#for a writer so famous for subtlety

[charlesemersonwinchesteriii]

"so did you like. ever actually listen to or even look at the Hodgson playlist or??" no. it's too scary. far far too scary by far. I was scared. but I did accidentally find out that I Say A Little Prayer For You was on it which proved more than sufficient to render my brainscape a nuclear exclusion zone for the past 3 days. one can only imagine what other horrors lay in wait within The List to shred whatever remains of my psyche. and then for all I know this Sunday's playlist will be Irving. my god. truly there is no rest for the wicked in this world. what's going to be on that one huh. will there be a matching congreve rocket ready to strike me. track number one "I Love Autistic Blonde Freaks And I Cannot Lie". simply cannot take it anymore lads.

[inbarfink]

After all these years, ‘I Remember You’ is still one of the great highlights of Adventure Time Storytelling. And not just in the basic ‘what???? Silly children’s cartoon does something SAD??? HOLY SHIT MIND BLOWN’ way. But with the execution of that Something Sad. How it manages to pack so many Complex Emotions into just 11-minutes of television. And especially the way it utilizes the basic Adventure Time format for that purpose.

So Adventure Time is a Board-based show. Each episode has an outline pitched and written down by the writer’s room, and then this outline goes to a team of (usually) two Storyboard Artists who develop that simple outline into a full story. And with the show’s art-style deliberately eschewing staying perfectly ‘on-model’ in favor of having the animators take direct reference from how the different storyboarders draw the characters

And the show being generally extremely versatile in terms of themes and tone - AT has allowed a lot of their Storyboarders to really express themselves and their unique artistic vision as part of the Big Collaborative Narrative that is Adventure Time. 

Now, the Boarders who worked on ‘I Remember You’ are Cole Sanchez and Rebecca Sugar. These two were a Storyboarding Duo from the start of S4 and until Sugar left the AT Crew during S5, and they always struck me as a curious combination. I think really from all of the individual boarders working on AT during that time, these two really are the closest to having like… Totally Opposite Artistic Sensibilities as boarders. 

With Sugar favoring a style that is very loose and sketchy and also very rounded. Focusing on expressions and subtle body language and lighting. And being famous for going deep in depth into Big Moments of Emotional Catharsis

And Sanchez having a very clear art style that emphasizes strong silhouettes and clear lines that suggest flatness. Focusing more on major poses and the character’s positions in the space. And having just a really great eye for AT’s brand of silly humor.

Like, I almost kinda suspect these two were paired together so they can each cover for the other’s “weakspots” in writing ‘Adventure Time’. 

And there were a few episodes that did some really interesting stuff with this very contrasting pair - ‘Jake the Dog’ is another example. Giving most of the Farmworld scenes to Sugar and most of the Time Room scenes to Sanchez both plays to their personal strengths as storyboarders and helps to emphasize the strong emotional contrast between these two scenarios. 

And ‘I Remember You’ is actually kinda unique among Adventure Time episodes cause… Most episodes will have the two boarders alternate between working on the episode throughout it. Like you’d have Boarder A draw a bit and then Boarder B and then Boarder A again… But “I Remember You” is divided between Sanchez and Sugar… basically perfectly in the middle.

So the entirety of the first half of the episode was boarded by Sanchez

Until Ice King pushes Marceline and then leaves the room in shame.

And then, Sugar takes over.

And, like, even if you don’t know anything about the Behind the Scenes of Adventure Time or who Cole Sanchez and Rebecca Sugar even are - the Shift is noticeable. The shift in tone, in narrative focus, in the subtleties in which the characters are drawn. 

The entire first half of the episode has this thin veneer of just being a Silly Goofy Ice King Episode. Sanchez’s talent for Adventure Time’s brand of comedy is on full display… but there is also this underlying feeling that Something is Happening just under the surface. And these hints of the Big Emotions of ‘IRY’ expressed via Sanchez’s kinda goofy style really create this balance between putting the audience into a false sense of security that this is just a Very Normal Episode about two characters hanging out and the Tension constantly brewing in the subtext. 

And then it all comes to a blow.

And then the Shift happens. And now we are in Sugar’s court.

And this subtle shift in the artstyle and storytelling also coincide with Marceline finally openly expressing her feelings and the Reveal of Simon and Marcy's shared past. The episode changes focus from Ice King's silly antics to Marceline's feelings. Everything changes, everything in the first part of the episode gets recontextualized and... even on the most basic level, the episode is now Noticeably Different.

I would almost say that Sanchez’s half of the episode has Ice King define the tone, while Sugar’s half of the episode has Marceline define the tone. But more than anything it’s the catharsis. The reveal and release of those emotions that were building up so expertly through the Sanchez half of the episode. All of the Sugar-boarded scenes in this episode are really heartbreaking on their own, just through the tragedy of the story and Sugar’s expert knowledge of howto convey emotion in the visual medium - but it’s so enchanted by what came before it.

“I Remember You” is truly a great testament to how ‘Adventure Time’ could use every aspect of its medium to tell a great story in such a short time.

[msfbgraves]

I think the reason Terry and Daniel has this insane chemistry in their limited scenes together is because of TIG.

TIG clearly has a certain fondness for the character of Daniel. In multiple interviews he cannot help but bring up Daniel even when Daniel is not being talked about or referenced. TIG also absolutely loves the character of Terry, and has a blast getting to play him. Put these two loves together and bam! It’s like a magic potion.

Let’s be real. TIG never talks about any other character the way he talks about Daniel (and Terry of course). He has chemistry with Kreese too, but it’s no where near the level he has with Daniel. Again, this bleeds over from his fondness for Daniel as a whole. And perhaps even his liking of working with Ralph. The man is like an Irish Wolfhound when talking about cat-coded Ralph and it’s amusing to watch.

For whatever reason, Danny boy is special to TIG. It makes me wonder how much of Terry’s obsession with Daniel was as ad libbed by TIG himself. After all, the man is a screenwriter himself. He knows nuance and subtlety and what tone and gesture and eyes can convey better than many. He knows what he’s doing, I am certain.

I feel as if someone were to ask TIG who his favorite character was (he couldn’t choose Terry)—he would readily say Daniel.

Even though they share a limited number of moments together, it’s interesting how much weight and meaning their interactions have, and why they often steal the show—and TIG himself steals all the scenes he’s in.

Whatever it is, I love it. TIG is just fantastic. No wonder he’s stupid popular.

Is he stupid popular? If so, huzzah - I'm out of the loop on regular popularity of CK characters.

I basically agree with all of it. The Karate Kid part III, Thomas' first ever film role with him as an absolute nobody whose main function was to antagonise Ralph, who was famous enough to have been asked to present Academy Awards, that must mean something to him. And he got to dominate his character, which must be odd as Ralph had quite a lot of clout on set, and could have stopped him, no problem. He was famously unhappy on that set, and could have made life very difficult for Thomas, but he didn't. And he obviously shouldn't have from an interpersonal standpoint, but this was the 80's and he was the lead, he could have Thomas regulated to the back of the room if he wanted to and he did not. That must mean something. Also there was no script, this was all ad libbed. And that makes for... some kids' film, alright, but it really also makes Terry Thomas' character. And he liked him so much he wrote a whole film about him, Excessive Force.

And you see, what I respect so much about TIG as a writer is that he respects what people actually do, not what people fantasise about. I find his girlfriend in Excessive Force rather underwritten, but in a shootout where they both are present they give her a gun. Because even though men like to see the cowering girlfriend they can rescue that is not what people in these situations do. If there's two of you and you have a spare gun you give her a gun too. Because you want to live. And he's kept doing that when he had the chance. If he has to play an action hero he writes one who thinks. If he's going to write a jealous, abusive piece of shit called Gus Travis, he's jealous and abusive because he's notably insecure. Because his girlfriend is actively trying to leave him, because they have a shitty relationship, but there is nonverbal communication and history between them. She's not just there to look scared. Because irl women aren't sexy lamps.

I'm sure he wouldn't have written a miracle cure for Miguel because there are no miracle cures for broken vertibrae. And it doesn't matter to him that the writers don't want to write how hard it would have been for Miguel to learn to walk again, let alone fight. So with Terry, yes, I am quite convinced he does his utmost to keep Terry human and it shows. It makes sense for Terry Silver to channel all his martial arts knowledge into other pursuits. When Kreese is ranting about some teenager "slighting" him, he has zero patience for that nonsense. He's off his rocker, but he's still an adult. He actually gives the Cobra Kai kids some good advice! When he talks to "Sensei Joe", he recognises that the man is teaching Tory well, and later, they have a very measured conversation about them working together. Because that makes the outbursts scarier. And Daniel. Omg. Half their interactions are body language only. But there is an obvious contrast to how Terry is with most people and how he is with Daniel. He is NOT NORMAL around him. Ever. In any interaction. At the very mention of his name he goes from: "FFS, Kreese, get off my balcony, I am so done with your spiel" to "... Danny Boiii?" And given how deeply in love the writers are with Kreese, and how completely different the dynamic between John and Twig is as opposed to Kreese and Silver, that has to be TIG not having any of that. He wrote Terry first, and sure he'll throw in a line about Johnny Lawrence if he must, but that's as far as he'll go. I loved the "WHY...?!" when Johnny stepped in to defend Kreese. Because that doesn't make any sense irl. Kreese tried to kill him over a lost All Valley. Kreese stole his dojo, his business. Kreese nearly killed him again. Also, Terry already beat him to a pulp twice. I'm a decent chess player but with a ranking of 1600 you don't play someone who ranks 2500 you'll get pummeled, and you certainly don't do it again and expect to win, that's insane. Johnny isn't a good enough fighter, going by their last two encounters. So WHY? indeed.

And for TIG to step into a silly karate show that is completely centered on Johnny and Kreese and say "actually, Terry was in a twisted relationship with Daniel and that's what I'm playing, Kreese is simply no longer a factor to him" and to pull that off... and to also say, "btw, I'm going to react like a person would to whatever is put in front of Terry, not how you think the world should be" that's a stupendous achievement. I mean they wrote in a whole subplot where Twig is deeply jealous of Johnny Lawrence and TIG was like: "whatever. This person is so far beneath his notice it's subterranian and will anybody point out he is an awful parent? No. Then I will, and that'll be the end of that storyline" and they let him. That doesn't happen! The whole crew of GOT tried to stage an insurrection and was told: "You're dumb actors, say the lines", Marty and Billy tried to petition the writers about Kreese and Johnny being OOC and got nowhere, Ralph needed 1,5 seasons to be allowed to play Daniel LaRusso, instead of a snivelling charicature and TIG comes in with: "That stuff you've written for my character? I'll take what I want from that, and you'll thank me for it, and that's all you get. BTW, where's Ralph?" and they let him!

Legend.

[mooniwrites]

Borrowed love letters (snippet)

Pairing: Lewis Hamilton x blacklatinafem!Reader

Summary: It’s your birthday and Lewis have a few surprises for you. WC: 687 Warnings: besides sickening sweet love and Lewis being a simp, none, I think.

Author note: I haven’t write anything in a very long time, so please be kind! Also, English is not my first language, and I’m not a 100% fluent in it, so I’ll probably have spilling/writing errors. Constructive (and kind) criticism is received and appreciated.

One of the downsides of dating a writer it’s that it doesn’t matter what I write, it’ll never compare to what you can come up, even in one of your ‘worst’ days, when -and I quote- “writers block is kicking your ass”. So that’s why I’m going to borrow the words of famous writers and poets to try to express my love for you, even though I know words aren’t enough to do so.

Today marks the day that you were brought to this world, a day in which the colors are more vibrant, the birds sing a little more and the sun hides because you outshine it.

Today I will give you 27 gifts, 26 to commemorate each year you have walked this earth, and 1 to celebrate the year you have shared with me (the first of many, I pray).

Today, I borrow the words of Kafka “in a way, you are poetry material; you are full of cloudy subtleties I am willing to spend a lifetime figuring out.”

The first gift is a Rothschild Slipper orchid, one of the most expensive and exotic orchids in the world. As a plant mom, I know that you’ll take amazing care of her (please wait for me so we can name it together). The reason of this being the first gift it’s because I know you have been looking for this orchid for years, and also the fact that it flowers every 15 years is a huge proof of patience, love, perseverance and resilience, all things that I link to you, to who you are. I still remember the afternoon where your parents told me about your birth, that you were born death and the doctors had to bring you back to life, how complicated it was and that you spent your first month of life in hospital. I’m glad that baby you was so stubborn and fought.

The second gift is a vintage cigarette holder. Because your soul feels like an old one, one that has seen and felt and cried a lot, and still maintains the kindness and naiveness of a young one. Your existence is an exquisite mix of contradictions, like a very aesthetic artifact that was originally designed for a purpose, but a dark skinned Latina woman that loves to cook while listen ballenato would stare at and wish that she could put those incredible gorgeous Florasis lipsticks (I also pray for the day that they become cruelty free baby).

The third gift is a reversible sapphire white 14K gold ring, just because as soon as I saw it I thought of you wearing and it was meant to be (don’t worry baby, that engagement ring is in the making).

The fourth gift is a rain cloud diffusor, I knew you have wanted one for months, but haven’t got it because you forgot, or you would rather buy something for someone else (because you are selfless like that).

At 5, you fell in love with what is still today your favorite animal: whales. I still remember the way your face got warm when you told me that at 5 you believed whales could come out of anywhere that had water, including rivers or puddles, so it’s only natural that your fifth gift it’s related to them. One of my most precious memories it’s almost frizzing myself to death in Alaska just to see whales doing their dance to eat, or as you would call it “the coolest breathtaking and most beautiful method” , I remember all the times you explained to me how whales do the bubble net fishing method, how they work like an orchestra, with the trumpeters, that swim deep and release air to form bubbles and group the shoal, then the one that call the rest so they can go to the surface and eat, while also singing to confuse the fishes, seeing you get excited hearing their songs, the way your eyes illuminated when they appeared right next to our boat, your tears of happiness because you couldn’t believe what you just witnessed warmed me up better than any jacket could.   And even that freezing winter in Alaska it was warmer than the ones I spent without you by my side.

[imaginarybestie]

Burning Questions for Other Friends

Dear P,

It is not just D that I'd write burning questions to. But also C, perhaps, since she is someone who gets the real me, more. Maybe K, sometmies, too, since she also might get the real me, in some ways, if not all ways. Maybe other friends too. Sometimes T, with all her deep wisdom and life insight and intelligence, creativity, high ideals, compassion, and the empathy, that I all attribute to her. Also maybe other writers who I love. Maybe other people from the online community that D and I frequent.

Maybe other family members, even though we are mostly pretty distant and don't seem to see eye-to-eye or really see the same world at all, in so many ways. Yet they might know me better and have certain things in common with me that might let them see certain answers, maybe better than I'd expect. They surprise me sometimes with some of their strengths, intelligence, wisdom, kindness, goodness, gentleness, sensitivity, subtlety.

So often, it feels to me like the world is just so very cold and delusional in so many ways, but then my family will do some little things sometimes that makes me feel they're different, and they give me some hope for humanity, for love, kindness, the chance of closeness and relating. Even though it's usually a very short-lived little ray of hope. And others besides my family also give me hope like that, sometimes, but I guess it's different with family because we have more in common in a few ways, and they're this stable presence in my life, unlike all the others who give me hope, but I don't know them well enough or have enough in common with them to really be attached to them that much.

And then there are family members who have passed away now, my grandparents and maybe others. They have a special kind of meaning and memories for me, and maybe I would ask them some questions, if I could ask their souls or the ideal imaginary friend version of them. Other saints, perhaps. Other famous people online whose writings or youtube videos I love, maybe? Hmm.

And best friends I had in high school, too, maybe. When I get in the right state of mine and emotion, I can really feel a sense of connection to them the way we used to be. Maybr they're not really the same anymore, and maybe I am not either, and yet, maybe there's still some kind of commonality between us, our personalities, values, interests. Or even if not, then once there was. And who they were then inspires me to connect with an imaginary friend based on that past them. Maybe sometimes an imaginary friend of how I wish they would have changed and grown over the years, so that we could have stayed close, instead of what really happened where we changed so much that we didn't have much in common anymore, it felt, and things fell apart.

Maybe even my husband, who I have a bad relationship with, to say the least, and do not feel very close to at all and don't trust. Some imaginary friend version of him that's based on the good things that still exist in him, and the good things that existed in the past but are no longer there anymore, too. And maybe the ideal him that I thought he was but he maybe never really was, because I thought he was better than he really was. I thought he'd also improve and grow over time and we'd grow closer, while what happened was just the opposite, in so many ways.

Now I see he is a narcissist, but it's mostly latent and I've learned to deal with it and be ok, most of the time. I need to depend on him for a lot of things, at this point, and I'm better off with him than alone, due to physical and mental health issues that make me unable to support myself or to get the help I need from supposed governmental aid or anything such as that. So anyway, those are a few ideas of friends I migth write. Also characters from books who I really love and who really come to life or teach me important lessons. Maybe I'll think of others later. But that's a start for now.

Love,

C

[daimonclub]

Australia quotes

Australia quotes Australia quotes. Aphorisms. ideas, thoughts on Australia and Australian people. Quotations on Australian culture, traditions and history by famous authors, writers and artists. In Australia, not reading poetry is the national pastime. Phyllis McGinley In Australia, they set up a special fund to kick films off. It was quite an enlightened sort of move. You could go to this government bureau with scripts and and get finance for films. Bruce Beresford My mother used to say that there are no strangers, only friends you haven't met yet. She's now in a maximum security twilight home in Australia. Dame Edna Everage In Japan, Australia, and England there is such a strong youth culture. Marc Newson In particular, Australia, because of its ancient geography, soil profile and distinctive weather patterns, is more adversely affected by climate variability than some other continents. Peter Garrett In the early 1930s, flying from England to Australia was the longest flight in the world. It was considered extremely dangerous and hazardous, pushing pilots to the limits of mechanical skills and human endurance. Aviation was young. Mary Garden It doesn't really seem any different anywhere. I'd say it seems like we're biggest in Australia. It's just that we've always been this underground band and for some reason in the last month has been starting to go overground. Jon Crosby It feels like it's just starting in America and the UK. It's great to have a loyal fanbase in Australia and New Zealand. People in America say how polished our band are, but that didn't happen overnight; that came from doing all this touring back home. Kimbra It is a matter of public shame that while we have now commemorated our hundredth anniversary, not one in every ten children attending Public schools throughout the colonies is acquainted with a single historical fact about Australia. Henry Lawson It so happened that I was on a German sailing vessel on the way to Australia when the ship was captured, and on the high seas I was made prisoner by the French. Fritz Sauckel It's not a country of articulate people, sophisticated people. There's too little subtlety. Men and women don't enjoy each other very much in Australia. I don't find very many men sexy in Australia. Of course, I'm married and out of it, but still. Judy Davis Italy is definitely where I feel most at home, or alternatively, living in total wilderness, in the bush in Australia. Noah Taylor Leaving Australia was the hardest thing I have ever done. Barry Gibb Mmm, well that whole thing about having to look tough has never left Australia. Robert Forster Most Indians go into education. Their parents just push them into education like parents in Australia push them into sports. Mahesh Bhupathi My father died in 1930, but if you told him or anybody almost in that time that you'd be able to sit back in England and watch a cricket game in Australia, they'd have you put in the loony bin. Desmond Llewelyn My kids started school, so having a strong base in Melbourne has been a key priority. I'm not daunted by the travel. People say, 'It's so far to Australia,' and I say, 'You get on the plane, you eat well, you sleep, you wake up - and you're there.' Geoffrey Rush My parents and my grandfather on my mom's side would travel the earth. They went to Australia and China, and they went to probably every soccer game I ever played. Brandi Chastain My point is this, the Government made this decision to ban totally beef exports into Indonesia, even to compliant abattoirs and this will have enormous consequences for the beef cattle industry across Australia. Julie Bishop

Quotes about Australia My point was that the war was intrinsically wrong, and as a result of our participation we haven't improved Australia's security but created a greater danger at home and abroad. Bob Hawke National film industries tend to move in cycles. In Australia right now, we're on a high, a feeling of potential, which as yet shows no sign of flagging. But the word "industry" is misleading. A small national cinema has no industry in the Hollywood sense. Peter Weir New Zealanders who emigrate to Australia raise the IQ of both countries. Robert Muldoon Obviously all of us have thought about Vietnam, particularly in my generation in Australia that were part of conscription and fought there. Our friends came back, forever changed. So there were a lot of questions. Phillip Noyce To live in Australia permanently is rather like going to a party and dancing all night with one's mother. Barry Humphries To win in Australia, for me, has to be the ultimate success because the Aussies live for sport. Ian Botham Tobacco companies are legally operating entities in Australia. If the Government thinks that they should not make donations to political parties, well then they should ban them operating as legally structured entities in Australia. Julie Bishop Travelling is definitely something that your average 17-year-old doesn't get to do. One week we're in Japan, one week we're in Australia, one week we're back home going to football games. Solange Knowles Way of life in Australia focuses more on the outdoors. Thomas Muster We absolutely believed in Heaven and Hell, Purgatory, and even Limbo. I mean, they were actually closer to us than Australia or Canada, that they were real places. John McGahern We don't have any sailors in Australia, we have rowers. Ben Lexcen We had to leave Australia to become international stars. Barry Gibb We moved to Australia for two years though and that was a little bit tough trying to fit in. Kelly Preston We must have as clear a picture as we can of the Australia that we want to achieve at the end of that time. Lionel K. Murphy We were a Western civilisation, an English speaking civilisation, both NZ and Australia, and we had all these influences coming from both Great Britain and America to us; sending us their culture in the shape and form of movies and television. Richard O'Brien Well they're very, very genuine concerns at present as to the status of the 800 people who are to be sent by Australia to Malaysia. There's concern about the status of asylum seekers in Malaysia generally, but there's concern about the status of the 800 to be sent. Julie Bishop Well, I'm not going to go into what the letter says, because the police are looking at that. But as you say it's in Bahasa. But of course that's not to suggest that the letter came from outside of Australia. It came from in Australia. It came from Victoria. Alexander Downer Well, we know that people in Australia love the idea of both Impulse and Virgin Blue getting up and adding a bit of competition, and it's fun to be able to deliver it. Richard Branson When I left school I went on trip around the world - I only got as far as Australia, but like a bloody fool I cut it short because of a girl. It's probably one of my big regrets in life. Ben Nicholson When I left school I went to Australia for a year and worked in the drama department of a school in Perth. James D'arcy When I was 24 I went to Nigeria and it was such a culture shock, growing up in Australia and suddenly being the only white man in this unit full of black men. Bruce Beresford When I was rising eighteen I persuaded my parents to let me return to Australia and at least see whether I could adapt myself to life on the land before going up to Cambridge. Patrick White Whereas there's a wealth of galleries in Australia, everyone's got a gallery in Australia or wants your work. Because the art scene is smaller in Indonesia, there's not so much competition. Andrew Jack Who says Australia offers not a home for every poor Englishman, or any other countryman that finds his way to our shores? And what sort of thanks do we get for it? Henry Lawson With just about every player in Australia, his whole goal and ambition is to play for Australia. That's why they're playing first class cricket. It's just a different attitude. Shane Warne

Australian quotations Yeah, I think it's an absolute disaster that Australia, the government, allowed kangaroo culling. Steve Irwin You can be tops in Australia and be unheard of everywhere else. Barry Gibb A collection of huts surrounded by a barbed wire fence, and in the huts lived 500 of the original inhabitants of our area. And so it went with many country towns around Australia. Phillip Noyce All for Australia and the Empire. Joseph Lyons Americans are the most generous country on the planet. I've worked in Europe, I've worked in Australia. There is no where else where you get absolutely no attitude for being a foreigner. If you do your job well, they embrace you. Hugh Jackman And also it was a process of, we lifted weights as well, in an effort to train my body to then be able to lift heavier weights when I got in Australia. So that was the first couple of months. Brandon Routh And I liked pluralist Australia. I got a taste for pluralist Australia. I like, I like Australians and I can't believe that they're going to go to hell because they tell a good dirty joke, you know. Thomas Keneally And living in Australia I am relatively well off. Peter Garrett And the reason for that I think is that in Australia our films don't get the exposure, so the process is foremost. But anyway, I love being part of the team and hate being stuck in a corner somewhere. Jacqueline McKenzie And then once in Australia, I really hit the weights hard. Brandon Routh And where I grew up in Australia, surfing was a part of culture. Marc Newson Another time, we had three days off in Australia, so we went out of our way to fly to Ayres Rock. Phil Collins As we grew to love South Australia, we felt that we were in an expanding society, still feeling the bond to the motherland, but eager to develop a perfect society, in the land of our adoption. Catherine Helen Spence At 15 I auditioned for 42nd Street in Australia. Dein Perry was in that show. I actually got the job but I couldn't do it because I was only 15. Legally I needed to have another 15-year-old to cover consecutive nights. Adam Garcia At the end of my trial, I was rather hoping the judge would send me to Australia for the rest of my life. Jeffrey Archer Australia and Canada were settled by adventurers, they had to break new ground. I think that is indelibly etched on our cultural spirit. Tom Cochrane Australia as a nation, as a set of cities and some regional centres, that project died a death and we didn't get it up, but I still think there's merit in that. Susan Oliver Australia has an increasingly multicultural society. Julie Bishop Australia integrated the - brought on the ships and unleashed in the society the dogs of sectarianism, which had existed in other places - in Glasgow, in Liverpool and of course in Ireland, north and south. Thomas Keneally Australia is a huge rest home, where no unwelcome news is ever wafted on to the pages of the worst newspapers in the world. Germaine Greer Australia is about as far away as you can get. I like that. Andre Benjamin Australia is already a world leader in dementia research, treatment and care. Julie Bishop Australia is properly speaking an island, but it is so much larger than every other island on the face of the globe, that it is classed as a continent in order to convey to the mind a just idea of its magnitude. Charles Sturt Australia is so cool that it's hard to even know where to start describing it. The beaches are beautiful; so is the weather. Not too crowded. Great food, great music, really nice people. It must be a lot like Los Angeles was many years ago. Mary-Kate Olsen Australia is the most isolated continent. Jared Diamond Australia was great. I would advise anybody to go there. In fact, if you couldn't live here, Australia would be the place to live. It's the most Americanized country that I've ever seen in the world. Jerry Lawler Because in Australia there really isn't a lot to do. There aren't a lot of opportunities. Radha Mitchell But although Australia was also involved in the Vietnam conflict, I can remember my dad telling us that if we were in Australia, we wouldn't be drafted until we were 20. Mel Gibson But in practice Australia - the pluralism of Australia - sorry the sectarianism to an extent stopped at the time you took your uniform off after coming home from school. Thomas Keneally

Australia culture and history On the same line of reasoning, if Australians were to be Australians, or rather if Australians were as separate from any other nation as Australia from any other land, there would be no jealousy between them on England's account. Henry Lawson Once again our cricketers have flattered to deceive in Australia. Ted Dexter Part of my plan was not only to introduce all useful animals that I possibly could into this part of Australia, but also the most valuable plants of every description. George Grey People forget that a huge proportion of our jobs still depend on agricultural production in Australia so of course there are exports. That's easily overlooked. John Anderson Probably my mother's life was prolonged beyond that of a long-lived family by her coming to Australia in middle life; and if I ever had any tendency to consumption, the climate must have helped me. Catherine Helen Spence Residuals from Australia, from the Mission Magic show, saved my butt. So there is a reason for everything. Rick Springfield She told fortunes for a living. It's a wacky book and was great fun to write. It is very much a look at what life was like for women in Australia in the 1960's. Colleen McCullough Since I've been in Playboy myself in Australia, I love it, and I think it's really empowering and positive towards women, which is not a view that many women hold. Dannii Minogue So far, and today, everything felt really great. Now I am good to get on the plane and fly to Australia. Kim Clijsters So nonetheless given the importance that was placed on sport in Australia, I wanted to be part of that scene, particularly since I had felt very strongly in my early schooling being marginalised even in the Catholic school. Thomas Keneally Some books claim I have already clocked up a century of Grands Prix, but let me put the record straight. Australia will be my 100th start, and I aim to mark the milestone with a cracking performance. It could even be celebrated with a victory. Damon Hill South Australia has transformed. There has been a range of changes to our economy over the past 10 years in which we have genuinely set ourselves up for the future. I think we have to start behaving like that's real and project a quiet confidence in the future of our state. Jay Weatherill South Australia was the first community to give the secret ballot for political elections. Catherine Helen Spence Tender Mercies is a very low-budget film, but it was a huge budget compared to anything I had done in Australia. My fee for Tender Mercies was something like five times all of my Australian films combined. Bruce Beresford Terrorists oppose nations such as the United States and Australia not because of what we have done but because of who we are and because of the values that we hold in common. John Howard The Labour Party of today has fits of horrors of the very thought of somebody like me might saying that they bought in white Australia. But I believe they did. Colleen McCullough The markets where we've got real good presence are the older, more mature markets like Australia, and Western Europe - where we've only got 6,000 stores, compared to the US with 13,000. Jim Cantalupo The marshalling of those resources in order to obtain the maximum war effort for Australia, and a maximum degree of help and cooperation for Great Britain and the sister Dominions, is the primary objective of the new Department. Harold Edward Holt The Menzies Government, by its participation in the plans for the development of other nations, can see the virtue of planning for them but apparently cannot see the virtue of a plan for Australia. Lionel K. Murphy The Open Skies issue is something that's ongoing and we understand that there are issues in Australia that need to be sorted out. It's something that I think over time there's an opportunity for us and we'll work on that in a progressive way. Jenny Shipley The people of Australia would be staggered to learn that Australia has no national development plan. Lionel K. Murphy The strongest initiative that government can take to ensure Australia is prepared for population ageing, is to maintain a strong economy, and a secure nation. Julie Bishop The wickets I have played on for my whole career, most of them have been to suit fast bowlers in Australia. Shane Warne Then Mission Impossible brought me to Australia and that was great because I fell in love. Jane Badler There are better alternatives... Australia should be exporting its solar technology, not its uranium. Bob Brown There has always been quite a strong black and white art tradition in Australia, with quite a large contingent of cartoonists, given the size of the population. Pat Oliphant There's a lot of exaggerated talk about CAFTA, but it's actually a fairly routine trade agreement. Although it involves fairly small nations, they're still more important trade partners than places like Australia or many other larger nations. Ernest Istook This book that I just wrote is going to be coming out very soon to Australia. Ronald Biggs Read the full article

[waugh-bao]

@charliesmydarling​ The jazz drummer in question is Dave Tough (1907-47). He was an early swing/jazz drummer, and also one of Charlie’s biggest heroes. They’re remarkably similar in appearance and personality, actually. 

Tough grew up well educated, but eschewed the professional life his father wanted for him to become a musician. He was born in Chicago, and spent a lot of his early life listening to African-American bands (as well as brining others to Lincoln Gardens to do the same), eventually he became a founding member of the Austin City High School Gang and one of the most prodigious drummers of his generation, though he never willingly took a solo. Even as a teenager, he was so good that Louis Armstrong used to stop by the White City Ballroom a few times every week to hear him play. 

Eventually, he moved to New York to try to make it in the big leagues, and, later in the ‘20s, he traveled to Europe, and found a lot of success in Paris. However, he was also epileptic, and at that time some doctors believed that alcohol was a cure for that disorder, so he developed a drinking problem. Right before the Great Depression, he came back to the US, and bounced for a few years between NYC and Chicago, sometimes playing the drums and sometimes essentially living on the street because he was getting drunk so often he couldn’t work. By 1935, he’d gotten himself somewhat together, and he worked in a variety of famous big bands, including those of Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Jack Teagarden, etc. 

During WWII, he was in Artie Shaw’s Naval Band, and after that came his apogee. He joined Woody Herman’s First Herd (1945-6), and had his period of greatest professional success and recognition, becoming the first drummer to win the Down Beat, Metronome, and Esquire polls all in one year. But his alcoholism forced him to leave the band, and began drifting around to work occasionally with old friends. In December of 1947, he slipped on an icy sidewalk in Newark, New Jersey and died, aged 41.

Tough is fascinating as a drummer, but also as a human being. He was a talented writer, who worked on a novel (as of yet still unfound) through his life, published a book of poetry so good it was praised by Kenneth Rexroth 40 years later, and wrote music criticism and advice columns for Metronome. In the same vein, he was very interested in, and knowledgeable about, art, literature, linguistics, etc. But he felt that he was an awful writer and an even worse drummer. Those close to him remembered him as a thin, quiet, hilarious little man (about 5’6” and 98 lbs) who always had a book and never had a kind word for himself. A lot of them thought his self-hatred was the root cause of his alcoholism, and why he eventually drank himself to death. 

No-one else saw Tough the way he saw himself, though. He was universally beloved for his extraordinary kindness, and regarded as one of the greatest drummers ever. Woody Herman said, “A giant rhythm player! With the least amount of ‘chops,’ Dave inspired a whole big screamin’ band with his subtleties and strong feeling for time. And he was probably the most gentle, the kindest, one of the grooviest cats you’d ever want to know." Everyone who knew him said the same. Giants of jazz like Dizzy Gillespie, Buddy Rich, Gene Krupa, Lionel Hampton, etc. went on praising him years after his death and the most extraordinary thing you run into reading about him is that basically no-one had a bad thing to say about him. 

Bud Freeman (1906-1991), the saxophonist, became friends with Tough as a kid, and remained probably the closest one he had through his whole life. They were in the Austin City High School Gang together, went to NYC together, worked to find each other positions in Europe, worked together constantly in the ‘30s, etc. After Dave died, Bud, who was a composer and writer in addition to being a musician, made it a mission to ensure that the world didn’t forget his friend. Dave appears constantly in all of his books. 

“Dave started playing drums as a Boy Scout. He was an Eagle Scout and a fantastic drummer at twelve…Even as a young kid, Dave had something very special. He made it easy for those who worked with him. He practically played your instrument for you. When I performed with other drummers, my fingers would lock up because these guys didn't keep good time. Dave's beat was so powerful that my fingers flew over the horn. Dave was a little beyond being a drummer. That was a hell of a deep mind working there. I don't think an ordinary man could play that well. He was just incredible. So strong yet so subtle. He sounded like another note in the band.”

“The great man who was later to lead all the bop drummers in what they thought was a new style.” 

“Dave Tough, who would become the greatest jazz drummer in America, or anywhere…” 

“In my view, he was a Louis Armstrong, a Bix Beiderbecke, a James P. Johnson. A true giant!”

Essentially, he used his second life as a memoirist as a way to help make Tough immortal, and to carry on their longest standing argument after his death, to try to convince Dave that he really was a great musician.  I think the little story he tells about Dave in Crazeology is a beautiful encapsulation of their relationship. 

“He was a very literary person, with expansive interests. That's what had the impact on me. He had a way of looking at things that was helpful to many of us. An example? Dave and I went to take in a Cézanne exhibit in Chicago—we were just kids. And I said to Dave, “Gee, I wish I could say something about this magnificent work.” And Dave looked directly at me and said, “That's the best thing you'll ever say about it.” In other words, all this bullshit that critics have been getting away with for years has nothing to do with how an artist thinks.”

[georgefairbrother]

A surprising amount of the iconic BBC sitcom Only Fools and Horses (64 episodes, 1981-2003) was based on real people, conversations and events.

Creator and writer John Sullivan (1946-2011) grew up within the relentless trading and market culture that informed so much of the show and its characters. This background was also shared with BBC producer and director Ray Butt, who very was supportive of the show from the commissioning stage and went on to direct 21 episodes.

One classic example of art imitating life is the famous chandelier scene. John Sullivan recalled his father telling him a story about this very thing occurring and involving people he knew, however the owners of the stately home, unsurprisingly, didn't see the funny side.

Other examples include the time the lads were watching a hearse and funeral cortege go by, and Boycie said, “Albert, your minicab’s arrived!”; this was a reflection of a real conversation John Sullivan had overhead in a pub, while Uncle Albert's attempt to win a compensation court case having staged a fall into the open pub cellar hatch was also based on a real family history.

There were also many subtleties consciously included in John Sullivan's world building. The furniture in the Trotters' flat changed frequently, demonstrating that everything, even personal possessions, were for sale at the right price. The three-wheeled Reliant Regal van was also significant, emphasising that almost every part of the Trotter family’s life had something, or someone, missing.

[aminiatureworld]

Spotlight

Characters: Albedo, Kazuha, Xiao, gn!reader

Word Count: 3,707

Warnings: Swearing

Premise: Modern AU in which the reader’s s/o is famous.

Author’s Note: My first crack at a modern AU and I enjoyed it immensely! My personal media of choice definitely came through in this prompt. I would now kill for Albedo to read Shakespeare. Also streamer Kazuha is an inspired idea, thank you anon for that! Not to mention musician Xiao, truly chef’s kiss.

Albedo

Albedo was a stage actor, both by education and by trade. Starting in high school he began in local productions, before entering into the Mondstadt Theateracademie. After appearing as Estragon in a filmed version of Waiting for Godot, he began to be scouted for various television miniseries, eventually becoming a well-respected film actor.

You arrived somewhere in the middle of his career. Working as a costume assistant at the Academie you had quickly fallen for the inquisitive and deceptively intense soul that exuded every color of emotion onstage, from raging anger to soft sorrow, before stepping into the wings and resuming an aura of utter calm. He had captivated you, both as an actor and as a human being; and when you learned that he had also become slightly infatuated with you, well, it was hard not to feel like you had stepped into a wonderful play, or perhaps simply a wonderful play had been brought to life.

The switch from theatre to screen was certainly a jarring one for both of you. When the first film contract was offered Albedo had stared at it for a long time, rereading it over and over again as the coffee in front of him quickly turned cold.

“Is there something wrong with the contract?” You had asked.

“No, it’s not that. It’s only…”

“Only?”

“Only on stage there is a single audience. You can feel their reactions, can measure their response. There is nothing nebulous about the people around you. But on film you cannot do that. You cannot adjust for time of day, or whether it’s a weekend or a Friday performance. You must let your lines out and hope that they land without even being able to calculate it.”

“It’s not a science experiment my darling,” you had teased.

“Maybe not,” Albedo admitted. Still he continued to read and reread, and it was only until the next afternoon that he had told you his answer.

Still, you had to admit that he made a fantastic actor. The naturally inward part of your partner’s personality, the part that always seemed to jump out the moment he left the stage, worked well to balance with the camera’s need for subtlety, unlike the projection required for stage plays. It was little surprise then that he should grow so popular. Despite all the worries about measuring audience response, there was no doubting the success of Albedo’s acting career.

Being a naturally withdrawn person Albedo mostly stayed off of social media. He had one private Instagram for friends – he didn’t post anything; one private Facebook for family – the only picture was one of you two in the mountains next to a particularly weird looking rock; and WhatsApp – which could barely be counted. Thus when he started blowing up on Twitter – a platform you had a mostly unused account on – the reaction was mostly one of “why are they talking about me?”

Not that Albedo minded fan enthusiasm, indeed when people started showing up in droves at the stage door for him he was always careful to thank everyone collectively and talk to as many people as possible, it just sort of confused him that so many people should take a vested interest in the actor and not just the character.

“It’s because they want to show you how wonderful they think your performances are,” you’d explained.

“I don’t have Twitter,” Albedo deadpanned.

Despite his protests though you sometimes caught him scrolling on your account, face slightly red at all the positive attention. His habit of internal self-deprecation had never truly gone away. That fact became slightly unfortunate in the face of hate comments. It was hard for Albedo not to take things personally. If someone said his acting was shit then you would catch Albedo reading the same line over and over again, as if to achieve mathematical perfection. It was a difficult urge to fight, and you were always careful to give Albedo plenty of reassurance when these things popped up, as well as surreptitiously blocking the trolls that wandered their way onto your dash.

This habit to take things at face value did not apply when you entered the mix. As far as Albedo was concerned you were his partner and no amount of complaining online would make him second guess that or second guess your worth. Even if you thought that you had a better hold on social media assholerly than he did Albedo would still make sure that for every hate comment that floated your way there were at least three compliments on his part. Mentioning you off-handedly in press interviews, saying that he had to go home to his partner, leaving small sketches on post-it notes scattered throughout your apartment, there were no lengths that Albedo wouldn’t go to assure you. And, if you had to admit, these things truly did make you feel better on the days when the small part of your brain said that this wasn’t mindless social media harassment.

Being an actor Albedo had an incredibly fine-tuned sense of the way that people responded to emotions, as if he were performing some grand sort of scientific experiment to see how many people he could sway with his gift. As of such he was always careful that, regardless of his success, things between you were never upturned. You were with him before he was really famous, and you would be there during and after. Albedo loved you deeply; though he often said that he hated romance plays for how sappy they were in his mind your relationship was the one, glowing exception – regardless of the other happy couples in the world. Though it was slightly idealistic, it was the kind of intensity that comprised Albedo’s personality, was the thing that had garnered him so much success.

Albedo loved you deeply, and no amount of surprise movie contracts would change that.

 Kazuha

You had to admit that when you had met Kazuha you had no idea about his double life as a streamer. He was merely one of the many singers that came and went to the recording studios, all people eager to unleash their talent on the world. But unlike the rest of them, Kazuha could make you laugh.

Perhaps then it was unsurprising that Kazuha should be a popular streamer. Though his often florid talking style might seem on paper like it would be too grating for streaming, in reality his soft cadence combined with a dry sense of humor made him wildly popular. He rarely lost his temper, making him palatable to those who wanted to have a fun time without blowing their ears out, and when he did lose it his hyper-specific, often nonsensical insults were the stuff of memes. No, in retrospect it was not all that surprising that Kazuha was a beloved streamer.

At heart though, Kazuha had told you over coffee, the enthusiastic and earnest internet sensation was a poet.

“When you’ve had a life as dissonant as mine, how can you not be?” He’d joked. And indeed perhaps he was right, for Kazuha was as wonderful a poet as you had ever read. He was born to be a writer, you had told him.

You were also an aspiring singer, as well as a friend of the studio owner where you did your recordings. As such you had made it a habit to help around the studio when you weren’t also working or studying. As you and Kazuha were both students with intense side jobs, the good natured complaining of overworked students also made their way into you rapport, a friendship that grew day-by-day. Eventually it sprouted into love.

Though you knew that Kazuha was a streamer when your relationship started, in reality you hadn’t realized how truly popular he had become. The first time you watched one of his streams you were blown away by his popularity. Watching your first livestream only cemented that. It was hard to believe that your down-to-earth, slightly self-effacing, partner could have garnered such a large fanbase. Not that you didn’t think he deserved it. He absolutely did. However after seeing that you admitted you were a bit awestruck.

“Why? Am I not the same person on screen and off?”

“Of course you are! It’s just, well, my partner’s a celebrity!”

“I would go that far,” Kazuha laughed.

“Well you certainly are to me!”

Nevertheless your dynamic didn’t change much afterwards, besides the occasional teasing on both of your parts. Kazuha was after all Kazuha at the end of the day.

At the beginning Kazuha didn’t mention you much on stream, certainly not by name, you had to admit you were a bit intimidated by the idea of being recognizable on the internet, even if it was just by name.

“This is also my partner’s favorite map.” Had been his first mention, during a game of Mario Kart.

Despite this offhanded remark however the chat had almost immediately exploded, followed by the rest of the fanbase. Though there was, of course, some disappointed buzz – isn’t there always – the reaction was immensely positive. Positive, and curious.

After a while Kazuha started mentioning you more often in streams, especially after the two fo you moved in. Sometimes you would hear him as you passed him room – Kazuha liked to keep the door open – other times you would watch it on stream yourself.

“My partner hates this character. Too bad you can’t throw evidence.”

“Nobody tell my partner that I’m afraid of basements. I don’t need them to know that when laundry day rolls around.”

“Hey if you’re watching this dear, I promise that it’s not that much money. You don’t need to look at the bank account. Who am I kidding, this is why we don’t share one.”

“Hey, darling I know you’re watching this. Can you check and make sure I left my keys on the coffee table, they aren’t on my desk. Also can you make tea?”

Despite fans knowing very little about you, you were surprised by the amount of positive comments that flooded the streams. You had to admit that your initial expectations had been “people are going to find me annoying”. Instead funny comics of your voice drifting in from the other room popped up, along with a lot of waving and “tell your partner not to trust you with the keys” after Kazuha fell off a cliff one too many times. It was an odd experience, to be so happy about the comments of faceless people, people to whom you were also faceless.

Eventually Kazuha’s hardwork in singing paid off and his first single was recorded and given a deal. On the evening of the release livestream Kazuha set up in the living room, angling the camera so that you could sit on the chair just out of frame. You had talked about the release for months now, and a few weeks ago Kazuha had brought up the idea of a pseudo-stream reveal.

“I was wondering if you’d like to say hello to the audience or wave when my song is released. I understand that you’re hesitant about those sort of things, and I would never ask of you something that would make you uncomfortable. This relationship is the most precious thing to me, and I wouldn’t want you to feel pressured or exploited in any ways.”

“Thank you for being so considerate Kazuha. I’ll think about it.”

Now you sat in the chair, fidgeting slightly, waiting as the countdown on his laptop reached one. You excitement certainly seemed matched by that of the fans, who were typing wildly in the chat.

Eventually the screen faded to black and the chatting quieted down. The first few notes of a wooden flute emerged, combined with the strumming of a guitar. As the familiar words began to echo through the laptop speaker you found yourself washed away. Kazuha was always enthralling when he sang. At the end of the song was a dedication, and though Kazuha had already alluded to it, the sincerity still took your breath away.

To my dearest partner. My compass and my guiding star throughout this realization of my dream. You are my sun and my stars, and I’m forever devoted to you. Thank you for sharing in this project, and thank you for giving me such love.

Perhaps it was slightly saccharine. Regardless you felt the sudden, uninhibited urge to cry.

“So, what did everyone think?” Kazuha asked into the mic, face reappearing on screen. He was slightly giddy, and you watched as his hand tugged on the fabric of his linen belt.

Immediately the chat exploded, as waves of “that was amazing”, “I’m crying now”, and “the end was so sweet!” flooded the screen.

“Thank you all for the encouragement!” Kazuha let out a laugh, one that you could tell was one of utter euphoria, and no little relief. “There’s someone else I think who would like to thank you.”

Who knew that a small sentence could cause such a splash?

You barely had time to let out a tentative “Hello,” before an immediate wave of excited screaming covered the bottom left of Kazuha’s stream. “Thank you for supporting Kazuha’s song. And thank you for always being nice to me.” With a tentative wave of the hand you collapsed back on your chair, slightly hysterical laughter rising inside you out of the relief that flooded through you upon seeing the enthused fan reaction.

Afterwards your voice became the occasional guest on Kazuha’s streams, always greeted with enthusiasm. Kazuha continued to grow in popularity, and his music continued to capture a larger and larger audience.

All throughout this you never felt a snag in your relationship. Kazuha may have been a big streaming personality, but he was also a kind and considerate partner, the best that one could ask for in a significant other. Kazuha’s love was never in question. And neither was yours.

 Xiao

Sometimes you were a little self-conscious about the way that you met Xiao.

Though Xiao had definitely grown a following by the time you met – being the main pianist for a popular singer and a classical pseudo-prodigy in both piano and flute his own right certainly had roped him an enthusiastic fanbase – you had simply known him as “the guy who hogs the practice room”.

“I swear to the gods, how long can that bastard take to practice!” You texted angrily at your friend one day. Qixing Conservatory was the premiere music place in Liyue, but what should’ve been an amazing opportunity was being overshadowed by a practice room partner who appeared to not have a life, one who also had the obnoxious habit of playing the same damn thing over, and over, and over again.

“Playing the same piece as before?”

“Yes! Ugh I don’t even know what it’s called but I’ve heard it enough times to last a lifetime, maybe five!”

“Damn I’m sorry, what time does he usually end?”

“I don’t even know. Some time in the early evening. It’s obviously never gotten through to his brain that other people also need to practice. Or that hearing the same notes over and over while waiting makes me want to chuck my binder against a wall.”

“Lol. I kinda want to hear it now. Can you send a video, will the sound pick up?”

“I don’t know how it wouldn’t.”

“…”

“Holy shit! Okay, I need you to watch this video and tell me if you recognize the pianist.”

Safe to say you nearly fell out of your chair upon figuring out Xiao’s identity. Not that you weren’t already about to out of pure exasperation. Still, there was something much more intimidating about shaming a successful musician, and you no longer had the urge to glare at Xiao every time he left the practice room. Honestly, you would have been perfectly happy keeping your head down and never interacting with him at all.

Fate, however, has a sense of humor.

To be fair, some of it was your fault. You knew that Erlkonig was a massively difficult piece. You knew that you should’ve picked something else, knew that even Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata mvt. Three had to be less painful than the non-vocal arrangement you’d placed in front of your eyes. You were never trusting your music taste with your piece choices again. This was a terrible mistake.

“These stupid fucking running notes!” You let out, a groan of exasperation racing through you. Half slamming (you weren’t crazy) the piano cover down you swung the door of the practice room open. You didn’t want to deal with this anymore. Trying to ignore the embarrassment that rose up seeing Xiao waiting on a chair next to the door you went to walk down the hallway.

“You should work on it with a dotted sixteenth note pattern.”

It was the first time that Xiao had ever spoken to you.

Afterwards a rapport slowly grew between the two of you. Often Xiao said nothing as you passed, rarely you made a gesture of recognition when he finally reappeared from the practice room. However soon the occasional word or phrase of advice grew into longer sentences, later these sentences evolved into pieces of conversation. Soon enough you discovered, to your slight horror, that you found yourself yearning for Xiao’s company.

Almost as soon as you’d finally figured out your feelings you were hit with a wave of denial. You weren’t falling for Xiao? How could you fall for someone who got on your nerves so much? Sure he gave you advice, but what about it? You deserved it after having to hear him over and over again while waiting. Certainly Xiao didn’t seem interested in you, he barely talked to you! Yeah he was getting more talkative, but it’s easier to talk to people when you’re giving them advice. There’s no way you were in love with Xiao. And there was no way he was in love with you.

To say that Xiao’s career as a musician, never mind his genuine technical talent at two instruments, was a barrier would be an understatement. The moment you thought you were making some progress, finally admitting to yourself that this crush was, in fact, real, a wave of anxiety would pass over you. Xiao was too good for you, he was too important. Here was a man who had a successful musical career already up in the air while you banged frustratedly on the keys. Why would someone that successful be interested in you? Not to mention the fact that he didn’t seem interested.

Because, you had to admit, you did like Xiao’s music. Not just his classical repertoire, but his pop music as well. It was slightly jazzy, mellow and playful and utterly unlike the scowling musician behind it – something you secretly thought extremely cute and surprisingly charming. To him you were just a practice roommate, and you were sure he’d find the idea of dating someone who was more familiar with his public persona irritating.

So you buried your feelings, or tried to. Unfortunately like sometimes attracts like, and just as Xiao secretly had the emotional understanding of a teaspoon, you weren’t nearly as clever about things as you would like.

“Is there something on my face?” Xiao asked, his voice gruff and slightly reluctant.

“No, why would there be?”

“Because you’re staring at it!”

“Oh, I’m sorry!” You let your head drop, looking intently at the ivories in front of you. Eventually there was a sigh.

“You don’t have to do that. I… I don’t mind.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes! You staring down is weird too. Let’s, let’s just hurry up and do this passage.”

After that you became more aware of your staring habit. You also became more aware of Xiao’s own habit, leaning towards you. Sometimes you swore that you could feel the tips of his hair tickling your neck, light and feathery and stealing all your attention.

“Hey, Xiao, do you need glasses?”

“Why would you asked that!” Xiao flared up, face reddening. By this time you’d become more accustomed to these flareups of grumpiness, and ignoring it you pressed on.

“It’s just, you seem to be leaning forward.”

“I’m not!” Immediately Xiao shifted back, almost stepping away. Without thinking about it you reached to grab his hand.

“I didn’t mean it was a bad thing!” You got out, before becoming aware of your hand grasping Xiao’s. The touch felt electric, and you were suddenly so very aware of everything, yet unable to focus at all.

“Then you shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s fine.” Xiao grumbled.

Slowly the musician leaned closer to you once more. You had already half stood up and now you found yourself stepping closer to Xiao. The world continued to shrink until you were almost pressed together. Xiao was leaning forward, as were you, and the longer tufts of his hair were tickling your cheek, helped by the fan whirring away in the corner. Your hand was still in his, but all your thoughts appeared to have died away.

“Xiao?”

“Is this, too close?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

“Xiao?”

“What?”

“I like your music. I hope that doesn’t bother you.”

“Why would it?”

“I don’t know. I just, I also like you, not just your music. But I also like your music.”

“I also like yours too.”

Perhaps it wasn’t the most romantic of confessions, but at that point you were far too carried away by the moment, or maybe by the fact that was the most sentences Xiao had strung together that weren’t about triplets. Regardless of the fact, you were suddenly seized by incredible happiness, as all appeared to right itself.

Afterwards initially little changed, Xiao was a gruff as ever, you were still itching to play in the practice room more. Nevertheless when you went to a concert of his for the first time and he let out a small, almost imperceptible, smile your way you knew things had changed. They would keep changing perhaps, or maybe they wouldn’t. After all, this moment was beautiful.

So much that you didn’t even mind the hours spent waiting for the practice room.

[chicoriii]

Why I'm losing faith in Ladynoir...

...so also in the Love Square in general.

People who read my post about new episodes know that Alya's arc is annoying to me the most, as it's the biggest thing in season 4, but especially since Optigami, I see a big issue with Ladynoir's writing, which is even worse after Sentibubbler. And of course, if there's something wrong with Ladynoir, it affects the whole Love Square.

It's terrible that Ladybug doesn't trust Chat Noir enough to confess to him that she tells all the Miraculous secrets to her best friend or she gave the fox to Rena Rouge permanently.

It's terrible that since Alya knows the secrets, every time when Rena Rouge is fighting the villains, Ladybug's planning only with her, Chat is kept in the dark. He could be even treated like an intruder (see Sentibubbler).

But that's not what I meant. I hate that, but eventually I can accept it.

But I can't do the same with the fact that Marinette doesn't take into account his feelings at all. You don't need to be a genius to be aware that if you keep leaving your partner (or I would rather should say former one, as Ladybug treats him more like a sidekick at least since Optigami, Rena Rouge is her new real partner) out in the cold of all a sudden without even trying to explain it to him, that would affect him negatively. Marinette doesn't see a human being in him who has feelings like everyone. She doesn't treat him seriously. She's supposed to be in love with him secretly, but that's not believable to me anymore. She isn't even a good friend, nor a good guardian to him. It looks more similar to the way how Marinette treats Luka, and that was the reason why I was used to keep saying that Lukanette doesn't make sense as a romantic relationship to me. But she hasn't been really in love with him, so that has never been a real issue in the show's writing.

Marinette clearly favours Rena Rouge over Chat Noir and she's replacing him with her as her partner. Since Alya knows, it's like she cares only about feelings of her best friend and making favours to her (she wants to know all the guardian secrets? Of course! She wants the Miraculous permanently? No problem.), she doesn't give a shit about the cat wielder. I have a feeling that she doesn't need him anymore, because now she has Alya with whom she can talk about all superhero things. It can't be justified by the fact that Chat doesn't tell her that's something wrong. She's not Chloé who cares only about herself, she supposed to be a very empathetic character, who loves help people, she should be aware that she doesn't treat Chat fair anymore.

Something like that should have happened in S1 or at the very least in the first half of S2, not after the season 2 finale and the famous line "You and me against the world" and especially the whole season 3 in which Ladynoir developed beautifully. People sees Ladynoir as the most developed side of the Love Square. And I had agreed with it, despite I have always liked Adrienette the most. But so what? So what if the writers decided to undone their development? Marinette has seen that his feelings towards her are not a joke in Glaciator, she's seen that he hates being kept in the dark in Syren, she's seen that he's afraid of being replaced in Anansi. For heaven's sake, she's been even bothered by the fact he sacrificed himself in Lies! And now? All those words that Chat is irreplaceable or that she trusts him completely were only words? In fact, she trusts Alya and cares about her feelings much more.

It seems only Adrien respects and appreciates both sides of his loved one in real. And that's despite Marinette still have trouble with talking to him.

The Love Square can't be completed and really strong if Marinette cares only about feelings of civilian side of her crush. I still don't want to see the identity reveal yet, but previously I thought that mostly because Adrienette isn't developed enough. Ladynoir's side seemed to be more ready to it. Now I see it's not that easy. They don't seem to be even close to be ready to reveal their secrets. So it looks like it should not happen this season. In fact, Adrien appreciates Marinette much more than Ladybug appreciates Chat Noir, so in this sense Adrienette is more ready for the identity reveal than Ladynoir. It can't happen as long as Ladybug sees Chat more like a tool, doesn't consider his feelings, keeps him in the dark, leaves him out and, last but not the least, doesn't trust him.

I had no big issues with the Love Square writing in three previous seasons, I had seen it as an example of an amazing fictional relationship which develops slowly but gratifyingly. But not anymore, because Ladybug is not allowed to see Chat's normal human feelings in season 4. After three seasons of development. I get why they are doing it. For the sake of BIG DRAMA which is getting closer and closer and that would end with another Chat Noir's akumatisation or a different really bad thing. Still, it could have be written better, without undermining the faith in the Love Square. And to be fair, I'm worried about any type of melodrama in this show, I disliked the biggest dramatic moments in both Truth and Lies (they were so cheap, like taken from soap operas), not to mention Gang of Secrets, the episode I really hate, not only but mostly for that reason (and lack of subtlety).

[raydaug]

The Moon is Very Beautiful Tonight - The Love Language of the Tower of Doors

Natsume Soseki (1867 - 1916) was a Meiji era novelist and is widely regarded as one of, if not the most important and influential novelist in modern Japanese history. So prominent is Natsume’s place in Japanese history and culture that Natsume’s portrait was featured on the 1000 yen note for twenty years, from 1984 to 2004. 

Prior to becoming a writer, Natsume was a teacher, first at Matsuyama MIddle School, which would serve as inspiration for one of his most famous novels, 坊っちゃん (Botchan), and then Fifth High School in Kumamoto. 

In 1900, he was sent by the Japanese Government to study English literature in Great Britain. By all accounts, he did not enjoy his time studying abroad. Of his time spent at University Collect London, Natsume wrote; “The two years I spent in London were the most unpleasant years in my life. Among English gentlemen I lived in misery, like a poor dog that had strayed among a pack of wolves.”

However much he may have disdained it, his time in Britain was hugely influential to Natsume and his works. It engendered in him a great deal of skepticism towards the rapid Westernization of Japan. The tensions between modern Western culture and traditional Japanese sensibilities would become a recurring theme in his writings.

                                    Natsume Soseki (1867 - 1916)

After returning to Japan in 1903 but before resigning to become a full time writer in 1907, Natsume was a professor of English literature at Tokyo Imperial University. While teaching one day, Natsume overheard some of his students struggling to translate the phrase “I love you” from English into Japanese. The students settled on 我君を愛す (I love you), but Natsume took issue with the use of 愛す (aisu - love), as he felt that stating one’s feelings that openly and directly was too Western and wasn’t in keeping with Japanese culture, or what he thought Japanese culture should be. 

Instead, he suggested that “I love you” should be translated as 月が綺麗ですね (the moon is beautiful, isn’t it?). He felt that this phrase preserved the indirect, stoic nature of Japanese, as the the word for “moon” (月 - tsuki) and “like” (好き - suki) both sound the same when spoken out loud. This creates a double meaning for the phrase, stating one’s affection by hiding it in plain sight. 

Or so the story goes. Records corroborating this tale are sparse, with some of them popping up one hundred years or more after Natsume’s death. The exact phrasing of the translation also changes depending on the telling, with some versions saying that Natsume translated “I love you” to 今夜は月がとても青い (The moon is very blue tonight). 

Regardless of the veracity, the story of Natsume’s translation became part of the cultural consciousness of Japan. In 1955, enka singer Tsuzuko Sugawara released the song 月がとっても青いから (“Since the Moon is so Blue”) and 2017 saw the release of the romance anime 月がきれい (As the Moon, So Beautiful). 

“If French is the language of love, then Japanese is the language of awkward, and roundabout expressions like this one are common throughout.” Translator and editor Rei Miyasaka told me in a brief correspondence we had on the subject. Among other things, Miyasaka worked as a translator on the aforementioned As the Moon, So Beautiful anime series. “The story of Natsume’s translation, whether factual or not, is passed down essentially as a useful parable. It demonstrates a difference between Western and Japanese mannerisms.”

The Tower of Doors gamble is the apotheosis of Sayaka’s character arc and the arc of her and Kirari’s relationship. It comes when both are at their most uncertain about the other and the relationship they have, and the moon plays a pivotal role in the outcome of the gamble. 

Despite moving though the tower in a way that she thought was perfect, Sayaka still loses the gamble. When Yumeko begins to explain to a shellshocked Sayaka how she managed to beat her, she says this:

今夜は月がとっても綺麗ですね。 The moon is very beautiful tonight, isn't it?

“The phrase is definitely well-known in Japan. “ Miyasaka says. “...when this particular phrase is referenced in literature or pop culture, it’s usually with either a tacit or explicit nod to the Natsume Soseki story, usually in a discussion of Japanese people’s awkwardness and/or aesthetic sensibilities.” 

Yumeko doesn’t quite say the famous line exactly here. She adds とっても (very) and 今夜 (tonight) to it. I believe this was an intentional deviation, for two reasons. One, this is not Yumeko’s confession, she is instead calling attention to the Tower of Doors and Kirari’s intentions. And two, changing the line draws attention to what remains the same. The kanji used to describe the moon, 綺麗 (beautiful), shares the same first character as is used in Kirari’s name (綺羅莉), drawing a connection to Kirari and the moon. 

Later in her explanation, Yumeko drops any pretense of subtlety, saying:

このギャンブルのためだけに「扉の塔」は回転する！ The "Tower of Doors" rotates just for this gamble!) なんて馬鹿らしくて。 How silly/absurd/ridiculous! なんて愛らしくて。 How charming/adorable/lovely! なんてロマンテックなんでしょう！ How romantic!

The precise word Yumeko uses to describe the romanticism of the Tower of Doors is ロマンテック, which is the katakana for the english word “romantic.” Katakana is a sort of phonetic way of writing in Japanese that’s used in several different ways, including foreign loan words and emphasis, similar to italics in English. Yumeko is stressing heavily and unambiguously the romantic nature of the Tower of Doors.

When a furious and dumbstruck Sayaka retorts that Yumeko’s logic makes no sense and that the Kirari may have made the Tower rotate for no reason, both Yumeko and Kirari rebuff her:

Yumeko: まさか No way! そんなこと考えもしませんでしたよ。ここまで大掛かりな仕掛けを作っておいてギャンブルに使わないなんて。 I didn't even think about that. You can't make such a large-scale device/mechanism/gadget and not use it for gambling.

Kirari: 買い被りよ、清華。私もそこまで酔狂ではないわ。 You give me too much credit. I'm not that capricious/eccentric.

Here, Yumeko asserts, and Kirari confirms, the intentionality of the design behind the Tower of Doors. Kirari designed the Tower with the intent that the moon would reveal its secret. 

Yumeko won the Tower of Doors because she figured out the Tower’s secret. But that secret wasn’t that it rotated and that you could move from the bottom to top floor in one move. The key to the Tower was understanding Kirari’s intent when she designed it. That the Tower of Doors is a love letter to Sayaka, designed to capitalize on all of her strength in logic and reasoning, but with it’s own illogical twist layered on to. 

Sayaka failed to understand this for the same reason everyone loses to Yumeko; they become so absorbed in beating Yumeko and losing themselves in the gamble that they lose sight of the bigger picture. Sayaka was so focused on Yumeko that she failed to see the key to understanding the Tower and the symbol of Kirari’s affection for her; the moon. But it doesn’t matter in the end. Even though Sayaka lost the gamble, Kirari and Sayaka accept one another, and are brought closer, because, as Yumeko puts it, “You can’t prohibit someone from having feelings for someone else.” 

“...Japanese people love to euphemize and beat around the bush.” Miyasaka says. “...people tend not to like saying ‘I love you’ because people find it to be too forward...So quotes like this one [the moon is beautiful, isn’t it?]  might come up naturally when two people are sharing a moment...one should go no further than to express that, despite the stoicism expected of them by the other people around them, they feel safe exposing their sentimentality to this person, and that hence they love them.” 

Translation is more of an art than a science. There’s no equation that you can plug words and phrases into and have them converted cleanly into any other language because words are more than dictionary definitions. 

To translate something from one language to another while still preserving meaning requires a firm grasp not only of the mechanics of both languages, but also the cultural vocabularies of the languages as well. But even then, meaning can still be lost because the cultural contexts and codes that inform language exist outside of the words. 

The language of love that permeates the Tower of Doors is something that sadly gets, not just lost, but abandoned in translation from Japanese to English, and ends up going unnoticed, like Sayaka and the moon.

CLICK HERE FOR A TANGENT ABOUT KAKEGURUI’S OFFICIAL ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS

Massive, massive shoutout to @castleoflions​ for doing just as much, if not more work than I did on this in providing me with the manga pages as well as helping me with the Japanese. Also, thank you so much to Rei Miyasaka for offering me some of his time and helping me with the cultural aspects of this piece.

[jedothek]

First Take: Goncharov Grilled

First Take 

Goncharov Grilled 

By Atli Aurelian  

It is always entertaining to reach back in time and see what contemporaries thought of works that are now universally conceded to be great. 

Those Viennese blessed enough to be at the epoch-making premier of Beethoven’s Eroica symphony (1805) were united in only one touch of criticism: it was sooo long! 

And thus Keats’ Endymion, which has by now proven itself a joy forever, was greeted at the time of its appearance by such sentiments as these: 

“It is not that Mr. Keats, (if that be his real name, for we almost doubt that any man in his senses would put his real name to such a rhapsody,) it is not, we say, that the author has not powers of language, rays of fancy, and gleams of genius—he has all these; but he is unhappily a disciple of the new school of what has been somewhere called Cockney poetry; which may be defined to consist of the most incongruous ideas in the most uncouth language.... 

“If any one should be bold enough to purchase this ‘Poetic Romance’ and so much more patient, than ourselves, as to get beyond the first book, and so much more fortunate as to find a meaning, we entreat him to make us acquainted with his success; we shall then return to the task which we now abandon in despair, and endeavour to make all due amends to Mr. Keats and to our readers.” 

So when we turn to Callia Pankow’s review of Martin Scorsese’s Goncharov in the New York Times for September 23, 1973, we are prepared for views which could find no niche in the present-day critical jungle.  

“If ever a film resembled a sequence of violent acts in search of a plot,” she opined, “that film is Goncharov.” 

Seldom in the annals of error has a critic managed to get so much wrong. “We start right out with an incredible premise – and I do not mean that as praise” she tells us. Yes, Callia, you’re not the only brain trust aboard who knows what “incredible” means. “We are asked to believe that the Soviet Union has collapsed in what would seem to be (from the non-sci-fi technology in the film) the near future -- a typical capitalist wish-fulfilment fantasy, perhaps fueled by the wild speculations in Andrei Amalrik’s Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984?” One doesn’t know whether to snicker at Pankow’s lack of prophetic talent, or to wince at the anticipation that we are about to be subjected to her leftist views on the Cold War. Mercifully, her attention is diverted from dialectics to dialect. “Mr. Scorsese here seems determined to squander a fine cast. Surely an intelligent actor like Mr. Keitel knows his limitations better than to keep up his ghastly attempt at an Italian accent throughout three long, long hours. I conclude that this ill-conceived phonetic foray was insisted upon by a tyrannical director.” 

Perhaps the most amusing of the review’s many imperceptions is Pankow’s incomprehension of what is now one of the most famous motifs in cinema.  

“Scorsese treats us to repeated shots of various clocks, complete with extreme close ups of ticking second hands, including most memorably the tiny timepiece gartered to Katya’s thigh, revealed when she lifts her skirt in a (predictably successful) bid to seduce ‘Ice Pick Joe’ Morelli (John Cazale). It is as if the hapless writer, Matteo JWHJ0715, thought that he could inject profundity into a meaningless movie with a, y’know, symbol.” 

Pankow would have acquitted herself more honorably simply to have admitted that subtlety was wasted in her. Every newbie in film school now, of course, knows that Goncharov’s clocks represent the meaningless unending cycle that is human life, a pessimistic conception derived from Giambattista Vico’s theory of history expounded in his Scienza Nuova.  

In a move that can only be called petty, Pankow even tried to rob JWHJ0715 of credit for his previous triumphs, referring with a sneer to his screenplay for Sergio Leone’s Under the Sun (Sotto il sole, 1963), now considered a masterpiece:

“The extremely spare dialogue can only be explained as a product of a conviction on Mr. JWHJ0715’s part that less is more. We can, in this case, cheerfully embrace this view, and conclude that Under the Sun would have been more satisfactory as a silent movie -- or better yet, as a silent audio play.” 

            For myself, I can only surmise that wherever she is, whether in this world or the next, Ms. Pankow now habitually becomes silent herself whenever Goncharov becomes the topic of conversation.   

[leverage-commentary]

Leverage Season 2, Episode 12, The Zanzibar Marketplace Job, Audio Commentary Transcript

Jeremiah: I am Jeremiah Chechik, director of this episode.

Jessica: I am Jessica Rieder, one of the writers of this episode.

Melissa: Melissa Glenn, the other writer.

John: And John Rogers, executive producer of Leverage. And we switched to Irish whiskey, just for this one, we just-

Jeremiah: We did and it's doing the job.

John: It's getting the job done. Ah, the return of Kari Matchett. And by the way, we originally did not show the taser in that scene; that was added in post.

Jeremiah: That's right, it was added later. It was written as-

John: When people were going, ‘What happened? Was she beamed out onto a starship? What the hell was that effect?’

[Laughter]

Jeremiah: It was written abstractly. Kari is worth watching carefully for her subtleties.

John: Yes.

Jeremiah: She's just a delightful actress.

John: We really lucked out in casting- having Kari come in as the wife first season, knowing that we could then recur her, that was- that made a big difference. 

Jeremiah: She does elevate everyone's game.

John: Yes exactly. 

Melissa: Yes, she was great.

John: Wonder twins, where'd this episode come from?

Jessica: Oh my gosh.

Melissa: This episode, we- we knew we loved the idea of this episode, the idea of Nate in danger, the idea of Sterling being involved. But we just kept- we tried a lot of different versions of this episode throughout the season, and we had to kind of put it away, focus on a new episode, and then dive back in. And we stumbled upon the idea of bringing Maggie back in it as well. And so for weeks, it was ok: Sterling, Nate, danger, Maggie. And then just trying to find the right danger, the right, you know, the right kidnapping.

John: And then we actually sat down, I remember one day we were like, ‘Ok, what does Maggie do? Alright, now what is famous art?’ And we plowed through all the different stealable and collectable things.

Melissa: Yes.

Jessica: But ironically, this is the first episode that Melissa and I started writing of season 2, and it took all season. It was the last episode that we ended up writing, so it was quite the arc for us.

John: It's a bear- I mean some of these are a bear to break, you have to find the right setting, the right combination of characters. I’m gonna ask, I'm gonna break from the writing cause we've got a really cool sequence coming up. Jeremiah, how did you do this?

Melissa: Yes, a fantastic sequence.

Jeremiah: This was possibly one of my most favorite shots to do, and I'll describe how I did it in a moment, but I'd like everyone to pay careful attention to the tooth which will be hanging in the air-

[Laughter]

Jeremiah: In a few moments.

John: No, I like the fact that the whole set up to this- the fun was, originally it was written that you just heard his voice and Eliot broke into- 

Jeremiah: Here it is!

John: There's the tooth.

[Laughter]

John: I love the fact that you staged that we saw Sheppard- Mark Sheppard, come in. It adds the suspense to it that just makes it so much better.

Jeremiah: It just indicates that bad shit’s gonna happen.

Melissa: Yeah. The first time they landed on that table, it shattered.

Jeremiah: Now this is all one shot.

Jessica: Light.

John: Yeah.

Jeremiah: The interesting thing here was I had everybody freeze on certain poignant dramatic moments, and move the camera around, you know, with the steadicam and then unfreeze it at a perfect- and the actors- very difficult for the actors to do that. And they were so committed to doing this, as was Mark, that we enjoyed shooting this so much. 

John: You beat the hell out of Mark for quite a while that day.

Jeremiah: We did, and there's no one who enjoys getting beat up more than Mark Sheppard.

[Laughter]

Jessica: And his son was on set that day. His- how old is-? I can't remember how old he is.

Melissa: 10ish.

Jessica: About 10, and he had the time of his life watching his dad get beat up by Chris Kane. That was fantastic.

John: Well you know what? I'm friends with Mark and that was his big request for Christmas, was that could I get Chris to beat up his dad. And so it was like, I’ll gladly do that!

Jessica: Right. 

John: I'll gladly arrange for that.

Jessica: Yeah, it was really fun.

John: Now this is- now how do we wind up in the Ukraine?

Melissa: I believe we like the idea of the faberge egg. 

Jeremiah: It was originally somewhere else; Paris, I think.

John: Venezuela, I think.

Jessica: It started as Caracas, Venezuela, yup.

John: And then wound up- it really came like can you shoot Caracas, Venezuela in Portland? Portland doubles for a lot of things. 

Jessica: Doesn’t double for Venezuela.

John: What's interesting is you have this, sort of, very American-centric view of the world. We then started looking for cities and you call up flicker pages and stuff on Kiev and I like it; kinda looks like Portland and it's a lovely little city settled in a valley, lots of woods around it. From the mountain you would be hard pressed to which city you're in.

Jessica: It's true. I think at one point, there was one day where we all were researching Kiev and decided it sounded so great we wanted to move there. We just sort of fell in love with it.

John: Yes.

Melissa: Very Estonia.

Jessica: Oh, Estonia! Yeah.

John: Well we kept trying to come up with the, sort of, Mission: Impossible, third-world country. Remember that, Jeremiah? They used to have that sort of- 

Jeremiah: Balochistan.

John: Yeah that was this weird Latin American/Russain combination. And we kept picking, like, ‘Well let's pick these small Eastern European countries. Estonia. Estonia is the center of e-commerce in the world. Wow, Estonia sounds nice. Kiev has a beautiful culture. Wow, Kiev is beautiful!’ We have no bad place to go.

Jeremiah: To get there, basically they stand up with their passports of choice and they are in the Ukraine.

John: Yes. No shoe leather for Leverage. We’re there.

Jess: The beauty of television; things travel faster.

John: We had the traditional 1970s plane taking off shot, though, that was a nice choice.

Jeremiah: Yeah, very- yeah.

John: There you go. And again, this was a nice-

Jeremiah: Jeri Ryan just being superspy. And here we are in a lovely scene with the inimitable Matt Keeslar.

John: Matt Keeslar and-

Jeremiah: Now Matt and Mark Sheppard have worked together a lot on Middleman.

John: On Middleman. And you directed that show, right?

Jeremiah: I did, and produced as well. 

John: This is a full-

Jeremiah: So this was a lot of fun.

John: This is a rare four-hander. This is four very good actors kind of digging in, and Tim not with the team, which is not something we usually do.

Jessica: Yeah.

Jeremiah: This was a delightful scene to direct. Because again a) Mark and Matt really wanted to go at each other. Never really having played opposite each other that much in the series, and Matt always being the good guy. Here the roles are somewhat reversed, and in an unusual turn on this show, for Mark he's apparently the nice helpful man.

John: Well that was part of the fun. And I’ll let you two talk about it is, writing the old partnership they used to have here.

Jessica: Yeah, just seeing a glimmer of the friendship. You know, you could sort of see shadows of friendship that they used to have, and more of who Nate used to be and more of who Mark used to be- or Sterling used to be, too.

John: Yeah, and that little smile, too, has this moment of were good cop/bad cop we've done this a million times.

Jeremiah: Now here we have a lovely- I have to thank the art department here. They did a spectacular job creating just this wonderfully dowdy place, perfect paint chip, if I may say so.

Melissa: This office was amazing.

John: You know this was built in the 50s, this office.

Jessica: Yeah, totally it hasn't been redecorated since then.

Melissa: My favorite part is the rotary phone that we’re about to see. Every time he did the shot of the rotary phone, I had to almost leave the room because I was laughing so hard.

Jessica: It's true. Melissa had to actually leave video village a couple times cause she couldn't contain herself.

Jeremiah: I remember requesting, ‘I want him to have a rotary phone and I want him to dial allllll the numbers.’ 

John: All the way around.

Jeremiah: Because I know that would provoke Aldis in character, because first of all he's probably never seen the rotary phone-

Melissa: It’s true.

John: Didn't we talk about- you've actually never seen a rotary phone.

Melissa: No, I grew up with a rotary phone in the kitchen. I think maybe Rieder-

Jess: No, I'm not that young, I've seen a rotary phone before.

John: No, but you hadn't had one in the house.

Jessica: Oh yeah, no.

[Laughter]

John: You've seen one in museums, operated by dinosaurs calling each other before they went on hunting parties.

Jessica: Oh yeah. Right next to the display of fighter [unintelligible].

Jeremiah: Here we go.

Jessica: Yup, here we go.

John: And now he's gonna dial every number.

Jessica: Very slowly.

John: Wes and you can see Aldis-

Jeremiah: Watch Aldis!

John: Wes just staring. Just- oh the glare.

[Laughter]

John: Oh, that's great.

Jeremiah: That was worth doing. 

Melissa: I love it. It's just- yeah.

John: This was a lot of fun pairings in this episode, actually. This really- we were into the swing of, we know what couples, what splits we wanted to see, and we also varied it up a little.

Jessica: I think this is one of the rare episodes where we, sort of, how we- that’s part of how we broke the structure, was who do we wanna see play off each other? We really wanna see Nate and Kari in a room together, we really wanna- you know. And it was kind of fun to build around those pieces.

John: And this is interesting. We had a different way to get Gina in originally. Also, early was the idea that the team doesn't know that Nate has teamed up with Sterling and they get a call like, ‘It's Nate Ford and Sterling loose again and they're terrifying Europe.’

Melissa: Yeah, that is a great version.

Jeremiah: Note the old map behind Kari, it's a lovely-

John: Yes it's very nice. I love Kari says a thousand things about her relationship with Nate just in this, just in, ‘Oh God, I know exactly where this is going.’

Jeremiah: That look. And he of course backs out, totally backs down from his original stance.

John: And that actor’s great - is that Marty?

Jessica: Marty Ryan.

Jeremiah: He's fabulous, he was really good. And here we go.

John: Now it's- see yeah see? The two of them work the cases- you can see like, what I like- it's interesting, and this was a good choice Jeremiah, Tim’s a little scruffier than Mark here.

Jeremiah: Yes, well that was-

John: If you saw his old persona he would've been the really flashy one compared to Mark.

Jeremiah: It was purposeful, at least, not only in the writing, but the visual iconography Mark in a way controlling and driving. And being, you know, being in control. Of course, wonderful entrance of, you know- 

John: Parker, yeah. We never actually see her enter a room.

Jeremiah: You never see her come through a door, she's just there.

Jessica: No, she just- she just drops in.

John: That's actually a running thing we realized we had unintentionally done in the show. You don't actually see her come into the room a lot, she’s often just there.

Jeremiah: How pretty is this room?

John: That is a gorgeous room, where'd you shoot this?

Jeremiah: The museum.

John: Oh in that museum that we were in for 207? Yeah, oh it was fantastic.

Jessica: Yeah, that was a great location. 

John: This is also one of our more pure detective ones. It’s like it was a little bit of competence porn, like seeing the thief and Nate kind of use their brains to figure out exactly how this heist went down. 

Jeremiah: And you really feel the wheels turning, they're lovely, and this fake smile here is like-

John: And that's a callback, of course, to when she opened the van door. Lot of fun. 

Jessica: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John: It was interesting having Kari back. It was one of those things like, can she be the whole back half? We really liked to have her around.

Melissa: She was fantastic.

Jessica: Can we keep her?

John: This was one of my favorite bits. Talk about this running gag.

Melissa: Well this was just her bag of, you know, of escape bag, her on the run bag.

Jeremiah: Things that women on the run must have. 

Jessica: Yes, it’s perfect.

John: I love that it's ‘your first fugitive bag’ that Parkers put together here.

Jessica: Yes, that’s true. That was I think- this was one of my favorite bits in the episode, too, just the fun of it. You know, they are carrying on their whole, like, old married couple argument and Parker’s just down to business. I love it.

Jeremiah: Totally committed to organizing it and-

Jessica: I love it.

John: Yeah, also I like this, and Kari really established this in- for her first appearance, and again, it's again, when you're counting yourself very lucky when you get actors like this. Kari didn't play hostile to the team; Kari played like she genuinely liked them, she just didn't like Nate. And that carries through, and that allowed us to do this scene where, you know, Maggie and Parker actually have a perfectly lovely time together running away in Europe; it's just that Nate’s driven her out of her mind.

Jessica: Yeah, it’s true.

John: Really nicely done

Melissa: I think partially the team doesn't lie to her as much. You know, Parker doesn’t lie to her; she tells her exactly what she needs to know.

Jessica: I'm a thief, yes.

Melissa: Where as Nate is lying to her.

Jeremiah: Cause Kari does need a file, everywhere she goes and not just a nail file.

John: No, no. Just in case.

Jessica: Every woman does.

Jeremiah: And this presentation of the drink, it's very nice and very weighted. He’s poured it, he gives it, and-

John: And he takes it. 

Jeremiah: And he takes it.

John: That says something that Tim Hutton- pardon me, that Nate Ford did not intend on, and we- by the way, Mark Sheppard and I talked about that for an hour. 

Jessica: Oh my God.

John: He called me before when we were doing the rewrite-

Jeremiah: He talked to me for, like, five. 

[Laughter]

John: Yeah, five hours. Well you're on set with him, it's gonna happen. It was like the idea that Nate would take the drink without realizing that Sheppard had figured out that he was drinking again was a very big deal, and it actually pays off in the finale.

Jeremiah: Here we go, eastern european wardrobe.

Melissa: Oh this- their little bit.

Jeremiah: Trashy.

John: Yeah this is- again, I don't know what we would do without iPhones and picture cameras at this point; I don't think this show would be essentially unwriteable. I love her little weird, creepy look that Beth is running there; it's like vulnerable and predatory at the same time, it's nicely done.

Jessica: I don't know how people wrote shows like this before there were camera phones and cell phones. 

Jeremiah: They did, it was called Rockford.

John: It was called Rockford. What you would do was you bump into this guy in the parking garage, and you pretend to be a Texan who was looking to invest in his oil well. 

Jessica: That’s true.

John: And in that time you'd exchange briefcases with him, you know, it was just the camera bit that was tricky, yeah.

Jessica: That's true, yeah.

John: And Matt doing very hard-done-by very well. I also like, by the way, you guys did a very nice job of- if again, we never tell you where Tara Cole came from, but if you track how she looks, and what she knows, and what she can do, all the way six episodes, you get a pretty good idea of what she used to do before she became a criminal. And it was really nicely done.

Melissa: Yeah, it's a great scene with her and Eliot, kind of, squaring off their skills - the scene that’s about to come next.

Jeremiah: At least we think so.

[Laughter]

John: Well I would agree. She also- the fact that she can speak those languages that pays off in the finale, also. The sort of backdoor where she hangs up. Again, this is interesting because this is a really drive-y, hit the ground running episode, and it’s very investigatory. Oh, nice transition.

Jeremiah: Lovely transition.

Jessica: That was one of the challenges of writing it is, it is much more crime story than what we usually do. So making it a crime detective story that felt like Leverage was, you know, part of, I think, the challenge.

John: Well what also helps is we burn two stories an episode. We were actually talking about this in another commentary where, we do the wire, which is a con that most shows will do the entire show, we do it in an act.

Jessica: Yeah, it's true.

John: And we tell you it’s the wire, we don’t lie to you like some other crime shows.

[Laughter]

Jessica: That will remain nameless.

John: That will remain nameless. This show, the entire first half is detective story, and the back half is kidnapped. And so, you know, that also helps keep the pace up when you're doing something that's not our usual style. Yeah, she does a great job on this.

Jessica: And this day, we were losing light so fast, you know, cause it-

Jeremiah: This guy was good, too.

Jessica: And they did it so quickly because it was like, this is soon gonna become an exterior night scene if we don't get it done soon.

John: Oh the scary look, that was great.

Melissa: That was perfect.

Jessica: The three of them just knocked it out of the park, and they did it so quickly.

John: That's just my Irish whisky.

Jeremiah: Everybody has a lot to do in this episode. 

John: They do, and what I like is it's also a recurring thing that Jeri really found the character early; that kind of confidence where she knows what you can do, don't bullshit her, let's move it along, we have a job here, but without rushing you. You know, she really created a great character in six episodes. Now the blank envelope, of course, a classic piece of the famous Zanzibar Marketplace con.

Melissa: Yes, the illustrious Zanzibar Marketplace.

John: Where did you find and research the Zanzibar Marketplace?

[Laughter]

Jessica: It's kind of a funny story. You wanna tell?

Melissa: Sure. We were breaking the story and John says, ‘Oh, then they can do a  Zanzibar Marketplace,’ and we all said, ‘Sounds great!’

Jessica: Of course they can.

Melissa: And John left the room to go rewrite some stuff.

Jessica: Be brilliant.

John: And then I explained what the  Zanzibar Marketplace is. It’s like a marketplace that occurs when something is stolen very quickly. It's called a Zanzibar Marketplace because, like African markets, it springs up and then disappears and they move on. And then I walk out of the room.

Melissa: So John leaves the room and we all look at each other like, ‘I've never heard of that, I don't-’

Jessica: ‘Does anybody know what a  Zanzibar Marketplace is?’

Melissa: So we get out the laptops fast as we can, searching everything and there's no sign of it.

Jessica: Our poor writers assistant is, like, furiously looking for documents on Zanzibar Marketplaces.

Melissa: Can’t find it, can’t find it. So we just figured this should be how it works.

Jeremiah: People's imagination actually existed before Google.

Jessica: I don't know how people wrote-

John: Well no, cause they assume- cause I did it in, ‘This is a real thing’ voice and walked out of the room. I had no idea until I came in the next day they’d spent a night researching it.

Jessica: We did! Yes.

John: It's like ‘We can't find anything.’ ‘Oh I'm sorry kids, that was drunken bullshit. Did I not make that clear?’

Jessica: You'd think by season two we’d know the difference between real voice and drunken bullshit voice, but we’re still figuring it out.

John: Unfortunately they blend together.

[Laughter]

Jessica: And they really do.

Jeremiah: We figured, I guess, if you bought it, the audience would.

John: There you go.

Jessica: And we did, yeah.

Melissa: And we gotta make up more of the rule of exactly how it works, and what, you know-

John: The rules of the Zanzibar Marketplace, yeah, exactly.

Jessica: That was kinda nice.

John: It was nice how it worked, not worrying about the-

Jeremiah: This is lovely, that he closes the computer; he doesn't want to know.

Jessica: Right, he doesn't have to talk about it.

John: That was tricky, actually, that was; trying to figure out exactly where Nate and Sophie are in their arc each one of these beats. And that's the thing is, Gina’s in every episode, so we have to figure out what her attitude is towards him. It's not just that he closes it, it's Gina giving him the close it sign.

Jessica: Yeah.

Melissa: Yeah, ‘Don't let dad know you're talking to me.’

John: Yeah, exactly. A lovely embassy.

Jeremiah: This ballroom scene, I have another one of my freeze/unfreeze multiplex camera sequences.

Melissa: This time with 100 extras.

John: Yes.

Jessica: Oh my god.

Jeremiah: With 100 extras which again was challenging but delightful.

Melissa: Oh so fun.

John: And Hardison in the van. Again, establishing, oh he had to rent the foreign van, that's right.

Jessica: Yup, and it smelled like cabbage.

John: Yeah. And Mark-

Jeremiah: There's a lot of complexity in the staging here, and these are things, obviously, that I just love to get up and do.

John: I love how Mark’s really playing this, but without overplaying it and letting you know- there you go.

Jeremiah: And now, there you go. And they look and now we follow, one continuous shot, there’s-

John: Now the trick is, you can't cut in these, you've got to-

Jeremiah: No, you cannot cut in these.

John: You have to stick with them or else the shot doesn't work.

Jeremiah: You have to get the timing exactly right and the pace, you have to imagine how far transitions go, and whoop Beth into a close up.

John: Oh it's a four-way, isn't it? That's right. It's nicely done. Sheppard to Hutton to Riesgraf and then back.

Melissa: And Beth’s in a very flowy dress.

[Laughter]

Jessica: Dress, right yeah, lots of material there. Yeah Beth walked in on set that day and I think everybody fell over.

Jeremiah: And- another, geographically placing everybody in the same- 

John: Oh that’s it and screw you, no. its-

Jeremiah: Act break.

[Laughter]

John: If that's not an act break, I don't know what is. I love- Matt Keesler is a particularly gifted actor, by the way, in that he can play a leading man. He can play Johnny Squarejaw, he can play this sort of unctuous financier, and what's great is he gets to- oh look at the eyes.

Jeremiah: He can do that, and yet you know something else is going on behind those eyes. 

John: Yeah.

Jessica: It’s true.

John: I am always tempted to just write six episodes that was Nate and Maggie fighting crime before they get divorced, just bang them out for the winter. It’d be fantastic.

Jessica: I'm all for that.

Jeremiah: Here we go, another kind of fun little hand off.

John: And yeah, three-way pass. We actually wind up doing this pattern in the season finale; this particular handoff style. And it's nice, because by duplicating- and even with the same hand motion that Chris does, and by duplicating it in the finale, we establish that they've been working together long enough that they’ve got this rhythm down.

Melissa: They have the rhythms.

Jessica: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John: Exactly. Great dress on Kari.

Melissa: Yeah. And it was a dress she had to wear for the rest of the episode.

Jeremiah: Ages. For ages.

John: It's not Richard Kind in the finale in his bathrobe- he was in his bathrobe for a week on an oil tanker.

[Laughter]

John: Yeah, that's slightly more pleasant. And it was also nice because we got to define, sort of, what Jeri’s character was like, and she will actually, kind of, enjoy watching Nate twist on the end of a rope there. 

Jessica: Yeah, they developed chemistry with Jeri- well with Tara, so quickly that just made it so fun to write, so much fun to shoot that, like, just became comfortable and the play between her and Nate was so natural.

John: And this is- we don't usually send Eliot on the con.

Jessica: No.

John: This was a lot of fun.

Melissa: That is the official Zanzibar Marketplace.

Jessica: This is what a Zanzibar Marketplace is.

John: And now, as you may have seen on FBI files or in video tapes-

[Laughter]

John: No, there is nothing more fun than the awkward boyfriend/girlfriend meeting. Whatever paradigm you wanna-

Jeremiah: The exes.

John: Yeah, the exes awkward conversation yeah. And Nate’s veiled threat about how dumb and foolish and good looking the thief is. No it was all-

Melissa: Yes, yes.

Jeremiah: And Kari’s reaction. Always nuanced and always interesting.

John: Yeah.

Jessica: And we haven't talked about Sam yet. 

John: Anthony-

Melissa: Andrew.

Jessica: No, but his character name is Sam. Yes. And he was great, he came in, we sort of got him- we found him at the last minute and it was just fantastic.

Jeremiah: He was unctuous, in a redefinition of the word. 

[Laughter]

John: Unctuous squared. Yeah. No, and that's a nice beat there, too, that you never get the- That was a big thing that we wanted, there were two or three scenes that we needed to do between Tara and Nate. One of them being she doesn't stop him from drinking, and this was where we drop that one. And then the finale, the way she does stop him from drinking is actually taking his booze and drinking it; she doesn't lecture him, she just deprives him of it.

Jessica: Yeah.

John: Yeah, this is a great job. Is that a brand? Did smart computers pay us money? I don't remember getting that check.

Jeremiah: No.

Jessica: There is the Fabergé egg. The first one we ordered showed up- and Melissa and I picked it up. We forgot to check the size! 

Jeremiah: It was one inch.

Jessica: Yeah, it was one inch tall.

[Laughter]

John: Oh, that's great.

Jessica: The props guy came to us and said, ‘This isn't gonna work.’

John: We have a small problem. Where did Eric find the second egg?

Melissa: I think it was the same website and he just embellished it and made it one of a kind.

John: That's good. And this was a lot of fun; this was a lot of technobabble, figuring out how the webcam would work. I have to admit I’m fascinated by web cameras, I'm fascinated by the idea of open informational- this bright vital information also being open information that anyone can hack.

Jeremiah: Information must be free.

John: It must be- it wants to be free. But it shouldn't be.

Jeremiah: So they say.

[Laughter]

John: And then trying, basically trying to do the stall that would be echoed in the kidnapping stuff later. If you think about it, we basically set up everything that's gonna happen in the fifth act in this sequence.

Jessica: That's true. That was totally intentional.

John: It’s like we do this for a living.

Melissa: Yes. We’re getting there.

[Laughter]

John: Yeah, slowly but surely.

Jessica: Poor Aldis did a fantastic job. We gave him- we handed him just two pages of straight dialogue that he just had to spew out, and did a fantastic job just getting all of it, ‘cause-

Jeremiah: And made him look good doing it.

Jessica: Totally makes him look great.

Jeremiah: Which, as we know, is the most important. 

John: It is. It’s competence porn. It's good watching characters who are good at their jobs doing interesting things. 

Jessica: That’s really true.

John: It's one of the things that people like in television. And the biggest-

Jessica: This was so fun.

John:  It really was in the writers room was like, list the things that can go horribly wrong at a party. 

Melissa: For Nathan Ford.

John: You meet your ex, she's with a better looking guy, and then your ex wife and your girlfriend get along really well. It really just went right through the checklist.

Jessica: That is true, yeah, that was fun.

John: And also the idea, again, that your first instinct in a lot of these is to play the woman as being jealous and that's just really petty and, kind of, television. And the idea that Kari-

Jeremiah: I like doing this is a one, circling and having them play it out, with all those people around them isolating them like this. It was- 

John: Well it's kinda cool also that in a one- when we've got the sound off-

Jeremiah: And they finish.

Melissa: And they walk out of it.

John: In a one with the sound off, you can see the choices the actors make. I noticed this in one of the other episodes, you can really read the emotions when you've got actors this good. You don't need the sound; you know how this conversation’s going.

Jessica: It’s true.

John:  It goes up a little, down a little, up a little, they resolve, they're ok.

Jeremiah: Beth looking amazing.

Melissa: Yes that dress.

Jessica: Yeah Beth looking amazing.

John: And then keeping- and this was a lot of fun, actually, doing a sequence of Mark Sheppard as Sterling.

Jessica: And giving him to play more of the comedic, you know, side. Which we just don't see Sterling do very often.

John: No, and Mark is a ridiculously funny human being.

Jessica: He is; he was so great at it and just-

John: Now that room was originally a burn room. That was actually- remember that?

Melissa: Yes.

Jessica: Oh yeah.

John: That was gonna be a room that, you know, was in the embassies. And the CIA used the set up that if you press the button, everything in the room would basically be torched, but it was one of those things we never wound up using, but it was one of those really geeky research things that writers like that just don't work in the plot in the form.

Jessica: Don’t have room for it.

Melissa: Or don’t exist in locations.

John: Don’t exist in locations. I love when he grabs his face.

[Laughter]

John: He's just lovely. Yeah, you really get the sense that in the old days, Nate was the really straight uptight one and Sterling was the one who occasionally would do this sort of bullshit. The street punk.

Jessica: It's true.

Jeremiah: Mark just loved doing this. 

Jessica: He did.

John: Just, ‘you're such a kind man’.

Jeremiah: I think his son was on set for this, too.

Jessica: He was, yeah.

Melissa: Yes, he liked that as well.

Jessica: Max is his name, and he- was the son’s name.

John: And this is a common structure. When you're writing your Leverage spec, because we did the bottle show earlier today; it's a fairly common structure that the episode in theory is over at the end of the second or third act. You’ve accomplished goal one and either Nate’s hubris insists that you go farther, or you have some sort of organic result from the complications from the success. It can never be random, I'm not that good a writer, but I do insist that just stuff cant drop out of the sky; it has to be reasonably- it has to be a consequence of the action.

Jessica: They succeed too well, usually; that's one of the things we try to do.

John: Yeah and Hardison- Aldis playing the hatred of Sterling really nicely. Both of them play that really well.

Jeremiah: What's interesting on Leverage, just as a theme, is that things generally happen moving forward out of the success rather than the failure. Which differentiates it from other shows, which set out a plan which fail more often than not, and then consequences move the story forward.

John: Well it's the reverse of the- I love the fact that she knows his earbud voice, that's lovely. And Tim, by the way-

Jeremiah: Very defensive here. 

John: Tim despite- no matter what you write, it wouldn't work unless he really could play this ‘you have no right to be mad at me’ voice. He does the screwed up-

Jeremiah: And very cool, kind of.

John: Yeah, that is nice.

Jeremiah: Ethereal.

John: How'd you get the multiple images there?

Jeremiah: Just multiplexing them, and, you know, it’s a secret.

John: Is it a director secret? They have to hire you in order to be able to do that? I was unaware.

Jessica: Now this is a fun location. ‘Here actors, lay on this really dirty floor for 8 hours.’

[Laughter]

Melissa: Luckily it smells like cinnamon.

John: Why'd it smell like cinnamon?

Melissa: You know, I'm not sure- I don't know what that building- 

Jessica: It was like a former Cinnabon factory or something.

Melissa: I don't know.

John: No, you're just making that up.

Jessica: No, I swear.

Melissa: She is. She is making that up.

Jessica: Ok, but it did smell like cinnamon buns.

Melissa: It did smell like cinnamon.

John: Alright, sure.

Jessica: And the floor was sticky; it was really sticky.

John: Oh hey, that's something I don't need to know. 

Jeremiah: This is something people really didn't need to know.

John: Well you know, you admire Kari a bit more for being in that dress on that floor, cause he's in a suit.

Jessica: Right? These guys are troopers.

John: That is also- the bit with the door when she said it was locked is absolutely taken from my marriage.

[Laughter]

Melissa: Yes, I was gonna say, you pitched that bit.

John: I pitched that bit. I was like, ‘I already said: locked.’

Jessica: This is interesting. It was interesting to shoot and write the team alone with Sterling. You don't have Nate as a buffer anymore and it was sort of uncomfortable, like, to write it and to shoot it, it felt like there was something wrong.

John: What are your thoughts on staging this? Cause this is not a dynamic we've ever done.

Jeremiah: Iconically I knew where I had to be, which is the team against him. 

John: Yup.

Jeremiah: And so you want to work with Christian, who’s, kind of, bridging the gap and having to make the decision, because he's the one who's gonna have to make it all happen anyway. It's either gonna be Mark’s plan, or it’s gonna be the gang’s plan.

John: Left and right. So that's why they are in the same frame it’s like we choose one or the other.

Jeremiah: And then basically, he will make his choice, as you see. You know, right now we don't know exactly where we're going and Mark is making his pitch.

John: I think when we were writing it, we didn't really know where we were going at this point.

[Laughter]

John: I think writing we were like, ‘And then they get kidnapped and stuff happens.’

Jeremiah: See there, Christian makes his decision right’ he's already made his decision, he stands with the team, he says this is the- and Mark- 

John: Hates it.

[Laughter]

Melissa: Yeah.

John: There's a- it's a great bit that we- you know, it kind of throw away the Eliot beating the hell out of him in the opening of this, and it became such a big thing that the last shot- the two actors dug in on it so much, the second to last shot on the finale, Christian is walking past Mark and they look at each other, and you just feel like it could come to blows in that half a second that they pass each other. No, they're very aware of each other.

Jessica: Yeah, there's good tension there.

John: And this is Nick and Nora. You know what? Seriously man, you can just write Nick and Nora with the two of these for five years. It’s impatience. What I love also is that her brain is moving as fast as his is. Although we do do the vindication of the evil boyfriend here, so that's kind of nice. He's lovely in this.

Jessica: Such a great job.

John: Cause he’s selling the con.

Jeremiah: Trying hard not to tip it.

Jessica: Yeah.

John: Yeah, now cause he's- cause forgive me, he is- we haven't seen Matt Keesler yet. No we haven't yet, so that's actually the first confirmation we have that he might be the bad guy, when we do the complicated double cross.

Melissa: Yeah, Sam comes in and says- 

Jeremiah: The- for naturally gullible, we’ll believe it now. I don't think it’s strongly tipped by him being there.

John: No, no it's tricky. We always- we’re always- because we write con and heist shows, always wondering if we could fool ourselves. And to a great degree, the fans of the show are very hip to con and heist shows. But so many people have watched so much television that metastructure now is useless, because you never know if you're screwing with the structure or not. The bickering with the wire thing, lovely. The two of them utterly ignoring Sam sitting there was really great.

Melissa: Well it's not often that we change bad guys midstream; we usually are aimed at-

John: We did in the season opener, but he was plainly an accomplice. This is one of the few times we do the- again, crime story, the guy you think is innocent is actually in on it.

Melissa: It’s true.

John: No it- no, this was a lot of fun, and this was also a typical thing in the writers room of: ‘Yes we've locked them in a room with no escape. What interesting things do they do to get out of here?’

[Laughter]

Jessica: ‘Oh shoot, this worked too well.’

John: Yeah, I guess what would be in a room? And then we locked Rieder in a closet for two days until she came up with some really good ideas about how to get out.

Melissa: How to get out.

Jessica: I did; I torched my way out.

John: Yeah, it was nice; it was nicely done.

Jessica: That's what happens when you’re the lowest writer on the totem pole. ‘Is it possible to escape this room without dying? I don't know, let's use Rieder again.’ 

John: Hey, you proved your worth multiple times, by the way.

Jessica: I'm getting awfully good at the escape.

John: Yeah, to be fair, no one else is probably small enough to get out the ventilation shaft, but it was a valid attempt. No. And again with the bickering. Also web cameras. I remember when web cameras in hostage stuff first came in in television. And it'll be interesting to see in 10 years what technology has done to crime writing.

Jessica: That's true.

Jeremiah: It'll change it again. Well telephones now in crime writing totally transformed them.

John: Well that's yeah 24 shows with the cell phone. We kind of upped the things with the earbud, but the idea that-

Jeremiah: You never see a show where the hero goes up to a phone booth with somebody in it. Opens the phone booth, not that you can ever find a phone booth, but assuming you could, and throws him out in order to use the phone.

John: It's interesting, somebody on YouTube did a great clip of all ‘There's no signal on my cell phone.’

[Laughter]

Melissa: Yes.

John: You have to have a really good- constant communication between all your cast members is brutal for suspense. And you know it's- but it's expected now, and you really have to jump through hoops- 

Jeremiah: Well the only time that you lose cell phone coverage is when you absolutely need it.

John: Yes, exactly.

Jeremiah: That's a rule. There you go, electrocuted.

John: Yup and Maggie has no problem with shocking a man. I like Matt Keesler’s reflexes there. ‘I fully expected there to be a wall of flame when I walked in, sometimes this happens.’

Jessica: This is sort of the one moment where we let Kari- or Maggie, be sort of the typical girl, you know, where she's holding the gun like that- holding her clutch, you know, yeah.

John: Well guns are uncomfortable things.

Jeremiah: And now we reveal.

John: And that was- by the way, just as one of the directors- we have very few directors. When, you know, you have to do the flashbacks, the flashback reveals, that's gotta be a pain in the ass. Because, you know you've gotta overshoot the scene, you've gotta know where your stopping point is and you can't rely on the editor to do it.

Jeremiah: You just have to be specific in your head. I mean, for me, I just play the show in my head and then copy it.

John: Yeah, oh is that it?

[Laughter]

Jeremiah: It's really easy.

Jessica: Well if it's that easy.

John: I had no idea it's that simple.

Jeremiah: I read the script, play it in my head, I go ‘Woah, that's a pretty good show,’ and then I just duplicate it.

John: Also in a weird way Sam is playing- I like the annoyance that this is actually a very good plan to murder us. 

Jessica: Yes, exactly.

John: Nate can't help but admire a good chess defense. I mean, even if it's beating him, he admires it. If you think about it, weirdly Sam, the bad guy here, is our usual victim. He's a guy who’s been ripped off by the financial machinations of the rich bastard he works for- 

Jeremiah: And he wants revenge.

John: Yes, he wants revenge. Ordinarily he'd be sitting in the bar crying, talking to Nate in the opening five minutes of this episode, if only he weren’t a murderous bastard.

Jessica: If the Leverage team had found him earlier they could have saved him from his evil self.

Melissa: That's true.

John: So how'd we come up with the elevator bit, guys?

[Laughter]

Jessica: I don't even remember how we came up with the elevators.

John: No, this was fun. I will say I really respect- we had a totally different physical ending, and Dean Devlin came to us and said, ‘I've seen the car bit’ and it was a car bit, it was the car exchange. He goes, ‘I've seen the car bit, now let's see something different,’ and walks out. And were like, ‘Ok, we won't use the same kidnapped ending that every other television show on earth uses.’

Jessica: And there's a reason they all use it. Cause you can't come up with anything else. 

[Laughter]

John: It's the only viable- and I can't remember.. then became the elevators and I can't remember- and we were actually on a whiteboard figuring out the timing and how high the building had to be and how long the display was-

Melissa: And if Eliot was up on the top floor or if he was on the bottom floor, we walked through-

John: Who cut away from each- we had like 4 different versions of this. 

Melissa: Yeah. 

John: No, and it was funny because I remember the day we finished that-

Jeremiah: One of my favorite shots here.

John: That's brilliant, that's really nice. Well that whole top floor shot like a bastard.

Melissa: Oh my god, it was gorgeous.

John: That was just the construction site, right? Was that-?

Jeremiah: Yeah, it was- hung the plastic to get the kind of silhouette look. 

Melissa: It's the same building that the bottom floor is where they were is where it smells like cinnamon. 

John: Oh interesting.

Melissa: And Portland has just lots of-

John: Yeah Portland really has not disappointed us; lots of great locations.

Melissa: Lots of variety of looks.

John: But yeah, we actually finished blocking the elevator switch and I was like, ‘I think we invented a crime trope.’ You know how long it's been since somebody invented a crime trope? It's pretty nice. No the elevator switch - that saved our ass.

Jessica: And John gets all the credit for coming up with the timing of how, you know, Hardison slowed down one and then sped it up. I remember when you came up with that you'd been in your office with your head down as you- like when you just need us to go away for a while, and then you come back into the writers room you're like, ‘I fixed it. I'm going home.’

[Laughter]

John: I did. I went home, I was like-

Jessica: You did, you were like, ‘I'm done for the day.’

John: ‘It's 20 floors, here’s the delay, here's the seconds per floor. I'm out.’

Jessica: Yeah. Only a guy who studied physics in college and is now a television writer is gonna come up with that. That was-

John: This is- by the way, nice performance here, cause this could be easy to get very hackneyed in here and Tim and Kari keep it very grounded. And I love Matt just folding up. 

[Laughter]

Jessica: Yeah.

John: Just because, you know what? I'll be the first to say that's me. I'm in the corner handcuffed in an elevator with a bomb, I’m weeping and talking to Jesus.

[Laughter]

Jeremiah: Nice moment.

Melissa: Good to know.

John: Good to know. Well, it takes a bomb.

Jessica: It takes a bomb to get John to pray.

John: Just in case. ‘I know it's meaningless, so, you know, on the off chance I'm wrong’. Oh no, this is a lovely ending; this worked out really well. And you know what? That's why I say credit to Dean. It is a more interesting ending, you know? He's very good at challenging us.

Jessica: Every now and then Dean comes in and puts a gun to our head and it works out.

John: Nice blow by the way. You did a real blow there, didn't you?

Jeremiah: Yeah.

John: Yeah.

Jeremiah: And real fire.

John: And the victory gloat. 

Jessica: I love it.

John: This, by the way, is one of my favorite effects shots.

Jeremiah: I'm glad I fought for this.

John: Yeah, this was great- this was hard to do. Cause we actually wound up building the tops of the elevators and then shooting the jump, the leap across. There you go. I love- she's just- she knows what they're doing she just- we all know and up. And Matt, oh- 

Jeremiah: ‘What the-?’

John: And I love Karis reaction there like, ‘You sons of bitches.’ 

Jessica: Yeah, exactly.

John: But I love- I think it's actually in the script that-

Jeremiah: I like this shot a lot.

John: It's a beautiful shot. We built most of it, wound up building most of it practically, just a little CG assist. And we almost found her a place to let us ride elevators. They were like, ‘We'll let you do it, but if you die we won’t- the insurance wont cover it.’ Ok, in that case, fine.

[Laughter]

John: I love the look on Matt's face, because it's actually in the script and that character stands there with a look of a guy who just saw his girlfriend kiss her ex-husband goodbye right in front of him.

Jessica: That is the look; yup, he got it.

Melissa: Foiled.

John: Foiled. Gloaty-gloaty foiling and then the whole getting away, the whole, you know, how do they get away? Because originally, we made much more of a deal of the fact that it was an embassy, that it was an embassy car. Cause I had lived in New York for a while-

Jeremiah: There's Matt barfing into a trash can.

John: Yes. ‘The first bomb’s always the hardest.’ I love Parker’s attempts at humanity, they just never go well.

Jessica: Yeah, it’s true. Originally in the script there was more about the embassy being a safe haven, and we hit a little- a lot more-

Melissa: He was so untouchable.

Jessica: And so- I think we were all concerned that the thing at the end when we switched the plates wouldn’t play, but I think it still totally holds up. It's that you hit it enough, and you're familiar enough that it-

John: Yeah, we hit it 3 times and that's generally the rule. Good entrance there for Jeri, by the way, there.

Jeremiah: Yeah.

John: Nicely done.

Jeremiah: This all felt really good. This is complex to stage all this.

John: There's six people there, with one in the deep background, you know, we're not easy, yeah.

Jeremiah: Dean did this.

John: Dean shot this whole ending sequence.

Jeremiah: I was doing that.

John: I think you were blowing stuff up at this point.

Jessica: Yeah, Glenn and Jeremiah were blowing stuff up, and me and Dean were outside freezing our asses off in Portland in the rain. It was so cold there that day.

John: And yet 107, like, two weeks earlier when we were shooting the other one.

Jessica: Yes!

Melissa: When they were shooting the one where it was all onstage, the bottle show-

John: That was 107 degrees. When you're actually outside, it's freezing.

Jeremiah: All the faces here really sell-

John: Lana Veenker. I will give our Portland casting- she’s amazing. 

Jeremiah: She’s done a great job.

John: She has yet to disappoint us. And really has not only that, surprised us. Like I said, we planned on bringing up three or four actors a week; we brought up one, if that.

Jessica: Yeah.

Melissa: This one we had a few special guests, so.

John: Yeah, we brought up a few more. 

Melissa: Had a few more plane tickets.

John: But what was I going to say? Oh, the original ending, also, when you get to the point where- wow, there's a lot of flashes in this one. It's tricky, you gotta make sure they are all the right length, too.

Jessica: Yeah.

John: If they start to get too long, you lose your sense of where time is. 

Jessica: Yeah.

John: The end of this, you guys wrote it, you went up with Jeremiah and shot it, and I was working on the finale. And I was like, well- and Dean and I were trying to find a bad guy for the finale, for the second half of the finale and we’re like, it should be Sterling, but Sterling investigates art theft and we’re doing our crime, like our international crime episode. ‘God, it'd be- god, I wish Sterling was the Interpol agent.’ And it was one o’clock in the morning, and Dean tells this story in the commentary. One o’clock in the morning where I go, ‘Well why don't we just make Sterling Interpol?’ And Dean’s like, ‘Yes, that's it!’ I said, ‘Are we being really smart or really tired?’

[Laughter]

Melissa: Cause it was like the next day. We were shooting the reactions in the bar.

John: So none of this should play in any way shape or form as that revelation. So that's why we wound up actually shooting the news follow up, like, months later.

Melissa: Right.

Jessica: Right, yup.

John: And then putting different words in his mouth. I love the way Mark plays to the crowd here, though, he was fantastic. 

Jessica: Oh yeah.

John: And that's a great shirt too

Jessica: It’s perfectly Sterling. I think that's actually Mark’s shirt, isn't it?

John: It is. This is all Mark’s wardrobe.

Jessica: Yeah, Mark likes to bring his own shirts.

John: When he's not acting, he's fighting international crime. 

[Laughter]

John: This is great and then the smug look just for the freeze frame. There you go. And that is actually our production manager Benjamin Raymondjack as the CNN anchor.

Melissa: Did a great job.

Jessica: We use all the parts of the aimal here.

John: We use all the parts of the animal. If you were wandering outside our studio that day you may have been the CNN anchor.

[Laughter]

John: What’s great- and just the hatred. 

Jeremiah: Their reaction.

John: And also the way that Christian lets- finally Eliot lets her into the club with a shared hatred of Sterling. Yeah, but that entire- that entire ending was glommed on 4-5 weeks after.

Jessica: Yeah, literally, I think it was-

Jeremiah: Well we shot that week- but I knew that he was in Interpol.

John: No, we hadn't decided yet.

Jeremiah: No, you did.

John: Oh we had decided, but we hadn't shot it, that's right.

Jeremiah: That's right. So this, I shot the scene to be able to do that. 

John: Oh, there you go.

Jessica: Yeah, yeah.

Melissa: Originally I think we wrote it just to be that he got credit.

Jeremiah: This is a lovely scene; this is a very simple kind of button. It's just very simple and I wanted to keep the camera, sort of, out of upstaging the actors as I normally do.

John: Yeah. And you- I think you were one of the first to pull- to shoot from that side of the booth, too. Are they at a table or booth?

Jeremiah: Yeah, it's a booth.

John: I think you were the first to pull the wall out, you did in a previous-

Jeremiah: If there's a wall, I will pull it out.

John: Yeah, you pull it out. You know what? You did it in your first one, and then we did it again in The Bottle Job cause we were shooting in the bar, and then we did it again in this. No, it just allows you- it doesn't feel so claustrophobic shooting up against a wall.

Jeremiah: Well I don't like shooting up against walls. 

John: Yeah, there you go.

Jeremiah: There I go.

Jessica: This is- I think this is probably one of my favorites; in the episode I was off camera crying. Like, I had just loved the two of them together and, you know-

Jeremiah: Yeah, they're good.

John: Well I love the fact that Nate is the worst judge of his character. You know, both Sophie and Maggie are better judges of who he should be and, you know, what he can do.

Jeremiah: Well by the way, I think one of the reasons we like Nate is cause he really has the love of two great women.

John: That’s a good point.

Jeremiah: And that sort of the villain who- puppies love him.

Jessica: It's true.

Jeremiah: You love him. It doesn't matter if he's John Demenia, puppies love him.

John: And Demenia was framed. It's interesting. When you say villain- cause we were talking about this the other day. Tim’s really found- Tim and I talked about this a lot before the season started. As you pull layers off Nate Ford, most guys are like, ‘You get to know him and so you get to know his softer side.’ That's the standard television trope. Nate gets more awful the more you get to know him. He's more judgemental, he's angrier, he's dunker, he's got a violent past. And that's the episode. That was nicely done, guys. Would you like to say anything to the nice folks before we wrap it up?

Jessica: There we go.

Jeremiah: Just- I would watch the next one.

[Laughter]

John: There you go. Thank one hopefully you and millions of others. Kids?

Jessica: No, we had fun; it was great.

Melissa: Good night.

Jessica: Good night.

John: Nicely done.

[whattheheehaw]

Hi! I’m sorry you’re getting shitty anons about this and you’re probably sick of it so I apologise for asking this but I’m genuinely curious what made you start actively disliking zutara? Like, considering how much excellent and insightful content/meta you yourself used to make/write? I get that interests change over time and you’re totally valid!! the anons sending you hate over it are really dumb, but if you’d be ok with sharing, I’d be really interested in hearing why you’ve done almost a complete 180 on the ship? Was is just burnout/end of a hyper-obsession? Or was it some of us in the rest of the fandom that turned you off? Or was it even something about the ship/characters themselves that you changed your mind about? xx

In short, it was a combination of burnout, dissatisfaction with fandom, and disappointment in myself that caused my disinterest for Zvtara.

I got asks similar to this one a couple of times before, but I never gave a comprehensive answer, mainly because I didn't know how to articulate my reasons why I don't like it anymore. But now that I've been out of ZK fandom for a month and have had some time to reflect, I think I can give a much more thorough response. Beware, this is long and I heavily critique the Zvtara fandom, so if you're a ZK shipper, keep reading at your own risk.

My first minor annoyance with Zvtara is that the fandom has a tendency to idolize certain fics and creators. And while there’s certainly nothing inherently wrong about that, I feel like the Zvtara fandom does it to such an extent that it influences the type of content that content creators make in order to get recognition. And to illustrate my point, I’m going to talk about one of the most famous Zvtara fics of all time: Once Around The Sun by eleventy7.

Don’t get me wrong, I love OATS. I think it’s a great fanfic and I think the author devoted a lot of time and effort to make it such an excellent fic. The plot, the development of the characters and their relationships to one other, and the messages about family and love were all brilliantly written. I mean, there is a reason why it’s regarded as the “Zvtara Bible”. This one fanfic had such a profound impact upon the ZK fandom, and I think the biggest impact that came from it is the dramatic influx of post-war Zvtara AU fanfiction. 

Because so many people kept reading OATS and recommending it to others, I think there was an overall interest in ZK fics that take place in a post-war setting. And I think that all of the high praise towards OATS made more fic writers start to write post-war fanfics because of this demand for post-war AU.* I normally wouldn't complain about it because more content is more content, but in my opinion, 99% of ZK post-war fics are the same fic but in different fonts.

Like, there's at least 3 of these elements in every ZK post-war fanfic:

Ambassador Katara

An assassination attempt (usually on Zuko's life)

A healing scene between Zuko and Katara (usually Katara heals Zuko)

Aang and/or Mai is pushed to the side or vilified to some extent in order to make ZK happen

A private journey between Zuko and Katara to facilitate #6

S L O W B U R N (that's not really slowburn and more like "I love you and I very much want to be vocal about my feelings but #7 is in this fic" but the love story takes up like 30 chapters so I guess it's a slowburn?)

Zuko's advisers don't want him to get married to Katara because ✨racism✨

Ursa is found

Azula is in the fic because a) she's going to get a healing arc ft. Zuko and Katara and thereby helps them get together or b) she's the villain and thereby helps them get together

ZK wedding happens in the FN

After reading multiple post-war fics back to back, I could tell that the format was pretty much the same across the board, which isn't very interesting for me to read. My only other fic options in the Zvtara tag on AO3 are canon divergence fics which almost always take place during The Crossroads of Destiny or after The Southern Raiders. And to some extent, those stories are pretty much the same too. There's nothing really new or creative going on in the ZK fandom fic-wise, and because of that, my interest in ZK fandom started to dwindle.

My second issue with Zvtara is that it's a very old ship from a very old show. Because there's been 10+ years since the end of A:TLA, every nuanced point about shipping and the show itself have been talked to death.** There's just nothing new to say. It's the same arguments being rehashed over and over again in the tag because there's no other interpretation one can come up with.

For example, there's so many people who talk about why Zvtara as depicted in The Southern Raiders is not toxic and that's great and all, but I (and most likely many others) have read those same points about five times already. And for some reason, each time this happens, people act like someone just discovered the lost city of Atlantis when they bring up their new-but-not-new argument in defense of Zvtara. Honestly, I'm ashamed to say that I'm not exempt from being part of the group of people that reiterate old arguments. I've done it with one of my posts about The Southern Raiders and I've done it again with my Zutara/Omashu parallels post.

There's no new content to really dissect and analyze (especially considering Zuko and Katara are rarely in the same panel in any of the post-war comics), and because of this, people are just restating points that someone else made several years ago.*** And even if someone did have a different interpretation of an episode, their ideas would most likely be shut down because for the past several years, the same interpretation has been recycled through the fandom repeatedly and people are resistant to new perspectives.

This brings me to the third thing that I dislike about Zvtara: the insistence that there can only be one way to interpret The Southern Raiders. For the longest time, I've read take after take that said if Katara decided to kill Yon Rha, it would be ok because that's her grief to deal with and if she thinks that's the best way to mete out justice, then good for her. And again, I'm ashamed to say that I perpetuated that idea in a few of my own posts. I have always thought that "Katara killing Yon Rha is ok" is just a bad take in general, but I didn't want to vocalize that opinion when so many people—so many of the nice mutuals that I made—all shared that same opinion. Taking down a popular opinion of your own ship is completely different from taking down a popular opinion of a ship that you dislike. The Zvtara fandom is the first fandom that I was actually active in and I wanted to fit in so badly with everyone else that I just parroted whatever other people said, even if I didn't agree with those sentiments.

This leads me to my final reason why I don't want to be a part of ZK fandom anymore. I think I established myself as a "meta" person pretty early on and because of that, I constantly felt pressured to come up with new takes on the ship. And when people started flooding my ask box with stuff like "Can you write a meta about your thoughts on the idea that 'Zuko only took Katara on that field trip in TSR because he wanted her to forgive him'?" and "What are your thoughts about antis saying Zuko and Katara are toxic because of TSR?", I realized that I don't need to come up with new takes. People just want me to paraphrase something that 10 other people said about the same exact topic, because if I said what I actually thought about the subject (i.e. there is some truth in what antis say about TSR and it's not as much of a "Zvtara episode" that most people make it out to be), I'd probably get ZK shippers in the replies telling me that I'm wrong because x, y, and z or "you shouldn't tag this as Zvtara".

And that was pretty much how my love for ZK turned into disinterest. I was and still am disappointed that I didn't stick to my personal opinions. For as much as I talk about herd mentality on Twitter, I certainly don't practice what I preach. In all honesty, the only reason why I held on so long to ZK fandom was because I had so many nice mutuals there and we all shared this collective distaste for antis. I think I started to become more anti-Zvkka and anti-Kataang than pro-Zvtara, which isn't what I wanted to do when I made this Tumblr blog.

The thing that made me joke about becoming anti-Zvtara was the fact that some ZK shippers just like to send shitty anons to people whom they've reblogged countless different metas from. Sending shitty anons to people in the first place is wrong, but sending them to people who tagged their posts correctly and did nothing wrong is just disgusting.

*I'm not a fic writer and can't speak for fic writers, but it definitely feels like a lot of ZK fic authors are pushing themselves to write the next OATS, and by doing so, they are proliferating the tag with post-war fics that have very similar aspects to OATS.

**I think that as more people point out the same nuanced points about Zvtara, it diminishes the actual significance of those points. Like, it's hard to explain but the more people talk about the subtleties of the ship, the more those parts become glaringly obvious and I become numb to their actual impact on the characters and the show.

***At this point, if someone wanted to make a new argument about Zvtara, I think they would have to look very closely at every little detail in every single one of their scenes together to find a crumb of new meta material. And speaking from experience, it's not very fun trying to make a mountain out of a molehill. Whenever I post a "meta" like that, I feel like I'm reaching to make a point that doesn't exist.

[ikuzeminna]

Scene Analysis - Heero’s Farewell

AKA The Helmet Scene

This is one of the most famous scenes in the entire series. And it’s certainly one of the most interesting as well, thanks to a number of factors. We have a mood change, we have Heero finally fulfilling his promise to Relena to bid her farewell, we have a clear picture of how their relationship has evolved throughout the series, we have a retcon of the previous episode to make this scene work and a million other things, frankly. So, let’s get to dissecting it.

First, the setup. The previous two episodes, episode 46 and 47, present us with a Heero who, in my opinion, acts a lot like during the beginning of the series. It may just be me, but he comes off as rather brusque. Sure, he and Relena may be throwing compliments at each other, but there is a curtness to his tone and the ordering around (”You’ll stay here with me”) that annoy me personally. When Relena initially asks him if he came for her he even deflects, claiming that Noin and the others are worried about her. Sure.

Again, I don’t like it.

If I had to guess, I’d say Ikeda’s intention of not making their relationship romantic but keeping it symbolic paired with being unable to write normal teenager relationships is at play here. I’m putting the blame on him since he is the director, but I may be wrong, so sorry if I am. In any case, the farewell between Heero and Relena is just a loaded glance. They don’t speak, there is a huge distance between them, they just look at each other meaningfully and then Heero gets ready to fight. It’s pretty much Earth and Space, ever at a distance, yet bound by ...uh, something.

Come episode 48, the other writers apparently bound and gagged Ikeda, locked him up in a closet and gave us take 2 of the farewell, which the fandom knows as the helmet scene. And it really shows that someone else was in charge during the last two episodes because we suddenly have the most gentle, most tender sounding Heero in the entire series, complete with sparkly eyes and teddy bears.

And this, I like because the point of Heero’s character arc is regaining his humanity. So having him act like in the beginning kinda ruins that. So thank you, person, who made these decisions.

To clarify, episode 47 has Relena in a dark hangar with her helmet in her hands looking up at Heero who is about to board Wing Zero. He then enters the cockpit and closes it. That’s apparently the end of their interaction. Come episode 48 though, the hangar is lit, the helmets are on and the cockpit is wide open for Relena to jump up and talk to Heero one last time.

And here we see the aforementioned mood change. Gone is Heero’s brusque tone and his weird reluctance to admit any kind of fondness or affection. Instead, he freaking pulls her in during the conversation, because an inch from your face is the ideal distance when speaking to a person apparently. And not just that; he is softly smiling at her the whole time and instead of making it an order, he gently asks her to let him go.

I trust everyone can see how glaringly different this is from their interaction in the previous two episodes.

And there is so much more still. In their conversation Heero reveals his newly made promise to protect Relena (and the Earth Sphere). This goes aaaall the way back to Cinq, where he initially told Quatre he didn’t see much sense in fighting for Relena or her country. Through the various events, he did end up protecting her though, then he was forced to attempt to assassinate her again as Chief Representative of Romefeller and now we are at the point where the peace Relena promises, or at least wants to fight for, is something that Heero believes in.

This is so important for his character because he was the guy who would spout stuff like peace only being the result of war and not believing in it. This is also the lesson he later tries to make Wufei see in their fight in Endless Waltz. Heero is not a soldier anymore at that point; he has become a normal kid who belongs to and wishes for a peaceful world. So yeah, very important moment here.

It really makes me wonder why anyone thought the loaded stare of ep. 47 was enough.

Even more so because here Heero finally fulfills the promise he made Relena back in Cinq: he bids her farewell before leaving. Back in Cinq, and frankly, in all their previous interactions, Heero would just up and leave without a word. It started in episode 6, it happened in 10 and again in Cinq when he went on the suicide mission to Luxembourg. And Relena didn’t even ask anything special of him. She just wanted him to let her know when he’d leave. She didn’t demand a reason, she didn’t want to give him permission, it was just a simple goodbye she wanted.

Yet, Heero does all of the above when they talk. He tells her why he leaves to fight, he asks her to let him go and when she refuses, thinking he is intending to kill himself again for the billionth time, Heero shines even more light on his character development by telling her to believe in him. He isn’t trying to die on the battlefield.

Heero pushes Relena out of the cockpit at this point and gives her a look that honestly creeps me out a little even to this day, as the cockpit closes and he maneuvers Wing Zero into position to take off. Relena, placated by his plea and stare, says the she does believe in him.

And then, because he may not plan to die but is prepared to do so nonetheless if it can bring peace, he actually holds up his end of the promise and tells her that which she previously wished to hear. And it’s wonderful, because he really shouldn’t have.

See, at this point Relena has witnessed and heard of seven attempts and brushes with death of Heero’s. On the beach, at the harbor, falling down the side of the hospital, blowing himself up with his Gundam, asking the Noventas to kill him, nearly getting slaughtered by Zechs and then later by the mobile dolls in Luxembourg, this girl has seen a lot with him. So it’s a very reasonable assumption of hers to think he would do the same thing again here and throw his life away. Which is why Heero has to assure her that’s not his intention.

But because he knows the risks, he knows this might be the last time they talk, so he kinda chickens out a bit there after that bold “believe in me” and bids her farewell nonetheless, just to be on the safe side, I assume. Because he later also tells her not to worry over him since his life isn’t worth much anyway.

And while getting her wish of hearing a goodbye should normally make her happy, Relena freaks here. Here he is, a friend she has known for a long time and who means a lot to her, as he was what gave her the strength to carry on after her father died, sounding like he isn’t going to return. And Relena is heartbroken because Heero is important to her. The parallels to her father show us how much Heero’s death would affect her.

Her crying out Heero’s name in that agonized manner isn’t meant to be taken romantically. This is a girl fearing her friend will die.

I really love this entire scene because it not only gives us heaps of character development and normal human interaction, which those two sorely lack, it also brings a bunch of stuff full circle, illustrates their personalities well and makes for another interesting break from traditions.

What I mean with the last point is that normally (or at least in the 90s), the guy is all business when he has to go out and fight, being all stoically manly about it, while the woman will be emotional and initiate one final time of intimacy, and the guy may respond before going off to battle. I have this overblown image of Chuck Norris, Steven Seagal, Clint Eastwood type of flicks in my head. You know, the manly stuff.

And here we have Gundam Wing, where Relena doesn’t even care about herself or her feelings for him, but instead is only concerned about Heero’s well-being. Which is why I would have totally bought Relena’s feelings for Heero being purely platonic had Endless Waltz with that super tender caress not happened.

Which also portrays her natural selflessness, in contrast to Heero’s credo of living life acting on your emotions. And boy does he act. He is very much cranking up the romance here with how close he pulls her to him and how very tenderly he speaks to her. Ship it or not, it’s obvious here he likes her. Which in turn tints all their previous interactions.

Ikeda might have wanted a purely symbolic relationship between them, but the geniuses behind this episode ruined that. They gave us Heero displaying his feelings for her, which in turn made all that came before a massive slow burn of sorts.

Hah.

This is something I find highly amusing personally. If you removed the helmet scene and that caress from Endless Waltz, I wouldn’t see it. But those two scenes are enough to make me believe there are feelings there and it’s amazing to see how little it takes to make me change my mind. Then again, Gundam Wing is big on subtlety so this is practically on par with screaming it from the rooftops.

But still, thank you. Thank you writers for inserting this scene and generally giving us two amazing final episodes. You hit all the right marks in my book.

[wakeupdifferentisbeautiful]

Dining Room Furniture - What Do I Need?

Everybody realizes that there are sure fundamental household items you really wanted for the dining room and past those functional things whatever else is enriching and click here normally pointless to necessities. This is particularly so with contemporary moderate looks where over outfitting is banned and abstained from.

Dining furniture is an important thought as we use it nearly as frequently as we eat. It is extremely normal the focal space of the home and might be contiguous or part of a family living region, an idea that has become entirely trendy and utilitarian in current house plans. The decision of dining table and dining chairs is reliant upon the room size, family size, requirements and goals of the shopper. From a simply functional perspective the quality and solidness of the advanced dining room furniture will be a need measure in buying a table and chairs. Where there is a large family to consider the sturdiness factor will linger fundamental. The decision for this situation is still very differed and you may select a natural light or antique pine dining set which can withstand the substantial wear and harsh treatment of consistent use by kids. Flaws don't appear as much similarly as with different woods like oak, debris, mahogany, pecan or cherry particularly on the off chance that they have exceptionally lacquered wraps up. Regardless of whether the wood is harmed it doesn't reflect or feature the imperfections as they will in general blend in with the wood attributes without causing excessive to notice the table or chairs. Assuming reasonableness is supplanted by craving for style and stylish looks, you should seriously mull over chrome outlined glass top tables with coordinating with chairs or you could even pick cowhide or artificial calfskin chairs in an assortment of colors.

There are numerous stylish dining tables and chairs available that would praise any dining room. These are evaluated as needs be and the quality will normally be equivalent with the cost - it is eventually the emotional decision of the shopper.

The just other should have dining room furniture thing is the sideboard which will normally coordinates with the table and chairs. Oak is right now a famous decision and the styling of the sideboard is very long and not very high. An overhanging mirror to praise the unit is additionally a famous option to the dining room. Different household items are suitable for the dining room however may cheapen the beneficial moderate look that is right now common in dining room furniture.

One more stylish quality in rebate dining furniture sets is blending and coordinating with two colors in cowhide chairs for instance; red and dark calfskin chairs with an oak or pecan dining table. This is an extremely alluring look and can add appeal and advancement to the dining furniture. Color coding can improve the moderate look by giving spaces of concentration without jumbling the room.

Damien Ryan is an expert writer who has composed heaps of articles on different themes like dining sets, markdown dining room furniture, dining chairs, pecan dining tables, dining stools, seats, sideboards, and so forth Presently compose article on rebate current bedroom furniture by our online bedroom furniture stores uk and northern Ireland at cutthroat costs. For additional subtleties visit