, but Siegfried outlasted even the worst that humanity had to offer. Worst of all, he was gaining popularity.

He was about to demonstrate why.

“This city, THIS RING, is falling down all around us. ROTTING like some diseased cadaver. What has Lucifer ever done for any of you? What about The Sins? What about The Goetia? They give you enough . . . to keep you docile. Stupid. Comfortably numb, so you won’t FUCKING notice the wool over your eyes.”

Katie grinned as wide as her mouth could handle. Yet, her eyes told another story. She brought this man to be laughed at. Humiliated. The audience, however, wasn’t laughing anymore. She could see through the glare of studio lights and shadows, the eyes of the sinners watching. Fixated on Siegfried. Drawn into the words of the firebrand.

“WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO PROTECT YOU? Adam and his horde of bitch harlots butchered you. Massacred you. Hunted you down in the streets while Lucifer watched. While all watched and dined and ignored the screams of help. Oh, yes, they said there were treaties.”

Siegfried knew how to find the pulse of the crowd. This was no different from Madison Square Graden. The crowd was the poor. The lost and the wounded. Those who were left out of the grand plans of Hell’s royalty and vision. Those robbed of futures and dreams and ruled by Overlords. Their souls bonded by contracts to cowards who deserved nothing.

“Treaties that placed YOU up for sacrifice. YOU for butchery. YOU to be killed by Heaven, while all of Hell watched. OH, Lucifer would say again and again, it was to avoid WAR! It was to avoid all that fucking bloodshed. YOU DIE FOR Him and what does he do for you? What does his bitch daughter do for you? But to desire to change your NATURE, to rob you of what makes you unique. Stronger. Superior. She doesn’t know what we want. What we NEED.”

The cameraman on camera two was nodding along with every word. The crowd was silent, but one could hear the growing anger. The silence of people who have been pushed too much. Pushed too far. They hated Adam. They hated Lucifer. They hated the whole damn system that shoved them here.

Katie tries speaking up, almost ready to tear at Siegfried to shut him up. Yet, he keeps on talking. Of course, he could sense her frustrations.

He stared at her for one brief second. A look that spelt something horrible. It was enough to keep her there for now.

“You all saw what became of Adam. Dead! That cuckold stabbed by one of OUR people. One of us. But . . . . you all thought he was invincible. Unstoppable. But he could have been stopped . . . . he could have been stopped a hundred years back. A thousand even. But Lucifer . . . . just all of the royalty, did nothing. Nothing.”

Siegfried breathed as his lungs fought on to spill out more rhetoric. The demagogue was surmounting the Everest.

“So . . . I ask you this Sinners. Where’s your fucking rage.”

At that, the crowd broke into a maddening cheer. The deafened and subdued critics and questions alike. Siegfried stood, he did his part and now was time to go. He gave his speech, and he knew they loved it. He knew they bought it. He knew their hatred and pain was enough for him to enter their hearts. Their minds.

Katie sat there; her smile having faded as she looked on. Realizing what a mistake it was to bring him here.

Outside, Siegfried was excited to a crowd that welcomed him. He was guarded by his comrades of The Firebrand League. They walked through born again fanatics and new adherents.

Siegfried, who was Johannes Kruger couldn’t help but grin.

Power by words, but not nearly enough.

He wanted more.

The only standing in his way right now, was Hell itself.

#RAGE AND RUIN - { Siegfried }

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bluedalahorse · 1 year ago

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I’m going to mention something I really liked about Heartstopper season 2. It’s partially about Isaac’s arc, and partially also about how they handled the ensemble as a whole and what I think worked about that.

So let’s talk about… the power of Friendship!

Isaac’s on an aroace self-discovery arc in Heartstopper S2 and I’m here for it. His aroace journey doesn’t look exactly like mine—I didn’t really start to adopt the label until my late 20s—but aspects of it absolutely ring true. “I don’t have any celebrity crushes.” YEAH EXACTLY ISAAC.

Naturally, friendship is important to Isaac, and I was pleased to see that Isaac’s friends were making sure to include him in the squad dynamic even when he wasn’t coupled off. This didn’t always run smoothly, and there are the parts where people assume he might have something going on with James, or when he’s frustrated to be surrounded by couples. But we’re also seeing moments where they pull him into prom photos, invite him to dance, include him in the group hugs, etc.

One of the most important things that makes this all work, however, is that the friend group is having all of these little moments of friendship independent of Isaac as well. We have Tao and Charlie and their flashback to friendship meet-cute and their lock at the bridge. There’s Elle making new friends at art school and how that’s shown to be important. There’s Tara and Nick going off to the side and having their own chats with one another, and Nick considering Imogen an important friend and working to integrate her into the group and deeming her as important to come out to. All of these moments mattered to me as a viewer, because it means that when Isaac’s friends pull him in and include him in things, it doesn’t just feel like the lip service version of supporting aroace folks. This squad is able to value Isaac’s friendship because they value friendship period. It’s subtle but it makes a world of difference in how I enjoy the story.

Queer representation is often talked about in terms of visible queer romance and sexuality, which does make sense and does need to be represented. That then gets reflected in how we go about fandom things, and how we often focus on romantic and/or sexual pairings in shipfic. I enjoy these fics and getting to marinate in these pairings that I ship, but I always find myself missing something. I always want more. I think it’s because I want to marinate in the friendships of a work as well.

I want to take moment to talk about queer friendship, and how queer friendship is so central to the queer community and how we’ve organized ourselves for survival. It can sound a little bit taboo to say that queer friendship is qualitatively different than a more cishet-normative idea of friendship. Still, I’m gonna say it. Queer friendship is absolutely important and its own beautiful thing, and we need it depicted alongside the relationships that involve kissing and wedding rings and bouquets whatever else.

Heartstopper season 2 has done something really special in showing how vital friendship is, how friendship exists and lives and breathes in these queer spaces. They do it in a way that feels 100% organic and real. I hope other creatives—whether that’s people making the art for our books and television and movie screens, or whether that’s us in fandom writing our fanfics and drawing our fan art—take note of how this can be done.

Friendship forever. And ever, and ever, and ever.

#heartstopper #heartstopper season 2 #heartstopper spoilers #isaac henderson #the paris squad #aromantic #asexual #aroace #the importance of friendship #queer friendship

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wolfgabe · 2 years ago

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The Super Mario Bros Movie My Review

Be warned will contain spoilers below.

The Story: This seems to be a major point of contention among the critics with how there was barely any character development and how bare bones the plot was but as I often keep saying to people "If you went into this movie expecting an Avengers grade plot with Oscar worthy storytelling you were basically just setting yourself up for disappointment. In my personal opinion the Mario Movie represents something I think has been missing from a lot of animated films as of late which is essentially a straightforward fun filled adventure the family can enjoy that isn't worried about trying to perform any social commentary or impart any big moral life lessons. A lot of the critic reviews also do complete disservice to the dynamic on display between Mario and Luigi in particular with Mario's drive to save his brother and his refusal to give up even when everything seems stacked against him really serving as the films emotional core. In essence one could say that the structure of the film is almost like a game in itself where the plot and character development essentially serve as a vehicle through which to drive viewers towards the next big set piece or as some have called it an amusement park ride. But at its most basic core the story of the Mario Movie is a tried-and-true origin story wrapped in a good old-fashioned tale of good versus evil which really serves Mario well in this case. In the span of 90 minutes we see Mario struggling to make it as a plumber, accidentally get him and his brother sent to a fantastical world, team up with Peach to save his brother from Bowser's clutches, stumble through a training course, and slug it out with Donkey Kong before teaming up to crash a wedding that ends up leading us right back to where we began complete with one final confrontation. All in the process finding new confidence in himself and coming out as a better man. It's nothing new for a plot but this is a Mario Movie and if you know Mario, you should know you probably aren't watching this film for the plot in the first place.

The Visuals and Presentation: I am gonna be honest here I didn't expect Illumination of all studios would manage to do justice to the look and feel of Mario, but I can safely say I was wrong in that regard. It's been mentioned how working with Nintendo pushed Illumination's VFX teams to new heights and their newfound effort clearly shows in every frame. You can clearly tell Nintendo's trademark commitment to polish and attention to detail has rubbed off on Illumination. It's not just in the gorgeous set pieces which I dare say rival some of Disney and Pixar's finest work or how Illumination's signature squash and stretch art style fits the Marioverse like a glove but also in the smattering of enough easter eggs and cameos to warrant many repeat viewings. You're not just watching a Mario Movie but in essence a celebration of Nintendo and Mario's legacy be it nods to iconic NES titles or blink, and you'll miss it cameos, this is clearly a film for the Mario and Nintendo fans first and foremost.

The Soundtrack: The music my god the music Its frankly incredible how Brian Tyler has managed to do such a masterful job of weaving Koji Kondo's most iconic melodies into a cinematic soundtrack. As a longtime Mario fan I found myself astounded at how I found myself remarking "I recognized that tune." during the film. Its also crazy to say this might be the first film soundtrack I actually have shown genuine interest in listening to in a long time. I highly encourage the Mario aficionados to stick around for the credits especially.

The Voice Actors: Now this was another major point of contention prior to the films release but I think I can safely say the voice acting for the most part works. Chris Pratt and Charlie Day does a surprisingly good job of playing up Mario and Luigi's Brooklyn roots. With their falsetto Italian accents cleverly being presented as a marketing tactic for their plumbing business and before you ask Charles Martinet Mario's original voice actor does make an appearance which I won't spoil. Anya Taylor Joy does a wonderful job casting Princess Peach as a strong devoted ruler while Keegan Micheal Key manages to radiate excellent sidekick energy as Toad. Seth Rogan manages to be well Seth Rogan as Donkey Kong who's dynamic with Mario makes for some of the film's funniest moments, but the real scene stealer is arguably Jack Black as Bowser. It's almost surreal how Black has managed to do such an amazing job bringing an air of goofiness and menace to the Koopa King that hasn't been seen in ages. One point he is burning down a penguin clan's Ice Palace just to take their Super Star and the next he is tapping into Jack's musical side belting out a Tenacious D style power ballad on the piano declaring his love for Princess Peach. Be warned you may struggle to get Peaches out of your head after watching this film.

Final Verdict: Personally The Super Mario Bros Movie is a film where I can safely say that if you are a fan of Mario and Nintendo you can basically ignore what the majority of the critics are saying because those critics are not the audience this movie was intended for in the first place. While there may be some pacing issues and some scenes could be fleshed out a bit more, The Super Mario Bros Movie manages to be a lovingly crafted celebration of Mario that isn't afraid to embrace its gaming roots. And with the movie well on the way to breaking the 1-billion-dollar box office mark and having already smashed several records this will no doubt become the video game movie against which video game film adaptations are judged for years to come. I still find it hard to believe that after all these years it would be Illumination of all studios that would end being the ones who redeemed Mario on the big screen and who essentially may have truly broken the video game movie curse. I think I can safely say I am excited to see where they go next on the big screen with Mario and likely other Nintendo franchises as well.

My final score for the Super Mario Bros Movie I would say probably 8/9 out of 10.

#super mario movie #mario movie #film review #nintendo #mario #the super mario bros movie

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mafalda1987-blog · 7 days ago

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Oh, I'm thankful every day that this series exists! It's everything you said! And as a fan of Anna Torv, I identify a lot with taking the path that no one else has taken, or in this case, wanting to be independent and making decisions that the world is not yet ready to accept! I think The Newsreader team still doesn't understand this gold series, nor does it seem that the ABC

Things ahead of time are always more quiet first.

But for me Helen Norville will be a major milestone, in us, and in the way we approach an performance female characters! She is still not understood because society still does not understand women like her.😔

The Newsreader is timeless, even though it is set in the 80s, because it is the voice and the stories that we still need to process in a Patriarchy world!

Especially this one! If a man is feminine... Dale represents that stereotype. He is loved and idolized. If he shows more masculine traits, he is also not reprimanded. But where does Helen fit in? She is criticized when she tries to be one of them, in the series (eyes of some viewers). But when she tries to be more what others want like more woman ?Is there respect? No! And dont work either because they used and manipulated her and in that she feeling betrayed. Digs herself into a hole of hedonism and use them too and stops being herself! People reprimand her for wanting affection and being caring and dependent!But is because she don't have a true person who can trust and be vulnerable and her past was so bad that she don't want men too (only Dale) 🥲

Then Dale doesn't know Who I am ?

But Helen anxiety and depression behavior is because she knows who she is!

Others do not accept who she is!

And she lives in this indecision of using men to get what she wants or suffering abuse/gaslight in silence or shouting to the world who she is! And that is unique, I have never seen a character like that! And thoughs any human being with with so much recurring indecision around of course would become volatile!😭

Of course, after this, as Anna Torv already pointed out and Sam focused on the last interview you must think... But well, if Dale loves Helen despite everything. Why don't we do the same??😍

I love talking about Helen because not everyone are readdy to talk about the har part if be a women in 80s or now...and think her as fragile and just wants to be accepted for who she is without having to pretend or be used by others! And as woman who has gone through many Helen's phases.

We really need to talk about Helen's and Norville's and even Kaasics.

They exist its society prefer to say that they are volatile, unlike rude unloveble and crazy to US is to forgotten powerful woman and be ashamed to tell the truth Society not change at all !

My final opinion We love more ,We idolized,praised like 80s about Dale's Lindsay's Tim's Charlie's Gerry's. Because we are learned to love more them and not supporting woman that can be better than them. 😊 Not all as you can see here, you are being supported and loved ...but well, we are the extraordinary exception lovely nerd's to the society rule. 😉

Helen Norville truly is the female character of all time.

She’s strong, but not in a way a caricature “strong female character” is strong (being physically powerful, aggressive, capable of violence, etc). She’s not just a male character but sexy.

She’s thoughtful, sure in her convictions, decicated to helping the vulnerable, empathetic. She has a strong sense of justice. She’s loving. She protects people she loves. She knows what she wants and isn’t afraid to take it. She keeps standing up for herself and others even though she’s constantly being met with people putting her down in the worst ways. She has an open mind despite all the culture around her telling her not to. She endured many years of abuse and persevered. She’s extremely competent and knows it. She’s unapologetic. And she has amazing hair.

She’s also extremely vulnerable, easily swayed by personal attacks, unstable, prone to sinking to lows, gets overwhelmed by her emotions and is generally a bit of a mess. She flees when she’s scared. She’s deeply insecure when it comes to close relationships. She is affected by serious mental health issues. She has trauma and shame around it.

She’s Dale’s superior. She’s his mentor. She’s older than him. She doesn’t want marriage or children. What a beautiful “fuck you” to rigid patriarchal gender roles.

If this doesn’t read “complex female character who has real depth and isn’t made for male gaze but is fully human and her own person” idk what does. Thank you for reading my essay

#helen norville #dale jennings #the newsreader #helendale

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yourartmatters-itswhatgotmehere · 2 years ago

Text

Representation matters!-in TV/MOVIES.

i am, obviously, not able to type ALL here, but the ones i know and love dearly+the ones I think are most important for the viewers♥- I WILL KEEP UPDATING THIS WHEN NEEDED♥) +obvi not in any important-order!!

1. BISEXUAL-BI-REPRESENTATION (as a bi person myself I still think this should be represented more in media everywhere(when it’s done right!))

-bi boys: Jesper Fahey (Shadow And Bone), Nick Nelson (Heartstopper), Alex Claremont-Diaz (RWRB-Red White & Royal Blue), Timmy Andrews (The Craft: Legacy), Malakai Mitchell (Heartbreak High), Magnus Bane (Shadowhunters), Gar Logan-BeastBoy(DCTitans), Fiyero Tigelaar (Wicked (Part 1) 2024), Aki Menzies (GossipGirlHBOMax),, Salem Saberhagen (SabrinaTheTeenageWitch-90s), Li Shang (Mulan1998), Lucifer (Lucifer), Jeremiah Fisher (The Summer I Turned Pretty), Gael Martinez (Good Trouble), Michael Guerin (Roswell, New Mexico), Evan "Buck" Buckley (9-1-1), Dustin ‘Dusty’ Reid (Heartbreak High), Patrick Zweig (Challengers 2024), Cyrus Henstridge (The Royals),

- bi girls: Anna Taggaro (OTH-One Tree Hill S2), (and to me Peyton Sawyer, Brooke Davis(the actress said it so it’s canon!), Rachel Gatina (OTH-One Tree Hill), Nina Zenik (Shadow And Bone), AJ Campos (Crush2022), Hope Mikaelson (TO-Legacies), Ava Silva (Warrior Nun), Katherine "Kitty" Song-Covey (XO Kitty, To All The Boys I've Loved Before trilogy and franchise ), Missy Beckett (Heartbreak High), Yasmina-Yaz Fadoula (JWCC- Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous & JWCT-Jurassic World: Chaos Theory), Casey Gardner (Atypical), Noa Olivar (Pretty Little Liars:Original Sin), Abby(Atypical), Beatrix "Bird" Castro (Finding Carter), Marissa Cooper (The O.C), Alex Kelly (The O.C), Elphaba Thropp (Wicked (Part 1) 2024), Aneesa Qureshi (Never Have I Ever), Lake Meriwether (Love, Victor), Vada Cavell (TheFallout-2021), Eve (Lucifer), Stella Yamada (Lemonade Mouth 2011), Sahar Zahid (Heartstopper (sinceS2) ), Nora Holleran (RWRB-Red White & Royal Blue), Haley Dunphy (Modern Family), Eleanor Henstridge (The Royals), Maureen Johnson (Rent the musical), Anthea (Shazam! Fury of the Gods), Daphne Blake (Scooby Doo), Sue Gilbert (Dickinson), Toni Topaz (Riverdale), Marie Moreau (Gen V), Jackie (Love Lies Bleeding), Isobel Evans-Bracken (Roswell, New Mexico), Francesca Bridgerton (Bridgerton), Helga Sinclair (Atlantis: The Lost Empire), Jules Millin & Mika Yasuda (Grey’s Anatomy Since Season 19)

(for an epic and very queer historical-fiction tv show watch MARY & GEORGE !!)

2. PANSEXUAL-PAN-REPRESENTATION

Max Wolfe (GossipGirlHBOMax), Mazikeen (Lucifer), Mal (Descendants Movies), Josie Saltzman (Legacies,TO,TVD), Penelope Park (Legacies), Klaus Hargreeves (The Umbrella Academy), Isabel (Bottoms 2023), Karen Shetty (Mean Girls 2024), Benedict Bridgerton (Bridgerton),

(for an epic and very queer historical-fiction tv show watch MARY & GEORGE !!)

3. ASEXUAL/ ACE REPRESENTATION

Raphael Santiago (Shadowhunters), Isaac Henderson (Heartstopper), Tolya Yul-Bataar (ShadowAndBone-Grishaverse), Tori Spring (Heartstopper), Douglas ‘Cash’ Piggott (Heartbreak High),

4. GAY/ LESBIAN REPRESENTATION

-gay: Wylan Hendriks/Wylan Van Eck (Shadow And Bone), Prince Henry Fox (RWRB-Red White & Royal Blue), Jack McPhee (Dawson’s Creek), Alec Lightwood (Shadowhunters), Simon Spier (Love,Simon2018), Victor Salazar (Love,Victor), Benji Campbell (Love,Victor), Rahim (Love,Victor), Charlie Spring (Heartstopper), Josh Avery(One Tree Hill-OTH S7), Brimsley and Reynolds (OueenCharlotte-BridgertonSpinoff), Eric Van Der Woodsen (Gossip Girl), Quincy “Q” Shabazian (XOKitty), Damian Hubbard (Mean Girls 2024), Nick Feinstein (The Fallout 2021), Alistair Ellington (Maxton Hall : The World Between Us (2024)), Wilbur Evans (Geek Girl),

-lesbian: Beatrice (Warrior Nun), Shotgun Mary (Warrior Nun), Diana Berrigan(White Collar), Fabiola Torres (Never Have I Ever), Ellie Chu (The Half Of It), Sammy Gutierrez (JWCC- Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous & JWCT-Jurassic World: Chaos Theory), Emily Fields (Pretty Little Liars), Maxine Baker (Ginny & Georgia), Izzie Taylor (Atypical), Calliope "Cal" Burns (First Kill), Juliette Fairmont (First Kill), Tara Jones (Heartstopper), Darcy Olsson (Heartstopper), Mia Karp (Vampire Academy), Meredith Beckham (Vampire Academy), Tamar Kir-Bataar (Shadow And Bone), Nadia Zhabin (Shadow And Bone), Simone Jackson (DaisyJonesAndTheSix), Yuri Han (XO Kitty), PJ and Josie (Bottoms 2023), Hazel Callahan (Bottoms 2023), Madison (Finding Carter), Kit Tanthalos (Willow), Jade (Willow), Sabina Wilson (Charlie’s Angels 2019), Velma Dinkley (Scooby Doo), Winnie Black (Miller’s Girl), Janis ‘Imi’ike (Mean Girls 2024), Emily Dickinson (Dickinson), Sasha So (Heartbreak High), Monet de Haan (GossipGirlHBOMax), Shirley Honrada & Elodie Honrada(played by THE Lea Salonga!!) (Pretty Little Liars:Original Sin), Summer Field (Time Cut 2024),

(for an epic and very queer historical-fiction tv show watch MARY & GEORGE !!)

5. TRANSGENDER PEOPLE REPRESENTATION

-Elle Argent (Heartstopper), Anybodys (West Side Story 2021), Luna La (GossipGirlHBOMax), Chanel (Warrior Nun), Naomi Russell (Heartstopper), Amy (RWRB-Red, White & Royal Blue), Ash Romero (Pretty Little Liars:Original Sin),

6. Non-Binary/Genderqueer/ (they/them) Representation

-Darren Rivers (Heartbreak High), Addison (Never Have I Ever), Klaus Hargreeves (The Umbrella Academy), Jordan Li (Gen V), Darcy Olsson (Heartstopper), Felix Britten (Heartstopper),

(we seriously lack the representation in popular and mostly-watched shows and movies for teenagers and young adults here tho),

7. ASTHMA REPRESENTATION

-I don’t see this represented enough in TV or Movies for Young Adults, nor Kids.

8. DISABLED CHARACTERS REPRESENTATION:

Kaz Brekker & Jesper Fahey & Wylan Van Eck, Genya Safin(Shadow And Bone) , Rebecca Hall-Yoshida (Never Have I Ever), Maxton Hall : The World Between Us (2024), , JWCC-Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous & JWCT-Jurassic World: Chaos Theory , Wicked (Part 1) 2024,

+ MORE BELOW(and above in this entire post♥):

9. EPILEPSY REPRESENTATION

Nathan Walter (My Life with The Walter Boys),

10. DIABETES REPRESENTATION

Cassie Salazar (Purple Hearts), Abby Brown (OTH-One Tree Hill), (still not enough tho, if it’s done, it is so often shown WRONG..)

11. ADHD REPRESENTATION

Jesper Fahey (Shadow And Bone), Percy Jackson + other Demigods (Percy Jackson and the Olympians), Alex Claremont Diaz (RWRB-Red, White & Royal Blue), Anne Shirley (Anne Of Green Gables 80s movies), Neal Caffrey(White Collar), Stiles (Teen Wolf), Jesus Adams Foster (The Fosters), Sara Eriksson (Young Royals),

12. AUTISM REPRESENTATION

Sam Gardner (Atypical), James McEwan (Heartstopper), Wylan Hendriks/Van Eck (Shadow And Bone), David Kostyk (Shadow And Bone), Amanda (Change Of Habit 1969), Oskar Schell (Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close), Sara Eriksson (Young Royals), Quinni Gallagher-Jones (Heartbreak High), Francesca Bridgerton (Bridgerton), Harriet Manners (Geek Girl), Toby Pilgrim (Geek Girl),

13. DYSLEXIA/ DYSGRAPHIA REPRESENTATION

Wylan Hendriks/ Wylan Van Eck (Shadow and Bone), Percy Jackson (movies + tv show as well), Donna Martin (Beverly Hills 90210), CeCe Jones (Shake It Up), Evan Chapin (Atypical),

14. DEAF/Hard of hearing(whichever u urself use!)COMMUNITY REPRESENTATION+ the use of Sign Language

Feel The Beat 2020, Ginny and Georgia, CODA 2021, Switched at Birth (2011–2017), Echo(Marvel), Eternals,

15. LATINX LEAD REPRESENTATION

Ava Silva (Warrior Nun) , Lissa Dragomir (Vampire Academy), Wednesday Addams (WednesdayNetflix), Anna Taggaro (One Tree Hill), Maria DeLuca (Roswell 90s), Santana Lopez (Glee), Ella Lopez (Lucifer), Pilar Salazar (Love, Victor), Victor Salazar (Love, Victor), Maria (West Side Story2021), Cassie Salazar (Purple Hearts 2022), Alex Claremont-Diaz (RWRB-Red, White & Royal Blue), Jackie Howard (My Life with The Walter Boys), Noa Olivar (Pretty Little Liars:Original Sin), Descendants (2015) & Descendants 2 (2017) & Descendants 3 (2019),

16. BLACK PEOPLE AS THE LEAD REPRESENTATION

Ariel (TheLittleMermaid2023), Elphaba Thropp (Wicked (Part 1) 2024), Raven Baxter (That's So Raven), Cyborg (Teen Titans), Antwon Skills Taylor (OTH-One Tree Hill), Darius Bowman (JWCC- Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous & JWCT-Jurassic World: Chaos Theory), Calliope Burns (First Kill), Rose Hathaway (Vampire Academy), Starr Carter (The Hate U Give 2018), Mary (Warrior Nun), Mia Brooks (Love, Victor), Simone Jackson (DaisyJonesAndTheSix), Annabeth Chase (Percy Jackson and the Olympians), Faran Bryant (Pretty Little Liars:Original Sin), Tabitha 'Tabby' Haworthe (Pretty Little Liars:Original Sin), Darren Rivers /they/them/ (Heartbreak High), Toni Topaz (Riverdale), Sarah Fox (My Babysitter’s a Vampire), Wilbur Evans (Geek Girl), Tara Jones (Heartstopper), Lucy Field & Summer Field (Time Cut 2024), Ginny (Ginny & Georgia),

+ Queen Charlotte & Bridgerton

17. INDIGENOUS PEOPLE REPRESENTATION

Malakai Mitchell (Heartbreak High), Missy Beckett (Heartbreak High), Reservation Dogs, Rez Ball (Netflix, out soon), Mohawk Girls,

18. ASIAN LEAD REPRESENTATION

Alina Starkov (Shadow And Bone), Mal Oretsev (Shadow and Bone), Tamar Kir-Bataar (Shadow And Bone), Tolya Yul-Bataar (Shadow And Bone), Lara Jean (To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before), Ellie Chu (The Half Of It 2020), Tao Xu (Heartstopper), Kitty Song-Covey (XO Kitty), Isabel (Bottoms 2023), Minnie 'Mouse' Honrada (Pretty Little Liars:Original Sin), Ash Romero (Pretty Little Liars:Original Sin), Sasha So (Heartbreak High), Jordan Li (Gen V),

(+desi women) Edwina Sharma & Kate Sharma Bridgerton (Bridgerton), Devi Vishwakumar (Never Have I Ever), Inej Ghafa (Shadow And Bone), Zoya Nazyalensky (Shadow And Bone), Mohini "Mo" Banjaree (Lemonade Mouth 2011), Princess Jasmine (Aladdin 2019), Emma Morley (OneDayNetflix), Amerie Wadia (Heartbreak High),

19. POLYNESIAN / PACIFIC ISLANDERS REPRESENTATION

Moana/ Vaiana 1 + 2 , Christopher Kahunahana’s “Waikiki”, Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu’s “Kumu Hina” , “Vai,” , “Patu,” “For My Father’s Kingdom,” “Out Of State,” “Island Soldier,” “Everyday In Kaimuki,” “The Land Has Eyes” , “Naming Number 2,” “Merata: How Mum Decolonised The Screen” ,

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/pacific-islanders-films-representation_n_628bfc65e4b0edd2d0199a0c

20. MUSLIM REPRESENTATION

Rahim (Love, Victor), Aneesa Qureshi (Never Have I Ever), Sana (SKAM), Kamala Khan (Ms. Marvel), Adena (The Bold Type),

We Are Lady Parts, Ramy (2019), Ali’s Wedding (2017),

21. JAPANESE REPRESENTATION

Kenji Kon (JWCC-Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous +JWCT-Jurassic World: Chaos Theory), Gar Logan (DCTitans), Paxton Hall-Yoshida (Never Have I Ever), Jo (Running for Grace2018), Hiro + Tadashi Hamada (Bix Hero6), Stella Yamada (Lemonade Mouth 2011),

22. JEWISH PEOPLE REPRESENTATION

Seth Cohen (The O.C), David Gordon (Gordo) (Lizzie McGuire), Ben Gross (Never Have I Ever), Cyrus Rose (Gossip Girl), Max Wolfe (GossipGirlHBOMax), Danielle (Shiva Baby), Elphaba Thropp (Wicked The Musical Broadway/West End (when played by two Jewish powerhouses Idina Menzel & Caissie Levy)) , Disobedience 2017,

23. VEGAN REPRESENTATION

Gar Logan/Beast Boy (DCTitans), Draculaura(Monster High), as a vegan i LOVED Wicked (Part 1) 2024 !!! (..like seriously we NEED more representation here..)

24. THE MAIN CHARACTER WEARING GLASSES REPRESENTATION

Elle Argent (Heartstopper), Elphaba Thropp (Wicked (Part 1) 2024), Ellie Chu (The Half Of It), Emma Morley (OneDayNetflix), Katherine "Kitty" Song-Covey (To All The Boys I've Loved Before trilogy and franchise+ XO, Kitty), Velma Dinkley (Scooby Doo), Margot Rivers(Get Even(2020) ), Harry Potter

25. NARCISSISTIC/ABUSIVE PARENT REPRESENTATION

Nathan Scott + Lucas Scott & Brooke Davis(OTH-One Tree Hill), Wylan Hendriks/ Wylan Van Eck (Shadow And Bone), Pacey Witter (Dawson’s Creek), Chuck Bass (Gossip Girl), Kenji Kon (JWCC- Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous & JWCT-Jurassic World: Chaos Theory), Michael Guerin (Roswell90s/RoswellOG), Blair Waldorf (GossipGirl), Daisy Jones (DaisyJonesAndTheSix), Rose Hathaway (Vampire Academy) + Disney’s Tangled + James & Lydia Beaufort (Maxton Hall : The World Between Us (2024))+ Descendants (2015) & Descendants 2 (2017) & Descendants 3 (2019), The Royals, Cruel Intentions 2024,

26. LOSS/ GRIEF REPRESENTATION

OTH-One Tree Hill, Roswell90s/RoswellOG, Shadow And Bone, White Collar, The Last Tycoon, Reign, JWCC-Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous & JWCT-Jurassic World: Chaos Theory, Never Have I Ever, OneDay(Movie+TV show),

Red, White & Royal Blue(2023), Wicked (Part 1) 2024, Heartstopper, Vampire Academy(2022), Fallen (2024), Fallen (2016), The Vampire Diaries + Legacies, My Life with The Walter Boys, Wild Cards, Young Royals, Dickinson, Pretty Little Liars:Original Sin/Summer School, Heartbreak High, The Fallout(2021), Maxton Hall : The World Between Us, Dawson’sCreek, All Of Us Strangers 2023, Get Even(2020), Chambers 2019, Feel The Beat 2020, My Old Ass 2024, Anne Of Green Gables 80s movies, The Royals, Agatha All Along, Time Cut 2024, Bridgerton (S2), A Christmas Secret 2014, A Biltmore Christmas 2023, Charlie St. Cloud 2010, According to Greta 2009,

27. BAD MENTAL HEALTH/ DEPRESSION/ SUICIDAL THOUGHTS/SELF-HARM

OTH-One Tree Hill, Roswell90s/RoswellOG , Shadow And Bone, White Collar, JWCC-Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous & JWCT-Jurassic World: Chaos Theory, Legacies, Red, White & Royal Blue(2023), Wicked (Part 1) 2024, One Day (Movie + TV Show), According to Greta(2009), Better Off Dead (1985), The Beat Beneath My Feet(2014), Rocketman(2019), Mary & George, Heartstopper, Maxton Hall : The World Between Us, Dawson’sCreek, Fallen (2024), Fallen (2016), Vampire Academy (2022), Get Even(2020), The Royals, Ginny and Georgia,

28. WRITERS/AUTHORS REPRESENTATION

Anne Shirley (Anne Of Green Gables 80s movies), Lucas Scott (OTH-One Tree Hill), Wednesday Addams (WednesdayNetflix), Emma Morley (OneDayNetflix+Movie), Prince Henry Fox (RWRB-Red White & Royal Blue), Dan Humphrey (Gossip Girl), Joey Potter (Dawson’s Creek), Ezra Fitz (Pretty Little Liars), Cairo Sweet (Miller’s Girl), Emily Dickinson (Dickinson), Penelope Featherington Bridgerton (Bridgerton), Lucy Hardgrove (A Biltmore Christmas 2023),

29. FRIENDSHIP/ FOUND-FAMILY REPRESENTATION

OTH-One Tree Hill, Roswell90s/RoswellOG, Shadow And Bone, RWRB-Red White & Royal Blue, Wicked (Part 1) 2024, JWCC-Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous & JWCT-Jurassic World: Chaos Theory, White Collar, XO,Kitty, Heartstopper, Love,Victor ,Teen Titans(OG), Scooby Doo(Everything), Daisy Jones And The Six, Lemonade Mouth 2011, Bottoms 2023, Willow(2022-2023), My Life with The Walter Boys, Charlie’s Angels 2019, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Pretty Little Liars:Original Sin/Summer School, Heartbreak High, Dawson’s Creek, The Thief Lord(2006), Warrior Nun, Living for the Dead, Maxton Hall:The World Between Us, Legacies, Lockwood&Co, Finding Carter, Fallen(2024), Fallen (2016), Vampire Academy(2022), The Fosters, Lab Rats, My Babysitter’s A Vampire, Descendants (2015) & Descendants 2 (2017) & Descendants 3 (2019), Get Even(2020), Feel The Beat 2020, Anne Of Green Gables 80s +00s movies, A Christmas Secret 2014,

30. FOSTER KIDS/ KIDS WITHOUT A PARENT FIGURE/OR STRUGGLING TO FIND ONE/ ORPHANS/ ADOPTED/

Landon Kirby (TO-Legacies), Anya/Anastasia(1997), Michael Guerin(RoswellOG/Roswell90s), Carter Stevens/Carter Wilson (Finding Carter), Anne Shirley(AnneOfGreenGables 80s movies), Callie Jacob(The Fosters), Sam Walker (OTH-One Tree Hill), Peyton Sawyer(OTH-One Tree Hill), Christian Ozera(Vampire Academy),Lissa Dragomir(Vampire Academy), Hope Mikaelson(TO-Legacies),Gar Logan(DCTitans),Nick(No Good Nick), SHADOW AND BONE, Heartbreak High, Fallen (2024), Fallen (2016),

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maxwell-grant · 4 years ago

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Charlie Chan. Who is fascinating, because he was created explictly to be an anti-Yellow Peril character. Unlike most Chinese characters of the time, he's both intelligent, physically capable, and unambiguously heroic. In the novels, he's simultaneously proud of being Chinese AND proud of being an American citizen. He gives orders and instructions to white people, and the narrative treats this as perfectly normal and acceptable. There's a bit in the first book, when an attempt to trap the..(1/2)

(cont'd)There's a bit in the first book where an attempt to trap the protagonist fails, because a message supposedly from Charlie clearly isn't because Charlie's English isn't broken, it's like poetry. Etc. The movies made him more stereotypical, & played by white actors in yellowface, but still, he's a heroic Chinese man, who is as capable and patriotic as any white man. Nowadays, he's thought of as racist caricature. Which he is, but still, it makes one think.

I'm not nearly as acquainted with Charlie Chan as you are (and I definitely suspected he was less racist in the original books because that's nearly always the norm when it comes to pulp characters) but yeah, that "Which he is" is forever going to be the most unfortunate and saddest part of it all when it comes to Charlie Chan. For all the virtues that can be bestowed on Charlie Chan, for everything great that the character had going for him and inspired, the fact that the least offensive image of the character I could find to put here for illustration's sake is from the Hanna-Barbera cartoon kinda exemplifies the big elephant in the room when it comes to Charlie.

Charlie Chan is a great example of two things: One is the way progress is never a fixed quantity and often what was progressive and forward-thinking in it's time can become something outdated and backwards and downright offensive given enough time, and the 2nd is my constant stressing that this is all the more incentive to reclaim the pulps and either highlight or fix aspects of them, instead of dismissing every aspect of them based on the preconception that everything about it's history is unforgivably bigoted and must be handled with the nuance of a sledgehammer.

I stress time and time again the need to highlight and understand the prejudices that went into pulps, because either ignoring them or wielding them as a weapon to attack them does no favors to anyone. The pulps weren't exceptionally bigoted - look at literally any medium in it's time period and you'll find bigotry and prejudice and hatred - and they were exceptional in the number of POC heroes and heroines. Pulps were a medium of experimentation and cheap entertainment that gave way to much, much more varied kinds of protagonists than were permitted in films, serials, novels, comics and radio serials of the day. Imagine if no one was allowed to bring up and discuss superheroes without mentioning the Superman Slap-a-Jap posters or the Captain Marvel story so horrifingly racist it was recounted by an American ambassador after it deeply offended a friend's son and a major influence on the 1950s anti-comic trials. "Pulp fiction had deeply, unforgivingly racist depictions that deserve intense scrutiny and cannot be ignored" and "Pulp fiction was significantly ahead of every other medium at the time in regards to authors and editors striving to publish stories about heroic POCs, this cannot be dismissed and is something that needs to be perpetuated" are not exclusive facts. "A product of it's time" is not an excuse and never was, but it's a fact nevertheless.

Every time someone speaks favorably of Charlie Chan in any capacity, they have to start with a long preface of everything positive that the character had going for him. Yes, he's a deliberate subversion of the Yellow Peril, he's a heroic protagonist, he's plump and good-natured and humorous but far from a joke, he's friendly and pleasant and well-educated and wise, he's a good dad and family man and a terrifically sharp detective who's so good at his job he gets called to solve crimes all over the world, and none of these traits are apparent to people who have to google the character and repeteadly see a white man in awful make-up into every single image of the character, who watch the movies and cringe at the broken English. It's hardly relevant in the face of all the Asian-American critics who acknowledge the character's virtues but rightfully point out that this fortune-cookie spouting caricature, acting subservient to whites and whose virtues are based around his proximity to a white American ideal, doesn't represent them and they shouldn't pretend it does.

Which isn't to say that to like Charlie Chan is "wrong", a lot of East Asians love Charlie and the character's obviously got fans in Asian Americans. It's a complicated subject and I obviously cannot begin to vouch in a subject so heavily based around perceptions I cannot experience. And I deeply detest the idea of speaking for others on their particular experiences on this kind of matter, which is something Americans do a lot everytime they talk about representation in media.

So instead, I'm going to tackle this on a roundabout manner by going on an unrelated tangent to bring up an example of representation that isn't quite representative of what it's supposed to be, has a lot of issues that have been dissected by critics among the people it was supposed to represent, and none of that stopped the character from being popular and beloved and from being claimed anyway. And it's a Brazilian fighting game character, which means it's completely within my ballpark.

Yeah, obviously Blanka doesn't look like anyone who lives in Brazil (whatever resemblance he bears to redheaded jungle protectors of Brazilian folklore is purely accidental). Obviously neither Jimmy nor Blanka are Brazilian names or even exist in the Portuguese lexicon. Obviously there are issues in Street Fighter's approach to representation across the board, sure, and I'd actually say Laura is much worse than Blanka in that regard (again, my opinion, obviously not universal), but the fact remains that Blanka is and has always been pretty controversial. Obviously there's Brazilians who took offense to Blanka and they weren't wrong to do so, and I obviously do not speak for everyone here, that goes without saying.

Obviously the idea that Brazil's major representative in a global cast of characters, the first big name Brazilian character in videogames, is going to be a freakish jungle monster who roars and bites faces has problems, as is the fact that all the others get to be regular people representing fighting styles from their countries while Blanka doesn't. None of the Brazilian SF characters represent Capoeira, which is kinda shitty to be honest. And there's a whole stereotype of Brazil as a backwards land of beasts and savages that Blanka's creation played into. There's no shortage of ground to criticize Blanka's representation and Ono actually apologized in an interview once, but then he learned one teensy little thing:

Street Fighter is very popular on Brazil. Would you like to leave a message to the fans from there?

"Ono: Yes, I'm aware. At the time of Street Fighter II a lot of the arcade machines produced went there, so I knew we had lots of fans there. A message to Brazilians, well, I'd like to apologize. I know Blanka's a weird character and I don't want any Brazilian to feel uncomfortable with that.

When Blanka was conceived, we knew there were forests in Brazil, and so we thought he could look like that. I was actually kinda nervous knowing I'd meet Brazilian journalists. Still, this is the first Street Fighter in ten years, so we'd like all fans to play, including Brazilians, which are many.

Thanks. Well, but you should know that Brazilians love Blanka

"Ono: Ah, good! I was scared of getting beat up if I ever went to São Paulo! (laughs)"

(That's from a 2012 tv special called The Greatest Brazilian of All Time where over a million viewers voted to elect whoever they wanted, and Blanka was going to win. He was polling ahead of Aryton Senna and PELÉ, fucking Pelé, yes this happened. He wasn't even disqualified for being a cartoon character, it was an open poll, he was disqualified due to canon stating he had been born in Thailand, which I think may have been retconned since then. Again, A MILLION BRAZILLIANS voted for this contest, and Blanka was going to win.)

Blanka is great and sweet and lovable, he made the best out of the incredible shitty hands fate dealt him and became a cool and strong green man who shoots lightning and flies, a self-taught warrior who rides whales and planes to fighting tournaments, and he loves his mom and friends and kicks ass and after he's done he dances in joy and gives the kids of his village piggyback rides, and Brazil loves him. He doesn't represent any existing person or fighting style, he's rooted in a negative stereotype and incorrect assumptions, he's not even really Brazilian, and he's our boy and nobody can take him away from us.

No criticism of Blanka, no matter how in-depth or even right it is, is ever going to affect that, because regardless of what was wrong or misguided and offensive about him, we claimed him and loved him so throughly that Capcom kept playing up Brazilian representation in every subsequent game post Alpha, and because of Blanka's impact and reception in such a big game, Brazilian characters have become a staple of fighting games, and that's how we got much more diverse representatives in those games. Fighting games have more Brazilian representation than LITERALLY ANYTHING ELSE on media not produced here. It started as BAD representation, with way less thought put into it than Charlie Chan, and it still mattered to a lot of Brazilians who reclaimed it and made it better than it was ever intended to be, and as a response to it, it gradually became better.

Progress is not a fixed quantity, it's an uphill battle, and it's not unwinnable. Everything's gotta start somewhere.

The Good Asian is a ongoing comic that I think does the best job I've seen yet of handling an Asian American detective protagonist, which is not really a high bar in the first place, and more to the point, The Good Asian illustrates the 2nd part: the reclaiming. The Good Asian deals a lot with the realities that a 1930s Asian-American detective would run into, the strained circumstances and relationships between said character and the world around him, because it's born from an author who took a look at Charlie Chan and Mr Moto and the like and recognized the potential in those stories that could not be fulfilled in it's time period by the people writing said stories.

The Good Asian pays little reverence to Charlie Chan, but it acknowledges that it cannot exist without Charlie Chan, and it reclaims the Charlie Chan premise at the hands of someone more adequately equipped to tell a gripping story that goes places none of Charlie's contemporaries would ever go. Regardless of how good or bad of representation Charlie Chan was, Charlie Chan mattered and was beloved and inspired a better example for others to improve on or rebel against.

I desperately wish that I could google Charlie Chan without having to look at a guy in yellowface, and the ONLY way that's going to happen is if the character ever gets meaningfully brought back and reclaimed for good by people who can meaningfully tackle the character and present him as he should have always been presented.

And then, I imagine it would be a lot easier to show people on how swell Charlie really is. A true, positive role model and hero, who no longer has to look like a gross cartoon to be able to exist at all. Who can finally be what he was always meant to be, and always was deep down.

#replies tag #pulp heroes #pulp fiction #charlie chan #detective fiction #the good asian #street fighter #blanka

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punchincorporated · 4 years ago

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We've Already Been Told Dennis Is Gay: A Brief Analysis of Mac Fights Gay Marriage

In Mac Fights Gay Marriage, Mac is upset when he learns that his ex Carmen, a trans woman, married another man.

He's transphobic and confused, and thinks her union is a "gay marriage". He quotes the bible at Carmen and her husband, trying to convince them to get a divorce, tells them they'll go to hell if they don't.

Carmen's husband tells Mac that he is actually the one who is gay, and that he's "been confused for a very long time". Mac is visibly distressed by this, and flees the scene.

This is the first time in the show that Mac's struggle with his sexuality is presented in a serious light, and the audience is called upon to feel for him.

At no point in this episode, or any episode in fact, does Mac say "I think I might be gay" out loud, but he doesn't need to. We still understand.

Something to remember about Mac is this: to the viewer and to the characters in the world of the show, he's an open book. Every emotion he has plays out right there on his face, his dialogue is blunt, and he is unable to understand subtext, because that's his character. That is the reason everyone knows Mac is gay, and why his attempts at hiding it don't work.

Now let's talk about Dennis.

Most of the time, Dennis is very good at hiding his emotions (other than anger), up until the point where they build up inside so much that they become overwhelming for him, and he has an outburst. (Some examples: "My mommy's a skeleton!" in Charlie's Mom Has Cancer, crying on the floor of Family Fight, the "big feelings" speech in Tends Bar.)

This makes it more difficult for us to determine what's going on in his head than it is for Mac, but it's not impossible.

Mac Fights Gay Marriage doles out information not only about Mac's sexuality, but Dennis's as well, and how he feels about Mac in particular.

Here's happens with Dennis in MFGM:

Mac walks into the bar and goes on a rant about how gay marriage is wrong. The gang disagrees with him and he leaves, frustrated and confused. After he's gone, Dennis speaks up:

Dennis: "You know, I always thought I'd be married by now."

Dee and Charlie: "What?"

Dennis: "Yeah, well I don't know I... all that talk about marriage and everything's got me thinking about myself and my situation and, I guess I've always thought I'd be married by now."

Frank, Charlie and Dee are dumbfounded.

Frank: "What the shit are you talking about?"

Dennis decides to get in touch with Maureen Ponderosa, his high school girlfriend.

So, in the context of the show, this behavior from Dennis is really out of left field. The gang, representing the audience in this moment, is surprised, because Dennis has NEVER expressed interest in a long term, committed romantic relationship- until now. Until Mac brought it up, specifically in a rant about gay marriage.

Now, you could take what Dennis says, that Mac just "got him thinking" about marriage, at face value, if all Dennis did in this episode was call up his ex and go on a date with her. But he doesn't do that.

What he does do is marry her that very same day. Frank bumps into him and Maureen at the courthouse right after they are married and asks "What's wrong with you?", and he is right to do so, because it's insane.

Dennis takes Maureen back to his and Mac's apartment, tells Mac that he's married, then kicks Mac out of the apartment and slams the door in his face. He is very angry at Mac. And, I posit, that the reason he's so angry at Mac is because Mac is against gay marriage- and Dennis wants to marry Mac.

He heard Mac's rant at the top of the episode, was upset, and went out and married the first girl he could think of, the only girl he's ever actually dated, as a desperate attempt at happiness in the face Mac's rejection, and as revenge. He wanted Mac to hurt for rejecting the possibility of their life together.

Dennis: "I built up a shell, a shell around myself. A cold, calculated, heartless shell, that couldn't be broken by anything but marriage, and that's what she did, dude; she broke that shell! With marriage!"

This is Dennis rubbing his marriage in Mac's face, AND telling Mac what he should have done if he really wanted to be closer to Dennis, if he really wanted to make Dennis happy.

In the last scene of the episode, after not even one full day with his new wife, Dennis attempts to escape Maureen and their apartment so he can "reconnect with the guys". Maureen wants to watch a movie with him, (something Dennis usually does with Mac,) but he doesn't want to. She says "It's our first night as a married couple, I want to spend it with my husband." Dennis responds by passive aggressively insulting her cat sweatshirt.

Maureen wants to sleep with him, and our "totally straight" "playboy" "alpha male" icon, Dennis Reynolds, wants to be anywhere else.

#dennis reynolds #macdennis #mac fights gay marriage #meta #its always sunny in philadelphia #iasip #i have Thoughts abt this ep ok #AND gets divorced but its kind of more of the same tbh

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just-another-hhazbin · 4 years ago

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Welcome to Another Alastor Discussion that no one asked for

Today’s topic is... his hunting/serial killer ways, tendencies, and methods! And also moral philosophy, views on his past/friendships, and how he might be affected by the Hotel. Yay for character development and all that.

Obviously, discussion of murder ahead, viewer discretion advised, etc.

So, from what the vaulted Hazbin Wiki tells us... when killing, Alastor doesn’t chase after people, doesn’t stalk them, and doesn’t kill kids (would potentially temporarily adopt a child, actually, even though he seems to be annoyed by them. Tfw serial killers have better morals than half the populace.) It goes so far to say he has some sort of moral code that is “not normal” and implied to be “better” than what most denizens of Hell abide by/believe.

(Which may or may not speak poorly to Charlie’s chance of success considering Alastor’s Everything, but I digress.)

Based on that info, I think Alastor probably has some very set views on people/demons. “Inside every demon is a lost cause” and “nonexistent humanity,” right?

I’m going to bet that those views were very firmly formed during his life.

Alastor grew up as a mixed-Creole aromantic asexual in the American 1920s, including the Great Depression. Any of those factors alone would’ve made it hard on him, but the combination? Not Great.

Everything he felt and was down to (presumably) his skin color was degraded, considered “wrong,” etc. The majority of society was against him from the start and he STILL managed to become a popular radio host (we stan a King, serial killing aside).

But being surrounded by those negative views and intense social pressures is Hard. He was probably exposed to many people who treated him poorly and tried to force him to conform a certain way - *cough* like the Transatlantic radio host Accent that is certainly not his real voice *cough* - and in turn saw them in a similarly negative life, as faceless members of a corrupt society, as “lost causes.”

We know he’s not a mindless killer - he’s far too cunning for one. But for two, he has friends: Rosie, Mimzy (who he supposedly knew when still alive and who was major in love with him, rip), and probably Husk and Niffty as well.

So what makes them different from the majority of people who he finds “entertainment” from through their suffering?

My guess is: He got to know them. They became Real.

It’s easy to hate a majority group of people. It’s pretty damn easy to hate all of humanity, really, and presumably much easier to hate all demons. It’s often much harder to hate an individual person once you get to know them.

So here Alastor has his presumable exceptions in his friends and continues on terrorizing the masses. But if he stalks his prey? Follows them, sees into their lives, gets to know them? He runs the risk of them becoming Real to him in a way that faceless representatives/members of the masses aren’t.

And now enters Charlie, whose views are a direct opposite of his.

And he thinks, “Well, isn’t that interesting? That should be amusing,” and goes off to join the hotel. But what he’s essentially done is put himself in the position of 24/7 stalking his prey/entertainment, except even worse, because they’re presumably more-or-less living together in the Hotel.

Which means he runs the very strong risk of becoming attached.

I have no doubt that Al is sketchy as fuck and gonna cause some major problems/conflicts along the way for the Hazbin Crew. But I also think he’s in over his head and doesn’t even realize it yet. It’ll be interesting to see what happens if he’s ever put in a situation where he has to choose between himself, his entertainment, and/or the wellbeing of the Hazbin Crew.

I expect he’ll struggle with choice more than he predicts, regardless of the outcome.

___________________________

[Some of this becomes more understandable when factored in with my aspd!Alastor headcanon, since it’s already a struggle to understand empathy and people as Individual People when affected by aspd. But if I ever delve into that, it’ll be as a separate post all-together. Just adding this comment as something to consider. (And a reminder on the end of it that aspd/anti-social personality disorder is not how it’s been portrayed by the media and that not all “crazy killers” are psychopaths/sociopaths/have aspd etc. and that most aspd people are not “souless evil killers/criminals” etc.)]

——————————

I did indeed make a post about it.

Aspd!Headcanon Alastor

#am I projecting? maybe #alastor #hazbin hotel alastor #hazbin hotel #hazbin hotel theory #hazbin hotel meta #hazbin hotel headcanon #hazbin headcanons #alastor headcanons #alastor meta #radio demon #hh alastor #alastor hazbin hotel #the radio demon #tw racsim #it was the 1920s also known as Hell in disguise #creole alastor #hazbin alastor

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cobra-diamond · 5 years ago

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Avatar Comics Good Reads Ratings - Troubling Trends

Good Reads is a website where members can rate and review books such as Harry Potter, The Hunger Games and even the Avatar comics by Dark Horse. Good Reads says they have about 90 million registered members.

I was curious about what the results would show for the Avatar comics by Dark Horse, so I took the quantity of ratings for each installment and converted them into graphs. The quantity of ratings denotes how popular a work is on Good Reads, not necessarily its quality.

For example, Harry Potter #1 has over 6.5 million Ratings whereas The Martian ‘only’ has 750,000. That doesn’t tell you how ‘good’ either book is, just that one is more ‘popular’ than the other. Both are very different stories.

Here are the Good Reads ratings for all the Dark Horse Avatar comics (excluding Imbalance):

Assuming this data represents the fandom’s popular reception to these works (i.e. how many liked them enough to spend money), here are some interesting takeaways:

Most follow-on works don’t do as well as the first installment but The Search had more ratings for its Part 1 than The Promise’s Part 1. However, The Search also saw a much, much steeper drop in ratings than The Promise. The Promise actually held its readers pretty well until Part 3.

Half as many fans returned for The Rift than The Search but The Rift also saw a precipitous collapse in readers similar to The Search. The Rift maintaining half of The Promise’s initial readers is actually over-performing, as you will see.

Usually, you expect a ‘sequel’ to receive 2/5th as many readers as the first installment’s peak. This can be illustrated by taking Harry Potters and The Hunger Games’ Goods Reads ratings and comparing their first installment numbers to the follow-on works.

You can see how, for even cultural phenomena, the sequels never do as well as the first. This isn’t always the case but it’s a near universal trend.

Another trend is also visible: a popular work holding its readers after the first installment.

This is illustrated by a similar bar graph for Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn series. It held its readers well over its run until eventually running out of steam like all series do. I’m using Mistborn as an example because it doesn’t have the ‘cultural baggage’ of Harry Potter and The Hunger Games that could potentially throw things off for those titans of contemporary literature.

You can see Mistborn held fans very well after the first installment, much better than even Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, with the 2nd and 3rd installments maintaining their popularity almost exactly. It wasn’t until Mistborn #4 that there was another drop, but even then the readers who remained mostly stayed for #5 and #6.

What do the The Hunger Games, Harry Potter and Mistborn have in common? They held their readers.

This can be further illustrated if you graph the Good Reads ratings as percentages relative to the first installments. In other words, if the first installment’s peak represents 100% of the popularity, then the next installment is 75% and the next is 50% and so on.

You can see the 2/5th drop I mentioned earlier. While Harry Potter and The Hunger Games saw big drops compared to their first installments, Mistborn didn’t reach the 2/5th drop until Book #4 and only saw a steady decline over the lifetime of the series. However, both The Hunger Games and Harry Potter maintained their followings more consistently after the first book’s drop while Mistborn held its Book #1 readers much better overall.

Converting these bar graphs to lines, you get the following ‘slopes’:

As you can see, rapid drops for The Hunger Games and Harry Potter followed by steady-state readership, while a steady decline for Mistborn with periods of steady-state readership for Books #2 and #3, and Books #5 and #6.

So what does this say about the Avatar comics? Taking the total ratings for each Avatar installment, averaging them, and adding them to the above graph, you see that the Avatar comics never held its readers until the very end, but by that point, the total readership was a mere fraction of the The Promise/Search high.

This graph is actually misleading for the Avatar comics.

Since each installment was broken up into three separate volumes, and published at different times, readers were able to ‘opt out’ of an installment if they wanted. This means turning each installment into an ‘average’ artificially props-up them up since the first parts of The Search and The Rift over-preformed compared to their second and third parts.

It’s really the first bar graph at the beginning of this article that tells the story.

I’ve added the 2/5th line to the first graph as shown below:

From this graph, with the 2/5th line added, you can see the vast under-performance of the second and third volumes of the The Search onward.

Why did this happen?

Why did the Avatar comics, when Avatar had a massive built-in fan base, never hold its readers until the end? Why did it only get in the range of 22,000 ratings for a peak when Mistborn #1 has over 360,000? Remember that the Avatar finale received over a 5.5 million viewers. Mistborn doesn’t even have a television show!

Here’s why I think this happened:

First, Avatar is supposed to be animated and epic. When fans learned that the Gaang+Zuko & Azula were continuing in mere ‘graphic novels’, especially ones that looked ‘kiddie’ in nature, they probably thought, “Really? That’s lame!” and were disappointed. No matter how well-written or mature these graphic novels were, they’d never have the same exposure as the animated spectacle; 73 pages per book for an 8-11 year old audience is simply not enough.

Secondly, the premises of both The Promise and The Search appealed to the general fan base. That’s why the ratings for both Parts 1’s are basically the same. The premise of The Promise is that it is the next story of Team Avatar. Of course that’s going to draw fans!

The premise of The Search, on the other hand, gets into the loose-threads of the franchise, namely the Zuko-Azula-Ursa family drama triangle. Both of these premises are rather distinct from one another and, technically, could have been completely separate story lines (the Gaang gets a dedicated plot line, the Fire Nation royal family gets another). This is why both had near the same amount of readers for both Part 1′s: they were addressing topics the general fan base already wanted.

However, once readers ‘got inside’ these books, in particular The Search and The Rift, they opted out and became apathetic. This apathy is why Smoke and Shadow and North and South tanked... Hard.

Even though Smoke and Shadow was supposed to continue the Fire Nation royal family triangle, Smoke and Shadow’s Part 1 rating is only 11% of The Search’s Part 1.

Yikes!

Even Mistborn #6′s ratings was 20% that of Mistborn #1, and Azula and Ursa’s relationship hadn’t even been resolved!

The specific reasons for why the comics hemorrhaged readers is anybody’s mystery. Certainly plenty has been written about it. Much can be said about the poor writing, half-baked plots, bad characterization, childish tone, etc.

What I hope these graphs give you is an idea of the ‘numbers’ behind fiction, and in particular, Avatar’s current Post-Finale comics. We don’t know what the true purpose of the comics was (Make money? Keep the fandom alive? Keep the copyright relevant? Drive away its teenage/young adult fan base?), but it’s clear they didn’t appeal to Avatar’s fan base as they should have.

Whether you like the comics or hate them, one thing is clear: they should have been a lot better.

As an aside, take a look at Gene Yang’s American Born Chinese Good Reads ratings compared to the performance of the Avatar comics. American Born Chinese is what allowed Gene Yang to be taken seriously for the Avatar comics. Also keep in mind that Avatar had a built-in fan base.

And if you compare American Born Chinese’s Google Trends results to Avatar: The Last Airbender’s, you get the following graph:

In the words of Charlie Brown: good grief.

#Avatar The Last Airbender #avatar comics #bryke

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somecynicalanimator · 4 years ago

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Module - Research Project

I’ve written up a first draft for my essay. Although only about half of the planned segments are here, what I’ve written here provides a base upon which I can continue to develop my essay. I hope to add more to these two introductory segments in future drafts.

Introduction

Figure 1. Screenshot taken from short film Mind My Mind (Floor Adams, 2019).

Entertainment has come in all shapes and sizes throughout the course of human history, across many different mediums, and throughout these countless stories we have seen countless different characters, reflecting the endless number of different viewpoints and lived experiences people have experienced throughout history. The experiences of people throughout history have been reflected and preserved through the artwork and characters through which they express themselves. In many ways, these fictional worlds and the characters that inhabit them are a reflection of the real world, and the experiences we as a people have observed and lived through ourselves. However, many of the most popular and well-known pieces of media, animated or otherwise, have failed to accurately represent many aspects of the human condition, with many groups of people not having been represented very much, or at least not very well, within popular culture. One group that has commonly been underrepresented or misrepresented within popular media, especially in animation, until recently are people on the autism spectrum (Kerrie Pressman, 2020). Autism, or Autism Spectrum Disorder (A.S.D.), is a neurodevelopmental condition that, broadly speaking, affects social skills and how one interacts with the world (J. Chaiken, 2020). Autism can affect people in a plethora of different ways and does not affect everyone the same way. On the rare occasion when autistic people are represented in media, they are often portrayed in ways that fall back on old stereotypes, viewpoints popularised in movies such as Rain Man (1988) that have proliferated and spread for decades, providing only a limited view of the experiences of autistic people. With a greater focus now a days on improving and refining the representation that marginalised groups get in media in general, more superlative work is being done, particularly in animation, to increase awareness of, and improve representations of, autistic people as whole and the wide array of lived experience they live through as a group (Kristen Lopez, 2020). The research compiled for this essay covers a range of different elements to autism and the way in which it is depicted in media through the characters who portray these elements, including the strong connection between people who have autism and the medium of animation. This essay will discuss the impact of animation on those who view it, and how these pieces of art help shape and form the views of our viewers, the responsibility this gives us as animators and the techniques people us to shape autistic characters that move beyond stereotypes, that have a depth to them that help them express something meaningful about the experiences of autistic people. We will be examining the portrayals of autistic people from the past, how these portrayals have developed over the decades, and the impact these different representations have had, and could in future have, on the audiences who watch these pieces of media, as well as the developing role animation specifically has in these developments (Carla Simone Engel & Elizabeth Sheppard, 2020).

Portrayals of Autism from the Past

Figure 2. Screenshot of Raymond and Charlie Babbitt from the film Rain Man (Barry Levinson, 1988).

For many decades after the first diagnosis of autism, autistic people remained virtually invisible within mainstream media (Jay McCarthy, 2018), given social pressures of the past to hide neurodivergent people from the public to allow the families to “save face” amongst their peers. They virtually did not exist in media at all, in keeping with the general attitudes and discrimination toward mental and physical conditions of the time. However, with the improvement of diagnosis methods helping to diagnose autistic people at earlier ages, came more opportunities for representation in media. One of the first well known pieces of film to depict an autistic person at all, and as a main character no less, was the movie Rain Man (1988) (McCarthy, J. 2018). The movie depicts the growing relationship between estranged brothers Charlie and Raymond “Rain Man” Babbitts, played by Dustin Hoffman. Raymond Babbitts is an autistic savant who has lived in a shared care home since Charlie was little. The movie was hugely successful when it released, becoming one of the first immensely popular, Oscar nominated movies to feature an autistic character as a main character, though not played by an autistic actor. While the movie was heavily praised following its release, the movie’s reputation and legacy has become a lot more complicated over the decades (McCarthy, J. 2018). Many of the different traits and misconceptions of autism that have permeated throughout media originated with Dustin Hoffman’s performance here as Rain Man, mainly the misconceptions that all autistic people are autistic savants, and many of the character’s idiosyncratic traits being reused again and again for autistic characters throughout the past few decades. These qualities first depicted in this film have proliferated to such an extent that many autistic people struggle to escape the assumptions that they should fit the characteristics and savant abilities of Rain Man’s titular character (Pressman, K. 2020). While some care was taken by the producers and Dustin Hoffman to consult autistic people on the making of the movie, Hoffman basing his performance off of the mannerisms of Kim Peek, the character traits of Raymond Babbitt became so common place as to be stereotypical. Rain Man was meant to be one depiction of one autistic character, it should have been the first step towards a diverse array of autistic characters, but instead became the only basis for virtually all depictions seen in media for a number of decades (McCarthy, J. 2018). The negative impact of stereotypes can be seen readily in a study compiled by research published by SpringerLink. Stereotypical, negative depictions of autism via fictional characters, such as animated works, can greatly impact the way people view autistic people, creating negative associations that can led to social rejection and isolation (Engel, C.S. & Sheppard, E. 2020) These misconceptions are often ingrained during childhood, and can even persist through to adulthood. When autism is depicted in media, these representations often fit a certain mould, failing to depict the true diversity of people who are on the autism spectrum. Particularly, the most common depiction of autistic people in media are white, male, verbal children, with the stereotypical mannerisms that come with architypes of autistic people. Many people on the autism spectrum, mainly women, L.G.B.T.Q.+ people, people of colour and non-verbal autistic people are given even less representation in media than other autistic people (Lopez, K. 2020).

#research project #essay #first draft

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possiblyimbiassed · 5 years ago

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What happened to Sherlock? Part VIII - The Sign of the Hetero Norm (1)

Why does Mary Morstan play such a prominent role in BBC Sherlock?

I’m surely not the only one asking myself this; while she’s barely mentioned in canon after marrying Watson, she’s all over the place from TEH and onwards in Mofftiss’ adaptation. And when I recently read this excellent fic by @discordantwords, a couple of things dawned on me, that I think have been brewing in my mind for quite some time. Which brings me to the long promised continuation of my marathon meta series about what I think we’re actually seeing in this show. Because the entire point of Mary Morstan seems to be to prevent Sherlock and John from getting together in a romantic relationship - a story of hetero norm. This eighth installment will explore the ‘case’ of little Rosie, and the role she and her mother plays in this show.

This far I’ve published an intro and seven installments, each with corresponding attempts to test my hypotheses:

Introduction - The game is on (explains the method of analysis) Part I - Blog vs TV-show Part II - Re-living memories Part III - Drugs and weirdness Part IV – Heartbreak and coma (1) Part IV – Heartbreak and coma (2) Part V – Bizarre scenarios Part VI - Live and let die (1) Part VI - Live and let die (2)

Part VII - The Importance of Being Earnest (1)

Part VII - The Importance of Being Earnest (2)

This installment will also be parted in two, and the second half can be found here (X). Many of the screen caps from BBC Sherlock in this meta are from Kissthemgoodbye.net - thanks! And thanks also to Ariane DeVere for the incredibly useful transcripts!

My next hypotheses is, in and off itself, a clear and straightforward prediction that can be explicitly verified or falsified once we finally get to S5, so it will be extra fun to see what happens with it in future:

Hypothesis #8: John is not the father of Mary’s baby

(Disclaimer: My suspicion here only concerns John’s biological offspring. It would still be possible that John, and perhaps also Sherlock, might father the child - if it exists - by adoption. It does not exclude a metaphorical reading where the baby represents, for example, Sherlock’s and John’s relationship. I also want to stress that this hypothesis is an attempt at logical reasoning based on observations in the show and in ACD canon; it’s not meant to be ‘gossipy’ and has nothing to do with whether I would actually like to see this happen or not - that’s a whole other story. ;) )

This hypothesis has been brewing in my mind for quite some time now, but I don’t think it’s just a hunch; there are actually a series of reasons that have made me come to this conclusion.

(Continued under the cut)

But first of all: can we debunk my hypothesis at this stage in the story, by testing it ‘scientifically’? Well, not really, since the show doesn’t provide any reliable evidence that confirms John as Rosie’s biological father. Not even IRL would this have been possible without a DNA-test (or without physical circumstances that would have made any other option impossible). And the only thing that the show tells us about human DNA-tests is that not even this procedure is 100% reliable, as shown in ASIB:

JOHN: You were dead on a slab. It was definitely you. IRENE: DNA-tests are only as good as the records you keep. JOHN: And I bet you know the record-keeper. IRENE: I know what he likes, and I needed to disappear.

DNA is brought up in TGG (Ian Monkford’s blood) and again in TST (the identification of Charlie Wellsborough’s body), but since John’s fatherhood is never questioned in the show, little Rosie is never tested, as far as we know. The remaining evidence that speaks for John being the father is circumstantial: that John and Mary obviously must have been living together at the approximate time of conception. And that they both act as if they’re both Rosie’s parents.

So I guess that in order to get any further with this, I’ll have to start at the other end, analysing the characters and see if I can find evidence that support my hypothesis - on a textual level as well as metaphorically and on the meta level.

Mary’s function in the story

I think we can safely say that Mary is the most controversial character of BBC Sherlock. Some viewers love her, others hate her, but I can’t recall anyone claiming to feel indifferent towards her. Mofftiss have indeed managed to push forward a character who is hardly even visible in canon, once she’s married to Watson. In BBC Sherlock, however, Mary totally dominates the show from HLV and onwards. Her appearances may have been increasing in numbers and length already from her introduction in TEH. But from the point where John wakes up in HLV, there isn’t a single case where she’s not somehow involved. Up until TFP, everything is about ’Mary’. And even then, once we might have believed we’d got rid of the ghost of this hijacking protagonist, she comes back, only to once again take over the narrative with a weird and basically inexplicable voiceover. She seems like some kind of obsession; a brain ghost stuck on someone’s mind.

This is rather different from ACD canon, where Mary Morstan has extremely few lines as soon as she’s no longer a client, but Watson’s wife. Personally I find it hard to see the lovable aspect of this character in BBC Sherlock, since she constantly shifts appearance, behaviour and motivation; it’s almost impossible to pin down who she actually is. Which makes me convinced that Mary is not meant to be a real, believable character that we can relate to as such - at least not all the time. And maybe that goes for canon as well.

But what then is the purpose of her, what’s Mary’s actual function in the narrative, looking at the subtext? I think there’s basically three of them, and by no means mutually exclusive:

1. Mary is a metaphor for heteronormativity and its power over people when they internalise it

2. Mary is a façade or ‘beard’, where a straight marriage is established to cover up a story of a gay relationship

3. Mary is a mirror for Sherlock; by substituting himself with a female spouse for John, Sherlock can be with John ‘by proxy’, trying to figure out John without having to face his own real problem: reveal his emotions and risk failure.

As soon as Mary firmly puts her foot in the show, it all becomes a spectacle, a demonstration of how to keep up a straight facade at any cost. After TSoT, no-one ever assumes John and Sherlock are a romantic couple; Mary is the ultimate ’proof’ that John is indeed straight. Which is of course illogical, because why would a bi person stop being it because they married someone, no matter of which sex? Mary admits it herself by telling Sherlock that ”neither of us was the first, you know”. And Sherlock complains that John is dancing around Sholto ”like a puppet” even after the wedding ceremony. But in all the episodes after TSoT, John is happily freed from people’s assumptions regarding his sexual orientation. Gone are all the gay jokes, and John Watson is miraculously ‘cured’.

I think this is perfectly illustrated in the fic by @discordantwords that I mentioned above. The plot follows logically on TFP, as things would be if everything we’ve seen from HLV and onwards is actually meant to be ‘true’. Mary is now dead and John lives alone with little Rosie. For a case, in order to get close to the suspects, Sherlock is planning to fake his own wedding with Janine Hawkins, and John is feeling jealous and excluded – especially when he finds out that one of the murders that Sherlock is investigating had involved a wedding of a gay couple:

"Why all of this, then?" he asked. He tipped his head towards the kitchen, where Janine was fiddling with the kettle. "I could have just—wouldn't it have been easier for us to just—?"

"You're not gay," Sherlock said.

"Well," John paused. "No." He cleared his throat, looked back at the wall. "But everyone already thinks we're a couple. Wouldn't be that much of a stretch, really. For a case."

"No one has thought that for quite some time."

This fanfic rings perfectly true to me, considering S4 on the surface level; John and Sherlock appearing as a couple wouldn’t work after John’s own wedding in TSoT. Because gone is now every allusion to John being anything else than straight. Gone is also John’s admiration for Sherlock; from HLV and on, he hardly ever even speaks about Sherlock in a positive way. (Which also makes me wonder: was ‘The Fall’ also about Sherlock feeling he had fallen from John’s pedestal of admiration?). For the rest of the show, it’s only Sherlock whom we see suffering from (presumably) gay pining. It’s only in Sherlock’s Victorian imagination that Moriarty tells them to ’elope’ together, while John in TLD is shown to be exclusively fixed on his dead wife.

On the surface, Sherlock seems to support John’s relationship with Mary, while I’m sure he is actually suffering deeply. But I think, metaphorically, that Sherlock is acting like some kind of self-sacrificing Christ figure. (Don’t forget Irene’s words from ASiB: “I think you’re damaged, delusional and believe in a higher power. In your case, it’s yourself”). He bears the ‘cross’ of torture by seeing John with someone else, until he can’t stand it any more and trashes himself on drugs. This is what we see at the beginning of TEH, John holding hands with a woman in front of Sherlock’s grave:

Why can’t we see Mary’s face already here? I think it’s because this is from Sherlock’s POV; he’s either seeing or imagining them from behind. She might have a hidden face but a familiar shape because by the time Sherlock is recalling this, he already knows what Mary looks like. But at this point in time, maybe he didn’t? In any case, it must be devastating for Sherlock to see or imagine John with someone else, when he should be there to mourn him, Sherlock.

Thinking about John with Mary, Sherlock can’t even sleep. He is tortured on a cross and dies for all our ’sins’, doesn’t he? On the meta level Sherlock Holmes sacrifices his life, he extinguishes his true self, in the name of heteronormativity. So that John can have his straight marriage, even if it’s dysfunctional. But our worst ’sin’ as an audience, I believe - our ultimate mistake - is to buy into this narrative without questioning it. That’s literally letting the hetero norm rule.

King David the Adulterer

Mary’s ex-boyfriend David is introduced in TSoT, but after this episode he never shows up again. But this seems very random to me; why is David even there, and why is he depicted as some kind of rival to John? What is his narrative purpose? David is often blurred out in the scenes, but he is definitely present during the whole wedding reception, where his role is to be an usher (showing people their places/seats). David gives the impression to be single, since he attends Mary’s wedding without any partner as company.

Sherlock, who meets David alone at 221B during the wedding planning, deduces that he still seems to have an intimate relationship with Mary. Only recently I discovered this meta from 2014 called The Baby Problem by @abitnotgood, which brings up pretty much exactly the same suspicions I have had for quite some time now. The main points are the following:

Mary was dating David for 2 of the totally 5 years she had been undercover with the false name Mary.

They’re still close enough friends for David to attend the wedding, which might indicate their breakup was unwanted from one or both parts.

Mary’s reactions during the wedding reception indicates that she still cares for David.

Sherlock finds out that David has “offered to be her shoulder to cry on no less than three occasions.”

David sits at the same table as most other major characters, which indicates that he’s important.

David doesn’t look particularly happy while toasting for the bride and groom.

To these I could also add that Sherlock gets so suspicious about David that he threatens him with keeping a close eye on his whereabouts with Mary. From a story telling POV, when a character is suspected by the main character who is a genius detective, there should actually be some reason for this - shouldn’t it?

So who is David? Does he appear anywhere in canon? I actually think he does. In ACD’s short story The Crooked Man (CROO), the name David plays a symbolical role. The story is about a (supposed) murder of a middle-aged military officer, colonel James Barclay. It’s a classical Sherlock Holmes mystery with a door locked from the inside and the key missing. The death seems to originate from a domestic quarrel between the colonel and his wife. (Which is particularly interesting considering the Watsons’ ‘domestic’ in HLV).

Turns out the colonel died of fright when he saw his old rival Henry Wood, whom he had betrayed in the war and deliberately left to be captured by the enemy. Henry was repeatedly tortured and crippled and held prisoner for many years, until he could escape back to London and a coincidence brought his old love interest in his way, who was now married to the colonel. (Hmm... tortured by the enemy. Been away. Love interest married. Does this seem like anyone we know? ;) ). Henry was “the crooked man” of the story, who was bereft of his loved one because of James.

But the name David was mystically uttered by Colonel Barclay’s wife while quarreling with her husband - why? Holmes claimed it was a biblical reference to the drama of king David, Batsheba and Uriah. King David committed adultery with the beautiful Bathsheba, who was married to his soldier Uriah. Bathsheba got pregnant after sleeping with David, while Uriah was out fighting a war. David tried to cover up that fact by sending Uriah home, but Uriah refused to leave his comrades. Then David betrayed his rival Uriah the same way James betrayed Henry: by deliberately leaving him exposed to the enemy. The only difference was that Uriah died on the battlefield, while Henry was caught and crippled. Which leads us almost inevitably to Captain John Watson - he is a soldier who was crippled by the enemy too, wasn’t he? ;)

What about Rosie?

Although Mary is dominating the show from TEH and forwards, John’s and Mary’s daughter - little Rosie - is subjected to the opposite treatment; she has very little screen time, and we never learn about a single character trait of hers. In ACD canon the Watsons never had a child, as far as I know. And – even in Victorian times – I believe it would have seemed strange with the Doctor spending so much of his free time (besides work) together with Holmes, obviously neglecting his family duties. So since Mofftiss have introduced a totally new ingredient to their adaptation - a time-consuming baby - one would think this has to have a clear purpose, right? I would have expected Rosie to play a part of her own, someone the audience could relate to just like the other characters, if only still a baby.

But instead, Rosie is seen most of all as an obstacle. Mary is balancing her while discussing a case with Sherlock. Rosie is handed over to John like a sack of potatoes when the family goes on to solve a case with Sherlock; she doesn’t make a sound and we don’t even see her little face. We see John change Rosie’s diaper once (basically to show that he has a toy daisy behind his ear, which is apparently a good flirting device), and then we see Sherlock trying to babysit her at 221B, getting hit in the eye by her toy. We also hear her cry in the background once, and see Molly hold her once. And that’s about it.

When Sherlock texts them from the London Aquarium at the end of TST, Mary and John debate which of them is going to have to stay with the baby, but finally both of them show up at the Aquarium – without Rosie. And this happens not long after Mary has taken a ‘little trip’ around Eurasia ending up in Morocco and John and Sherlock going after her – little Rosie staying at home. Which means weeks without any of her parents. If S4 were real, I’d feel truly sorry for little Rosie.

In TLD, Rosie is more absent than her dead mother! While Mary haunts the episode, all we hear about the baby is John’s tremendous guilt for neglecting and abandoning her (which he manages to do completely). John does seem to have enough spare time and energy to go on another case with Sherlock, though, in the middle of his therapy session. At the end of TLD, all is supposedly fine again with Rosie (until John gets shot with a tranquiliser), but we never get to see it. But then in TFP John goes on a long journey with Sherlock to a far away island, and not a word about Rosie. She’s not even present when John receives Mary’s DVD at home. At the end she’s suddenly there again, though, without any comment.

Based on this, it doesn’t seem farfetched to ask if this little character is even supposed to be real. There’s a subtle hint in TLD which could point in this skeptic direction:

Sherlock: “And, of course, I hadn’t really anticipated that I’d hallucinated meeting his daughter.” “Still a bit troubled by the daughter. Did seem very real, and she gave me information I couldn’t have acquired elsewhere.”

John: “But she wasn’t ever here?”

An earlier quote from TGG could also question John’s fatherhood: ”Of course he’s not the boy’s father - look at the turnups on his jeans!” (Sherlock while watching telly with John in TGG, right after the fourth ‘pip’).

And - of course - if S4 is all imaginary, only happening in Sherlock’s head, Rosie would probably not even have been born yet.

There are also some more subtle hints about Rosie’s narrative function: John’s guilt about cheating on Mary in TLD is connected to the baby. John specifically mentions that he was “cheating” on Mary while she was taking care of Rosie: JOHN (to Ghost!Mary): “We texted constantly. You wanna know when? Every time you left the room, that’s when. When you were feeding our daughter; when you were stopping her from crying – that’s when.” This does make the (otherwise rather exaggerated) texting affair sound a bit more damning for John, doesn’t it? ;) If this is all taking place inside Sherlock’s head, it might rather reflect one of Sherlock’s (possibly) major excuses to himself for not confessing his true feelings to John; it might (once the baby is born) disrupt a whole family and affect an innocent little child.

John and Mary’s relationship

The other day I took to re-watch this little piece of extra material from S4: statements by Martin Freeman and Amanda Abbington about John’s and Mary’s relationship (X). Every time I see this video I’m just laughing so hard. Please don’t miss how Martin is struggling to keep a straight face without smiling, after claiming “they’ve been through stuff already in S3 that would test any couple.” (Yep. Like the discovery that Mary is actually a contract killer who shot his best friend and hasn’t even revealed her real name to John). Or how Amanda avoids looking at the camera when she’s lying talking about Mary’s feelings towards John, closing her eyes and shaking her head. Great acting! :)

I mean, this cannot even be intended to fool anyone; I think this is meant to signal to the audience that the marriage we’re seeing is a dishonest, superficial construction made up of empty words. It’s very similar to the scene in HLV where Sherlock tells John about his ‘relationship’ with Janine. Platitudes like “we’re in a good place” are not only included, but also called out in the very same dialogue. John: “You got that from a book!” Sherlock: “Everyone got that from a book!”. In the video clip, overly sweet violin music is playing when Martin and Amanda talk about their characters’ supposed deep love for each other, but this is mixed up with sitcom-like scenes where this love is made very hard to believe in, like Mary about to give birth in the car and roaring to her husband to pull over, or John telling Mary that he simply intends to forget about a recent past where she very nearly murdered his best friend.

John’s marriage actually seems terrible from start; he can’t even keep himself off Sherlock’s blog comments during his own honeymoon. Which I believe is canon consistent; in ACD’s stories Mary Morstan even encourages Watson to never leave Holmes’ side. And the bad marriage is also confirmed in HLV by Wiggins’ and Sherlock’s deductions about John’s cycling to work and keeping his shirts ‘folded and ready to leave’ at any moment.

But what��s Mary’s position in this? Let’s say, as a mental experiment, that she knows from start about John’s feelings for Sherlock. Why would she want to be together with, and even go on to marry, a man who is obviously in love with someone else? Well, while I don’t buy the facade-climbing Ninja!Mary who tries to kill Sherlock in HLV, she could still be dishonest in her approach to John. She could still be on some sort of mission related to Sherlock, where her role simply is to get in between John and Sherlock, while she actually is together with someone else (and even carrying that someone’s child). Her aim could be to hurt Sherlock as much as possible, for a specific reason.

As far as I see in TEH, Mary seems suspiciously eager to befriend Sherlock. Instead of behaving like one would expect from someone in love who just got their special moment ruined by a rival; with anger or at least annoyance, and of course supporting the beloved - Mary immediately sides with Sherlock.

And she seems to side with him most of all on an intellectual level, taking part in his explanations of how he managed to fake his death.

“Oh, he would have needed a confidant...”

So - what can we deduce about Mary?

If everything we see in the show after TSoT only has happened inside Sherlock’s head (as I’ve tried to make a case for in this meta series), from this follows logically that in Sherlock’s ‘reality’, there is no Assasin!Mary, no SecretAgent!Mary, no Martyr!Mary and - of course - no Ghost!Mary. Because up until the wedding, Mary seemed to be just an ordinary woman. The character’s appearance from HLV and onwards would all be fabrications of Sherlock’s drug-influenced mind, albeit loaded with a lot of metaphorical meaning from his subconscious.

But Mary still seems to exist on some level, doesn’t she? She is referred to by John on his blog, talked about by other people on the blog (including Sherlock), and she even makes comments on it on no less than ten occasions. On the blog, John is clear about getting married to Mary. And after Sherlock’s final blog post ‘The Sign of Three’, it also gets obvious that Mary is now pregnant.

And – most importantly – if S4 is all-fake, this also means that in Sherlock’s ‘reality’, Mary’s drama-loaded death in TST never happened. Mary is still alive! So if Mary is a ‘façade’, a ‘beard’ and/or a mirror for Sherlock on a meta- and sub-textual level, who is she on the textual level? Well, I think there are some clues in the show, and also a lot of subtext material in ACD canon to draw from, which might have been developed into actual story line in the show.

And this will bring us to the second half of this meta, which you can find here (X).

Tagging some people who might be interested: @raggedyblue @ebaeschnbliah @sarahthecoat @gosherlocked @loveismyrevolution @sagestreet @tjlcisthenewsexy @elldotsee @88thparallel @devoursjohnlock @sherlock-overflow-error @yeah-oh-shit

#who is mary?

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