#i have not felt so much equal love for an ensemble cast of characters in so long

[viridiave]

8path2 demo first impressions like less than a week before the full release because I am. So bored.

It's mostly spoiler-free! Mostly!

Ochette - My starter! I relate to her a lot in terms of atmosphere and physique (because I too am small and brown and from an island country)! Mechanically, she's my favorite traveler because of just how much they've buffed the Hunter job - like?? You are just never going to run out of stuff??? For breaking and healing??? Her story's a little slow-starting for now and I'm keeping a close eye on it in case uh - some unsavory things happen. Culturally.

Castti - Out of all the stories, I look forward to playing hers the most. Castti was my second Chapter 1, and my god is it a wild ride. I also just love Castti as a character - like? She's nice without being too motherly or demure? Her personality has darker undertones to it that isn't immediately obvious but it's clear to us that she's ultimately a model apothecary that has a heart of gold??? She's steeped in so much mystery and I'm dying to know more about her

Throne - I was absolutely not expecting much out of Throne. I will admit that Therion's story tempered my expectations a bit - but her story came swinging out of the woodwork being so distinguishable from Therion's that it made me care about her so much like?? I want so badly to see her be free. Her Chapter 1 set the scene for her circumstances and personality so well that it made me attached to her gjdjfjf also her recruitment is S-tier 10/10 Throne is a dog person

Osvald - Man I was actually most excited for Osvald's tale when the trailers first dropped - and while it's still amazing in my eyes, I feel like the other Chapter 1's just whisked me away a lot better than if I just started with him like how I initially planned. That said, I am extremely happy about getting to play as a canonical DILF whose first chapter is a freakin prison break :DDDD

The amount of worldbuilding it establishes is also refreshing like - I just screamed when they explained that he was the only prisoner there with a muzzle and I want so badly to examine the implications of that.

Partitio - Partitio's Chapter 1 made me shed tears. I was not fucking ready. I was not READY for the way they handled his story - it was a refreshing and hard-hitting portrayal of commerce and it does so much for his character like??? There's too much that I can say about Partitio's well-founded optimism and circumstances and personality but I'd be here for hours and I would not be fucking past the scene where he asks his dad to pretend that there was meat in the stew. I love Partitio so goddamn much.

Agnea - Agnea's story is what I'd describe as a lighter Partitio - and I say this in that this was the second-closest time that this game was able to make me cry. I went into this expecting a light story about a girl who wants to make everyone smile, and I got it - but the way they went about it endeared me to Agnea so much that I unironically would bawl if I think about how sweet and earnest she is. I want to see her succeed so bad and my god the full release really can't come any closer huh :'''DDDD

Temenos - I did not expect to like Temenos this much. But then I played his chapter and it begins with THAT and I just - his story is going to make me scream. It already did actually - multiple times, whether it be because Crick is dying of the gay or because of the things it does to my Catholic Guilt?? I feel like I'll end up relating to Temenos the most out of the 8 just because of that angle of doubt it shines on religion even if I do feel like the insurgents are too heavy-handed.

Hikari - Oh Hikari gods bless you. He is precious and I mean this completely as in he is so full of love for his people and that just broke me. He embodies the spirit of 'these are my dear, beloved people. They are mine, and I love them all so much.' and I am a goddamn sucker for it. And he's not without intrigue outside of that either like??? The mystery behind the curse of the Ku Clan??? It mechanically being integrated as his Latent Power and how the voice acting reflects that??? God why is this game so good at this and why is the 24th so far away

[ingravinoveritas]

This past week, I traveled to London to see Macbeth. Everything I had heard and seen about David, Cush Jumbo, and the overall production convinced me that it was not to be missed, and so I took the crazy chance of purchasing a ticket months ago, and it was the first time I've ever gone to another country just for a play.

Ever since I was a kid, I have been going to Broadway shows, and the experience of live theatre has always been something incomparable and incredibly meaningful to me. Seeing something beyond Broadway, however, never felt possible until now. This opportunity arose at a moment when I was finally able to seize it, and now that I have attended the play not once, but twice (thanks to a lovely person who was able to help me obtain a £25 day ticket), I can say that Macbeth was, without question, the most amazing thing that I have ever seen on stage.

What follows is my review/thoughts on the production, and I will try my best to avoid spoilers (though fair warning that one or two may arise, so proceed with caution).

In high school, Shakespeare was something we were taught. It was an assumed part of the curriculum, labeled as a classic. Yet it seemed to exist in a time capsule--a product of its era, and of an English language barely proximate to the one we speak today. We learned Macbeth on the page, in annotations and themes and meter, rather than something pulsing, beating, living. Something that makes us feel. And for nearly two hours in a beautiful Victorian theatre in a little corner of the West End, all I did was exactly that.

I felt. And after seeing this play, I am not the same person on a molecular level that I was before.

Everything about this play--from David's mesmerizing portrayal of Macbeth to Cush Jumbo's wrenching turn as Lady Macbeth to the entire ensemble cast to the staging choices (light, sound, and so on)--is extraordinary. It is breathtakingly ruinous. It is so fully immersive that by the end you somehow feel bruised, viscerally disgusted and wrung out in equally beautiful measure.

It's almost misleading to say that we the audience are simply watching the play, because thanks to the binaural audio design (headphones), we are in Macbeth and Lady Macbeth's minds, and become accomplices to the characters' wicked deeds. When the porter (Jatinder Singh Randhawa) comes on to provide comic relief at exactly the perfect moment, it soon becomes clear that it is a distraction from our own discomfort at what has just happened. But it is a short-lived respite, as we are soon plunged back into the action and the characters' spiraling descent into madness.

In terms of David specifically, seeing him on television or on any screen profoundly pales to seeing him on the stage. In much the same way that the stage is Michael's natural habitat, it is also David's. The way he moves, the way he holds himself when he's not even speaking--which I got to see up close when he knelt directly in front of me on several occasions--is meticulous. David becomes the character he is playing, down into the pit of his soul. He disappears so thoroughly that I very quickly forgot that I was even watching him.

So many people can recite Shakespeare, but there is a marked difference between recitation and what David does. Together, David and Cush make Macbeth and Lady Macbeth feel like the Bonnie and Clyde of the Elizabethan age (only hornier). And the themes the play invokes--greed, fear, jealousy, power--are shown to be themes not of a particular era, but of humanity. David especially is so preternaturally good at making all of that unbearably real. He not only makes Shakespeare accessible to the modern world--an already difficult feat on its own--he makes it timeless.

For the last ten minutes of the play, I felt like I stopped breathing. The evil that Macbeth perpetrates, and the realization that he has not become like this, but rather that this is who he has always been, hits full force. As much as this play is very definitely an ensemble piece, David is the standout. He commands the stage, and at no point is he more powerful than when Macbeth is falling apart near the end.

(On a purely aesthetic level, this is also when David looks most beautiful--the wild hair, the form-fitting shirt heaving with the rise and fall of his greyhound lean chest, and the majestic sweep of the kilt with every frenzied movement. The complete erosion of the line between sanity and insanity, but also showing us how tenuous that line was to begin with. And he is utterly gorgeous while doing so.)

It's also at this moment in the play that we see how skillfully David has manipulated the audience. Where Michael uses a character's emotions much more overtly and aggressively--sniffing the audience out, stalking around the stage, feeling as if he's about to pull you up with him--David is far more controlled. He draws you in slowly, carefully, and it's only when we see the depths of Macbeth's depravity (notably killing Young Siward) that we realize the truth:

He got us. He made us the witnesses to Macbeth's malice, made sure we couldn't look away. And now we are complicit.

If I had to pinpoint any negatives about the play (which is extremely difficult to do), it's that there is only a brief moment where the pacing lags just slightly, and it's because David is off stage for a considerable period of time. The cast is absolutely incredible, bar none, but the energy doesn't quite maintain that high level when he is not there.

Also, from a sensory standpoint, this is very much not a sensory-friendly production. There are several instances of sudden loud noises in the headphones (which I found especially jarring), as well as the use of flashing lights, and considerable use of smoke at multiple points. All of these were more acute because I was sitting in the Stalls (second row), so I can only speak to it from that vantage, rather than from other locations in the theatre. But for anyone who is autistic (as I am) or has sensory-processing challenges, be advised that this play is definitely inaccessible in those respects.

When I left the Harold Pinter Theatre that night, I felt as though my entire central nervous system had been rearranged. There genuinely is no way to be normal about this play, because it is not a normal play. It takes apart everything you know about Macbeth and puts it back together in the most unexpected, electrifying way. It is the beauty of destruction, and no one embodies that more perfectly than David. Even days later, I can still feel the buzzing of my skin, the blood rushing through me, fingertips tingling from some heady combination of arousal and fear. (Or as Dr. Frank N. Furter once put it: "A mental mind fuck can be quite nice...")

The moment the lights went to black, every single person in that theatre was on their feet in a standing ovation. The applause was thunderous, and seemed even louder in the wake of the complete silence that preceded it.

I had sat in that silence--awestruck, captivated--and thought to myself that I could watch this production forever. And I would go back and do it all over again right now if I could. If you have the means, the opportunity, it is an experience I cannot recommend highly enough.

David is truly a master of his craft, and yet performs without a hint of ego. He gives everything he has and leaves it all on the stage. And what he and this team of people have come together to give us is something I will remember for the rest of my life.

(Pictures taken on 10/12/2024.)

[weareyour4]

Experience Disney’s The Lion King - ElmQuill1617

Currently, over at the Lyceum Theatre in London’s West End, you will find Disney’s The Lion King. This musical has been there since 1999 and is one of the longest-running West End shows. Somehow, despite me being an avid theatregoer, The Lion King had passed me by, so I decided to go along and see what I’d been missing.

To be completely honest, despite it being a popular long-running show, I was sceptical about how much I would enjoy The Lion King. In the past, I have seen other Disney West End productions, which I haven’t connected to. I felt that, in some ways, they were making a show which pleased the audience, rather than choosing to take the essence of the film and take it above and beyond for the stage adaptation. This is one of the things I loved about The Lion King – it seemed to really utilise the art of live theatre and make not just a show to watch, but, rather, a show to experience.

The ambience is set as soon as you enter the auditorium, with the sounds of animals subtly in the background. The actors can be seen both on-stage and in the auditorium at points during the show, which makes for an immersive and exciting atmosphere and even as I sat up in the Grand Circle, I felt fully involved in the action. The cast was phenomenal, with every performer contributing equally as an ensemble, though I have to give a special mention to Gary Jordan, who plays the role of Zazu. The combination of the brilliant blue and white costume to represent the sky, the incredible Zazu puppet and Gary’s performance, bringing the character to life, really left a big impression on me. I hadn’t anticipated leaving the theatre feeling so fond of such a sarcastic African red-billed hornbill, but here we are!

One of the reasons that I hadn’t liked previous Disney West End productions was due to audience behaviour. In particular, I had gone to see Aladdin a few years back with my mum as a birthday present and the tickets were not cheap. Neither of us were really into the show as a whole and we found that there were problems with the sound, which meant that we often couldn’t hear the lyrics certain actors were singing. Aside from that, though, the two of us were almost surrounded by a large group of school children. They, and many other audience members, spent much of the performance singing along, chatting, leaving the auditorium, coming back in, leaving again and coming back in again. The teachers had decided to sit next to each other, rather than spreading out to watch the children and the fact that they were singing along and chatting, too, suggests that they would have done nothing about it, even if they had been sat apart. Thankfully, at The Lion King, I didn’t have any problems at all.

It’s great for people to visit the theatre, especially when they’ve never been before - it opens up a whole new world and can inspire people in many, many positive ways. The more people who go to the theatre, the more audience members are buying tickets, merchandise, drinks from the bar and ultimately, keeping shows running and theatres open. The trouble, is that when people haven’t been to the theatre before, they may not be familiar with theatre etiquette, which is ultimately to be respectful of everyone else in the theatre. When theatre-goers have paid around £50 of their hard-earned money to go and support the arts, they don’t expect to be sitting next to someone screaming song lyrics in their ear or lighting up the room, as they check their phone every three minutes (the latter of which happened to me at both Hamilton and In the Heights – sorry, Lin-Manuel Miranda).

Of course, many people would love to go to the West End, but they might be thinking that tickets are out of their price range. Have no fear, there are many ways that you can get tickets at a reasonable price and here’s how:

Ticket lotteries are available for shows such as Hamilton, which are free to enter and if you win, you get one or two heavily discounted tickets, depending on how many you requested.

If you are interested in seeing The Book of Mormon, they have a ticket lottery in-person at The Prince of Wales Theatre, London. If successful, you win either one or two tickets for the best seats in the stalls section, paying only £20 each.

A limited number of tickets for same-day theatre performances are available, mostly from the TodayTix app. Those will come at a discounted price, but sell out fast, so get in there quick!

Also on TodayTix, there is the option to search for theatre tickets which cost £20 or less.

Seat Plan is a website where members of the public can leave reviews of the theatre seat which they sat in, stating what the view was like from the seat, along with an accompanying photo. When you have reached a certain number of seat reviews, you get rewarded with either a Seat Plan gift card, to get theatre tickets from their website, or a Theatre Tokens gift card.

I would recommend considering buying theatre tickets which say that they are “restricted view.” If you search for those seats on Seat Plan, you will be able to see a photo of what the view is like and read what people thought about sitting there. In my experience, restricted view seats often aren’t that restricted at all and are worth paying the £25 less than the person who will be sitting in the seat next to you!

Treat yourself to a trip to the theatre and have a great day!

[astralscrivener]

for the book asks: 3 4 5 6?

3. What were your top five books of the year?

oohhh i love this question!! i read a Lot of good books this year so this is hard to narrow down so i will do my best

1. the darkness outside us by eliot schrefer rewired my brain chemistry entirely. i think the marketing leaned a little too hard into “haha cute gays in space” and did not prepare me for the existential space horror and the romance of it all. i’m NOT a reread person generally but we’re approaching the time of year that i read it (early january) and i’m really feelin a reread this year. my tbr stack is so big so i shouldn’t but i’m just 👀👀👀

2. babel, or the necessity of violence: an arcane history of the oxford translators’ revolution by r.f. kuang everyone is raving about this and i am one of them!! it tackles colonialism and white privilege so well, and i love the way r.f. kuang set it up like an academic paper with the long title and the FOOTNOTES. and i love that in general she gives us. a bibliography in the back of the book. you can FEEL how much research goes into her writing. i’m also a little biased because i was a classics major and i miss doing translation, and the book made me look at translation from a new perspective!! also i cried

3. the fifth season by n.k. jemisin this has been on my tbr for so long and i finally read it for my queer lit class and it fucks SO hard. i love the worldbuilding in this one, i love the use of narration and perspective, i love the characters, i’m emotional about syenite and alabaster, and i NEED TO READ THE NEXT TWO BOOKS. as soon as the semester is over and i get thru a couple of the things i’m reading rn, i’m hopping on it

4. the city of dusk by tara sim a lot of people say this should be YA because the characters are early 20s and act like people in their early 20s but i loved it. the entire time i was reading it i was just like. this is something i want to write. this is something i would write. this has the vibes of stuff i am writing right now. just a book handcrafted to appeal to me, personally. entirely queer main cast but it didn’t feel to me like some of the other books that came out in the last couple years that are queer, if that makes sense? i feel like some books hinge on the “look at our diverse cast!” marketing but have no substance, but this was FUN. very much dark d&d campaign vibes. the main character is unhinged. the gods are in a broken-ass marriage. i just loved it so fucking much but also that’s from a personal basis

5. ocean’s echo by everina maxwell another one that’s more personal bias than anything! i adored winter’s orbit last year and was very excited to read this one. it’s a milSF/romance (shelved as SF) and i love the main characters so much. everina maxwell keeps writing family fuckups who use bravado to cover up the fact that they hate themselves falling in love with characters who are so duty-driven and anxious that they’ll let themselves get hurt over and over without standing up for themselves and i will eat it up every single time

4. Did you discover any new authors that you love this year?

i knew i would love r.f. kuang and n.k. jemisin, i just hadn’t gotten the chance to read them before this year but holy shit. holy fucking shit. both of their writing is so good. the poppy war is another fave read of the year, and i said it up there but i’ll say it again, i’m SO excited to continue the broken earth trilogy. i also have the city we became and i’m really looking forward to it!!

i also read the seven devils duology by laura lam and elizabeth may, and i love the way they wrote their characters. it’s an ensemble cast and i think they handled it so well. there were some characters that were more main than others, but none of them ever felt like caricatures just meant to fill a role/trope, yknow? laura lam has a new book coming out and it’s got dragons in it, and i am Looking

5. What genre did you read the most of?

i read just about an equal amount of fantasy and SF! i think fantasy just wins by like, one book. this doesn’t surprise me!! those are my favorite genres to read. i like it when characters can punch the physical manifestations of their problems. in the face. with enchanted swords. or shoot them with laser guns. yknow?

6. Was there anything you meant to read, but never got to?

SO MANY. so many books, not enough time in the year. i meant to start the wayfarers series by becky chambers, the strange the dreamer duology by laini taylor, finish the villains duology by v.e. schwab, and finally get through a full reading of the iliad and the odyssey. i’ve read most of them, but i haven’t ever actually read the full thing, because there are simply some passages my classics professors saw and said “y’all don’t need to know this <3″. i will get to you one day, catalogue of ships 😔

end-of-year book ask!

[anxiousheart7]

As much as I get and agree with this point, Ive long since thought that Astarion was the unexpected breakout character and nobody really expected him to be the one everybody gravitated towards in the game.

He shares a lot of traits with characters like Spike from BTVS - another enigmatic character who came in as snarky foil to antagonise the heroes, but turned into fan favourite and was elevated from there. And I do think that Astarion was clearly modelled at least partially on the Spike blueprint.

He had some attention, but I really noticed that around June he started to come onto my radar through TikTok edits (I didn’t even know they were making BG3 before this point). And he was instantly engaging for me. I then started delving down the rabbit hole and by the time the game came out, I was invested.

But for me, everything I saw in the promo campaign in the run up and the subsequent post-launch content suggests to me that he was never expected to become the figurehead for the game.

In a lot of the early access footage I’ve seen and pre-release promos I noticed a few things:

Lae’zel is the only companion character featured in the intro cutscene. Similarly in the behind the scenes videos, many of the showcases focused on Shadowheart above the others and Gale seemed to be framed as the male lead, shown further in the first animated promo where he was the de-facto leader.

Astarion was always tucked in the back. On the ensemble image from the earlier marketing campaigns, he’s got his back turned and he’s off to the side, whereas Lae’zel is up front with the other two also centred as though he was supposed to be this option but less appealing than the more ‘good aligned’ characters.

Then I saw an updated banner closer to release and after the first wave of TikTok videos where people were really zoning in on the date scene and suddenly he’s front and centre and, although their image sizing have all been enlarged, they are more evenly prominent when compared with the earlier banner. Wyll has even been enlarged here to showcase his character more when compared to the older image.

It only seemed that once the interest in Astarion really started to take off, the attention went onto him.

I’m not sure what it was that really sparked his x-factor. Whether it was Neil’s superb performance, the engaging story, his dialogue in particular or all of the above, but for some reason, once Astarion Airlines took off, everyone was on board.

Now, I’m not disputing the point this OG poster is making. I do think that Wyll and Karlach especially deserve more love and attention than they’ve had. I like the themes they touched upon with his story. I felt that Karlach had so much potential to really explore and I wonder if she had less development time than the others (I know she was a release only story). This certainly seems to be the case considering the

I think the main issue is that character-wise, when the anti-hero character is so strong like this, you need an equally compelling and balanced hero archetype. Jack Sparrow and Will Turner are another example of this. Jack’s iconic at this point, Will is a strong hero but is definitely overshadowed at times by Jack. But they still bounce well off one-another.

Spike worked because for the majority of his early seasons he was on the sidelines, popping in and out to roll his eyes and snark at Buffy. It worked because the other cast shared that snappy dialogue and dynamic characters.

Whilst we do get this to some extent with the more ‘good’ aligned characters, they might not feel strong enough to pull the focus back in equal measure at the moment.

I do think it is unfair of me to imply that the creative team behind the game weren’t expecting the fan reaction to sway in this direction. I’m sure they had some inkling of what might come, but I don’t think they expected this as it has been.

But we’re in the eye of the storm. Astarion’s fan community is in a fever pitch right now so it feels like he’s dominating the space. I wonder if we revisit the game in a few months time once it’s settled a bit, we might see a little more of how the others develop. With there being so many interesting pieces of dialogue still to be uncovered, I’m sure we’ll deepen their stories as much as we have with our beloved vampire spawn.

I wish every day that Larian heard people freaking out about Astarion and went “yeah cool we made a good character” and then KEPT DEVELOPING THE OTHER CHARACTERS JUST AS MUCH. People liking Astarion shouldn’t have meant working less/cutting other characters content and writing. I love the concept of Wyll just as much, but we never get to know Wyll which is why it’s so much harder to write for him. Gale was supposed to have Tara in camp but we never got that content.

Astarion’s story is so so important, but every other story was (and is) important too. I hope with patches comes some more cut content, but even more than that I hope we get some more resolutions for the characters. I want Lae’zel to have the option to align her belief in herself, not any god. I want Karlach to be able to take apart a steel watcher, to find what makes them tick and try to apply it to herself, it doesn’t even have to work I just hate that the game alluded to it and then it went nowhere. Larian, your character design is amazing, I love all of your characters and wish you gave all of them the same love you gave Astarion.

[greatrunner]

"Demon Commander! Lanfear's Fierce Attack!"

Okay, I lied, and watched the first four episodes of season two instead of going to sleep for work... the week before last.

Things I wasn't expecting:

Mat being recast with some blockhead instead of keeping the guy who looks like a discount "That Actor from the Umbrella Academy"? What gives?

Team Red has a son, and not a side-piece. The show is trying really, really hard not to let her fall into the generic Foe Yay, and I can appreciate that.

There's a whole group of people with nasty fingernail hygrine, big into slavery. That's... unfortunate.

Moraine's arc at the moment is eating dirt from all the people she was less than kind or empathetic to. I kinda love it all while feeling bad for her.

Her sister felt abandoned and therefore disowned her. She gave Moraine the opportunity to just talk and reconnoiter with her, but when it was apparent that she was just gonna do as she pleased and potentially threatened the life she built, she pulled rank.

Despite giving her space, and dealing with the loss of connection, Lan tries to remain Moraine's partner, and gets a taste of the behavior the Ronin Warriors had to deal with when Moraine wasn't being forthright or outright lying to them. The clinch, though, was Moraine telling Lan he was just her jobber, not her equal.

And it's hard to feel bad for him in that moment, because, when it wasn't him on the receiving end of her shadiness, he never called her on it in way that wasn't half-hearted, or making excuses. And without Moraine to play jobber to, Lan as a character is probably less interesting than he was as the bodyguard.

Like, I can definitely see him becoming an stronger character (he's got a backstory with potential), but as it stands, it feels like the story is just keeping him on pause until it's time to throw the band back together. And then what? Awkward silence and some apologies that won't actually be apologies?

Lan, and the other Warders (and their girlfriend, Team Green) underline just how not interesting I find the whole "bond" storytelling. There's a lot telling you about the bond, how it transcends all normal romantic or platonic relationships. But the showing aspect of it all just makes it look like a normal relationship, or a less interesting version of The Bodyguard without one iota of that Costner/Huston chemistry.

Considering Moraine and Lan's dynamic, it's hard not see it as "Master and Servant" (esp. with the racial dynamics at play). To that end, the unfortunate and racist implications already at play in the series are at their worst within the Warder/Channeler dynamic.

The discussion between Lan and that non-malicious Black guy reinforces the idea that they weren't "equals" to their partners ("We're here to remind them they're not Gods!"). It's just... not great.

Again, all of this sounds exactly like something a white dude would come up with when creating his idea of a world where women have the 'most power' and guys who share that same position, are driven mad. Amazon Prime just made it worse with their spin on the Colorblind casting wheel. Like, sheesh.

Beyond Lan, one of my biggest problems with this series so far is maybe the lack of a dynamic between the five major leads. Allow me to regale you with examples from two Children's anime.

There's this thing anime used to, where in an ensemble series, the characters spent x-amount of episodes together before separating them. It was a proven formula that worked sometimes, and failed others.

Digimon: Digital Monsters made it as far as eight episodes before the Big Breakup. Before that each episode gave its characters a "focus episode". Ronin Warriors's break up was the following episode (one that's notorious for the sudden recasting of some of its English VA leads).

The show's story points lived and died by how much the writing could convince us that these characters cared abut enough about other to want find each other again.

In the case of Digimon, preaching the message of togetherness and teamwork makes their estrangement work to the advantage of the plot. The English dub manufacture's a tenuous familiarity with each character, but being trapped in the Digital World forces them to actually work together.

Both and after the separation, their circumstances demand that they get to know each other along the way. Not just for the benefit of the audience, but to the benefit of all seven (then eight) kids and their monster companions.

Ronin Warriors, on the other hand, has always been more about the individual journey and their relationship to the mystical armor (born from the corpse of their enemy, Talpa IIRC. It's been 10 years since I watched it last ;_;).

The show also didn't hide the fact that Ryō, Rowen, Cye, Kento, and Sage didn't know each other from Adam. Hell, it really doesn't even go into the origin story of how they got their armor like Sailor Moon did with the Sailor Scouts their and transformation wands.

From the jump, the boys know more than the audience. Talpa's the bad guy, the Netherrealm is something they have to protect the world (but mostly Japan) from. Their mentor is the Ancient One, a "Stupid Monk" (Talpa, derogatory) who fought Talpa eons ago.

What they're not expecting is four dudes (the Dark Warlords) with far more experience and power than themselves. They're a bunch of teenage boys who try to upstage each other and aren't interested in working together is their fatal flaw.

Ronin Warriors, however individual focused it tends to be, also features unity as a big theme of the show. Their separation and subsequent Side Questing to find each other is more about the practicalities of their job (if they don't work together than evil wins).

Their relationships were something they built along the way, right until the end of the series. It was formula that worked so well, they repeated it in some fairly subpar (and racist*) OVAs (Gaiden, Legend of the Inferno Armor*, and Message) with diminishing returns. But they're also the only time in the franchise (excluding Message) where the Ronin's feel like true friends, so go-figure.

To keep running with this comparison, Wheel of Time clearly aspires to be about a group of people. Right now, it's far more focused on the aesthetics of being an Epic Fantasy. From the start of S2 alone, there have been more new characters and more new locations thrown at the audience than a little bit. None of seems to be to the benefit of the story so much as it's to match the lore output of something like, again, Game of Thrones (which had years, film length runtimes, and more than 8 episodes) or, Grandaddy Tolkien's Legendarium.

Season one never really allowed any of the characters to actually be friends or casual acquaintances. Individual characters weren't so much given arcs as they were given archetypal roles to occupy in the "Kill the Dark Lord" Boss Rush.

In principle, Wheel of Time Ronin Warrior'ing Individual storylines isn't a bad thing, but it ain't working what little ensemble dynamics that show built. It just hopes you buy all these people are friends and miss each other. Because Mat, his abandonment of the group, and how little he impacts the plot, kinda says it doesn't work. Not for me.

Rand's character feels like he's in a holding pattern until the story finally reaches a point to where the madness-included powers are necessary. It's kinda like watching Anakin Skywalker if he wasn't a self-involved jerk who leapt at every chance to avoid accountability, blame other people, and committing to the principles of his job.

Rand is allowed to focus on someone other than his not-girlfriend, namely himself. I feel like the buzz cut drives that home. No more Fantasy Romance Guy, he's in his Vader era. Even his relationship with the tavern owner is way more engaging.

Nynaeve's story arc is definitely more about the individual than it is the group. Her whole thing is that she doesn't consider herself, and mammy's everybody. She doesn't trust anybody and figures she is the only qualified person for the job. (I feel called out.)

Combine that deep-seated trauma and abandonment issues, and you got a story comparable to Ryō trying to learn how to master Hariel's White Inferno Armor. Or Gohan reaching SS2. A lot of false starts, and just like Rand's deal with his powers, none of that stuff is really interesting.

The moment she snaps right better pop the fuck off just like the aforementioned or I'm gonna be salty. DDOS is not fun.

The show wants to build a relationship between her and Team Red, who, not the surprise no one, is evil. I'm not against it, but I also can't really buy that Red would be that distraught over potentially losing her to a Last Crusade test when so much of their dynamic was developed off-screen. Did she really spend that much time with Mat that she couldn't dedicate time to mentoring her on the low before she actually got permissions? Sounds like Chickadee making excuses.

I need someone in this group to be the non-magic Tank, and I was ready for Nynaeve to turn her back on the white tower nonsense and return home. I really liked that story turn. It was a choice she made for herself, and not for anyone else, and hey, it even gave Lan something to do (become her House Husband, lmao). So for it to turn out to be an illusion where she got more than one Get-out-of-Jail-Free card? Disappointing.

On the flip-side, the other gal (Moraine's No. 1 Fan), and Princess Not-Killing-Eve gets stuck with the Harry Potter plot. I hate how fantasy narratives reinforce and indulge this storyline. The "Bully the Main Character into Becoming a Proficient Learner" trope with lower-than-low treatment and work around a school that doesn't pay them much respect as human beings. I've never been interested in that storytelling because it requires that the lead become an emotional doormat in a lot of situations.

This gets abruptly interrupted, of course, with Red's Heel Turn, and their subsequent enslavement. This particular story turn isn't doing the character any favors, and just feels like way to put the characters back into the Globe Trotting subplot. Nynaeve's a blockhead, but the shit that last episode pulled was embarrassing.

Perrin's storyline doesn't feel all that engaging. The show rarely checks in on Perrin in the five episodes aired, he truly feels like an afterthought. The show finally gets around to focusing on his powers as a "Wolfbrother", a guy who communicates with wolves. There's a new minor Black character who saves him from certain slavery, the Ascended Wolfbrother.

AW isn't a particularly interesting character, but he's not terrible either. He's got some good moments with Perrin with regards to mentoring him, but he's your rote "Ugh, Humanity" type characters. He exists just to tell Perrin he's "running away" from his destiny because Perrin isn't:

Just blindly going along with AW's plans

Doesn't appreciate being lied to

Doesn't appreciate his relationships diminished on account of their humanity.

Out of all the characters, Perrin's Random Enemy/Ally Encounters seems to highlight what I really don't like about most Fantasy worlds. Every character, culture, or world, begins to sound like abstract names for Football Teams, with everyone's disdain stemming from being on opposing teams.

It's clear that Wheel of Time plans on stretching much of its story out with Talpa's Evil Warlords getting the Gang Back Together to free Talpa. Instead of hyper-focusing on "that one special person who might not be who you expected" like GOT did with Jon and Arya, the audience instead will be treated with what's shaping up to be an MMO quest log.

Daughter of the Night (Lady Kayura), Father of Lies (Anubis) are two quest lines completed. I know there's lie seven of these hoes, but I guess the next couple of seasons will be about Dias, Kale, and Sekhmet.

Unless the show surprises me, which it has done plenty of, in which case... we'll see.

Forever laughing at the fact that the guy who got drunk on the Game Awards (or was that his brother), and was in A Way Out, is "The Father of Lies". But was also in Westworld as some random jobber with a tablet.

Shade, no shade. But, like how does bro keep landing these gigs?

[iiruwu]

give us some harringrove recs bestie!

i gotchu bae!! but be warned, many of these are pretty much just the ones i've read at the top of the list, filtered by most kudos b/c thats just how i find all my fics. so, there's a chance you might've gone through them already. regardless these are some of my faves and have stuck with me for years after reading them. (this was also requested by @roseinthewoods so here you go!)

let us begin:

Under the Covers by ToAStranger -> my all-time fave harringrove fic. this absolutely deserves its popularity and has one of the best characterizations i've ever seen of the entire cast post-s2. not only are billy and steve super fleshed out, but i just adored how steve interacted with jonathon and nancy (who were equally great as far as characterization goes) along with many other characters. but steve rlly shines in this one! this author truly brings the world to life with their writing and makes you feel like you're really watching everyone's lives unfold in an organic, but also bittersweet story :)

dried up, half full by lymricks -> SUCH a good billy characterization. i mean, truly. also one of the best interpretations i've seen of what could have been billy's journey towards becoming a better person. lots of angst and inner turmoil. made me feel like i was truly in billy's shoes and rlly conveyed this sense of just not being able catch a break in any aspect of life throughout the story. im also gonna throw a quote in here that i have had saved for a while just 'cause it was so heartbreakingly good:

we could be heroes (just for one day) by brawls, ToAStranger -> another fic with really good characterization overall. unfortunately this one is unfinished but as im skimming this im remembering that the dynamic between steve and billy for this was just AGHHHH i was frothing at the mouth the whole time. so funny and sweet and very slowww to build up. it was a very realistic take on billy in specific post-s3, but, more than that, i loved the inclusion of almost the entire ensemble throughout this fic. the kids were such rays of light, it rlly made this fic that much better :)

master of puppets, i'm pulling your strings by wearealltalesintheend -> ONE OF MY FAVES!! this fic hooked me on the idea of billy & robin being friends and i was totally obsessed for a little while afterwards. the author wrote the two of them so damn well together in the s3 plotline and i just love how they were snarky as hell but also progressively more friendly and deeply trusting of each other as billy continued to open up. its also refreshing to see harringrove from an outsider perspective, with robin being there to help them connect the dots. (also characterization was an a+ as usual!)

Don't Leave Me (Hanging on the Telephone) by Glitter_Bug -> this is a fic that is a lottt more recent in comparison to the others. i've been reading this since it was about halfway done and i must say - the banter is PHENOMENAL between steve and billy. the dialogue alone hooked me in with how accurate to the 1980s it was with references and had me reading non-stop. the concept of billy being stuck in the upside-down and only able to contact the real world through the phone at steve's house is sooo damn good. it rlly offered a lot of opportunity for fun scenes with them through phone calls. this is also a fic that is actively being updated and is nearing the end soon!

Renegade (Who Had It Made) by moonflowers -> this was a very tender fic about billy's supposed death and included multiple POVs. i found max's POV abt her grief and coming to terms with his death to be such a nice inclusion that added a great touch to the story and also the many journal entries that she found as well!!! this fic felt very human and personal, like it was something not meant for ppl to see - which, considering the concept of max finding billy's journal with notes about steve in it and giving it to steve, makes sense. it was a nice harringrove slowburn overall!

andddd there we go! these are the most memorable ones i've read but there are so so many more harringrove fics out there that are just as good. i found some interesting ones just while skimming the tag alone. hopefully you liked this anon!!! these are very near and dear to my heart :')

[laurenreviewsmovies]

Eternals

Director: Chloé Zhao

Starring: Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Kumail Nanjiani, Lia McHugh, Brian Tyree Henry, Lauren Ridloff, Barry Keoghan, Don Lee, Harish Patel, Kit Harington, Salma Hayek, and Angelina Jolie

Release Date: November 5, 2021

My Rating: 9/10 (it may not be everyone’s cup of tea but it’s a solid 7/10 or 8/10 in general. It personally checked all of my boxes, so it gets a higher rating than that)

My Review (ABSOLUTELY NO SPOILERS):

I’m still so in my head about this movie, four days later. So I apologize in advance for this review...it’s a lot more “stream of consciousness” than usual. But I just loved this movie so much and I don’t think it deserves the hate it’s been getting online

I will admit that after a day or so, and after another viewing, the movie lost some of its magic. It’s still a great, solid movie. I still really enjoyed all the characters and the plot. But there was something so MAGICAL about it...I was sooo drawn in during that first viewing. And time away from that first viewing hasn’t made me change my mind about how I feel about the movie. It’s shining a little less brightly but it’s still undeniably a gem. Even though my heart isn’t racing because of how awesome it was anymore...I did in fact raise my initial rating of the movie after a second viewing. It’s just a solidly GOOD movie.

My biggest compliment for this movie is how impressively it dealt with an ensemble cast. It’s hard to do a good ensemble cast movie. Guardians of the Galaxy spent half the movie explaining who all these team members were and how they all got together. The Avengers had 5 movies preceding it, explaining the characters that were going to be involved in the team. We already knew them before the movie started...and even then, Hawkeye and Black Widow were undeveloped and kind of set to the side. Neither group became a “team” until the end of the movie. I wasn’t confident that Eternals would be able to get us behind a team that had already been a team for 7000 years, I didn’t know if they could dive into the backstory efficiently without bogging down the progression of the plot. More than that, I didn’t think they’d be able to equally include 10 people in a story. I have never been happier to have been proven wrong.

Every single Eternal was an integral part of the story. The story didn’t focus on half the team and have the other half be on the sidelines, only being brought in when the plot required it (looking at you, Avengers, Guardians). Every single character is important to this story. You can’t take one out, or the whole story has to be rewritten. Every single character had emotional depth. Every single character was important and developed and complex. Not a single one of them is black and white. And even though we only got a couple of snapshots of the Eternals in the past, they were the perfect instances chosen to show how the group functioned together and what had happened to bring them to the point where they were today, in the modern day MCU. I loved them all so much, individually and as a group. Best group movie that the MCU has ever produced because it focused on the GROUP. Yeah, there are certainly ‘main’ characters out of the bunch, but every single other character played a pivotal role.

Eternals uses its runtime better than almost any other MCU movie. The pacing of this movie was outstanding. There wasn’t a single moment where a scene felt slow or unneeded. The flashbacks weren’t confusing (as much as I love Shang-Chi, that was one of my main critiques - the constant back and forth). The movie flowed extremely well and was well balanced between action sequences and exposition. My friend I went with the second time asked when a good time for a bathroom break was and honestly, there isn’t a good time. It’s a movie where every single minute needs to be watched in order to get the full experience. Eternals uses every single minute of it’s 2.5 hour runtime, and it does so very efficiently.

OVERALL TAKEAWAY:

This movie intertwines mythology, history, theology and ethics...all within the world of superheroes! That’s all I can really say without spoiling too much, but how awesome is that?! It’s not just a “here’s some superpowered people, here’s a villain trying to take over/destroy the world” film like a lot of Marvel movies have been. It’s an epic, plain and simple. It was everything I didn’t know I wanted or needed in a film. If not for the references to specific MCU events, this movie easily could’ve stood on its own as a new sci-fi story.

With two awesome bonus scenes and an ending that blatantly sets up for a sequel in a way we haven’t seen since Thor: Ragnarok where Thanos’s ship just shows up out of nowhere...this movie is definitely worth seeing.

WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN IMPROVED:

I had a couple critiques, of course. They all have to do with the plot. There were a few parts of the story where some actions taken by characters felt like cop-outs. I didn’t like the explanation for the one Eternal missing the final fight. They straight up have that Eternal explain why they’re skipping the fight but it just felt like the writers couldn’t find a way to fit that Eternal into the final battle so they just had them leave instead. I also didn’t like how they resolved the emotional turmoil another Eternal is going through AFTER the final fights. Both instances kind of just felt like cop-outs. The ending made sense, and was epic...I just feel like it could’ve been MORE. I didn’t hate it, I didn’t even dislike it...it just felt kind of weak compared to the rest of the film. Furthermore, the B plot, regarding the secondary antagonists...I want to say that they weren’t needed but they WERE. They needed to be in the story...it just felt like, at times, they weren’t serving a purpose. But then the next scene would happen and I’d change my mind again. I kept flip-flopping on them. You’ll know what I’m talking about when you see the movie.

WHAT I LOVED:

• The acting. All the performances were amazing.

• The plot. The story was fresh and new, especially when you compare it to the other stories in the MCU. A couple of plot twists that I didn’t see coming, that genuinely surprised me and filled me with joy.

• The complexity of the characters. They’re all GOOD, but every single character is also pretty flawed. The family dynamics...the only thing I love more than quality family dynamics are when they occur in a found family.

• The CGI. I saw some technical film people complaining online about the CGI but for a basic person like me? Who just loves consuming media? It was great.

• The sound and the visuals...if you go see any movie in IMAX or Dolby, let it be this one. I saw the movie first in IMAX and second in digital, and the digital version couldn’t compare. It quite literally felt like a dull version of the masterpiece I saw in IMAX. There aren’t a lot of movies where I can notice a huge difference, but this might be one of them. This movie was absolutely stunning and it deserves to be experienced

• The relationships. Whether they be familial or romantic. They were very emotional, believable, and relatable. Even the “love triangle” didn’t even seem like a petty battle. It was deeper than that. All the relationships were just so very visibly intimate.

• A female-male friendship. Literally. Best friends. No romance. It was beautiful.

• Men showing their emotions. Emotions outside of pride and anger. It really shouldn’t be that big of a deal that more than one man cries during this movie but it was refreshing to see nonetheless.

• The comedic relief. I was concerned when I saw Kumail get cast, because he’s been one of my favorite stand-up comedians for a decade now...I know him as the funny man. I figured they cast him to be the comedic relief. While he does provide some comedic relief...it’s very organic. And he’s not the only one who provides it. There’s enough comedic relief in this movie to lighten the mood but not enough that it feels like it’s trying too hard to provide a joke every minute. At its core, this movie is an action-drama.

[literateleah]

the paradox of emily prentiss’ audience perception and character design

some of y’all about to be real mad at me, but it must be said:

emily prentiss’ character design makes no sense: my personal opinion + an objective analysis

i think it can be challenging to separate the versions of characters we have in our little brains from actual canon content, but doing so is important for understanding what those characters are truly like, especially within the context of their environment and in contrast to others around them. plus developing a deeper understanding of the media we consume is super fun and interesting! with that being said: emily prentiss should not work for the fbi and here’s why (in three parts regarding who’s responsible: cbs, paget, and fans) (sit down and grab a snack i promise this is over 3k words)

quick disclaimer: i don’t dislike emily at all! that’s my girl, i just looked closer and realized some funky things the writers did and felt the need to analyze her of course: so let’s get into it

part one: what cbs did

cbs set the stage for emily’s introduction on the heels of the departure of lola glaudini as elle greenaway! lola has clarified that she decided to leave the show because filming in los angeles was not the best environment for her personally, and after one successful season on a major network (but not much established long term plot or drama beyond elle’s departure as a character) a consistent ensemble cast was required- particularly because the bau had been criticized for being predominantly male in the first few episodes of the show and not much development was given to penelope or jj yet. enter emily prentiss.

for the duration of seasons 2-3ish, emily was framed as a chip off the block that was elle greenaway, just slightly…richer? in her first few episodes emily was hesitantly polite but ambitious, clean cut, intellectually concise and held her own within the team. she seemed equal parts intimidated and frustrated by her male superiors (gideon, hotch) but certainly proves herself among other profilers. her childhood was explored only within reference to her strained relationship with her mother (which was only ever referenced once more after the fact) and we received a short overview of her educational and career history in her first few episodes. emily fit right into the hole elle had left, and didn’t have many major storylines yet.

seasons 4-6 brought a bit more development and depth to emily’s character! she begins dropping more snarky remarks, one liners, and socially deepening her relationships with the other team members. this seems more within the lines of elle’s design, but emily arguably took more time to grow into her place within the team. during the foyet arc she was vulnerable and supportive, and the doyle arc gave her some independence and agency she didn’t have previously. this era also solidified her appearance and persona as more edgy, which falls in line with general fanon perception of her character (especially when compared to jj or penelope). i can’t address this era or season 7 without mentioning that cbs was actively trying to remove paget from the cast, similar to how they did to aj cook as well. paget has spoken about this instance before, and i believe it slightly affected her portrayal of her character, and “lauren” was somewhat of a goodbye for both paget and emily (thus why she wished for mgg to direct since they were best friends).

season 7: in my opinion, one of the best seasons for emily. she was wisened and deeply wounded by her experiences with doyle, which was understandable of course. she returned to the team she loved and learned to appreciate life in a different way, remaining mature during this time period as well! though her departure was a bit less than graceful and sudden at the end of this season, it made sense compared to some other exits the team had seen.

now *sigh* all the rest.

paget as emily appears in two separate guest appearances (once in s9 and once in s11, and she is referenced offscreen as well) before permanently reprising her role as unit chief of the bau. these appearances were most likely to boost ratings and get the team back together (i.e. 200) or just to pepper in international cases (tribute). emily’s personality remains pretty consistent here, just more mature and comfortable in leadership positions (seeing as she is running an entire branch of an international law enforcement organization). then season 12 hit.

upon the departure of thomas gibson as hotch, cbs reached out to paget to see if she would be interested in fulfilling her role as emily within a longer term unit chief position. i’ll get into why this is wack in a few paragraphs, but the remainder of her time on the show is spent on a mature portrayal that seems very distant from her previous versions. emily is more authoritative, gives orders with ease, and has no qualms about leading a team of agents or even receiving promotion offers as director of the entire bureau.

thus concludes a general summary of the canon content cbs gave us as viewers. now let's talk about what they didn’t give us, regrettably

the primary aspect of emily’s design that comes to mind for many is her queer coding. though not much was to be expected from cbs, a prime time cable tv network, each of her relationships on the show (all with men) seemed oddly forced, and without much chemistry as compared to the SOs of other main characters. rumors of scrapped plotlines have floated around about what may have been, but the ultimate lack of acknowledgement of any queer characters in the main ensemble still leaves a feeling of disappointment to audiences, and leaves more to be desired as for how emily navigates social bonds.

part two (sidebar): what paget did

i think it could be agreed within audiences that paget brewster’s portrayal of emily made the role what it was! her dry witty delivery and emotional prowess combined with sitcom acting experience made her performance a mainstay for years. i think she did the best she could with a confusing and at times flat characterization, and brought the role to life.

paget also heavily contributes to fanon indirectly with her comments outside of the show (press, cameos, twitter etc). her general continued interest and fondness for the role post production affects fan perception, particularly in what she chooses to elevate and comment on. she and aj have both spoken about viewing jemily content, and paget and thomas have both also commented on hotchniss. most cast members feel free to comment on their characters in the appropriate timing, and seem open to discussing fanon ships and theories outside of canon!

part three: what fanon did

as we can tell from this fan space as well as the presence on insta, tik tok and twitter, fans LATCHED onto emily super quickly. she’s remained a favorite over the years, and this fan persistence is what brought her back so many times after leaving (so many times). in my opinion, queer coding and a bolder female trope (in contrast to her female counterparts) are the main pulls because they resonated with so many fans- new and old. with that being said, newer fans of the show in the past year in particular have been heavily influential in fanon, solely because of the large influx of fan content and popularity of it.

fan content began to take coding and bite size moments and snippets from the show as canon, and cemented it into much of the content and discourse they created. these small pieces of emily’s character are significant, but have become magnified by how easily they are to share and edit. for example, a collection of catchy one liners from emily over the seasons makes for a great video edit intro, or gifset! there’s absolutely no problem with this content, it just all combines to create a certain fanon perception no character escapes (this isn’t a phenomenon limited to emily or the cm fandom!)

these droves of content also solidified emily’s personality as much more defined, but at the same time, simplified it in a way that’s slightly harder to explain.

fanon: more emo/goth than canon basis

fanon: more introverted/anti social than canon basis

fanon: more violent/chaotic when canon emily is relatively well mannered and doesn’t start many conflicts (particularly in the workspace)

fanon: much less maternal when canon emily displays desire on multiple occasions (even crossing professional borders) for children, particularly teenage girls (possibly projection)

(again, nothing wrong with this interpretation at all and it still varies! This is just a generalization based on most of the popular content i have seen)

part 4: why it doesn’t work

let me start with this: emily prentiss does not like her job.

we don’t receive much in depth information about emily’s internal feelings and thoughts towards her mother beyond resentment. this stems from wanting to make it on her own, as a professional and as an individual (cough cough college deposits). this makes emily’s insistence on proving herself to authority figures in her earlier seasons is interesting to watch in different circumstances. she cites her experience and denies help from her mother when justifying her placement in the bau to hotch, she is extra vigilant about being helpful on her first case with gideon, etc. nevertheless, emily forges her own path outside of diplomacy and becomes a successful profiler and agent, with the help of her privilege, wealth and name whether she likes it or not. but if we read between the lines and fill in the blanks cbs neglected, these ambitions may subconsciously be oriented towards pleasing her mother.

example one: emily’s authority issues go further than just “rebellion” or “anarchy”, she frequently questions the ethics and sustainability of the work that the bau does. every team member does this, but emily much more so than anybody else.

in “amplification”, emily almost breaks federal protocol to inform civilians of anthrax threats. she butts heads with both hotch and rossi on this front, and ends the episode with having a conversation with rossi about the ethics of lying in their line of work. emily resigns to a solemn “it be like that” and moves along, accepting this reality.

on multiple different occasions emily laments to derek about the darkness she sees on the job, and it’s shown that this gets to her quickly on particularly bad cases. this is another contradiction of the design that she can supposedly “compartmentalize” better than others on the team, when she cannot unless the lives of others are at risk (doyle arc, s7 finale).

emily also responds in this way to many cases involving children, a similarity to jj many don’t notice upon first watching the series. “seven seconds” and “children of the dark” come to mind, during the latter in which emily is prepared to cross multiple professional lines to adopt a teenage girl left orphaned by the case, until hotch stops her and establishes that her emotions can’t rule her judgement on the job. regardless of hotch’s thoughts about her attempted caretaking abilities, these actions and impulses deeply contradict the typical bureaucratic pathways of the work the bau does.

the looming reputation of her mother’s diplomatic history hangs over emily, and after going to law school and working for the cia, she most likely did want to forge her own path as far away from being a socialite: being a spy. her inner nature doesn’t always reflect this profession, and leads me to believe that with her knowledge of psychology, law procedure and care for children: emily prentiss might be more inclined to working in social work, placing suffering children and teenagers in homes they deserve.

and finally, the hill i will die on: emily prentiss was an bad unit chief

this wonderful post touches on my general sentiment, but there were many reasons as to why emily prentiss’ career arc makes little to no sense (plot holes included).

first: her background. emily attended chesapeake bay university as well as yale and achieved a ba in criminal justice. keep in mind that though timelines evidently don’t exist in the cm universe, emily prentiss is ONE YEAR older than aaron hotchner (for context). in her first episode, she professes that she has worked for the bureau for a little under ten years in midwestern offices- something the audience laters knows to not be true. emily worked with the cia and interpol as a part of a profiling team and undercover agent up until roughly TWO YEARS before her canon introduction. plot holes and time gaps aside, this makes me wonder, why didn’t she just say the cia was a backstop without revealing the highly confidential nature of her work with doyle (similar to jj’s state department backstop and cover story)? penelope or hotch could have easily accessed her file and seen that she did not in fact have experience with the bureau in midwestern offices recently, and given the fact that erin strauss set up her bau placement, i’m presuming these formalities or references were overlooked.

second: her experience within the team. emily worked as a part of the bau with the bureau for roughly 6 or 7 years. after this, she is invited to run the entire london branch of interpol, one of the most renowned international law enforcement organizations. i’m surely not the most knowledgeable on requirements or standard timelines for such matters, but with the fact that emily had never led a team in her life (not in the bau or interpol previously) and had roughly 10 years of field experience, i don’t believe she would have ever realistically been considered eligible to run the whole london department.

third: her return to the bureau. fanon depiction of their relationship aside, if you believe aaron hotchner’s last wish before going into witsec was to entrust his team to emily prentiss, you’re dead mistaken. bringing emily back was clearly a pull for ratings after the loss of two main characters (hotch and derek), but logistically a bad decision. let’s suppose emily has had 4 or 5 years of experience in london now, this established authority position would be unlikely to change at the drop of a hat, even for old teammates or friends. also considering how close they were after a decade of working closely in bureaucratic and field contexts, i firmly believe hotch would have referred jj for the job of unit chief but that’s another discussion for another time.

emily’s reign as unit chief is odd, because of the many chaotic storylines crammed into it. but amidst bad writing and viewings plummeting, emily’s character is completely flattened. completely. emily is unrecognizable, both in appearance (that god awful wig) and personality. at times she acts as a complete wise authority, giving orders and delegating local authorities as hotch did. but at other times she makes multiple illegal, emotional, and incorrect judgement calls based on personal circumstances that lead to further chaos (deleting the recording of her and reid’s mexico conversation and reprimanding luke in “luke” for the exact same thing she did in season 6 even though she enabled her to do so come to mind).

i’m not sure if this is due to paget trying to find her footing in the role again, or the writer’s bad decisions towards the end of the show wrecking any previous design for their ensemble. then, there’s the infamous “wheels up” scene in s13e1. notoriously cringey, this seems like a vague caricature of something rossi would say many years in the past (the same goes for her pep talk in “red light” in the hunt for diana reid). these moments are meant to mature emily in the audience’s eye, but instead completely removed her from who we understood her to be, and made her an unreliable leader.

part five: and why it does

in theory, emily was a bolder foil to jj, similar to elle who she arguably replaced at first. she came into her own, and stands as a more uniquely developed character than almost any other in the main ensemble. she isn’t as maternal or domestically inspiring as canon jj, less bright and sunny than penelope, not quite as stoic or intimidating as derek or hotch. And yet at the same time, she’s a fairly blank slate. stripping fanon content away entirely, canon emily has few defining traits (all of which are constantly changing), and that may be the key to why we love her so much.

[lilydalexf]

Old School X is a project interviewing X-Files fanfic authors who were posting fic during the original run of the show. New interviews are posted every Tuesday.

Interview with Audrey Roget

Audrey Roget has 10 fics at Gossamer, with some different ones at AO3, fanfiction.net, and her website. You might know her from her very good fics or as part of Musea, a collective that all wrote fic and posted X-Files fic recs. I’ve recced some of my favorites of her stories here before, including Three Times Dana Scully Didn’t Go to San Diego for Christmas and The Shirt. Big thanks to Audrey for doing this interview.

Does it surprise you that people are still interested in reading your X-Files fanfics and others that were posted during the original run of the show (1993-2002)? A little, yes. Not so much by folks who were around in those days. I sometimes go hunting for beloved stories from the early years, both those I read and loved, and those I never got around to. I am always delighted to hear that later generations of fans have stumbled across my stuff, especially since I haven’t posted anything new in a number of years. It’s fantastic that both years-long fans and new ones are out there continuing to rec fic from all eras, and to maintain archives for fans yet-to-be born. What do you think of when you think about your X-Files fandom experience? What did you take away from it? What did you take away from your experience with X-Files fic or with the fandom in general? It may sound corny, but the main thing I think of, and the thing that has ultimately been most valuable and lasting, has been the friendships. The feeling of having found a tribe – not just of TXF fans, but of other people who could be as enthusiastically engaged as I was (if not more so) with fictional stories and characters – was mind-blowing. Since I was a kid, I had often mulled over the books/movies/TV I loved and speculated internally about what happened off the page or off-screen, or created new stories for characters in my head. But, except for an elementary school phase where I and my two BFFs regularly played Charlie’s Angels, I hadn’t engaged in that kind of gleeful immersion in a fictional world with others until TXF fandom. My involvement in fandom followed pretty quickly from getting hooked on the show, so for me, it’s all one big ball of experiences. Even as my interest in/involvement in fandom has waxed and waned over the years, I’ve been lucky to remain friends with wonderful people who I originally connected with as fellow fans.

Social media didn't really exist during the show's original run. How were you most involved with the X-Files online (atxc, message board, email mailing list, etc.)? What got you involved with X-Files fanfic?

My initial entrée to the fandom was through fanfiction. I didn’t get interested in the show until mid-season 5. Around the same time, I read an article in a zine called Might (co-founded by Dave Eggers) about this thing called fanfiction that people would write and publish online. At first I thought it was satire or a joke – the fic cited involved Wilma Flintstone and a polished sabre tooth, as I recall – but then realized this was an actual thing. So I figured that a show then at the peak of pop culture must have fanfiction, and I went looking. Early on, I scrolled atxc on a daily basis and downloaded stories. But I didn’t engage in discussions about the show on Usenet, since I only knew how to access it with my Earthlink email client, and I didn’t want to post using my real name.

Later, I set up a pseud address with Yahoo and subscribed to a couple of email fanfic/discussion lists, and stayed subscribed to those for years. There was also a period in there somewhere – of maybe only a year or so, when I think about it – when I’d often nerd out into the wee hours with other fans via IM chat groups. That was around the time the small writers’ collective Musea was founded, and we were active for several years after the show’s initial run. In the early aughts, I followed many authors to LiveJournal and eventually set up my own account and stayed involved in fandom that way, until it mostly dispersed as well. What was it that got you hooked on the X-Files as a show? In a word: Chemistry. I had casually watched a couple of episodes during the first four seasons, but I’m not a huge sci-fi/horror fan at heart, and the story lines didn’t immediately grab me. But I happened to tune into The Red and the Black in 1998, and BOOM. For the first time, the intense layers of emotion and attraction between Mulder and Scully really struck me – and then of course, upon further viewing, I realized it was unmissable, an essential element in the fabric of the show. As a wise woman once said, a switch had been flicked. Mulder and Scully’s magnetism was like nothing I’d ever seen, and though I eventually came to appreciate the storytelling, humor, production values, and other components that made the series so successful, watching those characters interact has always been what kept me coming back. Were you involved with any fandoms after the X-Files? If so, what was it like compared to X-Files? I was part of a list-serv discussion group for The West Wing for a while, which was a fun melding of character and plot analysis with political discussion. Later, I got into the House, MD fandom, again mostly as a fanfic reader/writer. I was finding that other fandoms, unlike TXF, were more dispersed, the networks of people structured more loosely, if at all. There were fanfic and discussion communities on LiveJournal, and fanfiction.net was the other main hub for posting and reading, but if there was anything centralized like Gossamer, Ephemeral, or the Haven, I never found it. Within all those fan communities, as in TXF, there were partisans for various characters and pairings, and flame wars erupted over plot developments that outraged this faction or that. One main difference was that those other shows had larger, ensemble casts and more varied subplots. So on one hand, there was more opportunity to explore back stories and multiple perspectives. In House MD in particular, there were several entrenched rival shipper camps, which were about equally grounded in canon, rather than TXF’s central ship. I was less into TWW fic, but my impression was that readers were less militant about their pairing preferences than TXF or House fans. Who are some of your favorite fictional characters? Why?

I was deeply fascinated by Greg House for several years. (And the love-hate chemistry between him and Lisa Cuddy was a strong draw for me.) House MD came early in a wave of TV shows centered on anti-heroes, and Hugh Laurie brought amazing complexity and thoughtfulness to the character.

Philip and Elizabeth Jennings (The Americans) are a lethal pair of antiheroes. The inherent moral conflict of a sympathetic narrative from their POVs, and the global political conflict they embody was TV catnip for me. The internal struggles at the hearts of those characters were so exquisitely written and performed, they completely fascinate me.

The West Wing felt so much like a show created specifically for me. I’m especially fond of story arcs and scenes that centered on CJ Cregg, Charlie Young, and Josh Lyman. Though I loved Martin Sheen’s human portrayal of Jed Bartlet, the fact that he was the President always made him a little untouchable in my mind. But CJ, Charlie, and Josh were basically hard-working functionaries who were ambitious and idealistic and funny and flawed, and they spoke to me. What is your relationship like now to X-Files fandom? Do you ever still watch The X-Files or think about Mulder and Scully? Do you ever still read X-Files fic? Fic in another fandom?

I do continue to think about Mulder and Scully and watch episodes somewhat often. I’ll sometimes run a favorite episode as background when I want something comforting on. I read TXF fic pretty regularly, which can inspire me to go back and watch a particular episode or story arc I haven’t thought about in years. Just recently, I started listening to The X-Files Diaries podcast (@XFDPodcast, @admiralty-xfd), and that’s a fun dive into the characters, and how other fans react to and interpret episodes.

Every once in a while, a TV show or movie – and more particularly, the characters – will grab my attention and make me curious about how fanfic writers have interpreted the original material. Random example, I saw Singin’ in the Rain for the first time in a theatre a couple of years ago, and the chemistry of the three leads sent me to AO3 as soon as I got home. I also loved the first season of Mercy Street and found some well-done stories in that fandom. I usually peruse the Yuletide gifts every year and have been amazed by the sheer variety, creativity and cheekiness of the output. There are a bunch of other shows I’ve followed faithfully, and sought out fanfic – Broadchurch, The Killing, Agents of SHIELD, Elementary, The Good Wife. Although I’ve found some well-written stuff in those fandoms, I’ve rarely gotten the same charge from them as reading TXF fic. Do you have any favorite X-Files fanfic stories or authors?

syntax6 (@syntax6) – Universal Invariants/Laws of Motion. I’d also shout out to syn’s Hunter fics, too – well worth reading even for those who have never seen or particularly loved the show itself.

JET – I re-read Small Lives Awake every year around Thanksgiving time. Other annual holiday re-reads: Revely’s The Dreaming Sea and Jordan’s Through the Fire (both set at Halloween).

Amal Nahurriyeh’s Casey universe – the rare post-col fic that felt hopeful, made extra intriguing by a kick-ass original character. [Lilydale note: the series starts with Machines of Freedom and has lots of additional fics and snippets.]

Prufrock’s Love – Finding Rokovoko was genuinely terrifying and tender.

melforbes (@melforbes) – Seaglass Blue is a recent favorite, lyrical and bittersweet.

These are just a few (apologies to those that didn’t come to mind immediately). Fortunately for readers, there’s an astonishing number of authors who have written in TXF fandom whom you can depend on for a good yarn, insightful character study, and/or ingenious “fixes” where 1013 went awry.

What is your favorite of your own fics, X-Files and/or otherwise?

Probably the two set in my own (former) backyard of Southern California: Enivrez-vous and Ravenous. I’d first read the Baudelaire poem that was the source of the former’s title back in university days, so I was tickled to be able to use a few lines as an epigraph. Do you think you'll ever write another X-Files story? Or dust off and post an oldie that for whatever reason never made it online? It’s not out of the realm possibility. I’d meant for “Three Times Dana Scully Didn’t Go to San Diego for Christmas” to be followed up with “And One Time She Did.” In fact, the idea for that never-finished story was what inspired “Three Times” in the first place. I have a couple of scenes sketched out and – unusually for me – even know exactly how to end it. Every year, November rolls around, and I think I should finish and post it…maybe in 2021?

Where do you get ideas for stories? Sometimes it’s from my environment. “Enivrez-vous” and “Ravenous” describe places that I’m fond of, that made me want to place Mulder and Scully there. “What Not to Wear” has that element too – I set it in Memphis as a tribute to a great trip there with a sister Musean. But WNTW was also inspired by a kink challenge in a years-ago LiveJournal thread, so sometimes ideas come from fandom discussions or even other fanfics. In the House MD fandom, a fic by another writer made me want to continue the story, and the author kindly allowed an authorized sequel. What's the story behind your pen name? I wanted my pseudonym to sound like it could be a real person’s name – or at least, maybe like a romance writer’s pen name – rather than an online handle. I also wanted to use a slightly obscure fictional character, to amuse anyone in the know. I had long had a bit of an obsession with Whit Stillman’s 1990s film trilogy, which started with Metropolitan; the 3rd installment, Last Days of Disco, came out the same year I started down the TXF rabbit hole: 1998. The central heroine of Metropolitan – who is mentioned in or makes a cameo in the other two – is Audrey Rouget, a lover of Austen and, eventually, a book editor. I altered the spelling of the last name as a nod to every writer’s companion, Roget’s Thesaurus. Do your friends and family know about your fic and, if so, what have been their reactions? I have a few close friends – from outside TXF fandom – who know that I’ve written fanfic. I don’t know if they know my pseud; if they do, or if they’ve ready any of the fic, they haven’t said so to me. They are fannish sorts themselves, but not really TXF fans. A smattering of other friends and family members know or could intuit that I’ve been a fangrl on some level for years. My boss, whom I’ve known for about 3 years, recently mentioned off-handedly that she was really obsessed with TXF “back in the day,” and I am DYING to know if she got involved in fandom, but don’t think I’ll ever work up the courage to ask.

Is there a place online (tumblr, twitter, AO3, etc.) where people can find you and/or your stories now? Most of the X-Files stuff continues to be generously and steadfastly archived by Forte at The Basement Office. The House MD stories and some TXF things are at fanfiction.net; same for AO3. If ever post anything new, it will probably go to TBO and AO3. I really ought to get it all together in one place, one of these days…

(Posted by Lilydale on April 6, 2021)

[mlchaelwheeler]

sometimes i feel like there are just too many characters, and bc of that, there's always a couple of characters that just aren't focused on enough. like even though the episodes are longer than normal in vol 1, it feels like most of the time is being used up by El and other characters. so much so that characters like will, mike and jonathan (also lucas is often sidelined imo, but this season he still has more of a story related role than the cali crew) aren't really getting a huge look in bc there's not much time left to explore their arks. like ep 7 was super long, and that didn't even include will, jonathan and mike. apart of me kind of wishes they were with the hawkins group, so that at least they could be included in it hahaha

you said it all!! i was so excited to hear that all the episodes would be over an hour bc that means so much more character development, right? yah no 😐 so there was a lot of great development so far this season, but also a lot of time was wasted on plots that either i simply didn't care about or felt like didn't connect with the overall story. for example, why tf did jason have 2x more screen time than the cali crew?? he is SO unimportant and frankly really annoying. like. we get it, your girlfriend got murdered or whatever, and yes it did seem like he actually cared about her, but he's not important to the overall story!

another plot i found to be dragged out was the russia storyline. yes, i love hopper and was so happy when he was revealed to be alive, but how did his storyline add to the overall plot, besides giving joyce an excuse to be away from her kids? besides the demogorgan being introduced (and the mindflayer as seen in the vol 2 teaser??) the russia storyline has absolutely no impact on the vecna/hawkins storyline.

lastly: el. as much as i adore her (she is one of my favorite characters, i promise!), she gets entirely too much screen time each season. i miss the days when stranger things was an ensemble show, and the whole cast was given equal importance. remember back to s1 + s2 when the whole party had relatively equal screen time and importance to the plot? now think of s4 where mike and will were hardly on screen and dustin didn't even have a plot beyond being smart. 😐 i do love the other characters, but i really miss the core party and their dynamic.

also. yes there are WAY too many new characters that are stealing screen time from our main characters (see my jason rant above). when they're important to the plot and push the story forward (eddie, robin, etc) i don't have a problem with them. in fact, eddie is one of my new favorites! however, i don't think that new characters should constantly be added just for the sake of more characters. viewers fell in love with this show for a reason: the core characters! keep it that way moving forward!!

[drivingsideways]

Misaeng review

Ok, it's been almost a week, so I feel like I can get my thoughts (somewhat) in order. As usual, I'm late to the party, given that Misaeng aired 6 years ago, and is already considered a kdrama classic. Still: thoughts!

(under the cut)

I came to this drama with quite a lot of expectations, both because I'd seen it on a lot of rec lists, and also because I'd watched director Kim Won-seok's Signal and My Mister, which are justifiably as beloved as Misaeng. I'm happy to report that Misaeng mostly lived up to those expectations!

The writing & direction work together to make Misaeng a very immersive experience, which is good, considering the entire run time is over 20 hrs. The level of seemingly mundane detail of the operational aspects of running a trading firm that they delve into (and other dramas might have avoided for sake of pacing) seemed odd to me at first, but eventually result in a world building that's incredibly well fleshed out. The (formerly unlikely!) high stakes of a misplaced piece of paper or octopuses in a shipment of squid end up being parts of an emotionally wrenching narrative whole fairly seamlessly. Still, at 20+ hours, Misaeng also does get into the kind of pacing issues that most of the slice of life kdramas I've watched so far have. And it didn't need to! I think it had a wonderful ensemble of characters, and if they'd maybe given a little more time and space to characters other than Jang Geu-Rae (Im Si wan) and Oh Sang-sik (Lee Sung-min), the mid portions may not have felt quite so, well, stuck.

But more than the strong writing and direction, it was really the actors who delivered. They made what could have easily been a dull-ish office drama into a heart warming story about human connection and the joys and troubles of leading an "incomplete life". I'd never watched Lee Sung-min in anything before, and about half way through the series I was like, HOW IS HE MAKING A SHORT TEMPERED, ALCHOHOLIC MIDDLE MANAGER SO SEXY? Like, serious props, dude. Lee Sung-min is by turns annoying and brash and too shout-y and stubborn and funny and so incredibly vulnerable as a man trying his best to live by his principles in a world that thinks they are an impediment to "success", that you forget that he's playing a fictional character-- he's someone you know, he's someone you've seen in the mirror.

His performance as Oh Sang-sik is very ably matched by Im Si Wan's Jang Geu-Rae. This series would not have worked if these two actors didn't have the chemistry they do, and play off each other in every scene. I had watched Im Si Wan recently- in JTBC's "Run On", in which I liked his performance quite a lot, but I absolutely loved him as the naive and endearing Jang Geu-rae. Misaeng, is in part, a bildungsroman narrative centered around Jang Geu Rae. Im Si wan brought a kind of vulnerability to the role that might have felt cloying and emotionally manipulative in the hands of other actors, but Im Si-wan manages to do it with a light touch. I feel he's one of those actors that uses his whole body in a scene, not just relying on facial or verbal expression, and it's a joy to watch.

Each of the other actors in the ensemble also bring that dedication and talent to their roles, even if it's in a single scene. There are lots of one-off characters that we meet during the course of the series, and every single one of them leaves an impact.

But! I'm going to pick a fave from the supporting cast and that's Byun Yo-han, whom I'd last watched as the broody, troubled (and very sexy) swordsman Lee Bang-ji in Six Flying Dragons. I can't imagine a character more in opposition to that one than Han Seok-yul in Misaeng, but Byun Yo-han just knocks it out of the park as the scheming, cheerful and mostly inappropriate clown with a heart of gold; Han Seok-yul is the definition of Chaotic Good, and you're equal parts horrified by his antics- which include sexual harassment dont @ me -- and yet charmed by him. I wish they'd given him a few more scenes and a larger plotline to work with, but I also suspect that he might have just walked away with the entire series if they did that. (Am I plotting that series in my head as I write this? MAYBE.)

Alright, this is getting a bit too long, so I'm going to get to the bits that disappointed me. That's really one major thing: the gender politics. I don't know how different the show is from the web toon it's based on, so I can't tell whether they made significant changes to the basic plot and characters. As in- I have no idea if the webtoon was as male dominated in every way as the show is, so I'm not sure how much of the show's treatment of women as a class, and its female characters in particular, I should lay at the door of the original writer vs the screenwriter and director. I'm also lacking the Korean context in which this was written and made and aired, so you may take my criticism with a pinch of salt, if you please!

That the show features mainly male characters is perhaps unsurprising and realistic, since we know that the kind of corporate life it depicts is very male dominated, top to bottom. The show also portrays the very real and horrific overt and subtle misogyny that women face in the workplace and out of it; mainly in the character of Ahn Young-yi, played with steely determination and quiet suffering by the lovely Kang so-ra. There are only 3 other female characters that have any sort of real speaking role- Sun Ji Young (played by Shin Eun jung), a senior manager at the company, Jang Geu-rae's unnamed(!) mother (played by the amazing Sung Byoung-Sook) and Oh Sang-sik's unnamed (!) wife (played by Oh Yoon-Hong, who's a delight in every tiny scene she has). There are other women who appear but in very minor roles, and often in "comedy" moments that often rely on sexist tropes to start with.

Anyway, right there you can see one of the problems- 4 women characters that have any kind of real screen time, and only 2 of them are named. Aigoo! Screenwriter Jung Yoon-jung is a woman, and like, I don't like putting the burden on any one woman to y'know fix structural misogyny, but I can't also help feeling disappointed that she overlooked even this "small" thing among the larger things.

But that apart, the main issue for me was that while the show doesn't shy away from depicting egregious sexism in the form of sexual harrassment, verbal and physical and certainly emotional abuse, in a manner that's clear that we are meant to be horrified by it--it falls short of depicting how women deal and work with it. It just doesn't give enough space to women or their worldview.

It's very comfortable depicting victimhood, but doesn't put work into depicting the ways in which women survive by finding solidarity with other women. We have a scene or two where Ahn Young-yi who is this show's poster child for female victimhood interacts with the older women who offer sympathy and understanding, but no real strategy or support. And yes, we see men also being targeted by their seniors for the grossest verbal and physical abuse; and it's men who help Ahn Young-yi strategise on how to deal with her situation. Real life experience tells me that it's the women who do this work for other women. I have certainly been on both sides of this equation, for one, and so has every woman that I know in corporate life. And yes, one of the show's core philosophies is that those who endure, survive--but it is none the less extremely painful to watch Ahn Young yi "endure" the kind of abuse she does as a coping strategy and a survival strategy.

At the end of it, when she slowly manages to gain the support of her sexist team, it's shown as a victory-- though naturally imperfect, because this show takes its Realism very seriously (right until the end where it makes a tonal shift into quirky that I was a little ?? about)-- and y'know, sure, it is a victory. And I absolutely understand the choices she makes and why she does it-- I guess I just got annoyed by the fact that other antagonistic figures in the narrative get a more straightforward comeuppance for their egregious behavior, but Ahn Young-yi doesn't even get a goddamned apology from her abusers. Instead, we have a half humourous, half serious moment where she comments on how she's working at turning herself into "someone cute"- because she understands now that sometimes the right strategy is to "go with the flow". Be the water that slowly wears away at the rock. It's an interesting moment- the men she tells this to are taken aback by her bluntness, but also a little clueless about what she means. It's the kind of nuance that I would and do enjoy. Unfortunately, it also closely follows one of the show's most annoying scenes at the tail end of the series- where it tries to play off workplace sexism and misogyny as comedy- boys being boys-Reader, when I tell you that I had to WORK to unclench my jaw--!

I'm not saying we should have a single and obvious narrative of female emancipation. I'm not against realism in fiction, but god, sometimes, please do remember that when we look for escapism, we are actually imagining a better world. The first step toward liberation is allowing yourself to imagine it.

And the show does allow other characters its moments of unfettered fantasy- Im Si Wan parkour-ing all over the rooftops of Amman- and having a semi mystical + Indiana Jones moment in the deserts of Jordan--so why, I ask, are the women not given that gift?

*looks into the camera *

Tl;dr: I enjoyed it, it made me cry every episode, and I cared about all the characters, and if you haven't watched it yet, treat yourselves.

PS. Yes, Han Seok-yul is a disaster bi, sorry, I don't make the rules. Yes, hotties Oh Min Seok and Kang Ha-neul are canonically naked in a hot tub six feet apart because they are bros. Yes, I will be writing the fix it in which they fuck like angry bunnies. Yes, I am going to put my shipper cooties all over this gen slice of life show, deal with it.

[ladyloveandjustice]

And with that, we’ve reached the end of our Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer liveblog!

It’s really been a wild ride. Overall, I’d say this was a really solid action adventure manga and a good example of a shonen actually managing to pull off a strong ensemble cast. It managed to keep this very weird, wacky vibe throughout while strongly delivering on some more serious themes. The deaths and losses in the story all had weight, which ishard to pull off.

 It was impressive that it ballooned up into having like, a main hero cast of 13 characters (plus animal mascots, plus antagonists, plus one posthumous character...) but all of them got at least a little screentime and development. The gender balance was pretty good for a shonen too, since of those 13, six were girls. And far from being sidelined from the action, all of them were at least on equal footing with the guys battlewise, with Sami and Anima actually being the most powerful characters by far! They also all felt fully realized as characters too and got development and stuff! That shouldn’t be notable, but it’s something that’s sadly pretty rare in action shonen, so yeah, I’m gonna note it! 

(Also, Shimaki might be the first fat character I’ve seen in an action manga whose powers don’t revolve around his weight, and while there are a couple jabs at his expense, most of his screentime doesn’t either, instead focusing on how smart he is. A miracle.)

I mentioned this in the liveblog but I really like that while the manga very easily COULD have gone the direction a lot of stories go which is "we start out with a super powerful female lead and weak male lead, but naturally our male hero becomes more powerful than our female lead and thus is able to save her”, it very much did not go that route. While Yuuhi definitely got significantly stronger and more powerful and a lot of the manga was concerned with that, the end makes it very clear that he’s STILL nowhere near Sami’s equal when it comes to “power”, and what “saves” Sami is actually his willingness to emotionally support her, with the bonds they’ve made with their friends supporting them both! It’s a good message and strong emotional conclusion for both of them.

Though I enjoyed the manga, I wouldn’t be able to recommend it casually without going into the caveats, since this manga is heavy on the fanservice with its sixteen year old female lead, whether it’s with constant panty shots or just... randomly showing her at home in her underwear or whatever. It’s downright jarring in ways that damage the story at times, since panty shots will happen even during some important emotional moments. (It also has plenty of fanservice involving the adult women in the cast, but that’s at least a little easer to swallow). There’s also some really bad scenes of adult men (our protagonist included) being creeps/harassers to women, including to underage girls. This is heaviest in the early chapters and mostly fades once the plot really gets going, but still unfortunately makes some bizarre appearances even towards the very end when it feels the the characters should have developed past that.

It’s sad that this occasionally drags down what’s otherwise a really fun and sometimes meaningful story. True, I have quibbles- sometimes it did feel like the story had a hard time balancing all the plot threads and there were snags like the storyline with Yuuhi and his grandfather and the abuse not hitting the perfect note with me- but largely, it carried itself well.

From the beginning, I was charmed by the scrappy girl with the slasher smile declaring she’d crush the world in her hand, and I never stopped being charmed.  It’s a story about overcoming despair, finding second chances, and learning to love this weird, wild world we live with all its highs and lows. It’s got fun action scenes, good art and very self-aware sense of humor. 

There was a lot to dig into with it, and I hope you all enjoyed watching me grapple with it. I certainly enjoyed the experience. Big thanks to @liobi for sponsoring the whole shebang.

[hutchhitched]

My thoughts on The Devil All the Time under the cut…

 The last movie I saw in theaters before the world shut down in March was The Last Full Measure. I’d already seen it twice, but I went with a friend, and we were the only two in the theater. It’s fitting, then, that the first movie I saw during the slow reopening is another one with Sebastian Stan. Honestly, I doubt I would have gone if it wasn’t one of his. Somehow, Alamo Drafthouse and one other independent theater got it to show in Houston. The earliest screening was 3:30, but I was a guest on a podcast at the time, so I settled for the 7:15 show. Alamo has buffer seats established, so two seats are saved on either side of a purchased recliner. I was in the back row by myself. There were maybe eight or ten other people (besides waiters) in a theater that can normally seat around 100, and no one came within six feet of me the entire time I was there (other than delivering food and beverage). All in all, a fairly pleasant movie experience for the second week of open theaters in the city.

 Back in the before times in January, I checked out a copy of the book and read it during the first week of the year. The work is gritty, discomfiting, and (for lack of a better word) depraved. It’s not a feel-good story in any way, but it’s also really intriguing and has a lot to say about human character, poverty, and rural America. I read it knowing who was cast in a few roles, and that made Lee Bodecker much more interesting than he probably would have been otherwise.

 The movie is remarkably true to the book. It’s an ensemble cast for a book with numerous characters who dance around each other in an inexplicable way until the moment it all clicks and the bigger picture settles. Unfortunately, a few characters/storylines are simplified and/or removed, but that’s to be expected in a movie. There was only one omission that surprised me, and its absence didn’t hurt the overarching narrative at all.

 The tone of the movie is dark, very Southern gothic. Whoever location scouted did a great job finding places that felt like poverty-stricken Appalachia. The Ohio and travel scenes created some visual diversity that worked well.

 I saw a tweet that summed up the movie in a few words with which I whole-heartedly agree. It’s a story about toxic masculinity and religious hypocrisy. Add a little police corruption and murder in there, and that’s about right. Like I said, this isn’t a fun movie. As a religious historian and regular church attendee, the religious overtones were fascinating. I wondered several times what happened to the book’s author that turned him off evangelical Christianity so hard because there is almost nothing redeeming (pun intended) in The Devil All the Time. God doesn’t answer and can’t save you, and his emissaries (preachers) aren’t going to help either. In fact, they’re likely to make your life much, much worse instead. Run away. Literally.

 Toxic masculinity is alive and well in the movie. Vulnerability is unacceptable, and loving something or someone leads to heartbreak at best and total destruction at worst. Trying to do good ends up as bad, and guns are both the way to get something done and how to end a lot of lives. One gun, in particular, is presented and then buried at either end of the film, and I took that as a metaphor for how the character fought to change his life by letting go of his past. Fingers crossed for him because he’s got a tough road to get there.

 The cast is remarkable. Tom Holland played anger, vulnerability, fear, and despair all equally well, and Jason Clarke was smarmy as hell. The women actors were excellent in their limited roles. Riley Keough, in particular, was truly incredible. Depraved, but excellent. Robert Pattinson’s voice and accent blew me away. He looked the same as in any other role, but he sounded completely different. Whoever the voice coach was for the actors needs a raise.

 Sebastian Stan is fantastic in his role, which I expected from the trailer. It doesn’t hurt that his character’s introduced to the audience while getting a hand job in a police car while in full uniform at a lookout point surrounded by multiple other cars. He’s charming and ambitious in his early scene, which makes his fall from grace in the second half of the movie worse. He’s corrupt and immoral and conniving. His connection to Sandy, one half of the Bonnie and Clyde-esque serial killer duo, is the tipping point for the film and Bodecker himself. Seb’s physical transformation over the twenty-year time span is done well. His jawline sags as he ages, and so does his morality. His final scene is a show stealer, and I wish he’d shown more of that fire throughout. Maybe that’s intentional—as he sees his future collapsing, he loses control and rages on the screen. I might have done a little fist pump in celebration.

 When the release date got pushed back to September with awards chatter associated, I was bummed like many of y’all, but I can see why now. It’s not a fun movie. It’s not going to break box office records or be something people watch repeatedly and quote for fun, but it’s really, really well-done. The narrator slips in and out and nudges the audience to think about what’s happening and why. There aren’t a lot of sympathetic characters, but there are a ton of excellently acted roles. I’m looking forward to watching it again on the 16th, so I can see what I missed the first time. I’m very sure I’ll be repeating the Lee Bodecker scenes, as well.

[piccolina-mina]

Hi, im the anon wondering about which character is the favorite. Tbh i was just curious, but i understand how that could create drama 😅 my bad. Youre probably thinking im from the rnm fandom and you would be right. I had a hunch of which character it was, but i wasnt positive. I dont really see them playing favorites in terms of writing but that might just be because the favorite character is also my favorite character. I was curious as to your opinion but I understand if you dont wanna answer

I think narratively the show favors Michael. The writers openly discuss how much they love writing for him. He's everyone's favorite. He's Carina's favorite. He's a fan favorite. And that is fine.

But I do think there are some days when it's so blatant that it's a clear flaw on the part of those creating the narrative. There are many layers to this too, some more disconcerting then others, but I'll stick to the narrative.

The fact that I (and others I'm sure) don't actually have to mention his name and people automatically know sort of proves the point.

And it's not a slight against his character or the actor, and it's not to suggest that his storylines aren't enjoyable either. Case in point, personally, I think he and Alex are having the strongest personal arcs out of everyone this season.

But then, that isn't exactly surprising is it?

More often than not, I feel like it's Liz's story in name only, but consistent, deep, gritty, well thought out etc storytelling falls on Michael. I can see and feel all the time and energy dedicated to this specific character.

That's cool, but when you have an ensemble cast, the hope is that it's spread out a bit better. The first season is testing the waters. The second season gives you a better idea of how things are and will be now that there is a rhythm.

In the second season, Liz, our lead, has gotten lost and swallowed up in the plot. Jeanine is great and has some shining moments, but she doesn't exactly have her own personal story that isn't wrapped up in alien stuff. This is where it's frustrating that ... we don't spend a lot of time with the Ortechos, something they've attempted to rectify a bit this season, but it's still mostly unsuccessful.

This is where her arc with Rosa has not been as strong as it should be and got lost in Liz trying to bring Max back. This is where I repeatedly point out the lack of focus on her relationships outside of the pod squad. Her friendships with Maria and Alex suffer a great deal and honestly with Kyle as well.

This is where all things alien consume her, and she doesn't seemingly have a life or rather chooses to expend any focus to a life outside of the pod squad and their issues.

And this is where because of all her energy being put into such a narrow focus on solely alien issues often at the expense of every other facet of her life, she often feels decentralized from her own narrative.

But we have Michael, and I do think one of many reasons he's such a favorite is because of all the focus he gets and how well-rounded and developed he is compared to the others. I mean if that's the character everyone pours everything into ... then yeah, he would be the favorite, yeah?

He's fun to play with, the witty oneliners, the bad boy with a heart of gold, the misunderstood tragic not a hero but really a hero, the lovable jackass, the endearing "screwup" so on and so forth. He's wrapped up in a bow, the catnip of all the most endearing tropes.

And they love peeling back layers for him and developing him and expanding on his background and characterization carefully and thoughtfully.

And that's awesome and enjoyable even, but when you have an ensemble cast and it doesn't begin to be spread about evenly, then it's a reasonable nitpick.

I feel like we have a better grasp on his past than any other character. He naturally was the one who wanted to go back home, but almost all of the past alien history and folklore has essentially centered him or involved him more so than Isobel and Max.

He's the one who heads to and finds out about Caulfield. He's the one who sees his mother and where the aliens were held. He's the one who watches her die in front of him. He's the one who continued to be tied into that plot while they hand waved why Max and Isobel weren't interested in learning more when they dropped enough breadcrumbs to support why they should be.

Until this season, until very recently with Isobel, everything related to their origins fell on him, he is the face of the pod squad being invested in finding out about their history. It then ties in with his tragic backstory as the foster kid who never had nor felt "home."

By spending a season and a half essentially centering him alone in a narrative that should involve all of them, it seemingly made it his plot. And that's BEFORE we even get to these recent revelations with Sanders and this implication that Michael was "the special one" not Max (which the mere idea of a special one at all was not and has not been something I particularly care to subscribe to in the first place), so it's doubling down and solidifying something they didn't need to emphasize this much.

The alien past has always felt like Michael's story and Max and Isobel are just hitching a ride. The many ways it was only tied to Michael makes it that way. It was Michael that Jesse had a file on.

It's Michael whose first love is a product of the Manes Project Shepherd element. It's Michael who gets that conflict with Alex.

The Valentis have just as much ties to that as the Manes and yet that angle is barely explored or used to add an extra layer to the tension between Max and Kyle for example.

It was just barely used to flesh out Kyle during the first season, and then seemingly dropped altogether this season when he should have just as much claim in this narrative as all three pod squad members and Alex.

Ironically, this is a big disservice to Isobel. And this is where this exclusive focus on pouring so much into one character comes at the expense of others.

Isobel, people like her and all, but when I look at the actual narrative and her place in it, if not for the fact that she's an alien, she's not a character with much purpose, and that's a huge problem.

Because narratively, outside of being used as a victim, they honest to goodness don't know what to do with her. They barely invested enough in her character to give her a fully formed, consistent personality. There's no real pull there. And as the only female alien, they could have done so much more beyond being a vessel for Noah and an abortion storyline where the only point was to make a statement about women and reproductive rights that didn't land as intended because of Isobel's privileges and access.

Max benefits from being the co-lead and being part of the primary love story. And then of course there is the eternal and patently unfair and imbalanced fraternal angst that ALSO is more often than not used to serve Michael's storyline and development.

It's about Michael working through his resentment. It's about Michael's abandonment issues. It's about Michael's battle with self worth. And 2.05 was about Michael realizing how much his brother always loved him. And him growing from that realization. And him saving his brother.

Just like now, it's about Michael protecting Max and "suffering" for it. It's about Michael being a dark horse martyr and sin eater for his siblings after taking the blame for killing the girls from Isobel and now damning himself to a screwed up life on Max's behalf.

The weight of the revelations geared toward Michael. The Sanders connection was significant and that was ushered in through his connection to Michael.

In the same vein we found out Michelle Valenti has what should be an equally as impactful and longstanding connection with Max ... but did it carry the same weight as Michael and Sanders at all even though those respective relationships have run neck in neck throughout the series? No.

We know Maria was sidelined all first season. This season most of what they've given us feels performative to address the concerns people had because of how things are handled ... with her splitting redundant narratives with side characters, having things happen offscreen, or shuffled to a side, or left on the editing floor.

And her biggest relationship all season is? Michael.

Kyle is getting sidelined this season. There's so much we don't know and could about him. His love interest storyline also feels performative and perfunctory... they didn't invest in it at all. It was like going through the motions.

Rosa's storyline hasn't exactly taken off as you'd have expected given the circumstances. And they just jumped around with key and crucial character building and meaningful moments with that too. They sailed right on past the Maria and Arturo reveals without letting them breathe. Almost like they just didn't have any strong interest in doing much outside of hitting the necessary notes: tell Maria, reunion with Arturo, save Max, overdose.

Liz's core relationships are all over the place. Maria, Arturo, Rosa, Alex, Kyle ... not enough investment in them. Not enough digging deep into them. Not enough exploration. While Max was gone most of the season. And she worked with and provided support to Michael and Isobel, hung out with Cam, but continuously neglects the aforementioned others who should matter.

But Michael's core relationships have layers and stay intact ( Max, Isobel, Alex, and Maria) and he gets substance with other ones ... Kyle ... Sanders ...

So yeah, nothing wrong with having favorites. And if that person is your favorite then maybe it's easier not to care or think too hard about it or whatever.

But the reason I dislike when you can tell when one character is a favorite is because of how it affects the narrative overall.

It seriously impacts the storytelling. It's like writing entire chunks around a character and this specific position you want them instead of writing the story and weaving in the character.

It can take me out of a piece when I can tell the objective is to get to a precise moment with a specific character. When I can tell that some of the writing is obligatory and then "the real fun" happens with X.

It's like stuffing your face with all of your vegetables because you have to in order to get to that ice cream Sundae. Like "if I get through A-W then my reward will be Z."

This is me coming from an objective viewpoint because I can separate when analyzing. I have actually enjoyed Michael a lot this season. He and Alex have had the best character growth this season, in my opinion, and I really love that.

But this is also a glaring issue, and I hate when favoritism bleeds into a series, especially an ensemble cast when it leads to issues with the storytelling.

And despite my enjoyment, that's what I feel is happening here a lot.

It certainly isn't the first and only show I've noticed this with. And yeah, I've even made these same observations and criticisms when it's my favorite character too.

It's the same on another series I watch with one of my favorite characters, and it's so frustrating except in that case, it's a character who can do no wrong even when they're wrong, and ... that's a whole other discussion.

But yeah. I don't expect agreement with this. It's probably one of those unpopular opinions or hot takes that can definitely bug people, especially those whose favorite character is Michael.

But this is my observation and why I feel that like him or not, storytelling suffers, is predictable, or underwhelming, or annoying, or jarring when you can sense the obsession and favoritism.

[papers4me]

Scattered thoughts (SE02). part #1

I did a similar post after Se01 ended to collect all the scattered thoughts that didn’t have a place in my ep reviews due to space. This part will only focus on the BEACH ARC.

-Beach arc is the best furuba arc yet! way better than the “after Beach arc”,  duno what it’s called. However, it is better for the following reasons:

The pacing flows effortlessly!

 No weird jumps or left out plot threads or abruptly leaving plots for later. Every big moment any character has is followed by logical progression or if it is meant to be dealt with later, then it is followed by logical presentation of the character itself deciding not to dwell on it such as tohru’s flashback with her mom, which was not meant to be dealt with now, so we slowly see tohru either making her self busy with other things or getting help to let go of it by other characters: kyo.

All characters,  including minor characters, had spotlight equally. Truly representing “ fruits basket” being an ensemble cast show that tells humanity stories. Yuki, kyo, tohru, shigure, akito, rin, haru, momiji, hiro, even kisa got sth important to say.

No character hijacked another characters’ moment. Each character either said what they felt by themselves to the viewers (yuki-kyo) or showed it to the viewers via facial expressions (shigure-tohru) or was commented on by others within the same scene (when kyo said tohru isn’t herself to hiro cuz he thinks hiro is the cause- & when shigure told hatori abt akito cuz he felt her attachment to kureno is odd). No odd/excessive voice-overs that hijack other characters’ space & cramp the ep with unnecessary lengthy monologues or direct life lessons such as the after beach arc: Se02, ep 14 where yuki, shigure, haru & kagura talked on behalf of kyo, rin & tohru.

Each character’s had a decisive moment that impacted their direction & goal for the entire story. yuki, kyo, tohru, akito, hiro, rin, shigure & momoji all decided big & minor decisions that were reflected later.

Show-not-Tell was amazingly implemented in the beach arc. We understood that they we’re in love, sad, confused, scared, angry & frustrated by looking at the characters’ face expressions, their interactions with others, & lots of imagery. Yuki’s perspective of tohru as a mother figure was shown amazingly via depicting her caring for hiro, momiji & kisa. kyo’s concern for tohru’s changed behavior was not shown by having tohru behave differently. She was laughing & smiling & tricked us as she perfected her “i’m okay” mask, but it was shown via him pointing out that her laughs are shallow & seizing chances to talk to her without him monolouging abt anything. Tohru’s trust & reliance in kyo was shown via her putting her hand on his knee when they chatted abt her mom’s watermelon memory without the need for any inner thoughts or words.

One of the strongest show-not-tell moments was between akito & shigure in the dark room where both didn’t talk directly abt the source of their annoyance but you could tell the atmosphere was charged with tension!!

The biggest Show-Not-Tell moment at all is the continuous depiction via imagery & interaction of the difference between kyo/tohru’s romantic interaction filled with spontaneous flirting, mutual understanding & support as kyo supports tohru in getting over her pain & tohru supports kyo via seeking his company, enjoying their time together which means a lot to the outcast cat & yuki/tohru’s platonic interaction filled with tohru’s one-sided support & yuki’s longing for care & warmth. You can tell there is NO love-triangle between these three without anyone pointing out that.

It had furuba’s best written ep yet!!!!! ep.9. A writer who can envision the most thrilling, captivating, realistic & brutal scene between two characters talking in an empty room without much movements or action or excessive flashbacks or heavy monologue or reliance on lots of imagery, all while showing every emotion realistically & logically & even subtly revealing the show’s biggest plot twist!! is an epic writer hands down!!!!!! truly a superb writing skill!! One of the well-written eps I’ve seen.

The whole arc subverted expectations. Most beach eps in shojo anime are happy, romantic & maybe a bit eechi.lol. But Not furuba. Here it is abuse, sadness, self discovery, toxic family, confusing love-triangles that turned out to be not real, tears, family secrets, flashbacks of two dead characters. Even the love realizations moments were sad. Yuki realized his love is platonic & felt sorry that he sought a mother in a girl his age. Kyo realized he loves the daughter of the woman he thought he hurt & who explicitly hates him in her her dying moment “ I won’t forgive you”! He cried in despair & sorrow for tohru & himself.

Beach arc has furuba’s most shocking plot twist yet with kyoko’s haunting words to kyo of "Not Forgiving him”. This (can of worms) secret will be so ugly when it unfolds. It Has to be ugly! Logically it hast to!! NO EXIT!

The irony of akito igniting tohru’s spirit to fight the curse while thinking she scared her away.

Kyo had one of the most romantic love confessions that I have ever heard! & he didn’t even say it to tohru!!!!

Throughout the beach arc, only three animal transformations happened: momoji ( twice) & rin once.

Akito’s ep 9 scene with kyo & ep 10 scene with shigure are two sides of her twisted & unstable mind! truly well-written. From showing her clever abusive tactics, completely in control to showing her loosing it & at loss at shigure’s cold behavior, loosing all control over him.

My interest in shigure skyrocketed in ep. 10. He looked so angry, bitter, jealous & intentionally inflecting pain with his words to akito! ( mirroring what he did to kureno in ep, 25).

It had one of the cutest moments between all characters ( tohru/kyo, tohru/yuki, tohru/momiji, tohru/kisa, kisa/hiro, kyo/haru, haru/yuki, hiro/momiji, kyo/momiji, kyo/hiro & even kyo/yuki) all young characters interacted & their relationships moved positively. Yes, even kyo/yuki reached an unspoken agreement to stop fighting & ignore each other unless tohru needs help/support.

There was a showdown between the female protagonist & the female antagonist where neither of them won. Both were hurt & both were extreme in their perspective. Akito for wanting an unrealistic eternal banquet & imprisoning the cat while blinding her eyes that no one truly wants her company & tohru for wanting to break a magical curse & unrealistically save everybody while burying her own traumatic issues under her concern for others. 

During beach time, Kyo got the best noticeable body/physical growth & glow! yuki remained pretty as always! haru is still hot! momiji is a cute kid! & hiro wants to be a man! XD

Shigure was all kinds of mess. He’s always a mess when he’s close to akito.