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prettyboysdontlookatexplosions · 4 months ago

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medialog july 2k24

watched

the seven samurai - classic that holds up IMO!! like lawrence of arabia, one where you can see why basically every person to make a movie since cites it as a formative influence. lots of really beautiful shots but what really stood out to me was how human it felt - small scale but not in a way that means "minor," in a way that emphasizes that even the smallest of scales is everything to the people living it. every character feels so real and carries such a sense of a life lived, thanks to both the writing and the absolutely wonderful performances. it feels so empathetic and compassionate and warm even though it's ultimately a war movie - one of those movies where you get the sense a fundamental love for humanity is one of the animating creative impulses. also toshiro mifune, one of the hottest people ever to live, spends the back half of this movie, to quote nick, dressed like hercules with his ass hanging out and it's incredible.

tank girl - every single Look and Aesthetic in this movie is an absolute 100/10 and lori petty is a foul-mouthed delight, but wow was I not prepared for how much of this movie is about the discovery of a secret underground society of kangaroo people

read

megan whalen turner, the thief - a pair of friends of mine basically shoved this into my hands when i was at their apartment with the promise of great craft & an ending that goes crazy. the first in the series of six, this one is more or less a sturdy and fairly straightforward middle-grade adventure story, and while it was at times a little heavy on descriptions of the characters making their way across various types of terrain, overall my interest was sustained by a few things: a clean, deliberate writing style that washed me in nostalgia for the middle-grade classics of my own youth (which this could have been - it came out in 1996 - but somehow i never came across it); a setting deliberately out of any real historical time but clearly influenced in Vibes by (among other places) ancient greece, which contributed to the nostalgia; glimpses of a convincingly rendered mythology (and the fascinating choice, which continues throughout the series, to render the characters' occasional glimpses of the actual divine as more unsettling than anything else); and a wonderfully compelling set of characters, above all gen, the book's narrator and the series' central character (although not most of the books'), who as i said a while ago is a classic blend of clever, brave, and incredibly annoying to everyone he meets.

monique wittig, the straight mind - collection of essays by a french lesbian feminist/theorist i first heard of, to be very honest, because adele haenel was one of the panelists at an event at the local french bookstore and i wanted to see her in person, lmao. the first essay in the collection opens with a call to abolish the concept of sex, which is one of those claims i'm not sure i actually endorse or even fully understand but find really invigorating to read, all of which more or less applies to my experience of the collection as a whole (including the part where i was not sure i was always following it). i did particularly appreciate her interest as a writer (she was a novelist as well as a theorist) in language and the role it plays in upholding gender/the work of imagining a way to play a role in dismantling it. and i found her general rejection of "the myth of woman" quite bracing.

rick emerson, unmask alice: LSD, satanic panic, and the imposter behind the world's most notorious diaries - i heard about this book on an episode of you're wrong about before i stopped listening and it was in fact an incredibly entertaining and fascinating bit of light nonfiction about a truly bonkers episode in american publishing history. go ask alice is the obvious draw here, but a large chunk of the book is devoted to "editor" and professional liar beatrice sparks's follow-up, jay's journal, which emerson reveals to have, in fact, started as the actual diary of a suicidal teenager whose family entrusted it to her in the hopes that their dead son's pain might somehow be able to help other families prevent similarly tragic outcomes... only to have sparks expand his few dozen entries into a story of the absolute most insane satanic panic ground zero nonsense (this book predates michelle remembers!), but somehow leave in enough identifying details that everyone in the family's small mormon town knew exactly who it was about. truly truly monstrous and if emerson sometimes veers a little close painting sparks as a cartoon villain, it's honestly hard to blame him given how much time he spent contemplating this unbelievably heinous act.

courtney summers, i'm the girl - the simplest way to describe this book is to paraphrase the author in some interview i can't remember as a story about a girl who confuses beauty for power because that's what the world has told her is true; it's emotionally rough but highly readable, and as always i just so admire summers' lack of interest in morality tales or lessons learned, her keen understanding that having a sixteen-year-old being groomed come suddenly and fully into a perfect feminist analysis of what's happened to her would make the book more palatable to some but ultimately be a betrayal of the character she'd created. summers has alluded in her newsletter to this book, loosely based on research about the epstein/maxwell case & the testimony of their victims, closing the chapter on the first arc of her career as a writer - eight thorny, painful novels about interior lives of teenage girls struggling with themselves and the world they live in - and it feels like a fitting capstone, one that both calls on the skills she's developed over the years and feels like it digs even more deeply than the project into an area of interest that feels fitting for an author who started writing YA in her early 20s and is now in her late 30s, namely, how to write a book that makes space for real empathy with a young person naive enough - some might say, and indeed some have said, stupid enough - to be well and truly taken in? (and i think one of the smartest things the book does is foreground early on how badly its protagonist doesn't want to be thought of as stupid, which is part of what makes her vulnerable and part of what makes processing the reality of what's happening to her so difficult.) also, despite the fact that romance has never been a huge or simple part of summers's novels, she's always had a knack for crafting a YA dreamboat love interest, and as someone who it turns out was figuring out her sexuality in her 30s around the same time summers was - it was great to see her do it again but this time with a girl :)

ted chiang, exhalation - my friend recommended me this because i was looking to read more sci-fi short stories but running into my perennial problem with sci-fi which is that frequently the writing is bad. ted chiang is pretty good! i liked how much he clearly conceives of or intuits that form & story are one and the same - almost all the stories in this collection take the form of a document that has some in-world reason to exist, which keeps the style feeling fresh and which he often uses to merge character work & sci-fi concepts in a cool way (as in a story with the fascinating premise that creationism is real but earth is not god's favored planet). it was unfortunate that the longest story in the collection was by far my least favorite, being both the most subject to sci-fi bland prose disease and focused on a concept it is impossible for me to muster interest in (the ethics of digital sentience... they're pictures on a screen...). the last story, the only other one written in the third person, suffered a little stylistically as well, but made up for it with an INSANELY good premise, which is that it's a multiverse story focused on a variety of psychological challenges people might have in response to learning for sure parallel universes are real - there's a support group for people addicted to checking in on their parallel selves! that's the most awesome multiverse concept i have ever come across.

evelline adams, astrology for everyone - astrology got less fun when the ratio started shifting of people viewing it as A Fun Pretend Thing to people taking it very seriously, but i do retain the same aesthetic appreciation for the particular kitsch of vintage astrology writing that i did when i borrowed this from my friend several years ago.

patrick radden keefe, rogues: true stories of grifters, killers, rebels and crooks - a collection of 12 of keefe's new yorker #longreads that i read because (a) i liked empire of pain, his book on the sackler family, a lot (b) i'm trying to get back into my library ebook habit to keep me away from Scrolling and hopefully learn some things and substantive-but-still-easy-to-read journalistic nonfiction is my favorite genre for this purpose because i don't feel i lose anything by reading it in 5 minute snatches while waiting for the train, and (c) his other books had all the licenses checked out. anyway this gave me what i wanted! i think my favorite was the one about wine fraud just because i think wine fraud is funny because anyone shelling out crazy money on wine deserves to be scammed so it's basically a victimless crime. the book closes with his profile of anthony bourdain, which is a really lovely read although incredibly sad in retrospect because bourdain comes across as so full of life and would die the year after it was published.

megan whalen turner, the queen of attolia - book two in the series, and everything is growing up a bit, as we shift from an adventure story to a war story, from gen's narration to an expertly deployed omniscient/shifting third, and from an irrepressible protagonist to one Truly Going Through It. this book kicks off strong by opening with a set of circumstances that permanently and painfully changes gen's circumstances, and the question of how he's going to process this and move forward drives a lot of the emotional suspense of the book. it also upends our understanding of a character introduced in the first book en route to an absolutely insane romance that shouldn't work but in its quasi-mythical context absolutely does. i tend to prefer hard copies for fiction, but starting here and for every book after i got to the end and went straight to the library app so i could keep going.

megan whalen turner, the king of attolia - THIS BOOK SLAPS SO HARD IT'S UNBELIEVABLE!!!! at first you're like, WHY is the narration primarily focused on some random no-name member of the royal guard we have never met before? but then you realize it's so that the entire book can be propelled by the dramatic irony wherein we, readers of the series, know gen well at this point and also know exactly how and why things went down the way they did at the end of the last book, but almost no one else does and (partly because of the ways he is annoying) many assumptions are being made... so a lot of the "suspense" in this book comes from, like, when is this new guy's understanding of gen going to start aligning with ours? it's soooo cool and something i don't remember reading in a series before (although i don't read a ton of series), and this book is, like, relentlessly entertaining on its way to its insanely satisfying conclusion, and also contains two of the most romantic paragraphs i have read in my LIFE despite the fact that the couple they center on barely appears together in the book.

megan whalen turner, conspiracy of kings - we catch up with a character from the first book who's been having a rough go of it and now needs to toughen up a bit in response to his circumstances. i think as a novel this is maybe the weakest of the set but as a character i love my sweet baby sophos so much i would have read 500 more pages. also contains one of the DUDES ROCK scenes of all time.

megan whalen turner, thick as thieves - this one picks up with a minor character from book two that i was happy to see again, because he really punched above his weight in terms of interest. it kind of combines the adventure-story of the first book with the dramatic irony as suspense of the third, and both the narrator and the central dynamic between the two main characters are delightful. this book has the least gen of all the books and i did miss him but it was funny how intensely his whole Deal hung over the circumstances regardless, and also despite the fact that the ending of literally all of these books so far has involved the reveal of some five-dimensional chess magic trick, so to speak, and thus i knew logically it was coming, i once again found myself so swept up that i was fully :O when it all went down.

megan whalen turner, return of the thief - an incredibly satisfying ending to the series, even if it left me sad that it was over! as was often the case with these books, it was, like, so satisfying that part of me almost felt like it should feel like cheating... but it didn't and i was just so happy to be there rooting for all my close personal friends. also the narrator of this one is a new character who is both physically disabled and nonverbal, and a) i thought that was generally pretty cool and the way the text engaged with people underestimating him was interesting and b) the descriptions of him as a kid being fascinated by triangles & numerical patterns was THEE most endearing thing i have read in my life.

listened

willow, empathogen - i don't know why willow decided to put out the best tori amos record since scarlet's walk? but i'm glad she did, because this album rocks! (and, like, seriously, if you're a tori person, you owe it to yourself to check this out - the influence is strong and undeniable, IMO, and on its own merits the album sounds gorgeous and takes you on a rich and textured sonic journey, even if you do maybe get the sense that being the very rich daughter of two incredibly famous millionaires in the entertainment industry is an impediment towards having all that much to say as a lyricist.)

other

anna di resburgo - my friend had an extra ticket to a short-lived production of this, the only surviving bel canto opera by a woman (recently assembled for performance from its discovery in some archive). it was only her second aria and as per the program notes kind of flopped, possibly partly due to its thematic similarity with another opera first produced around the same time by donizetti, by then an acknowledged master of the form while di resburgo was a novice (she had previously composed one opera, which has since been lost, and none after, although iirc she did some other composition) (also disclaimer that i know very little about opera, like just barely enough for all that to kind of make sense to me lol). anyway the work is uneven and (as my friend pointed out) oftentimes the music, while pretty and sometimes interesting, is at odds tonally with the plot - the plot is in theory quite dramatic with life-or-death stakes but for much of the runtime the music feels more suited to a farce - and the libretto is... not a piece of well constructed drama overall or scene to scene or line by line (there are some, like, accidentally comical exposition dumps along the lines of "father, do you remember that mysterious orphan that showed up on our doorstep all those years ago?"). but it was not without its highlights, and we agreed that as a second outing it showed promise we wish the composer had received support for the way men with similarly Just Alright second operas did.

inwood shorts - we went with some friends (actually the same friend as above) to see some shorts by local filmmakers at a place in inwood with an incredible view of the river featuring on that day an unbelievably gorgeous sunset and while nothing really wowed me a nice time was had by all & there was a big laugh in the crowd when the guy in a short giving a little "tour of my neighborhood" schtick said "for a while i lived in this place upstate called yonkers." :)

#media 2k24 #isabel 2k24

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novlr · 6 months ago

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i'm writing a character who is a serial killer but not willingly if that makes sense. like, she kills once she finds that she finds herself in a murder or be murdered type of situation.

like in one scene, her mother's ex boyfriend comes back to try and get back together with her, but finds her daughter instead so he tries to s/a her but she stabs him and he bleeds out.

then in another scene she get's jumped by two guys and she stabs them both to death as well.

so i'm just wondering if you have any tips for writing such a complex character who kills but feels bad about it before, during and after the fact.

she doesn't enjoy the act of murder. she doesn't get off on it. she simply on kills so she can survive.

thanks so much!

This is a topic very close to my heart! I have a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and a master’s degree in forensic psychology, both from accredited U.S. institutions. No fictional murder best-sellers under my belt, but it’s a topic I know a lot about.

Sometimes, people kill for reasons that aren’t nefarious. There’s the cut-and-dry self defense (“it’s me or them”), the culmination of years of abuse, or sometimes it’s completely an accident (which is called “involuntary manslaughter”).

Murder mysteries and thrillers are top-notch reads and go hand-in-hand with pop culture’s fascination with true crime. But what goes into writing an accidental serial killer, or one that’s more upstanding than you’d think?

Define your morals

In order to establish morally gray, you’ve got to set the good and evil boundaries within the world you’re writing. Is it a modern-day story, where a cold-blooded killer is the evil one and a person defending themselves against an attacker is the good one? Or is it a more intricate fantasy or science fiction setting, where the laws and morals aren’t quite the same?

The important part of writing a morally gray character, in general, is establishing the normal bounds of morality in your story world and then placing the character’s values somewhere in the middle. They’re not looking to hunt other people for fun, but the act also wasn’t a noble defense or socially acceptable resolution to the problem. I think that’s the hardest part, building enough plausibility and setting up empathy for the character’s actions while still writing them as a ‘villain’.

The vigilante

The easiest example of a morally gray killer is the vigilante. Typically, their motive comes from a righteous or judicial point of view, and they’re killing the “evil” ones. These types are taking out drug dealers, abusers, or anyone committing what they consider to be egregious or immoral acts. They perform bad actions to do good.

Doing bad things for good reasons is often considered “lawful evil”, wherein a character is still following rules but they’re doing so in a ‘bad’ way. That circles us back to the beginning; there should still be a compelling reason for their actions. That’s what pushes their assigned morality back from ‘black’ into the ‘gray zone’.

Crossing the lines

Consider what factors or events‌ would persuade a character to act in a worse or better way as a one-off circumstance, or a trigger that sways their actions. Perhaps they won’t kill parents, no matter what brought them into that position; maybe violence against women will often trigger a violent episode.

Gray, on the moral scale, has the obligation to be interesting — so don’t think too hard about staying within neutral territory. Swing one way or the other occasionally with good narrative build-up and support to really bring out the character’s individuality.

What if it’s always an accident?

Maybe your character is frequently caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, but they always manage to come out on top. What do you do then?

It’s first necessary to define a serial killer. Definitionally, a serial killer is a person that commits multiple murders. Murder being the key word — it must be on purpose for the act to fall on that definition. Otherwise it’s manslaughter (which is an incidental death where even if harm was meant, death was not). I can’t stress this enough: by definition, you can’t have a serial killer whose only kills were in self-defense or accidental. Your character must progress to proactive murder on more than one occasion for them to be considered a serial killer.

Of course, that’s not to say you can’t have other characters (or even their inner monologue) refer to them as a serial killer. Social knowledge rarely sees eye-to-eye with legal or academic terms and definitions. I just caution you against using ‘serial killer’ in marketing material or descriptive collateral, if this is the case. It is a technically inaccurate descriptor, and someone waiting for that switch from accidental to purposeful is going to be sorely disappointed when it never happens.

It could, however, be a great plot device to start there and explore the character’s evolution from unfortunate events to intentional murder. Maybe they were targeted for multiple violent crimes, and one day decided to be proactive and preemptively solve their problem (via murder, of course).

Avoid the Angel of Death

While a vigilante may be a good character type for the morally gray serial killer, the Angel of Death is not. This type of killer is looking for personal gratification by taking someone’s life into their own hands. More often than not, the Angel of Death is looking to make themselves a hero by saving the day, and the deaths are secondary (and a sign of their failure). I’ll admit that the line between “personal gratification” and “justice” can be a thin one.

The important distinction to keep in mind here are the moral definitions you’ve created: I can’t argue that an Angel of Death is serving any higher purpose than their own desire to cause situations where they might be a hero. It’s like hiring a hitman to take out a target, but intercepting the hitman just in time to save the target. The entire situation is at the mercy of the character; there’s no justice in the actions, no redeeming qualities. They don’t feel bad for sending the hitman — the outcome was planned from the start. And if they can’t beat the hitman? Oh well, better luck next time.

Convincing the reader that the protagonist has a good (“enough”) reason for their actions is key to achieving the moral middle ground. A reasonable, morally upstanding person probably won’t resort to the character’s actions, but they understand how the thought process could bring them where they are. The Angel of Death is fabricating the entire situation; a morally gray killer should be working towards a goal, or acting on a strong reason.

The morally gray serial killer isn’t looking to win anyone over, or get a standing ovation for their good deeds. They’re killing for a reason — a reason that wouldn’t normally drive someone to kill, but the reader can see how they got from point A to point B in the thought process.

written by S.K. Eleteon

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sthefany16 · 5 days ago

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Angels in America

Angels in America is a complex and profound series, tackling challenging and compelling themes such as sexuality, faith, and the devastating impact of AIDS in the 1980s. However, the ending left me with a sense of injustice, particularly regarding the character Joe Pitt, portrayed brilliantly by Patrick Wilson. His performance is remarkable, bringing depth and sensitivity to the role. He captures all of Joe's anguish and complexity—a man tortured by his homosexuality and societal pressures. His journey is marked by suffering, self-doubt, and a search for acceptance, making him one of the series' most tragic and intense characters.

Yet, the series' ending was deeply disappointing. While all the other characters reunite and find reconciliation, Joe is inexplicably excluded. This is especially painful considering that he endured some of the greatest suffering throughout the story.

In addition to struggling with his own sexuality and the weight of repression, Joe bears the burden of caring for Harper, his addicted wife, and even turns down a significant job opportunity for her sake. Joe is constantly mistreated and humiliated by Roy Cohn, his cruel and manipulative mentor. In a moment of courage, he abandons everything to pursue a romance with Louis Ironson, only to be mistreated and rejected once again. Louis, the partner for whom Joe sacrifices so much and falls in love with, treats him abusively and disrespectfully.

Joe’s mother, Hannah, does not accept him or offer any support when he comes out as gay. Yet by the end of the series, she seems to be at peace with the other characters, even forming bonds of friendship with them, while Joe is left out as though he is undeserving of the same redemption and support.

Louis, for his part, is second only to Roy as the worst and most detestable character in the series. He abandons Prior Walter, his boyfriend who is in an advanced stage of AIDS, leaving him to die alone without visiting him even once. Immediately after leaving Prior at the hospital, Louis begins a relationship with Joe, convincing him to leave his life behind, only to humiliate and reject him later without any justification, as if their relationship meant nothing. Louis is selfish, narcissistic, manipulative, and judges others as if he were morally superior. His treatment of Joe is especially cruel, culminating in an episode of physical violence that Joe clearly did not deserve. Despite all this, Louis has the audacity to try to reconcile with Prior, completely disregarding the harm he caused.

On the other hand, Belize, Prior Walter's friend, stands as the true example of unconditional friendship and dedication. Throughout the series, Belize shines as the only truly decent character, standing by Prior during his battle with AIDS and even stealing medication to ensure his recovery. Belize's presence is a testament to genuine compassion, showing that amidst the chaos and selfishness of the other characters, there is still kindness and loyalty.

However, the series' ending brings the characters together in a moment of reconciliation, but Joe is not there. His absence is a painful reminder that, despite all his struggles, he was denied the closure he deserved. This shift in narrative feels inexplicable, as if Joe were the only character unworthy of redemption or acceptance, left without his mother, wife, or partner.

In conclusion, Angels in America is a masterpiece that deserves recognition, but the treatment of Joe Pitt and the redemption of characters like Louis raise questions about the narrative choices. Joe’s exclusion from the resolution was a misstep that undermines his journey. Patrick Wilson delivers a captivating performance, showing us that Joe is a deeply empathetic and kind soul, striving to do what is right even in a world that offers him no kindness in return.

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billpottsismygf · 8 months ago

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Episode 3 of Dead Boy Detectives is the best one yet. The murder is absolutely brutal, but it's tightly plotted and has so many great character moments throughout.

This is the most attached to Charles I've felt so far. He's currently furthest down my list of favourites out of the main cast, but his performance was really moving this episode. I also loved how it highlighted his relationships both with Crystal and Edwin, and the jealousy that Edwin feels there. Interesting that that jealousy seems to go both ways, too, with Charles being the last to leave Edwin and Monty alone at the end.

Edwin and Charles are unlikely friends in a lot of ways, but I do buy it, especially when he occasionally makes Edwin smile. Here, Edwin is confronted with the fact that he actually doesn't know many of the deeper parts of Charles' life, and that he maybe hasn't shared all of his own. Really nicely done.

Edwin's sexuality crisis continues to be really compelling. I actually adore his dynamic with Monty. I know he's literally a plant by Esther, but their tiny interactions so far have so much chemistry. I also have Thoughts on why Edwin is more open to him than the Cat King, and it's the plausible deniability of it all. The Cat King was extremely upfront about what he wanted from Edwin, and Edwin could not quite bring himself to admit he even understood what that was. Whereas with Monty he's able to retreat behind his protests that "he is a boy and I am a boy, if anything he just enjoys ghosts".

Also! Crsytal and Edwin are becoming friends!!! Crystal's my second favourite character and I'm so happy they're warming up to each other. Edwin is such a spiky character but I love him and want everyone else to love him. On that note, him being understanding to Niko about her trauma also made me very happy. Edwin is not budging as my favourite character!

Small things:

Esther continues to have the best, most over the top performance. Perfect, no notes.

Niko yaoi enjoyer and general weirdo, I love her so much <3

#dead boy detectives #the case of the devlin house #edwin paine #oh no I'm gaining a new blorbo #he's just my type too: repressed and/or uptight gay #if only all my repressed uptight gay blorbos from different media could become friends #I am getting more and more into this show and I'm so glad #because I spent most of the first episode being really annoyed I didn't like it more #I still wish they'd done a better job in episode 1 but it's so good now! I'm completely hooked!#I'm enjoying going through it at a measured rate rather than bingeing it all in one night #also crystal's preeeetty #still hard for me to remember they're supposed to be teenagers lol #let them be adults! it's not like they're at school!#dbd #mine #dbd mine #reactions #edwin #I love when my reaction posts are me explaining my thoughts eloquently in detail #in stark contrast to my actual bearing #just know that re: all of the Edwin bits I am actually squealing and happy flapping

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theendorisit · 3 months ago

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magnus protocol season 1 final part - praise and credits

all right my haunted maggot clowns, Season 1 is OVER, we are at our Magnus protocol hiatus until FEB 2025 and you know what that means?

No, not hysterical weeping!

It’s time to recap the last ten episodes, epilogue and fluff of Season 1, so SPOILERS AHOY!! Including TMA Spoilers. If you haven’t listened, come back later! Ok? Ok!

Part 1 (eps 1-20) is here:

All praises to the guest writers:

Harlan Guthrie, for more of his work visit https://www.malevolent.ca/

Alex C Telander, for more of his work visit https://ostiumnetwork.com/

Muna Hussen, for more of her work visit https://www.thesiltverses.com/ I honestly cannot rave enough about how much I adore The Silt Verses, strongly recommend to everyone.

If you have enjoyed the guest writers, I also recommend the Nine To Midnight annual series, lots of writers, all brought together by Harlan Guthrie: https://linktr.ee/ninetomidnight - Check it out! This years halloween episode is GOING TO BE AMAZING!

The Magnus Protocol Episode 21 – Breaking Ground

CAT2RBC4254-04011998-12042024 Architecture (landmark) -/- corruption (entropy)

Written by Jonathan Sims

Script Editing by Alexander J Newall

Thoughts: Intriguing case, I enjoyed it thoroughly, though as a Brit it is very disconcerting hearing about the millennium dome in a horror context. It’s like a fleshy bouncy castle. Spooky, but also plain weird. Hello, Dr Welling. Of course the star of this episode is the consequences of Gwen trying (failing) to be authoritarian. Delightful escalation of Ink5oul’s powers, as the mere presence of a tattoo can be manipulated. I adore Magnus stories for the implications they provide - what might a scorpion tattoo do, hmmm? Crawl under the skin? After all, some scorpions can burrow up to 2m underneath the surface, using complex tunnels. Sting and sting and sting again until death? Mind you, some scorpions only paralyse their prey, before they feast. The compulsion scene is delightful, amazing performance by Anusia, and ALL OF THEM, MINE: So amazing, giving me shivers. All of them: All people? All normies? All OIAR? We’re back in the terror, the horror, the mystery, compelling statements again.

The Magnus Protocol Episode 22 - Mixed Signals

CAT13RBC4488-14121924-15042024 Experiment (brain) -/- imprisonment (existential)

Written by Jonathan Sims

Script Editing by Alexander J Newall

Thoughts: I love existential horror. What makes a person a person after all? If there’s someone screaming in pain and terror and loneliness but you never hear them, see them, know of them - do you know, or care, of their personhood at all? Also, as with Archives, the question of why we’re hearing about certain cases is floating in the air. There are certainly voices speaking in the void, yet unable to make themselves heard. Office tensions are rising, we are getting some juicy backstory hints. Shahan and Billie getting some real frustration into their voices, Sarah and Anusia have all the terse company-line bullshit vibes and I love Lowri’s conspiratorial name-dropping bombshell to a mood-killing baffled response.

The Magnus Protocol Episode 23 - A New You

CAT13RBC3536-20062018-18042024 Transformation (dysmorphic) -/-doppleganger (infection)

Written by Harlan Guthrie, for more of his work visit https://www.malevolent.ca/

Script Editing by Alexander J Newall and Jonathan Sims 

Thoughts: One of my top three episodes in Season 1. This case makes my heart sing. It’s delightful, insidious body horror, with a sweet side of social commentary. What’s not to adore? And a piece of coral (a living skeleton with multiple identical lifeforms inside) being referred to as She is so intriguing to me. I feel I could spent a long time trying to unpick the nuances of this piece. Especially as there’s a key story element in the fact that something goes wrong at the end, and the forum mods don’t want other people to know. So far things have felt every individual and separate… but maybe things are more connected than we think? Do we have cults and followings like in Archives? On a related note, ngl I cackled when JS and MB’s fates were revealed because I know Jonny and Alex had fun writing that. However, I don’t trust such suspiciously merciful deaths, at all. (Also, were those deaths a Koji Suzuki reference? Hmm) Wonderful performances from Anusia and Billie in the final scene.

The Magnus Protocol Episode 24 - Raising Issues

CAT1RBC1375-29022024-23042024 Baby (demonic) -/- Delusion (exhaustion)

Written by Alex C Telander, for more of his work visit https://ostiumnetwork.com/

Script Editing by Alexander J Newall and Jonathan Sims 

Thoughts: This is the first time a Magnus episode has made me physically cringe in sympathetic pain. Please keep the demon child that wants to chew through my tit and into my chest cavity far away from me. Nope, no, nuh-uh, nah mate, f* off with that nonsense. The medical gaslighting, the exhaustion and the dark acceptance of pain, oof. Plus the new parent not-knowing-if-this-normal? Brutal. Painful realism came in kicking with this one, and it’s very good. Also, demon baby likes Celia. Lady Mowbray likes Celia. Celia is an external magnet. I enjoy the multi-person dialogues in Protocol, everyone giving their best, reminds me of the intervention scene in early Archives. Also, yay, Basira! I love Plummy Teacher Basira, she’s so baffled by these two randomers. Great performance by Frank Voss.

The Magnus Protocol Episode 25 - Gut Feelings

CAT2RB2474-07022024-24042024 Food (Gorging ) -/- compulsion (disgust)

Written by Jonathan Sims

Script Editing by Alexander J Newall

Thoughts: Ah, the McWeevil episode. Tasty. There are all sorts of wonderful implications here that I dare not type in case someone is eating while reading. Also I love the dance we’re doing with the old consent/compulsion/choice dynamic. In Archives many people tried and failed to escape from horrors (shout out to Robin Lennox), but there have been quite a few cases in Protocol with the victim struggling and managing to walk away (though with unclear consequences - the OIAR team aren’t doing follow-up in the same way as Archives). Also Colin, Colin my sweet, you might be the most sensible person in this universe, but this sort of thing will only get you murderised. I love Ryan’s acting, such a desperately agonised breakdown, which you can see a bit of here: https://youtu.be/xlERmS-okTI The universe persists in teleporting Celia towards Oxford for shits and giggles.

The Magnus Protocol Episode 26 - Catching Up

CAT1RBC4463-14042024-02052024 Exhaustion (athletic) -/- compulsion (tape)

Written by Muna Hussen, for more of her work visit https://www.thesiltverses.com/

Script Editing by Alexander J Newall and Jonathan Sims 

Thoughts: Magnussing - creator approved! I really enjoyed this case, because Mr Jarrod is set up as a mysterious figure, like what’s this guys deal - nvm, he’s fucked. The character narration (as a witness statement) is engaging and draws you in, right down to the horrible end. I can’t recommend Muna’s writing enough. Alice connects all the dots together, and we get the wonderful Imogen Harris as Helen again. I am increasingly wondering why some people seem identical to their Archives counterparts, and others are quite different. Is it a natural variation? Does it mean something. Also, while I love Helen’s laugh, I kind of wanted Helen to finish with ‘come back anytime, my door is always open!’ (too on the nose perhaps). Celia, get the tory baby to sleep, it’s sexy time. “with additional voices from Jonathan Sims.” Alright, it’s official that Jonny’s making the baby burbling noises (/silly).

The Magnus Protocol Episode 27 - Driven

CAT3RB5535-18021845-10052024 Kidnapping (carriage) -/- consumption [letter]

Written by Jonathan Sims

Script Editing by Alexander J Newall

Thoughts: Another one of my top three episodes in Season 1! On the same theme as above, Jonah is a twat in this universe too! I wonder who ’N’ is. Victorian Paranormal Monster Pursuit? Yes please, more please! Such delightful gore, very delectable, much fun. So many thoughts on how such a monster would hide in our world. And ‘no cost too great’ indeed. The ancient Magnus rite of sacrificing assistants reigns eternal. Curious emphasis on ‘if there are already such monsters in this world’. Hmmm. Maybe the gap in reality has been discovered? Ooh, weird emails. Sam, now Gwen. Very interesting that Celia, having been repeatedly teleported towards Oxford, now wants to take Sam to Oxford. Something will get revealed…

The Magnus Protocol Episode 28 - Interruptions

CAT2RB2578-17081998-13052024 Transmutation (human) -/- ceremony (academic)

Written by Jonathan Sims

Script Editing by Alexander J Newall 

Thoughts: Goodbye Dr Welling. And this, children, is why we don’t roll a critical fail when casting reanimate dead. It’s spooky scary skeleton time, and Sam dun fucked up. Though honestly, if I had experienced something this traumatic as a result of wandering off into a place I wasn’t supposed to be, I don’t know, I think I might have a severe aversion to doing that? Sam, wtf is wrong with your trauma response? Though I am curious on the mechanics of statements - are people only saying things they know, or can information they’ve long forgotten be brought up? 10/10 case, superb, love it. Every episode is getting me hyped. Gwen doesn’t take shit lying down, and while corralling externals is not her forte, backstabbing office politics clearly is. I love Ian’s brusque minster, it’s pretty damn accurate and really gets me in the room with the characters.

The Magnus Protocol Episode 29 - Keyed In

CAT2RB4254-30012020-13052024 Drowning (subterranean) -/- key (metaphor)

Written by Alexander J Newall

Script Editing by Jonathan Sims 

Thoughts: Now something else (not Celia) is pushing Sam to go to Oxford. Interesting. Alex makes Jonny try to pronounce things in Czech. This is a curious case, and I think it’s speaking to keeping secrets, unlocking doors you can’t close again, and the floodwaters are rising. All things Gwen needs to hear. The fact that Lena considers that the Visit went well, ouch. Also, I am convinced Teddy is working for the Response part of the OIAR, and he’s the one dropping off Sam’s weird paperwork. That ending: DUN DUN DUUUUUUUUUN…. (Alice, just pop over to Victoria, get the Oxford Tube, it’ll drop you off in Headington, it’s fiiiiiine). Presumbly the archivist got the train down from Manchester in the first time. Perhaps it has a (Communications) Network Railcard?

The Magnus Protocol Episode 30 - Dead End Job

CAT2RS3366-13052024-13052024 Transmutation (human) -/- Isolation (urban)

Written by Jonathan Sims

Script Editing by Alexander J Newall

Thoughts: Light a candle for the Scottish in the Magnus Multiverse, they are doomed. Ryan’s performance broke my heart. Robin as the custodian is a gem, and then he’s the hilltop golem. Spectacular sound design. Turns out the Welsh aren’t doing so hot either. Lena moonwalks backwards out of the whole situation, Gwen, yer fucked, luv. IT IS MINE - Is this Celia being an external magnet or is the rift what the Archivist is actually after? Makes sense, an entire multiverse of suffering would definitely be satisfying! Plus see previous comment about Magnus Institute and the rift.

London Exclusion Zone has a delightful 28 days later ring to it. I do hope this means what I think it does: that Celia is wrong and the wound is not a pathway to her world but to any world. Which means we’re in Magnus Mk 3, and there could be ANOTHER Jonathan Sims here. In fact, wouldn’t it be something amazing, if here was a world where the Archivist succeeded in taking over as the conduit, and managed to control the horrors into a smaller area, namely London? If so, fucking brilliant, cannot wait… a few weeks until the premiere, and my relentless hunger for lore is satiated.

The Magnus Protocol Season 1 Epilogue

Written by Jonathan Sims

Script Editing by Alexander J Newall

Thoughts: Anusia and Billie smashed this one, some great emotional beats and as they now comprise 66% of the office staff (assuming Celia doesn’t just book it), I’m looking forward to watching their dynamic change over the next season. Important point: apparently there was a full description of the horrors that were seen, but we don’t get to hear it. Yet. Maybe. So until we do, all that happened was that Gwen yanks out a server rack, the phone rings, and Alice says ‘oh Colin...’ because she can see that Colin has been relentlessly ringing his exes and sending dick pics to everyone. Gwen screams because she spots Colin, drunk out of his mind and naked on the floor, having broken into Lena’s other secret alcohol stash (she has like 5 of them).

Colin in Season 1: Dinnae fash yersel', I'll sort out this machine!

Epilogue: Did ye, aye?

(But yeah, I’m mid way between gruesome flesh packed inside the servers, with hairy skin peeling off the circuits like lichen on tree bark, or Colin being in the phone, like the ringing brings up a picture of his face that’s been flensed and matrixed with wires and LEDs, because whatever happened, it was a) not immediately obvious, aka the room isn’t splattered with gore, and b) immediately obvious that it was Colin. So either his face is on show, or a defining feature like a tattoo.)

The Magnus Protocol Season 1 Fluff

Written by Jonathan Sims (except that intro and ending, that is clearly all Alex)

Script Editing by Alexander J Newall

Thoughts: Alex, you are a delight. Never change. All the characters are absolute train wrecks, and we are here for them (and their pain and suffering)

Featuring (in order of appearance), and where you can support them:

Lowri Ann Davies as Celia Ripley (https://x.com/lowritweets?lang=en)

Shahan Hamza as Samama Khalid (https://linktr.ee/shahanhamza)

Billie Hindle as Alice Dyer (want to support gender affirming treatment for a trans creator? https://ko-fi.com/F1F2XMJRD plus check out Billie’s latest role: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eDt3bYqDT0)

Sarah Lambie as Lena Kelley (https://x.com/baabuzz)

Anusia Battersby as Gwendolyn Bouchard (@anouchard, https://x.com/AnusiaBattersby)

Vera Chok as Ink5oul (https://x.com/Vera_Chok)

Callum Dougherty as Bystander (https://rustyquill.com/crew/callum-dougherty/)

Beth Eyre as Archivist/[ERROR] (https://x.com/BethEyre)

Tim Fearon as Augustus (I think: https://www.mandy.com/u/tim-fearon/)

Jonathan Sims as Chester (@jonnywaistcoat, @macguffinandco, https://www.patreon.com/macguffinandcompany/posts)

Alexander J Newall as Norris (@rqbossman)

Faye Derham as Mother (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm8335409/)

Frank Voss as Basira Hussain (https://x.com/AvoidedDrowning)

Ryan Hopevere-Anderson as Colin Becher (https://linktr.ee/ryanhopevereanderson)

Mark Nicolson as Ticket Attendant

Imogen Harris as Helen Richardson (https://x.com/ImogenCHarris)

Ian Hayles as Trevor Herbert MP (https://x.com/IanHayles)

Kazeem Tosin Amore as Teddy Vaughn (https://x.com/KazeemAmore)

Kai Partenie as Ticket Officer (https://www.instagram.com/kai0997)

Pip Gladwin as Taxi Driver (https://x.com/pip_gladwin)

Robin Hellier as Custodian (I think: https://robinhellier.com/#qualifications-credits)

Executive Producers April Sumner, Alexander J Newall, Jonathan Sims, Dani McDonough, Linn Ci, and Samantha F.G. Hamilton

Associate Producers Jordan L. Hawk, Taylor Michaels, Nicole Perlman, Cetius d’Raven, and Megan Nice

Produced by April Sumner

Dialogue Editor – Lowri Ann Davies

Sound Designer – Tessa Vroom

Mastering Editor - Catherine Rinella

Music by Sam Jones (orchestral mix by Jake Jackson)

Art by April Sumner

Fabulous work everyone! See you at the Premiere!

Official transcripts:

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seraphtrevs · 1 month ago

Note

Succession for the ask game :)

my favorite female character - my darling wife Shiv, who is the most beautiful woman in the world and has never done a thing wrong in her life

my favorite male character - Tom. The thing I love about Tom is that there has never been a character quite like him. Like usually you can put characters in a Type, but there is only one Tom, and he says the most deranged things I've ever heard - I love that in a man

my favorite book/season/etc - season 3

my favorite episode (if its a tv show) - All the Bells Say

my favorite cast member - sarah snook

my favorite ship - tomshiv. I am absolutely obsessed with their dynamic. they made zero sense to me as a couple in the beginning (which I think was the intention), but then slowly you come to understand why they are perfect(ly awful) for each other. The most hand-in-unlovable-hand ship ever

a character I’d die defending - shiv. did she make mistakes? no of course not, she's perfect. (but seriously - the things she had to put up with were very infuriating. i'm not actually excusing her worst actions, but i found her the most relatable of all the siblings, and i understand why she turned out the way she did. i find it really disappointing how she is often judged at a higher standard than the male characters, because our culture insists that women are morally superior creatures, which of course means they bear all the responsibility of men's bad behavior since those poor little boys simply can't help themselves. 🙄I appreciate her as a female character who was given an antihero arc, the same as the male characters.)

a character I just can’t sympathize with - roman. never have i hated a character more intensely than i hate roman. he's a misogynistic alt-right freak who is mean to children for fun, sexually harasses his employees, worships nazis, and is completely incompetent yet gets handed positions of power because he was born into wealth. i love my fair share of morally indefensible characters so maybe i don't have a leg to stand on, but he's too similar to the sorts of people who are currently killing my country. he's a well-written character and kieran culkin gives an amazing performance, but i can't enjoy him, even in a love-to-hate kind of way, and i certainly can't feel sorry for him

a character I grew to love - tom. it was not love at first! I had no idea what to make of him at first, but his deranged ways grew on me

my anti otp - tomgreg. not the tomgreg in the show, which is delightfully bizarre and very compelling, but fandom tomgreg. i'm sure there are fics out there that are more true to their canon dynamic, but for the most part, tomgreg seemed to suffer from what we used to call "migratory slash fandom" - aka fans who have a generic, stereotypical m/m dynamic they like, and they move from fandom to fandom, casting two male characters into that archtype, flattening whatever made those characters and their relationship in canon interesting in the first place

#ask games #asks

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dramavixen · 1 year ago

Text

are producers the clowns for approving subpar endings or am i the clown for expecting more

**Spoilers for:

Love Like the Galaxy (China, 2022)

The Red Sleeve (South Korea, 2021)

Late as I am to every bandwagon, I at last completed my first watch-through of Love Like the Galaxy a few days ago. For the past couple of weeks, I have done nothing but think about, consume, and breathe this story. At last, a show that was ticking all the boxes! I could tear myself free from this drama slump of mine!

This celebration lasted until I sat down with my parents to observe that thing the producers might call an "ending," but which sparked a frustration in me so severe that it triggered a post-COVID coughing fit, which in turn almost made me throw up. I couldn't comprehend it: was this the same show? Did I accidentally click on a parallel universe version where everyone's intelligence was operating 20% capacity?

Since I'd like to avoid making myself physically ill again, I'm not going to focus too much on how logic abruptly becomes an imaginary concept throughout the last two episodes. At least all that did was make me angry. What I can't accept is that they use that lack of logic to curse our leads with the most careless of reconciliations.

To alleviate my distress, we're going to perform an investigation. A deduction, if you will, of precisely what the ending was lacking, and utilizing a case study of how to conclude a story in both a fitting and compelling manner.

An unresolved misery

In recent years, my tolerance for male leads' misbehavior has plummeted down into the core of the earth. You could say that after years of being brainwashed by media into excusing male characters' questionable actions due to how much they "love" their partners, I'm taking back my common sense. So when faced with Zisheng's killing spree while armed with the knowledge that a "happy ending" was endgame, I anticipated how the writers would close such an abyssal rift in the leads' relationship. And the result was...well, not all that worth it.

If you need a memory refresh or you're reading this without fear of spoilers (godspeed), the conclusion of LLTG sees Shaoshang being kidnapped multiple times by people who she knows don't hold good intentions, but she goes along with them anyway. Don't ask why (the answer is so Zisheng can swoop in to rescue her). Some needlessly dramatic things lead to Shaoshang assuming for a few seconds that Zisheng has died in an explosion. But lo and behold! Here he comes, emerging unscathed from the ordeal. She flies into his arms and forgives him. Then they run off and save China, because it's not a historical C-drama until they do.

By the time we got to the fire/explosion scene, my mental state had already been reduced to a pulp. Therefore, to write this piece, I had to rewatch that part and make sure I was getting all the details right. It shocked me into a second round of holding my head to prevent my brain from ejecting itself as it sought to escape this reality.

(Also, I have to take a moment here to demand justice for He Zhaojun. They leave a pregnant woman on the floor after dragging her out of a fire, while she's having contractions, so they can instead take the time to hold a premature mourning session for Zisheng. Guys, it's not the end of the world if you don't have a brain. But please don't throw away your conscience.)

However the writers did it, it still counts as a happy ending. Such a conclusion should come as a relief, so why do I find it so hard to come to terms with? Let's rewind a tad.

Both Shaoshang and Zisheng grew up under grim circumstances, their identities subjecting them to emotional and social turmoil. But while they share a similar internal struggle, they must deal with it in opposing ways. Shaoshang opens herself up to anyone who shows her true kindness, desperate for someone to accept her for who she is. On the other hand, Zisheng can only isolate himself from everyone, unable to reveal his true self due to both political and personal interests.

Their eventual parting is unavoidable. Shaoshang is moved by Zisheng's unwavering love for her. Can't blame her all that much; just look at him. But the closer she gets, the more Zisheng fears dragging her into his mess of a life, and the more he pulls away. When Zisheng chooses vengeance over love, he's already crossed Shaoshang's bottom line several times by refusing to share his troubles whenever she asked—the irony being that he once scolded her for keeping things to herself.

ZS: If, one day, they really intend to kill you, would you not tell me then, either? Shaoshang, exactly who do you take me for? Why must you always act on your own, and not trust me? SS: It is not that I do not want to trust you. I simply— ZS: You simply do not care about me. After betrothing you, I would frequently think about how great it would be if I could become your confidant and anchor. You could tell me about all of your fears and loneliness. I do not wish to control you. All I hope is that you can be honest with me. But how is it that your heart never warms toward me?

I see that Zisheng is a loyal believer of the "do as I say, not as I do" doctrine.

While it's initially funny to look back on the above scene in context, it's quite sad once you mull over it more. Zisheng's desire to know Shaoshang's troubles is rooted in a concern for her safety that is both emotional and practical in nature. When Shaoshang later applies that same thinking on him, the tables have turned completely. Zisheng is now aware that few situations are simple enough to be resolved just by being honest with someone else. And if the problem is severe enough, doing so may only aggravate it further.

From his perspective, telling Shaoshang would mean ruining her and her family's lives by association. Not to mention, she herself swore that she would stay with him through everything. So if he dies as a result of carrying out his revenge, the possibility of her dying solidifies itself as an inevitability. Leaving her behind is the one method he has to ensure that he alone would suffer the consequences.

Like it or not, it's hard to blame either of them for the end of their relationship. Is Zisheng wrong to keep Shaoshang in the dark? Arguably yes, arguably no. But is Shaoshang justified in her anger about being kept in the dark? Absolutely.

While we can be reasonably upset that post-timeskip Shaoshang possesses none of the outspoken nature of her teenage self, her lingering depression is the most realistic result of everything that happens. She has tried repeatedly to find her place in the world, yet arrives at nothing but failure every time. Not to mention, she suffers from an inferiority complex that intensifies the ache of each and every rejection. She isn't unfamiliar with being abandoned, but Zisheng doing it to her is the final straw that breaks her. The coffin her family was preparing for her didn't go to waste—the moment that Zisheng turned his back on her, he killed a part of her. Meanwhile, Zisheng becomes a corpse with a pulse, someone who only continues to breathe so he can regret what he has done.

When you delve into how much Zisheng hurt Shaoshang and himself, it becomes clear that a Michael Bay explosion shouldn't have been the answer to their problem. After the timeskip, the issue at hand should be less about her forgiving him than it is about each of them needing to redeem parts of themselves that they lost to the circumstances. That's why their interactions at this point are so painful to watch. Every word, every look, every movement brims with love for the other person, but they are both shells of their former selves that cannot move on.

No words for the above; too busy sobbing as they each individually accept that they'll never experience true happiness again.

As a viewer, you know that Shaoshang accepting him at this point would be an objectively bad idea. But it's also hell to watch two people, both overly accustomed to suffering, walk away from the person who brought them the greatest joy in their life. That's the art of tragedy, flourishing before us in a quiet, leaden fog. And they killed it in a bloom of gunpowder, of all things?

The beauty in tragedy

To say that a tragic ending is inherently superior to a happy one would be a pretentious fallacy. At the same time, a forced happy ending will feel unstable enough that the slightest of questions will cast it into doubt. The genre of an ending is irrelevant. It only matters that the ending is the right one.

So should LLTG have ended with the leads parting ways for good? To find the answer, I want to first dig into a successful example of tragedy. For that, let's look to our dearest, our legendary, our precious: The Red Sleeve.

Similar in premise to LLTG, TRS features a female lead with independent thinking and a dream for freedom, faced with a man of high social status who goes about chasing her in a way that flaunts his power. The stakes are higher in TRS since the man in question will one day be king, but the highlight of the show is the same as in LLTG: you bounce back and forth between hoping that she ends up with him and praying to any god that exists that she runs far, far away from him. You can't really win.

One day I'd love to write a thorough analysis on the amazing character that is Sung Deok-Im, but for our current purposes I'll focus on the nature of her ending. TRS is roughly based on history, and a quick Google search when you begin the drama will inform you that our female lead is fated to die at 33 years old—only a few years after she is "promoted" from gungnyeo to Yi San's consort. As a result, you spend much of the drama battling the lurking dread of how her death comes about.

A few months after her young son passes away, Deok-Im falls ill and dies. The unborn child in her womb follows her. Yi San is beside her as Deok-Im slips away, and her dying wish is cruel but fair: should they meet again in another life, she begs Yi San to pass her by. Only then can she choose to live a free life, full of choices, which was all she had wanted until she fell in love with him.

While watching LLTG, my emotions mirrored those I endured through TRS. Both dramas force you to get to know the female lead as someone who wants to be herself, a baffling idea in the face of a society where women's primary identities are those associating them with someone else: daughters, wives, sisters, mothers. Yet she continues to harbor hope that she can control her own life, even as she falls in love with a man whose station will certainly snuff out that possibility. The saving grace in LLTG is that Zisheng is not a part of the royal family, and even then Shaoshang goes through her fair share of frustration. TRS on the other hand...even if you haven't seen it, you can likely guess what happens.

The biggest tragedy in TRS is not that Deok-Im dies young. It's the despair that trickles through every part of you as she transforms from a free-spirited, boisterous young woman into an obedient consort whose every word and movement is straight out of the books of etiquette, who isn't permitted her own feelings or thoughts in the face of the country's interests. History may not share the specifics behind how the consort actually died, but the drama all but tells you that depression played a major role. By the end of the drama, Deok-Im hasn't existed for a while. She dies as Royal Noble Consort Ui.

I wonder what I have gained by being in this place, and what I have lost.

I cry inconsolably whenever I see this expression of acceptance and resignation on her face as she sends off her friends and her former self, knowing full well that she has caged herself into a life of sadness so she can be with the one she loves—a man whose first priority can never be her.

But oh, no; our suffering doesn't end there. Yi San lives on after her, looking after his country while carrying the lingering pain of Deok-Im's death. At one point, he retrieves her belongings and appears stunned by her gungnyeo clothing:

It is so small. Were you always so small? Yet, I loved you.

In Yi San’s memory, Deok-Im was a person of great stature. What she may have lacked in social position, she more than made up for in personality. Her tenacity made her appear so strong that only in hindsight does Yi San understand just how vulnerable she was.

Yi San is also someone to be pitied. When we watch palace dramas, it's easy to say that the king's consorts have it far worse than the king. They fight over a man in order to survive, and arguably their sacrifices are greater in number and magnitude. But it's egregious to host a competition of suffering, and you can't deny that Yi San himself leads an unfortunate life. In the cold isolation of the palace, Deok-Im gives him warmth and company. It's no wonder that he wishes to have her by his side, but he is still willing to let her go when she pushes him away.

Almost every other palace drama would have you turning up your nose at the king or emperor's so-called "love" for one of the women in his harem. TRS leaves no room for such doubt. The throne takes away Yi San's ability to choose, and ultimately his ability to wholeheartedly love someone. Even so, Yi San holds Deok-Im so dear that you might want to blame him for how she ends up, but it's hard. Really, really hard. (For anyone interested and who hasn't already, I highly recommend reading the actual history behind this drama. Dude was so in love that it physically hurts.)

In the final scene, he reunites with Deok-Im in the afterlife. At last, they are together and without all the frills and chains of royalty tying them down.

Many years have passed, and at times, I was not certain myself. Do I truly miss you, or do I simply glorify the past? Now I know. I missed you, and I missed the time that I spent with you. [...] Now I understand that we do not have much time. And we do not have the luxury to wait. So, love me. Please. Love me.

I'm always scared to watch the last episode because I just spend the full hour and a half bawling until I can't breathe. Taking these few screenshots was truly a test of my entire being.

So what makes a good tragedy? Tragedy is not "bad things happen." It's "bad things may have happened, but I wouldn't have chosen any differently." When Deok-Im becomes Yi San's consort, it isn't because he keeps her there. She chooses to stay. She loves the prospect of freedom, but she just loves Yi San more. It's awful, it hurts, and it's perfect.

What could have been

We've taken a slight detour, but have at last arrived back at the topic of: how should LLTG have ended?

If given the choice between Shaoshang and Zisheng being together and them not being together, I would obviously choose the former while beating the latter into a permanent nonexistence. With any degree of empathy, you can't watch two people suffer as Shaoshang and Zisheng do, then turn around and wish for their continued misfortune and loneliness. So although I'll concede that it would have easily made for a fantastic tragedy like TRS, I can't bear to say that it should have been one. But if the writers want to go for the non-obvious happy ending, it still has to follow the progression of things.

The current problem is this: Zisheng abandoned Shaoshang and scorned her trust in him. We're now in a position where Shaoshang has the decisive say in whether the relationship can be revived.

LLTG's primary focus has always been Shaoshang. Though multifaceted, her personality and motivations are pretty straightforward. Each time she suffers is a result of her lack of agency. She had no choice in her parents leaving her as an infant, no choice in her poor upbringing, no choice in agreeing to marry Zisheng. Even when she gave up Lou Yao, was that truly a result of her volition alone? For someone whose greatest enemy is helplessness, what matters most is maintaining her own free will.

Through this lens, each time Shaoshang asks Zisheng if he has something to tell her, not only is she asking him to trust in her as his equal, she wants him to let her decide to stay with him. Zisheng turning her away scars her so deeply because it's the same thing as telling her, "I don't care what you want to do." He's drawing a line while taking away from her the power to choose—the one thing she's told him repeatedly matters to her.

SS: I used to hate you for abandoning me. I hated that you acted on your own. I hated that you would rather leap from a cliff than walk alongside me. I hated that I loved you so truly, whereas you told me lie after lie. It has been five years. It was not easy to let go of all of this. I can no longer give away my heart or trust again. ZS: I am sorry. Regardless of what choice you make, I will respect it. These last few years in the Northwest, not a day went by where I was not filled with remorse. I know you. I knew completely that you feared being abandoned. Yet I still chose to harm you in the way that would hurt you the most. In the first twenty years of my life, I lived in hatred. And for the rest of my life, I will live in remorse. If I could, I would tear my heart from my chest to show you. But I know I no longer have that right.

"A married couple exists as one entity." Such is what the drama emphasizes time and again, but what does that mean? Not that one party is in automatic agreement with the other. It's about learning to reach compromises and understanding what's important to the other person. When you don't give your partner their say in that conversation, then what relationship is there to be had?

That is why Shaoshang's unwavering desire for individual opinion matters even more after entering a relationship, and why she still struggles to come to terms with what Zisheng has done. She doesn't blame him. She doesn't want him to beg for forgiveness. After everything she's been through, she just can't put herself in the same vulnerable position again. And he's learned to fully respect her opinion, which means that he has to let her go.

TRS's ending works for the simple reason that it remains true to the characters and their motivations. The tragedy isn't there to make us sad, it's just where the story was always going to find itself. This is why we as viewers hate the ending, but we wouldn't have wanted it written any other way—to do so would be betraying Deok-Im and Yi San.

But when you look LLTG, it gives you a very weak argument for Shaoshang and Zisheng's reconciliation. In front of you are two people whose love for one another could not run any deeper, yet there are legitimate obstacles to their relationship. Shaoshang needs to relearn trust and feel respected. Zisheng's conflict mimics that of Yi San's; as much as he may regret the past, there is nothing about it that can be changed. That regret is something that has to be addressed. (Of course, in Yi San's case, that was addressed through his death. So maybe not that for Zisheng, if you please.)

I can see where the writers attempt to cure Zisheng's remorse, but come on now. They stage a bizarre speech for him where he denounces his previous actions, like a child being punished by his parents and being forced to write a 200-word essay reflecting on his wrongdoings, and while they're being held in the most asinine hostage situation ever known to man. He seriously proclaims that he should have walked the honorable path instead of opting for vigilante justice.

This entire scene was a nauseating roller coaster, but that last part threw me for a major loop. Sir, the only reason you can say that so shamelessly is because your soon-to-be wife found evidence after you killed the guy. Are you really going to stand there with a straight face as you tell me that you regret how you killed the man who you watched murder your father, and who brought about the horrific deaths of your entire family? There was no other option at the time. Of course you had to kill him. It was as much a personal vendetta as it was political. No one likes what happened after that, but those are consequences that should be dealt with separately. Also, Shaoshang's qualms aren't rooted in you killing the guy, they're rooted in you killing him and then trying to kill yourself, all without taking her desires into consideration.

And just as I was thinking the above, the next thing that happened on-screen: Shaoshang turns to him with an expression that says, ah, so he's learned his lesson! Oh...my goodness.

Hi, ma'am? Question. What exactly is more emotionally persuasive about this weird declaration now than when he laid his heart out that night when you wished one another well and said goodbye? Is it because he almost explodes afterward? In the five years he spent out on the battlefield, was he not always in danger of exploding, or being stabbed, or being tortured to death, etc.? Did he not almost die saving you from falling off a cliff two days prior? Why didn't you waver then, especially since it should remind you of, you know, the other time that he jumped off a cliff?

During the scene where she runs to him after discovering he miraculously is not dead, a severe suspicion came over me that perhaps they inhaled so much smoke that they were no longer thinking straight.

A solid happy ending was clearly a possibility. Even if they wanted to go with the above nonsense, could we not also have had a moment where they admit to one another that while overcoming their pain will be difficult at first, being apart from one another for eternity would be much more painful? That nothing in life is easy, but it will be easier with each other? That that commitment is what makes a married couple a single entity, and they just want to commit to each other? Then they can go off and save China, whatever.

They deserved an ending that had me rejoicing that these two are finally, finally, finally on the same wavelength. It should have been more introspective and more considerate of Shaoshang's hurt and Zisheng's regret. Their psychological wounds are instead dismissed through an absurd monologue in a basement and the arbitrary realization that death is lurking around every corner.

The hilarious part is that in the last two episodes, even the actors are noticeably less enthusiastic. In their performances, I see essences of how I feel when a client requests edits to a design that will make it significantly uglier. You gotta do what you gotta do to pay the bills.

Sigh. I could forever grieve what could have been, but this is still one of my favorite dramas. Characters that feel like real people, relationships that make your heart hurt. Those should be common sense in media but are hard to come by in reality, and I'll continue to appreciate what LLTG gave me.

All I really want from the drama industry is for it to please, for the love of our collective sanities, stop thinking that "happy" endings are a valid shortcut to satiating an audience. Good tragic endings are difficult to write, yes, but good happy endings are not any easier. To underestimate that is to let down the story and characters that were so painstakingly brought to life in the first place.

#星汉灿烂 #love like the galaxy #scribbles*#i had to get this out of my system before i created a reco graphic #otherwise it would have haunted me the entire time #anyways now onto rewatching nif to relive baby wu lei #lltg

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lanymme · 10 months ago

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Having just reached Meltryllis’s first appearance it’s very apparent why she’s the leading lady in the SERAPH collab and so on, and why she’s a fan favorite over Passionlip.

As much as I personally like Lip, Melt is undeniably standout, and Saori Hayama’s voice performance of cool intelligent superiority and breathless sadism is really compelling.

She’s not just a favored child—yes, she gets to be the one to break genre expectations and shatter the episodic format, which of course is going to give her a huge boost, but the intricacy of how her parts work together is apparent from just her first scene.

To see what I mean, let’s compare the two sisters.

Lip is very pitiful, and she’s convincingly miserable and mentally unstable. She’s a really compelling character and I really love her arc. But I think she doesn’t really take advantage of the fact that she’s designed after a BDSM concept—Masochistic Constitution feels like it mostly serves as “this is one of the several reasons she’s so miserable and sad.”

Based on some lines from her Punish scene and her SG entries, it seems like there’s supposed to be a sort of temptress angle to her powers—that once you get a taste of hurting her, you lose yourself in her like a fly in a trap, even knowing she’s not well, even knowing she’ll hurt you, until she closes around and devours you.But we just don’t see that in practice.

If she inspires anything it’s pity. Like, yes, we see in her SG2 scene that Robin Hood gets caught up in trying to punish her, but it’s more of a technical process, limited to the scenes where someone is bullying her. She doesn’t represent what’s so enticing about a masochist or a submissive person, she’s not even really portrayed as a closeted or unconscious masochist. Every indication points to her hating that kind of treatment, but being too meek to resist.

As a result, the different elements of her character don’t tie together. The eternal victim who shares the blame for her own loneliness and kills people because she doesn’t want to be alone, but doesn’t want the vulnerability of being known—she doesn’t have that element to tie everything together.

In fact, the line about her being a temptress from her Punish scene falls so flat as to come across as distasteful projection, which seems to imply we’re supposed to know she likes it by the fact she doesn’t fight back. It kind of makes me think Nasu doesn’t understand how to portray the appeal of a submissive, how to represent her as subject and object of desire.

Melt, however, is a different beast.

She’s bold. She’s direct. She’s domineering. She’s scary, she’s a merciless killer, but she’s also a really hot sadist.

It’s hard to fully get across without Hayamin’s breathless perfromance. She just sounds like a dom enjoying the high of Dominance. There’s an intoxicating joy in her violence, a sense that it’s not a warrior’s attack but something that she enacts for her own sake. She’s scary, but she makes that fear feel sexy; that life or death moment where you know she will kill you if you slip up feels almost like a scene between the two of you. It’s hot, and you can feel that almost dulling your extremely necessary fight or flight reflexes.

You can feel the influence of Sadistic Constitution just by being present with her. She goes from cold, beautiful, and fearsome to sounding like she’s going to lose herself in the joy of sadism as the encounter continues.

And this connects directly to her goal: she wants to offer up her entire self, the whole world, as a cradle of pleasure to her beloved. It’s the generosity of the sadist taken to its utmost extreme, the selfish selflessness of wanting to be the one that creates a paradise for your partner. It’s magnetic.

You can tell she’s unsafe. You can tell she doesn’t have limits and will really hurt you, that her love has no room for your humanity. She’s very obviously messy and dangerous. But also, she’s so magnificent that you worry if your attention slips, you just might take her offer anyway.

Melt is the femme fatale that Lip fails to be, and that lets her tie her aesthetic together and adds a lot of depth and complexity to her character. It makes her entrancing whenever she takes the stage.

It makes me sad to think about what Passionlip might have been, but it also makes me really pumped for Melt’s chapters.

#fate extra ccc #meltryllis #passionlip #fate series #analysis

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kmze · 9 months ago

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Thoughts on 4x13-4x23 TBH I had a lot of fun watching this half! I liked Elena’s no humanity arc and I enjoyed Silas fucking around with everyone and getting inside their heads. I also liked the detours to NYC and the storybook town Katherine compelled. There is some good foreshadowing this half and it was definitely much better than the first half of S4 (at least to me) The worst part was Bonnie’s storyline because of how tragically it ended and that she wasn’t in control of herself for much of it (this season was rough for her, might be her roughest). Also everyone appears to be dumber for plot reasons (or maybe it was just Damon being put in charge too often). Thoughts below!

4x13

The way Rebekah body slammed Elena CTFU!!

Klaus is such an asshole. As much as I have enjoyed some of the Klaus and Caroline scenes this season (my feelings about them have evolved, they are a necessary evil lol) stuff like this will always turn me off about them.

This Forwood scene is both touching and heartbreaking. Caroline reassuring Tyler he did the right thing because he freed the hybrids, and calling him a leader. They’re so great.

Again it's so cruel how the show is handling Beremy in regards to Bonnie. They came back together pretty quickly, which isn't a bad thing because it shows Jeremy has been pining this whole time (which your own fault my guy). However, they are just setting Bonnie up because he's gonna die! All those shirtless muscle grazes for nothing.

Rebekah dropping truth bombs though about how everyone should shut up about taking the moral high ground.

I like that Caroline always finds a way to stay alive! She knew she could use Klaus’ feelings for her against him to cure her, and she doesn’t have to give him anything in return. Adapt or die.

4x14

I am so tired of hearing about the cure already!

These beach/forest island scenes are making me zone out, I have no idea what's going on with this plot and very ready for it to end.

Nah Klaus was being way too nice and forgiving, Tyler and Caroline needed to be quicker figuring that out.

For someone who hates Elena she sure does talk about her ALL THE TIME JFC Rebekah, get a life.

But EL OH EL at Elena trying to get Stefan back to worshipping her by talking about his feelings on being human and when she asks why he didn't tell her he says "because it wasn't about you" BURN!

I like how you can subtly tell its Katherine when she goes to bite the hunter. Elena never would have done that.

Poor Forwood :(

Klaus is so fucking delusional “you know I would never hurt you” you just did less than 24 hours ago!

4x15

Stefan and Caroline have great silent communication.

Sometimes I read Reddit against my better judgement and for some reason they all believe Stefan and Bonnie should have happened. But I’m sorry after 3.5 seasons into this rewatch Stefan doesn’t give a flying fuck about Bonnie! Whatever “friendship” people think was “ignored” does not exist! He basically told Damon to leave her on that island with a 2000 year old psychic immortal because Damon needed to use the sire bond (!!!) on Elena. Bonnie doesn’t really fuck with him either, ever since Grams died she keeps her distance more than I noticed before. I think Bonnie recognizes how much Stefan is a lying liar who lies.

I think that’s why Bonnie ultimately got closer to Damon than she ever did to Stefan. Not that she trusts Damon or even really likes him until S6, but he at least shows her who he is all the time.

Damon and Caroline do not have good silent communication lol.

The crazypants Bonnie scenes are amusing in a scary way during all this heavy stuff.

This was one of the most emotional episodes of this show ever and I mean that in a good way. Nina deserved more accolades for her performance because it’s really heartbreaking, and she does a fantastic job of switching from extremely emotional to “emotionless” humanity off.

The scene where the trio walks out of the house while it’s burning you see Damon and Elena keep walking together but Stefan stays back a bit to look at the house and gets separated from the two of them. I felt like that was foreshadowing that Stefan is going to move on and essentially leave the triangle.

4x16

Wait did Elena just imply Caroline has seen her naked!

Damon’s list of things Klaus sucks at CTFU!

I feel like Stefan always has a vervain needle in his pocket LMFAO! Phone, keys, wallet, vervain needle. It will also endlessly amaze me how often vamps get roofied by vervain needles in broad daylight and just no one cares.

The way NH!Elena stops when she sees Stefan and Caroline dancing and stomps over GREATEST MOMENTS IN TVD HISTORY! I firmly believe this is the first time we see Stefan have his more than friendship feelings for Caroline (the ones that scared him and he pushed away) and actually act on them.

OMG am I ready for Rebekah to go away already!

Klaus and Hayley have ZERO chemistry wow. They definitely get better on TO but this was painful to watch.

Personally I would have told Stefan “not my problem” re: NH!Elena but Caroline is nicer than me. She’s also still kinda falls for his tricks at this point (wait until S6 my friends).

4x17

Love the 1977 flashback mostly for the use of Psycho Killer.

KLEFAROLINE! I can’t believe this is the only episode ever that they all shared scenes at the same time.

Isn’t Shane dead?!? I can’t follow this storyline at all man.

You can always tell how bad the show is treating Bonnie by how bad her wig/hair is and right now it's getting bad again. It looked great with the curtain bangs but the full bangs are a no-go. How this show managed to make Kat Graham look NOT gorgeous on purpose is it's most heinous crime.

I think we can all agree when Klaus said “don’t underestimate the allure of darkness Stefan, even the purest of hearts are drawn to it” it was him propositioning Stefan and Caroline to have a threesome.

I’m really enjoying the NYC scenes and the flashbacks. It’s giving a different feel to the show and I like it, almost the opposite of how it made me feel in the beginning of the season. Maybe we’re transitioning with Elena again but this time it's about having no humanity and hedonism so it's like grimmy, dark and sexy. Also change of scenery once in a while is a good thing.

Klaus pushing Stefan against the tree was way more sexual than the script intended me thinks. Then Caroline rushes over, and that’s why we only got one episode of this throuple, le sigh.

Damn NH!Damon was cold blooded in the flashback with Lexi, I forgot about that.

4x18

Katherine compelling a whole town reminds me of WandaVision now.

Stefan pointing out how incompetent Damon is lol always funny (and true).

NH!Elena intimidating Katherine is GOLD! Nina is having so much fun with this arc and I love that for her.

Damon and Stefan being like “ew” at Katherine and Elijah like they both haven’t slept with her AND her doppelgänger.

Honestly the vial the cure was in did not look like a 2000 year old vial so like again, morons. Damon for some reason thought Katherine was as stupid as him and hide it in the most obvious spot.

NH!Elena is right how fucking stupid is Elijah that he trusted Katherine or believes anything she says EVER. He's just as gullible as his sister.

I’m with Elijah honestly Klaus no one cares about you being tormented, you’re the worst and this is karma. I'm also with him in regards to Rebekah and her insisting on taking the cure, you wouldn't last one day without superpowers, you're just bored and need attention.

4x19

Caroline still got the better dress lol. I do love when she uses men's affections to get herself things.

Silas appearing as everyone was a good villain for this half. Gave everyone an opportunity to play something different, plus there’s always something scary about a shapeshifter especially one that can read your mind.

Bonnie going cray-cray again but even worse her hair and this dull dress WTF?! Like they gave her prom queen but at what cost! I hope Kat burned this wig once she was free from it.

I personally feel like the Steroline prom dance affects Stefan more than Caroline. She maybe feels a little tingle after they share a look but Stefan’s reaction is way more played up. He’s the one who lowers his head like they might kiss and then the breath he takes after. My heart. Love how this becomes such an important moment in their love story, especially for him. He mentions it in his speech about loving her changed his life, and oh yeah his friggin' wedding vows!

See another vervain needle! This guy!

I'm sorry but LMFAO at Klaus talking about humanity saying mockingly "why does this always happen to innocent people" because he's kinda right! Being human in this world would be super lame with all the supernatural power and knowledge they have.

Elijah knows there's a super-powerful immortal psychic who can impersonate people wondering around and he doesn't ask for even a little bit of clarifying information when "Rebekah" says she passed his test. Also he just believes she passed his test? HOW IS HE THIS GULLIBLE?!

4x20

The first scene cracks me up in retrospect like “we three are contractually obligated to be in all episodes so here’s some random dialogue to fill that” LMFAO

MARCEL <333 you beautiful sexy ass hell man, I shall always crackship you with Bonnie Boncel4lyfe

Elijah is just as bad as Stefan when it comes to his brother, like OMG just let that man GO! Some people just don’t want to be saved man.

The Klamille scene when they looking at the painting and discussing it is really nice (plus great song). I know technically he looked at art with Caro first but like Cami actually appreciates art and Caro couldn’t really care less beyond distracting him lol.

4x21

IDK if I can believe Caroline was valedictorian… I mean I don’t think she’s dumb or not determined enough to get it but there is no way she attended enough classes to get it. Sorry show I don’t believe you.

You know Caroline is moving up in the TVD food chain when Matt turns a dig about her from Rebekah into a compliment!

Matt being the trigger for Elena made sense, he got the biggest emotional reaction out of her when she first saw him in the woods. I don’t think Damon got any real emotional reaction out of her tbh, and Stefan got some with her jealousy over Caroline and when he compared her to Katherine. This just proves Matlena should have been endgame like I’ve always said!

4x22

Stefan definitely had Caroline babysitting Elena.

Sorry but I love how everyone doesn’t even entertain the idea Elena could kill Katherine. They are like she’s 500 years old and 500x smarter than you, you will die.

Lexi’s comments are great foreshadowing for Steroline. They are ambiguous enough that they don’t say Stefan has feelings for Caroline but they don’t deny it. Lexi definitely seems to think so though and she's known him for over 100 years so...

I know Katherine and Elena have tons of reasons to want each other dead but it felt like they played it up on purpose this episode and the next one to make them fight and give Katherine the cure. It’s not OOC or anything just feels more manufactured than it needed to be.

I can’t believe they killed Bonnie! I know it’s temporary but JFC she can’t catch a break, this was an awful season half for her. Fuck Julie and Dries.

4x23

I can’t believe they had Stefan graduate LMFAO zero people believe he attended more than 2 classes this whole year.

I like how the Klaroline scene in 4x23 and the Steroline scene in 6x22 work in tandem. I used to view it as a conflict but now I appreciate how they work so well for Caroline. Two hot powerful guys promising her their heart and she gets to choose which one whenever she wants since they both gave an open timeline. It girl behavior!

I don’t think I ever zone out more than when Damon and Elena make one of their yelling love declarations of toxicity. I will never understand their appeal.

Poor Stefan. I do feel a little bad but they did hint all season he was going to be the one to move on and he knew it too. Through a rewatch it’s easy to see the hints and foreshadowing. His scene with Damon where he says he’s “not not happy for you” is great too because that’s what matters to him more in the end.

Human Katherine! Such a great storyline excited for it!

HELLO MY SHADOW SELF

Lines that made me laugh:

Rebekah: You’re like Sherlock Holmes with brain damage (she's annoying but she is funny!)

Elena: You got Lexi’d! (CRYING I swear everyone is funnier without humanity)

Caroline: I don’t know if this is your new weird way of flirting, but it sucks. (her delivery was the best part)

#tvd rewatch #tvd spoilers #S4 rewatch #4x13 - 4x23 #anti-delena for ts #anti-stelena for ts #sort of I wasn't really anti I just wasn't nice lol #forwood for ts #steroline for ts #klaroline for ts #again I wasn't anti but I was a little mean #but he stabbed her with a lamp and bite her I can't be nice about that #k rewatches tvd

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world-smitten · 1 year ago

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See You In My 19th Life pre finale thoughts

I was not planning on watching this show, but I'm having a Shin Hye-sun moment, thanks to her absolute brilliance in Stranger. This show has grown on me like a weed, so here we are 🥲. Spoilers!

Age IS problematic in Ji-eum's and Seo-ha's relationship - not in the sense of the 1000 year old spirit falling for a 10 year old boy, but in the sense of someone who gains awareness of their soul's immortality at the ripe old age of 9. That's an essential tension in the show's depiction of past lives - asking what happens to a child who gains this knowledge, especially if that child is vulnerable. Rich, cherished 12 year old Jo-won reacts to this knowledge by running straight into her mother's arms; poor and neglected 9 year old Ji-eum immediately thinks to hustle her way out of poverty, driven by memories of a happier past life where the love around her sustained her childhood until her death. The young actresses - who perform and are directed wonderfully - don't play her as an adult in a child's body, but as a child translating ageless knowledge through their intrinsically childish filter. Her love of Seo-ha is equal parts endearing and disturbing for this reason - memories of loving him in a happier past life are impressed on a 9 year old child, who then devotes herself to becoming the kind of woman who can stand by his side, who can protect and care for him. And in order to do this, she has to be "successful"; therefore, her fixation on reuninting with him is tangled up in her desperate attempts to escape poverty and neglect. Which is why I'm OBSESSED with Shin Hye-sun's performance. A lot of people have already picked up on Ji-eum's general weirdness - what I love is the calculated poise of her body language, as if she's crafting herself into the picture of dignity in direct reaction to the indignity of her early childhood. There's one moment I'm obsessed with in episode 8, where she bumps heads with Seo-ha and she's in pain...but then she bounces back, asking him if he's okay, refusing to show him any vulnerability. This is also why I love that the writing forces her family into Seo-ha's path - he meets her brother, her father, he learns the role they played in Ju-won's murder; he sees this painful, messy side of her too. This really endears me to their romance - it's melancholic and twisted, but I want them to find happiness in their sad little love story.

SYIM9L is very ambitious for a 12-episode show - different plotlines with different emotional tenors all existing in increasing dissonance with each other. Less is more, I think. The story about child murder is awkwardly triangulating with the story about fated love, and the outcome reads clumsy. Poor Min-gi. A love triangle that is constantly perpetuating itself across different lives might be fascinating in itself - but if the show wanted to place Ji-eum/Seo-ha in a story of past histories/fate/free-will, it...was already doing that? The murder mystery is a story of parents devouring their children - one father attempts to kill his son (allegedly), another unwittingly kills his daughter in another life. And these choices, made before either were born, play a role in how Seo-ha and Ji-eum relate to one another. Personally, i don't think she chose to pursue him, I think it was an inescapable compulsion because she was desperate and she was NINE. The concept of free will is invariably complicated because the character making the choices was a vulnerable child. Episode 8 has been the high point for me, because it touches on the helplessness felt when you realise how deeply the adults in your life have let you down; by externalising that helplessness via reincarnation (your daughter's soul is the soul of a child you murdered - your father killed you in a past life for money), it feels all the more raw and upsetting. I just find it more compelling than whatever is going on with their first-lives.

Ha Yoon-kyung's cuteness has the precision and potency of a long-range ballistic missile. Love you queen.

#see you in my 19th life #shin hye sun #kdrama #quick thoughts

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mermaidsirennikita · 1 year ago

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well now that the crown is over it's time for one last ranking of the seasons

Lol good lord

Season 2--I think this was the most dramatically consistent, despite the Kennedy episode; the cast was across the board at its absolute strongest; and the throughline of Philip and Elizabeth's marital issues was so good. The intense argument they had on the ship was literally just a couple fighting and was somehow some of the most riveting TV I've ever seen? Plus you had additional standouts like the episode where we saw the seeds of Charles's Various Issues sown after Philip almost kills him in a murder-suicide by plane because he's so annoying (while also doing some genuinely intense trauma delving into Philip's own childhood) and, the delving into the Wallis and David being Nazi sympathizers/the brief returns of Jared Harris and John Lithgow, Matthew Goode doing the absolute MOST!!! with Vanessa Kirby in that absorbing fail relationship... It was a lot. Even the Kennedy episode couldn't sink this ship!!!

Season 4--Olivia Colman had some adjusting to do (and so did Helena Bonham-Carter, though to a lesser extent; imo, the Matt Smith -> Tobias Menzies pipeline was the easiest transition the show ever had, and it's in part because Philip had such a personality transition due to his arc in season 2, so Tobias playing a more settled if still wistful for what could have been Philip who'd become Elizabeth's attack dog made sense) but she was fully settled into this cold but also weirdly funny Elizabeth, so out of touch and brittle yet also comically so. But let us be real, Josh O'Connor and Emma Corrin OWNED this season. The thwarted chemistry of the Australia episode. The transformation from shy Di to broken wife to resolved and jaded icon who's decided to break off and also use her influence for good. ALSO, the only PM performance that matched Lithgow's was Gillian Anderson as Margaret Thatcher. Her chilly meetups with Elizabeth, the one PM than Peter Morgan seemed to acknowledge was never enamored with Liz (and I think he's exaggerated a lot with the others lol), the general looming doom she represents... Amazing. Plus, we get one-offs like Elizabeth choosing her favorite child and the show trying to dodge it being Andrew, Margaret's hot young thang though tbh the show severely condensed that relationship (wrong season but my thoughts remain lol) ... Perhaps the most bombastic season, amazing.

Season 1--a great setup of so many issues that would follow Elizabeth, the only season where we see "the woman", fab setting in with Claire, Matt, and Vanessa, and incredible performances from John Lithgow and Jared Harris (who legit never fails to make me cry when he looks at his family for his last Christmas and starts crying). The "I ASK YOU TO MAKE AN EXCEPTION FOR ME"/"... no" scene with Matt and Claire is an example of their magic together. And I say this as someone who has never found Matt Smith compelling in any other role ever. Also, the way Vanessa Kirby made such a splash with her resentful anger at Elizabeth... God.

Season 3--I was initially frostier on this season, but upon rewatch it's still good TV and had some great standout moments. Tobias Menzies is an excellent Philip, and of course you get the introduction of Josh O'Connor, whose Wales episode and monologue about how he won't be a complete person until his mother dies (when we all know Charles will never be a complete person)... So good. It does suffer from the transition a bit, and I'll be real, I don't think Emerald Fennell really worked as Camilla at any point on the show. This also began the serious issue the show has with really glossing over the complexities of Camilla and her relationship with Charles--the idea that they had this straightforward star-crossed lovers thing, the omission of his other women and her genuine love for her husband and dislike of the idea of being Charles's wife versus his mainstay mistress... Meh. But still, good TV with some great performances. And I'll never be over "MUMMY I HAVE A VOICE"/"no one wants to hear it". One of the coldest takedowns I've ever seen on television, lol. Josh and Olivia were great together. (Also: a really good Anne, especially in this season.)

Season 5--there were things to like about this season. But ultimately, it was a flop. Elizabeth Debicki is such a good older Diana ("older" as in a woman who never even hit 40... Jesus) but the show seems like it couldn't decide between her being a little girl lost who was so easily manipulated, and a spoiled brat who was just upset that Charles didn't love her!!! I find Imelda Staunton horribly miscast as this rather watery Elizabeth, which is a very odd transition from the seemingly-silly-but-deeply-cold woman Olivia played. Jonathan Pryce could've played a really good Philip, had he had a script, and same with Lesley Manville. Dominic was a total miscast as Charles, and go from the FABULOUS scene with Josh O'Connor screaming at Emma Corrin about how she needs to be nicer to his mistress to this guy who's like. Breakdancing with the kids, because he sooooo loves the At Risk Youths (which is so racially coded, and looks a lot worse now that we know Charles is one of the people who asked about Archie's skin tone). The whitewashing of Charles in the last two seasons of the show is INSANE. One standout is the episode about Mohamed Al-Fayed because Salim Daw is an ACTOR!!!! baby but the show is also incredibly fetishistic and offensive in its treatment of the Fayeds so. At what cost. I find it rather odd that the show missed an opportunity to track the interesting angle of Philip and Diana's relationship after s4 (Tobias and Emma were great together, of course) because Philip really was advocating for her on some level up until the last minute in Charles and Diana's marriage (when Diana was like "UMMMM REMEMBER HOW YOU SPEAK TO YOUR BETTERS ROYAL WHITE TRASH" lmao because she did legitimately have bluer blood than Philip) and that's the kind of quirky thing The Crown used to thrive on.

Season 6--Again, Debicki and Salim Daw give strong performances (as does Khalid Abdalla as Dodi, but he barely gets time, so). Again, the Fayeds get a horrible treatment from the script, but in terms of acting probably the best moment of season 6 was Mohamed's reaction to Dodi's death. Otherwise, pretty horrible. Ghost Diana was bizarrely handled. This fiction that Charles and Diana were on good terms in the end was... lmao. She hated that man. Anyway, it was laughably bad, William and Harry were hopelessly miscast (justice for Harry, lol, PM dropped some obvious hints that he was less than happy with the royal family but I'm like my guy you really could've done more, give us stronger Chaos Harry foreshadowing you coward) and it just ended so weirdly. I hate.

Man, what a ride. I will always love the first four seasons. But damn, it crashed and burned.

#the crown #i finished that shit and went '.... that's it?'

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