#i think i literally watched this more than any episode of the tv show

[ilikekidsshows]

"Even good person make bad decision sometimes."

True.

"Therefore Marinette is not a bad character."

That, is arguable.

Because I'm at this point where I would questioned where's the line that make a character "bad" and where's the line that make a character "just misunderstood/misguided"

Because if Chloé is bad character because she bullied Marinette and Lila is bad because she's a liar who manipulate others... then where's Marinette stand when she has done both?

Her bullying and humiliating Kagami (in extend Lila and Sublime) isn't even stemmed from misunderstanding, it's her own jealousy that told her "everyone who get close to 'her Adrien' is her enemy."

Her choosing to manipulate Cat Noir to reveal his identify isn't stemmed from misguided attempt, she get sick of Suhan keep nagging her about Cat's identity!

And I'm not even talking about the "Gabriel is hero who died sacrificing his life to saved her's." BS.

So yeah, where does she stand then? Because it's hard for me to see her as someone who "misguided" when everything she do is stemmed from her own jealousy and insecurity. She knows it's bad, she just choose to say "Who cares? I don't. 🤷"

---

Yeah, for all Miraculous brands itself a romantic comedy series, the protagonist isn’t motivated by love, not really. Because the thing Marinette wants even more than love is control. She wants to control how people see her, think of her and feel about her. I’ve been calling her a control freak even before she started manipulating and gaslighting her most beloved people, because the need for control is that integral to who Marinette is as a character, a fictional person.

Almost anything Marinette does that isn’t motivated by her Love Quest, and even many parts of her Love Quest, is motivated by the need to gain control of a situation and nothing makes her freak out more than a lack of control. “Marinette has good intentions”, isn’t a defense to begin with, but, in addition, Marinette’s “good intentions”, when they are even present, are just a mask for her true motivation, to control something.

Because, like, even if we apply the most good faith interpretation to Marinette's behavior, that she has an uncontrollable, untreated anxiety disorder stopping her from learning how to handle social situations with any amount of reasonability, that still doesn't make her look flawless. I know the writers and the passionate stans think Marinette having trauma absolves her of all guilt, but she is responsible for how her coping mechanisms hurt other people, it's her responsibility to get help when she has repeatedly seen herself hurt others.

But, like, when we look at how Marinette's interactions are written, it's clear the intended reading is that Marinette feeling bad about doing bad is all that's needed for her to be absolved. In-universe, the characters around Marinette tell her everything she does is instantly forgiven because she feels so bad about it, that she's a good person because she feels so bad. It's hard to blame Marinette for not seeing there's a problem with the way she behaves when people are literally telling her that, as long as she's the one feeling the worst, she's a moral paragon even when she hurts others.

As much as that kind of thinking would make sense, I still wouldn't see Marinette as a good person if that was the canon. On my pettier days I see Marinette as a bad person, but, that's not accurate either. She is toxic and exhausting, though. Still, if I saw someone in real life be as manipulative as consistently, regardless of their motives, I would not want anything to do with them. That's the problem with watching a show and seeing a character act the same way year after year. It doesn't matter if the TV show wants you to think her "mistakes" aren't in continuity, that you're meant to see them as episodic, disconnected, separate stories, all the while muddying the waters with a serialized continuity that increases as the story goes on. I'm still seeing her constantly do the same things but worse.

I also can’t see Marinette as a good character, because her writers are telling me she is a good person despite them writing her as a self-centered and petty person out to manipulate everyone around her, especially the ones she cares the most about. A character has to be truly badly written to have one of her defining traits contradict what the storytellers are trying to say about her this completely. Some of it is the awful mishandling of the show's episodic versus serialized nature, but some of it is just the writers not thinking about their show as a cohesive whole. It's also why their attempts at "refreshing the formula" don't actually change anything about the formula.

[lovely-v]

what if i liveblogged phineas and ferb across the second dimension

[maxwellatoms]

Do you think were any kind of specific aspects of the culture, industry, economy, etc that made making cartoons in 90s / 2000s better or worse than trying to make them today?

They're literally different worlds.

As a 22 year old neurodivergent, I was able to pitch show ideas directly to executives. Part of that was because TV Animation wasn't a glamorous profession (quite yet), so the higher-ups were genuinely passionate about the medium. I earned good money for the time and was generally trusted to run my show and tend to the crew. I would periodically be handed portfolios, which I would personally review and pass on to other show runners. For the networks it was always corporate, cutthroat, and ultimately about the money, but as an artist you could still have a voice and make art while being paid a living wage.

The pay for a freelance storyboard in 2005 is almost exactly what it is today, but now you're likely to have less time and be required to do an animatic on top of it. Portfolios are online, and (beyond metrics) you'll probably never know if anyone looks at it or not.

Animation got big. Too big. The executives got "glamorous", then the talent got "glamorous". By then you probably wouldn't get a pitch meeting unless you were a celebrity or knew one willing to be connected to your project. Animation eventually got so big that it popped. And that's where we are now.

Most of the people I know from Kid's TV Animation are currently unemployed. I have been off Jellystone for over a year, and I'm starting to get genuinely worried. Like, "move away to save money" worried. Most of the employed artists I do know are on long-running legacy series, and they're concerned about their futures when/if those series end. Right now is not a fantastic time for "animation as a money-making profession". The "glamorous" part popped years ago.

That being said, there are still opportunities out there. If you're just starting out, apparently there's a planned surge in adult and pre-school animation. It's also a great time (as long as YouTube remains sane) to be crafting your own content. But I think that the time of Big Studio Patronage is over for most of the industry. It's up to the individual artist now more than ever, not only to make but to promote their own content.

Back at the height of Billy & Mandy, we mostly pulled fours and fives in the Neilsen ratings, but we occasionally got a seven. For reference, E.R. consistently got eights. It's difficult to say exactly how many people that actually was due to how those ratings work, but it was a big deal for the time. Millions. Enough people that if I had a dollar for each person that just watched that one episode, I would have been set for life. Now, nobody gets a seven. A four is huge. Back then there were maybe fifteen or twenty channels of programmed content as opposed to the streaming smorgasbord we were all just enjoying (and which now also seems to have popped). Point being, even though I wasn't paid-per-view, I was able to use those views as justification for an eventual raise. In modern times, streaming numbers are seemingly deliberately kept secret. You'll never really know how well your show was doing until it's over. Or maybe never.

In modern times, a million views on YouTube is enough to get you noticed online. It's a lower bar for entry in a way, but you've got to get there all by yourself. Once you're there (hello Hazbin) a network may indeed come and scoop you up. Even if they don't, you can probably make a decent living with numbers like that if you're savvy and willing to take the time.

I feel like I could go on all day, shaking my fist at the sky, gray-ass beard blowing in the wind. Was it better or easier making cartoons in the past? It seemed that way to me, but that was a world I knew. There was no AI to sell you out to, and the media was more of a "Wild West" than it is today. I do think that AI is going to continue to displace artists (and soon others), making it even more difficult to get anyone's eyes on anything at all.

Culturally, we lack the common cultural touchpoints that bonded our society in the 20th Century. I suspect that the media landscape will continue to become more "bubbly" and disjointed unless some powerful force swoops in to mandate a common viewpoint. Those are two very divergent, uniquely tiring futures, each presenting a different challenge for an artist's survival.

Outside of whatever our modern world is, animation was made for a century by photographing drawings. If Émile Cohl could do it in 1908, you can do it now. It's a lot of labor, but maybe that's part of what makes it special.

[crimson-and-clover-1717]

When I watched OFMD this year, I literally knew three things:

It was called Our Flag Means Death

It was a pirate comedy

It had been cancelled

I didn’t know Rhys Darby (‘that Murray bloke from Conchords’) or Con O’Neill (‘the weird guy from Chernobyl’) were in it until they came on screen. And please don’t stab in me in the face, but I had never heard of Taika Waititi. I’m very much not the target market for this show. Although I will say I think it’s universal in its exploration of the human condition. So if you’re human, the show is for you.

I knew nothing about budget cuts, editing decisions, or even at this point any circumstances around why it had been cancelled. I had not an inkling it was a romance. I had no notion it was going to overtake my life to such an extent.

I watched one episode a night for 18 nights (I know, I know… I binge-watched it immediately afterwards over two days, and haven’t stopped since). I also had no-one to talk to about the show as I watched the 18 episodes. No-one I knew had ever heard of it. I really was a blank canvas.

And this is what I thought. Other than finding Calypso’s Birthday a little uncomfortable on first watch (and that’s largely because I find torture, even the OFMD variety, difficult to engage with - I always skip the opening of 206 now), I saw no difference between the seasons in terms of artistic merit. It’s possible that because I didn’t experience an 18-month hiatus, and build up my own version of what season 2 should be in my head, I didn’t have any expectations to be knocked down. I just engaged with what they asked me to watch.

I fell in love with this show at ‘My name’s Stede. I’ll be your robber here today.’ I fell in love with Stede Bonnet when he did his little Scrappy Doo air-punch in episode two.

With regard to season two, The Innkeeper affected me so much I honestly think it altered my brain at a structural level. More so than The Chain sequence which is when I think this show started affecting my brain chemistry.

I also loved the development of Stede and Ed outside of their personas. The couch scene in Fun and Games made me believe in them as a couple in ways I hadn’t quite in season one because they were growing and being real with each other. I thought their arguments were so well-written. Man on Fire has one of the most authentic representations of couple miscommunication I have ever seen on tv. And I think Mermen is really good in doing what it needed to do, and did it well. How do you end a tv series that gives a satisfactorily emotional ending, but doesn’t give away everything in case there’s another season?

Ed’s journey in particular just ripped my heart out and then glued it back together. And seeing Stede continue to develop his very nonlinear understanding of the power of his earnestness and gnc self, whilst still sometimes wrestling with notions of traditional masculinity… I needed to grow a second heart.

When I learned of the financial and time constraints later on, I was shocked they had achieved such a high standard of tv.

Imagine my shock when I discovered the Canyon…

It’s fine if you don’t like season 2, or season 1, or OFMD at all for that matter. But if you want me to say season 2 isn’t any good, or as good as season 1, then you want me to say something that I have never felt to be true. When you experience it holistically like I did, it all hangs together beautifully.

[copdog1234]

Man, I was watching the movie and the entire time I was thinking "Wow. This would've been so much more satisfying in the show" because the show has earned it. The show's writing is far from perfect, it has many, many flaws, but my god is it far better than Miraculous Awakening will ever be. And I'll tell you why.

I will preface by saying, yes, an hour and a half movie has way less time than a TV show with several episodes to build up characters and relationships, so time constraints will make it so we may not get as much depth in the on-screen relationships.

You know what, though? The time they spent playing mediocre songs could've been used better to show us all the things the songs had to outright tell us. Cause that was the problem.

The movie sure liked telling us how the characters were feeling. It rarely showed it. Like could you tell me why movie Marinette liked Adrien? Because I couldn't. What did he do to earn her affection beside look pretty? Why did we only get a montage of them getting closer instead of actually seeing it? Or how we never really see much of Gabriel and Adrien's struggles with the loss of Emilie, we simply get glimpses. How am I supposed to feel anything when Gabriel stops being Hawk Moth when this movie showed us literally nothing of their strained relationship? And then there's Gabriel's claim that he did absolutely everything to get Emilie back. No he didn't. He did actually nothing. He freed a couple of criminals and then akumatized himself. That's it. That's all he did.

Could you tell me why Alya decided to befriend Marinette? Could you tell me why Adrien "who decided not to get close to anyone" was friends with Nino? Could you tell me why Chloe was so confident Adrien had any interest in her when they never actually interacted?

And then there wasnt enough explanation on how anything that we should've been told worked. Could anyone really tell me how these versions of the miraculous work? Or why Master Fu was in possession of them? Or why they really chose their holders? Could you tell me if the kwami had much personality and were necessary?

Like, I will say, there were funny moments, the animation was nice, and there were cool set pieces, but where was the substance?? It was nonexistent. If you don't watch the show, would you know or feel anything for what was going on in this movie?

Cause even for me, who does watch the show, I didn't.

Think about this. The show has even faked out multiple reveals to me and every time I was hyped and screaming, I have read fanfiction of these same to characters falling in love and confessing every which way and I've swooned, but we get reveals and love confessions that are real and permanent in this movie and I felt. Nothing.

It's okay if yall disagree with me, but I just needed to get this off my chest. I'm hard on this movie because I wanted it to be good because I love the characters and story from the show.

[imababblekat]

TmnT Boy’s Meeting Aprils New Roomie; HC’s

Anon Request, “Can I request the bayverse turtles reactions to meeting april's new roomate who is a really a short s/o (like 5 ft) that has a tired and chill personality (has the same kind of personality as aizawa and shinso from mha) and instead of freaking out when they see the turtles they just say "hey" nonchalantly then go back to what they're doing? (You don't need to do this I just think it would be funny)”

~xXx~

Michelangelo:

Mikey had barged his way into Aprils apartment to excitedly talk about the latest episode of their favorite TV drama when he stumbled upon you

April was there with you, equal panic on her face as the orange clad turtle waited for the inevitable screaming or a similar panicked reaction

Your lack of shock left Mikey curious about you; all you had given him was a tired “sup” with a head tilt up and continuing your conversation like seeing a mutant ninja turtle breaking into your apartment was the most normal of things

His brothers wouldn’t have believed him if not for April being witness to the ordeal and are left as equally surprised by your lack of reaction when they ultimately come to meet you

Doesn’t take long for Mikey to practically glue himself to your side; it’s like the golden retriever boy trope

Loves the fact you’re so short; doesn’t out right tease you because he knows what it’s like to be the smallest, but he won’t hesitate to pick you up and throw you on his shoulders to get something from a high place

Donatello: 

His mind is so deep in explaining what he figured out what was wrong with Aprils watch, that he hadn’t picked up on her panicked face till he’d heard the once vacant room in her apartment creak open

Your lack of noticing him at all, which was odd considering he was a literal giant in comparison to your much shorter stature, and making way to grab some water before retreating back to your room had Donnie wonder for a second if he was really that good of a ninja

But after questioning April the next day about whether or not you truly did notice him, it turns out he in fact wasn’t as invisible as he felt, when his friend informed him that you did actually see him that night

Ultimately, he had to introduce himself and his brothers to make sure you wouldn’t go talking about them to the wrong person, but at your simple nod and “okay” while absentmindedly texting on your phone at the end of their empty threat introduction, Donnie was even more confused than he had been the first night

Your nonchalant behavior had left his overthinking brain wondering why you reacted so differently compared to others

It didn’t make any logical sense to him, especially after no indications that you were going through some kind of weird shock symptom 

His time spent trying to understand why you didn’t freak out on him that night turns into a lot of time bonding and forming a friendship he also never calculated to be possible, not that he minded of course; your chill personality was a nice contrast to the chaotic energies of his brothers when needed

Raphael:

He had been asked by Donnie while on a solo patrol to grab something from April, so when he’d stepped through her window he did not expect to see another person there with her

Your lack of a fear struck response leaves him frustratingly confused afterwards

Poor Raph is so used to people screaming or even fainting at the sight of him, that when all you did was wave a simple high and continue watching your Netflix show, he couldn’t help the suspicion he held towards you

Due to his skeptical feeling towards you however, he ends up spending a lot of time around you, and even though it does take some time, your unconcerned attitude towards, well, all of him, eventually has his walls crumbling around you

You make him feel normal, like he’s not some freak of nature; you don’t even flinch when his anger gets the best of him, instead waiting for him to calm some before offering some comfort

As Raph finds himself more lax with you, he opens up quite a bit and finds a friendship he didn’t know he desperately craved

But he’ll never tell you that, not at first at least, and instead just teases you and calls you shorty and time you tease him about how sweet he’s being

Leonardo:

Leo is definitely the most guarded when meeting new people, and your unbothered nature towards him when he accidentally stumbles upon you in Aprils apartment, does not easy his mistrustful thoughts about you

For a while he actually wonders if you’re some kind of secret spy to the foot clan or some other bad group of people, but anytime he tried to get you to confess your secrets, you’d just confusingly ask if you could help him with all the weird staring he’s doing

It lowkey leaves him feeling flustered, because he’s not used to not being taken seriously by anyone except his brothers

It takes a while for him to warm up to you, but when he does he starts to realizes how much he appreciates not being seen as a freak almost like Raph does, he also feels very relieved to not have to worry about his family being in any sort of danger with you

Yeah, you might be the shortest person he’s ever met, but he secretly feels like you could kick some ass

Your unassuming personality also has him thinking you could secretly be a force to wreckin with, and often ponders if he should offer up the idea to train you; definitely not because he wants to spend more time with you or anything of course!

~xXx~

[byers-bowlcut]

I've seen people say El likes the IDEA of having a boyfriend more than she actually likes her own boyfriend, and jfc it's so true 😭 Like it's all over the show:

Season 1

She's initially attached to Mike because he's the first person to give her shelter, food, genuine human care and just,, not calling CPS immediately. Her feelings for him was born from trauma and dependency in season 1. And throughout the rest of the 3 seasons, we don't see it grow past that.

Also I think it's noticeable in S1 that:

She was uninterested when Mike tried to share his hobbies with her

She also did not seem to mind AT ALL when she questioned if Mike could be her brother. He voice is neutral and curious here, not the least bit repulsed by the thought of being siblings with Mike, like girl does not care 😭

Season 2

This season has zero onscreen moments of Mike and El actually getting to know each other further. They were separated nearly the whole season.

What we DO see:

El's attachment and dependency on Mike that was developed from S1

We also find out how El spent a year of her life watching melodramatic romance films. Many other middle schoolers might identify that relationships in real life don't work like those films. But El is fresh out of lab life, she's literally learning the world through this TV, and has now become obsessed with the IDEA of having a boyfriend/relationship just like that.

Season 3

Again, no onscreen moments of El showing interest in who Mike is as a person.

The very first scene we see of them, she's trying to get him to stop singing along to the song they're listening to. She seems to like kissing Mike. But isn't shown enjoying anything actually characteristic about him, like sharing interests with him such as music.

Hopper indicates that they don't do anything meaningful together either. We see here that before hanging out with Max, El had little sense of her own style, her hobbies, her interests- meaning spending time with Mike for months probably didn't involve many talking points did it?

Also in season 3, El dumps Mike with ZERO hesitation. Then she has the time of her life with Max. The most acknowledgment we get that she's oh so heartbroken is a small frown to Max that her and Mike aren't on best terms. And even that doesn't seem so paramount cause 1 episode later she totally dismisses Mike after he explains how Hopper threatened him. She just tells him maybe Hopper was right 😭😭

It's literally ONLY once she starts becoming in danger that she starts clinging onto him again. I feel like we've seen this film before hm.

Like where are any signs that she likes Mike as an individual, and is falling for who he really is, rather than simply being attached due to trauma, and liking the concept of doing romantic things (ie: kissing, dancing at the ball, etc.)

Season 4

This is the season it becomes the MOST OBVIOUS: El loves the concept of a happy relationship and being loved, but not really loving Mike for who he is. And bringing in Will's feelings just emphasizes this point.

To start, El continues doing all these relationship-y things that she did in the start of S3. She has Mike's name and pictures plastered all over her room. She makes a "Mike box" with his pictures decorated all over it. But the thing is: this is all sort of a façade at this point. We know she's BEEN unhappy with him for months ("From Mike! From Mike! From Mike!"). But with all these items, she's basically trying to convince herself that she's in this happy, fantasy, movie-like relationship, like she probably watched in hopper's cabin in season 2.

And then, there's the sheer difference between her and WILL in their feelings for Mike. We see it right off the bat when Mike comes to the airport: Will and El both have plans to give Mike something.

Will plans to give him a painting he worked extremely hard on. The painting is a connection of what they BOTH love: DnD, and it includes their friends who also play the game. It's very personal and immediately touches Mike. What's more is, the painting illustrates the exact qualities about Mike that Will loves: his leadership, his bravery, his guidance. This painting literally spells out to us that Will truly loves Mike for WHO HE IS.

Meanwhile, El plans on giving Mike a fun reunion date. She has the whole day planned out. And immediately: we see that what she wants to do doesn't actually takes Mike's interests and personality into consideration. You can see and hear the strain in his voice when he talks about "burritos for breakfast" 😬

You can see how he's not that relaxed at rinkomania, and nervous about skating, saying he's clumsy. He probably would've much preferred movies and playing a board game, over skating. But El has her own ideas. When she brings Mike to rinkomania, she tries to act really cool about it. She wants to impress him, wants to seem like she fits in and belongs.

Her present was never actually ABOUT Mike, and about loving Mike that she would plan this huge date for him. Her present was about her desperately wanting to have this cool date like every other normal teen girl might, with a normal boyfriend, and make it seem like they have a happy perfect relationship.

And then finally we reach their S4 fight. I find it extremely interesting how Hopper's cabin is framed in the background during their whole fight. It's almost like an indication that her desperate need to be loved by Mike stems from her trying to cope with losing Hopper and the hole left by him, that clearly did not exist when she happily dumped Mike in S3.

In their fight, when the topic of bullying comes up, Mike says he understands her, but El is quick to say he doesn't. She thinks Mike doesn't understand her, but this is just as much her not understanding HIM as well.

She doesn't get the extent of Mike's insecurities (definitely partially a result of bullying), something that Mike later divulges to WILL and not her. If the writers wanted to show us how much El understands Mike and loves him for who he is, her and Mike would work through his insecurities in their rs together, NOT through a middle man.

Overall it's pretty striking that we've never once heard El actually compliment Mike, or articulate, or even show what exactly she loves about him through four whole seasons. I mean...

Attachment to him due to trauma or grief =/= loving him for who he is.

Wanting to BE loved =/= loving him for who he is.

So really in terms of a relationship, what El ACTUALLY wants is the concept/idea of a regular boyfriend, and a happy easy relationship, all in an attempt to feel normal. And that's why we see them fall apart the way they do in season 4, and why Will is currently so involved. Because Will DOES see and love Mike for exactly who he is.

[blocksgame]

Tips on character voices when writing fic

This is written in mind for people writing fic in MCYT/QSMP/DSMP/Life series/etc kind of fandoms. But if anyone finds it useful for anything else, well then, hell yeah.

Character voice is big in all, uh, fiction, and mimicking it in any fanwork is big. But I think it’s especially big in these fandoms where the voices are so distinct – it’s usually how a Real Person Somewhere (the streamer) talks, versus something very scripted that you’d see in a TV show or novel. And it can be a big difference in your character sounding generic versus really feeling true to the original.

Listen to a bunch of your subject talking. If you want to write a character well, watch vods from their point of view, or episodes where they show up a bunch. Take note of what they say and how.

2. If you don’t know how to start doing that: try literally writing down what they say. Transcribe an actual exchange in fic-format. You probably won’t want to publish a literal exchange from canon, but it will give you a sense of how to physically write what they say.

3. If you do this (or just pay attention to how they talk), you will get a lot of: Stumbling, pauses, repeating words, filler words, weird sentence constructions, fragments, etc. I love em! Here’s something that comes through in improv much more than in novels or movies: Most people, even very charismatic people, are not very eloquent when they speak. Writing out conversations or sentences will give you a sense of the unique and delightful way in which your subject is not eloquent. vvvvv way more under cut vvvvv

(People use a LOT of filler/etc when they speak. It’s reasonable to cut back on this if it’s interfering with a nice-looking or readable result. I believe this is the eternal struggle of people who write transcripts – you want the transcript to be accurate, but there are also a lot of things you can obviously simplify and not lose the meaning. So you’ll end up falling somewhere on this spectrum either way. But I do think a lot of mediocre/generic fic dialogue is very stylized – it doesn’t sound like your guy because your guy literally wouldn’t say that. They would say it worse and more confusingly.)

(I’m serious, if you’ve never sat down with a short non-completely-scripted clip or real conversation or whatever and just written out exactly what was said, do it. It will make you better at writing.)

4. Wonda-cat made a really incredible list [link] of characterizing speech patterns for the Dream SMP members. But you can also do your own reconnaissance and come up with your own patterns, common phrases, etc.

5. You do not have to get EVERYTHING right. You’re not going to, like, get so deep into the speaker’s brain that you can produce “exactly what they would have said if they were somehow in your fic.” That is impossible. You’re just trying to evoke a character, and if you get a few turns of phrase to ring true, you’re doing great.

6. A lot of these people are popular because they are hilarious. Include jokes. Yes, even if your thing is angsty or serious. A lot of the most serious lore I can think of from, e.g., the Dream SMP or 3rd Life or the QSMP - the really story-defining, life-and-death moments - were absolutely hysterical. If you’re writing characters who are usually funny, then add some humor. It can heighten angst via contrast and a sense of realism. Ask yourself what a funny streamer would make jokes about if they were possessing a character in this situation.

7. Some people have the mystical ability to “hear” character voices in their head, and read things in their voice. If you can, do this with all of your dialogue during the editing process. This won’t always get you there, but sometimes it can catch things that sound wrong by invoking "that's really hard to imagine them saying". If you don’t have this power, try recruiting a friend who does.

8. So there’s dialogue and then there’s narration that’s still from a character’s point of view. I’ve mostly given you tips about dialogue, but a lot of this is also true for narration. IMO, narration is less about phrasing things the way the subject would, and more about recreating the way they think. I don’t have concrete rules on how to do this, but here is my wisdom:

You can get eloquent again - narration is more of an abstract and artistic process than dialogue.

Spend time with your subject’s source material.

Pay attention to what they notice and care about. How do you think they think?

Don’t be afraid to get weird with it.

That last one also applies to all art ever.

9. MCYT tends to give you a great boon you don’t see in other media: what the speaker says to their chat/audience when nobody else is listening. This can be incredibly characterizing even if you’re writing a story where people don’t have chats. It’s your person talking about their thought processes and feelings! Mine that shit.

10. Some questions that might help guide both characterizing narration and dialogue (that you’d get from dialogue):

How open are they about their feelings?

How often do they lie? What do they lie about?

What kind of metaphors do they use, if any?

How quickly does their mood change?

How can you tell when they’re in different moods?

What kind of things do they pay attention to?

How formal is their speech?

11. Finally, this is a little odd, but I find it’s much, much easier to write a character that sounds good if I, the author, like them and am rooting for them at least a little bit. If a character needs to be there who you don’t love, try to love them. Or at least get a sense of what other people love about them. It just makes everything else easier. I swear to god.

Happy writing out there!

[goddessxdivine]

the Faks

I can understand the importance of Carmy saying to Claire that (Neil) Fak isn't his best friend is in part to show how out of touch Carmy is with personal connections, and still be annoyed at how much time all of the Faks have gotten. especially over Sydney. like i promise with everything I have in me that I would have much preferred a Syd-centric scene over the Faks going to Claire's job to tell her how much Carmy loves her. despite Carmy not asking for their intervention.

i get that Matty Matheson is a producer of the show. i understand that fully. and if i'm being honest, i didn't mind Neil Fak in season 1 or even season 2 ("Clairebear" nonsense aside). however, can we please do what's best for the show even if that means your character stays a side character that is sporadically seen???? maybe it wasn't Matty's idea or choice for more Faks but they need to fix it and fix it fast

focus on the Faks is part of the reason season 3 fell short among the audience and critics, in my opinion. we are here to see Carmy and Sydney's journey (individually and together) yet you've hired *checks notes* John fucking Cena to play yet another Fak family member that no one asked for? no shade to John Cena lol but like at some point we have to get back to the original plot of the tv show. and i literally don't care about a Fak family tradition of "haunting" one another. like be so serious. again, i can understand its relevance to the plot but i still hated having to see it

Ayo went from being nominated as the supporting female actor to the lead female actor. and you're telling me that instead of a Syd centric episode or Syd flashbacks, i have to sit through the Faks misunderstand Carmy saying "peace" as "piece". are you actually joking omg that scene annoyed me so badly. the Faks provide a comedy that is more easily acknowledged, sure. and at times i can appreciate that humor but why does it often have to be cheap. "its dystopian butter" was much funnier than "piece? like of ass"

and as a Black woman there gets to a point where i watch this and think to myself "is this becoming microaggressive?" like it kind of reminds me of when DC's Titans had a character focused episode for each of the main characters and when it was Kory's turn, she was barely in her own episode ??????? cause literally what do you mean you've brought in more Faks but we've yet to see any of Syd's friends she has outside the restaurant? like why do Black female characters get relegated to only the central plot of the show when other characters get to exist outside the main setting

they hired Josh Hartnett to play Tiff's new fiance. like lets break this down. Richie can exist outside the restaurant. we see his daughter, his ex-wife, and his ex-wife's new fiance. all characters that are important to Richie's characterization but who does Syd have (aside from her dad, dont get me wrong her dad's presence is important). idk lets dig deeper ????????

tl;dr down with the fucking faks!! more syd now!

[episodeoftv]

Round 5 of 8

propaganda and summaries are under the cut (May include spoilers)

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: 5.16 The Body

tw Death of a major character, grief, dealing with the death of a parent

Buffy, Dawn, and their friends deal with the aftermath of Joyce's death.

The purposeful removal of music for the whole episode, the grief portrayed, the portrayals of people with varying amounts of interaction with death. It hits so hard.

This episode killed me. I have never watched anything that has fully encompassed the feeling of loss and what it's like to experience death close to you than The Body. It is an absolute gut punch in the best way. I actually had to take a week off of watching Buffy to recover because I was so destroyed. 12/10 I don't think I will ever be able to watch this episode of TV ever again

One of the greatest depictions of grief and bereavement of all time. Both formally inventive and unique in its cinematography, sound design, editing etc. while also being an incredible personally affecting emotional experience.

There’s another buffy episode that probably deserves the title more, but I did have to give this one some recognition. For a whacky silly show about vampires, this episode is maybe the realest portrayal of death and grief I’ve ever seen. It’s not just a sad episode that makes audiences cry - I mean it is that - but it’s also this incredible examination of what it’s like to lose someone, and how the world shifts on its axis when that happens. The lack of any non diegetic music is an amazing touch to give this episode a sense of distance from all others. It’s real in a way that’s hard to watch but also unforgettable. Certain scenes and lines will always stay with me and will forever shape my feelings on life and loss.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Body_(Buffy_the_Vampire_Slayer)

M*A*S*H: 11.16 Goodbye, Farewell and Amen

In the closing days of the Korean War, the staff of the 4077 M*A*S*H Unit find themselves facing irrevocable changes in their lives.

LITERALLY the most episode ever. For American television broadcasts it remains the most-watched primetime television episode ever, beaten only by a number of Super Bowls, the moon landing, and the Nixon resignation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodbye,_Farewell_and_Amen

[piratecaptainscaptainpirates]

I understand the criticisms people have about season 2, I really do. I have my own genuine complaints. But, frankly? I feel like we can pick this show apart too much. I don't expect any piece of media I consume to be perfect so I sure as hell think I should be able to extend my favorite show a little grace.

Literally every problem I have with s2 is almost certainly down to the fact that they had to work with a 40% budget cut and had to keep every episode strictly under 30 minutes (whereas in s1 longer episodes had some breathing room). It's very obvious to me that the writers of this show did their absolute level best to do their story justice with what they had. And at the end of the day, my biggest complaint is always that I wish they had more - more time, more episodes. That's a pretty nice thing, really, that the worst I can say about something is that I wish I had more of it.

Like I said, I get the criticism, I really do! I'm not saying any show is above critique. But I'm also not exaggerating when I say that this show as a whole is the best thing I've seen on TV in a long, long time. I can't make myself care much that s2 was a bit messier than I'd have liked when I think it still runs circles around everything else. And, as if the fact we got s2 at all wasn't enough, they made sure Ed and Stede's story never really suffered for the budget cuts, and they made sure that we ended the season with Ed and Stede in a good, satisfying place. If you haven't watched it since it was airing I couldn't recommend enough watching it again without the week-long breaks and all the fandom speculation and craziness in between; the pacing feels soooo much better that way. I love it even more with every rewatch. We complain a lot in fandom spaces but almost everyone I know irl who watch it casually think s2 was better than s1.

I love this show so much. I'm so glad we've got it and for every bit of hate I see about s2 I'm just gonna love it even harder, because even when it's messy it's the most earnest, heartfelt thing out there and I appreciate the fuck out of it for that.

[rhiannonsknife]

DROP UR HOT TAKE GIRLIE WE SUPPORT YOU

-🔆

okay, listen!!! in the grand scheme of things, this is such a non-issue. the show raises way more important questions than this, and i wasn’t even planning on posting this note. it was just a silly little rant in my notes app because my brain latched onto it, so here we are! i wrote this before episode 4 so it’s spoiler free :) (the only things i edited just now are in italics)

also, for context, this is coming from someone who genuinely could not care less about shaving and will never not stand for the fact that body hair is beautiful. if this wasn’t clear from the great bush discourse yet.

anyway. to the people saying ‘it’s a hallucination’ in response to the (minimal but very important) no armpit hair discourse: first of all, be ready to hear from me again if shauna still doesn’t have armpit hair in other scenes, because by your logic, it should definitely be there then. (yeah…this whole argument was proven wrong since then, so…)

but also!!! also!!! while a part of me wants to say this is kind of irrelevant, i really don’t think it is. name more than three movies and/or tv shows where all of the cast actually have a realistic portrayal of body hair, especially the women/non-men. i’ll wait.

like, sure, coach ben has a full face of hair because he (obviously) can’t be bothered to shave out there/probably didn’t even bring a fuck-ass razor for a weekend trip, but most (not all, but most) of the girls have clean-shaven legs, armpits etc etc (we’ve already seen this outside of hallucinations, so don’t tell me it’s about that again)

and yeah, maybe it’s just about the cast’s personal preference, but if you’re on a show about being stranded in the wilderness for nineteen months, giving up shaving for a couple of weeks before filming to reflect a more realistic portrayal of the female body doesn’t seem like that much of a stretch idk 😭

it just highlights a bigger issue in media, which is basically my whole point here: how women’s bodies are always portrayed in a way that conforms to beauty standards, even in situations where it makes no sense. we see men with stubble, unkempt hair to sell the idea that they’re surviving, but when it comes to women? smooth legs, shaved armpits. you could be watching a post-apocalyptic movie, a historical drama, even something like yellowjackets, and still, the natural way women’s bodies actually look is rarely ever acknowledged.

and i get that, to some extent, actors might not want to change their grooming habits for a role. like, obviously, no one should be forced to do something that makes them uncomfortable! there are actors who put their bodies through extreme changes for roles, whether it’s major weight loss/gain, muscle gain etc. and it’s completely reasonable for someone to set their own boundaries with that. but the thing is…growing body hair out isn’t some huge, irreversible transformation. it’s not a physical strain, it’s not a health risk, it’s literally just skipping a step in your routine. it saves time rather than adding any sort of challenge, so what exactly is speaking against doing it? because if it’s just that we, as a society, still think women with body hair don’t “look good” on screen, then yeah. that’s kind of the whole issue. (chat again: not that deep. I KNOW. this is just my take here)

but at the same time, why is body hair seen as something so unthinkable for women to have on screen in the first place? like, we’ve been conditioned to think it’s “unhygienic” or “unappealing,” when in reality, it’s literally just…hair. men get to be scruffy and unshaven in movies all the time for the sake of realism!!

— a/n: guys again: it really isn’t that big of a deal, i know, and i was literally just yapping in my notes app, that’s all this is about. because i feel very strongly about the way our bodies tend to be portrayed in media. but after the great bush discourse, i just felt like pointing it out!!

[welcometothejianghu]

Welcome to another round of W2 Tells You What You Should See, where W2 (me) tries to sell you (you) on something you should be watching. Today's choice: 延禧攻略/Story of Yanxi Palace.

Story of Yanxi Palace is a high-budget 2018 Chinese harem drama about the historical-accuracy-adjacent antics of an extremely baller young woman who gets a job working in the Forbidden City in an attempt to discover the reasons behind her sister's death.

Imagine Nirvana in Fire, but only the scenes that take place inside the Inner Palace. So there's still schemes aplenty, but now these schemes are happening among a cast that's 90% women, all locked inside a walled city with rigid rules, excruciatingly strict hierarchies, and a very limited number of ways of getting out alive.

This show was huge in China. The English-language fandom is almost nonexistent. I'm betting most of you reading this have never even heard of it, and if you have, you have only the vaguest idea of what this 70-episode palace drama is about.

I enjoyed this show a whole hell of a lot. I also had some major issues with the show, to the point where I very nearly did not write this rec. But I'm doing it because I think the good parts of the show are worth seeing, and because I think the problem parts of the show are worth thinking about. Interested? Then follow me through these five reasons (and a few anti-reasons) I think you should watch it.

1. The Real Housewives of the Forbidden City

Tired of c-drama sausage fests? Want to see a bunch of incredibly talented ladies act their faces off? Then this is the show for you.

The vast majority of characters in the show are absolute bitches to one another. They are locked in a cutthroat game of power and manners where the stakes are literally life and death, so they spend their whole lives either plotting to take someone else down or counterplotting so the person trying to take them down gets taken down instead. They all know they can't trust one another, but they also sometimes can't not trust one another. They keep their friends close, and their enemies closer.

Unlike most other schemes-based shows, which are all about one big mystery, Story of Yanxi Palace has several smaller arcs. Remember the sister-murder I mentioned at the start? I was prepared for that to take the whole runtime of the show to solve; it actually gets (mostly) concluded around episode twenty-something. Antagonists arise and fall. Situations happen and resolve. Think of it less like a movie's single narrative, and more like a video game's multiple levels. Hooray, we finished Garden World! Now we get to go back to Palace World, but with way more EXP and powerups than we had before!

I know that looks like a bunch of lovely, high-class ladies in that shot, but it's not. It's a pit of vipers. Any woman in that lineup would straight-up shank pretty much any other woman in that lineup without hesitation or remorse. Every woman there knows exactly where she fits in the hierarchy and has a detailed plan for how to take out every woman above her to get to the top -- except for the one in black, who already did take out every woman above her to get to the top, and that's why everyone has to ostentatiously defer to her now.

If you are a fan of TV shows where folk scheme their way to success, this is really a can't-miss property for you.

This is also a show about how smart women have to become to survive being at the mercy of stupid men. Not only are the women being vicious to one another, they're doing so while simultaneousy having to pretend that they are pretty, delicate, vapid ornaments whose only thoughts are how they want the best for their precious emperor and his beloved mommy. It's all about the exercise of soft power, how to hide your knives behind silk sleeves and a sweet smile.

So okay, it's not quite as trashy as reality TV, but it's still bitchy as hell and incredibly fun to watch.

2. You love to hate her (and her, and him, and her)

Now if you've read pretty much any one of my previous recs, you know I like a good baddie, and this is a show with some good baddies. As I said in the last point, this is a show about bad people doing bad things entertainingly.

However, I am not going to tell you who most of the show's love-to-hate characters are, because the vast majority of them do not start out hateable. If the show introduces a female character and you like her, or a eunuch character and you like him, there is like an 85% chance they're going to do a heel turn. (And then sometimes do a face turn after? Look, schemes are complicated.)

But I will tell you about one bitch who's rotten from her first moment to her last: Noble Consort Gao.

Noble Consort Gao is the scenery-chewing, shit-stirring, absolute meanest mean girl in the palace, and it is so fucking entertaining. She's your major antagonist for the first half of the show. She's strategically mean, but she's also recreationally mean. She does the anime villainess laugh for real. Her actor, Tan Zhuo, has set her bitch dial to 11 and isn't even bothering to chew the scenery -- she's shredding it with those incredible metal claw-nails she wears.

Noble Consort Gao is a good starting antagonist because she's so blatantly evil -- and yet somehow still unstoppable. She's a good example of how you can get away with being pretty much openly sinister if you also manage to mind your manners. The reason she gets away with being so damn awful to everyone else is that she's still playing by all the rules. She's managed to weaponize every convention about propriety to lord her power over everyone else. She's like a fucking HOA.

And you'll notice I'm speaking about her with such fondness because she's delightfully awful. In fact, pretty much everyone in this show is delightfully awful. There are exceptions, but on the whole, you want to see them go down, yet you're also going to be a little sad when they go. Even Noble Consort, by the end, you get where she's coming from, and you feel a little bad for her on the way out.

Do you like vengeance? Because we've got some vengeance for you here. Many, many people in this show have been wronged, often by the people they trusted most. And of course they all respond to this in a healthy manner, seeking justice for themselves and for their loved ones through proper channels and reasonable means.

Ha ha, just kidding, everybody here is completely unhinged! The primary difference between a good guy and a bad guy in this show is how many innocent people they wind up taking down with the guilty party. It's messy as hell and we are making popcorn about it.

This is a show full of villains. In fact, this cast is pretty much entirely bad guys, semi-bad guys, potential bad guys, and good people who had to do bad things to survive. There are maybe two non-child characters who are Just Plain Good that don't get nuked almost immediately. Everyone else is some shade of grey. Even our hero (and we'll get to her in a minute) is pretty yikes-inducing cruel when she needs to be.

Going to say this as clearly as I can: This is not a show for people who cannot tolerate moral ambiguity. This is a show for people who love to watch clever bastards work. And pretty much nobody's more of a bastard than Noble Consort Gao.

Ladies and gentlemen, the cunt is served.

3. No, seriously, this is actually what it all looked like

If you are at all interested in this actual time period, you owe it to yourself to see this dedicated work of historical recreation.

The amount of research and detail that went into this production is honestly mind-blowing. Because this show is set in the 18th century, we actually have some pretty great documentation about the places, objects, and people involved in this story -- including some (slightly later, obviously) photographs! The production went all out in its attempts to replicate the setting, including using period-appropriate techniques to create various accessories and objects.

The outfits are amazing -- and excruciatingly accurate in several aspects. I've seen more than a couple people say that their first reaction to the costumes was, ho hum, kind of boring. Well, yeah, compared to some of the absolutely bugfuck-complicated wearable works of art from earlier periods, these are a little understated. But then you start paying attention to the million little details: the embroidery, the hair ornaments, the layers, the fabrics. A whole team of people clearly put a huge amount of work into these outfits.

Nearly every royal character in the show is a real person. You could spoil yourself for several major plot beats just by going to Wikipedia. In fact, I accidentally did this, because I was reading the show's DramaWiki page and thought, oh, that's interesting; I understand why the actor names are links (because it takes you to the actors' pages), but why are so many of the character names also links? Turns out: Wikipedia! So, uh, careful where you click.

One of the great things about the show is how utterly claustrophobic it is. Most of it takes place within the heavily guarded walls of the Forbidden Palace; on the very few occasion it goes somewhere else, you're just traveling to other walled manors and villas. There's one brief scene in a forest, and the psychological difference is enormous. You see a few trees and you're immediately like, oh, so that's why these women are going crazy in their gilded cages.

The drama even shows how some of the least glamorous parts of the Forbidden Palace work: the chamber pots, the coal for furnaces, the mopping, the weeding, the laundry, the fire brigades. It's an enormous production, keeping what is basically a 178-acre city-state running to imperial standards. It's nice to see a drama that acknowledges that while rich people may want to see only clean walkways and fresh sheets, those things don't happen by magic.

If anything, knowing about all this detailed research makes the unintentionally funniest scene in the entire show -- the one with the eunuchs playing Western instruments -- ten times funnier. You had artisans spending months doing exact recreations of historical hairpins, and you couldn't spend thirty seconds asking the internet "when were saxophones invented?" or "does an accordion make noises like a string quartet?" Perfect. No notes.

Trust me when I say you'll get used to the queue haircuts on the dudes. It helps that most of the time, they're facing the camera so they just look like they've got their heads fully shaved, and most of them have heads that look very good shaved! ...Most.

4. The kind of girl who'd make Mei Changsu say damn

The show has a strong ensemble cast, but the woman at the core of all the action is the tough-as-nails protagonist, Wei Yingluo.

The details we have on the actual Lady Wei are sparse. She doesn't really exist as a person in the historical record, to the point where we don't even know her given name (if she even had one) or when she showed up to the palace. We mostly know when she got given her titles, how many kids she gave birth to, some of what she did later in life, and when she died. The show takes these historical gaps and just runs with them, weaving into the silences a narrative that, while implausible, could have happened!

The show starts when Wei Yingluo enters the Forbidden City, not as a royal lady concubine, but as a regular little maid. She's got an agenda, though -- as mentioned earlier, her sister has died tragically, and she wants to figure out why. The stakes get higher as it becomes clear just how much people don't want this question answered, for their sakes as much as for hers.

She very quickly realizes that she can't just live a quiet life and snoop around casually. Too many people are out to get her, and if she's going to survive, she's got to fuck with them before they fuck with her. And they are wholly unprepared for the self-destructive lengths to which she will go to to fuck with them.

Wu Jinyan deserves all the accolades for turning in a great performance. She has to be completely all over the board emotionally and energy-wise for seventy whole episodes, and she brings it. She's very funny and physical when the show calls for her to be! She's willing to flail around and stuff her face and ugly-cry. Then she turns on the don't-mess-with-me stare and the temperature in the room drops ten degrees. Did she get some award for this? [checks her DramaWiki page] Okay, she got several awards for this, good. Even in a huge cast this talented, she's an absolute standout. I can't wait to see her in the Double, which is definitely on my to-watch list.

I'm not going to call Wei Yingluo a Mary Sue, because that's not accurate, but this girl does have some serious plot armor on. You never get the sense that she hasn't earned it, though. She's smart, capable, and more than a little completely fucking crazy. The show makes you believe that the reason she survives most of the shit she pulls off is that everyone is just so baffled that anyone would try it at all that they don't even know how to respond.

I thought about starting out this rec post with Wei Yingluo -- putting her above the cut, in fact, because she really is that compelling. She's back here, though, because it's with Wei Yingluo that we start to slide into my points of critique. Too often, female protagonists are here to solve the problem with their cuteness and quirkiness and extra-special perfectness that shows up all the other girls and captures the heart of whatever boy she needs to save the day. And no matter how this show starts off wanting to make her something different, it ultimately can't conceive of a female lead who isn't at her core just like that.

The writers can never decide how much Wei Yingluo's Manic Pixie Dream Girl act is an act, and how much she means it. The show introduces her as a stone-cold psychopath who is capable of feigning being a carefree brainless uwu smol bean. Later it decides, actually, she's really at her core a spunky, soft-hearted creature who likes to goof off and is just capable of switching on Scheming Bitch Mode when she needs it! And it's like, are you kidding? You just spent like forty episodes telling me that it's all a big trick when she does this, and now you're saying it's not anymore?

It's like they made a character capable of decieving men, and then got decieved by her, which you have to respect. Any fictional character can fool another fictional character; only true legends fool their creators.

sidebar: fuck that dude

The show can never fully commit to this bit, because he's supposed to be our big heroic love interest, but the emperor fucking sucks.

Hands-down the show's biggest moral is that All Emperors Are Bastards -- yes, even the ones in relationships we're supposed to find cute; yes, even the ones whose lifestyles we're supposed to envy; yes, even the ones played superbly by the devastatingly handsome Nie Yuan. While watching we repeatedly invoked this tweet:

Being a billionaire must be insane. You can buy new teeth, new skin. All your chairs cost 20,000 dollars and weigh 2,000 pounds. Your life is just a series of your own preferences. In terms of cognitive impairment it's probably like being kicked in the head by a horse every day

He is the dumbest, most easily played motherfucker in China. Getting horny makes him stupid, and he's horny all the time. He has absolute power over the lives of everyone in the empire, and you can distract him with the mere suggestion of a vagina. He has taken a full You Girls Fight It Out Amongst Yourselves stance toward his scheming harem. This will not go well for anyone.

And speaking of those wives, no matter how many times they loudly profess their undying devotion to him, I have a rough time imagining these women feel anything for the Emperor beyond exhausted contempt. Well, okay, maybe the Empress who married him before he took the throne, since she had a chance to get to know him before he was in full Emperor Mode. But none of the other women should ever stop dunking on this guy like the gullible shitbag he is. If you (like me!) are already skeptical about any given heterosexual romance in fiction, be prepared to roll your eyes through the Big True Love Story this one tries to sell you.

5. Right on the cusp of a fascinating feminist conclusion!

I may be on this one for a while; skip ahead if you like.

Okay, so: What little English-language buzz I've seen about this show has used the word "feminist" about it -- mostly in conjunction with how the show's popularity made the CCP sour on its failure to portray appropriate communist values (???). So I went into it expecting feminism! And I got a show with a whole bunch of female characters in it! And hoo boy, are those two things not necessarily the same!

This show is a great example of how merely passing the Bechdel-Wallace Test doesn't make something feminist. Sure, it's mostly about a single woman who, through her plucky nature, rises in the ranks of power. But that is feminist only by the shallowest, most girlboss, Lean-In-ass definition of the word.

At the beginning, you can kinda tell this was written, produced, and directed by men. By the time you get to the end, you can absolutely tell that the production team was dudes from top to bottom. This, to me, is the big tell: that the show cannot conceive that anything these women are doing could be interesting unless it's trying to stab another woman in the back. There is a time jump very near the end, where the few female characters still standing agree to stop being shitty to one another -- and then fast-forward a decade, because why would we care about seeing what their lives are like when they're not being shitty to one another?

The show is incredibly constrained by Actual History. At the end of the day, it's a Cinderella story, and as such, we have to cheer for the social and legal mechanisms that make it possible -- even when they're grotesquely misogynistic. The show lets its female characters pay lip service to how awful it is that women are little more than breeding stock, but it doesn't let them do anything about it. Mothers can be obliquely sad that their daughters are being fed to the same patriarchy machine that fucked them up, but talking is the most they can accomplish ... because those daughters were real people who were actually fed into the patriarchy machine. We know this. We have documentation. China is very good at keeping receipts.

Wei Yingluo starts out as a servant, and throughout the first half of the show, she moves up and down in the servant ranks -- and all the while it makes the point that being a servant fucking sucks. Maybe it's better when you get to work directly under someone you really like, but the actual job sucks shit and puts you at the mercy of everyone above you in the palace hierarchy. Your life is not your own. You're barely a person. You can easily get executed for merely working in the same household as someone who broke the rules.

The feminist answer to this dilemma is to notice that the system is bad and either a) refuse to participate in it, or b) use your power to mitigate its badness. The show, however, clearly thinks that the real problem with this whole setup is that the people we like aren't at the top of it. Somebody has to take the abuse; you just don't want that somebody to be you. Once Wei Yingluo gets to a place of real power in the palace hierarchy, she starts behaving very much like the people who used to be shitty to her and takes no steps to prevent the early-show damage she suffered from happening to other people.

Now: You can make the argument that if she'd done all those radical things, she would've been dead meat -- and I think you'd be correct! But the show never indicates that it gives a second thought to how abusive and unfair this all is. Survival in this system means exploiting the people below you. There's not a neutral option. And this show expects you to cheer for exploiting the "right" people.

The show never quite seems to internalize what the stakes are -- at least, not for more than a moment or two at a time. I made the Real Housewives joke because the show more or less treats the consort-on-consort schemes as fun catfights by mean girls wanting to be the prom queen. It almost gets to the point of realizing that a woman's place in the harem is literal life-and-death shit for her, and that if she can't produce a son and work him into a powerful position, she's fucked. It always bunts when it gets there, though, choosing to play up vanity and petty grievances instead of the absolute desperation these women must be feeling.

It gets so close with Consort Shun to a real discussion about how awful it is that the men in their lives see them as pretty objects to be bartered for favor and power with other men. But it can't fully go there, because that would undermine the structures propping up this Cinderella story, and then we couldn't feel good about the Cinderella story. And we want to feel good about the Cinderella story. We will burn every other female character in the show if we get to feel good about the Cinderella story.

I've made a lot of jokes about lesbians in this show, but the truth is, it is chronically deficient in lesbianism. Lesbian sex would have improved the lives of at least half the characters here, if not more. Unlike a lot of other historical c-drama shows, Yanxi Palace acknowledges the reality and possibility both male and female same-sex sexual desire -- but it does so in order to say that both are bad. (I legitimately cannot tell if the production is doing this to show how regrettably anti-gay the past was or to play on the audience's expected homophobic disgust. I suspect the latter, but I genuinely don't know.) While it does the fascinating thing of showing desire and coupled relationships between women and eunuchs, it has no idea how queer those setups are, nor does it acknowledge the possibility for same-sex pairings to fill that same positive dynamic.

So why on earth would I list this whole mess of problematic attitudes as a reason for, and not against, watching the show?

Because it is fascinating to think about. Look, I've burned a lot of time and brainpower here writing several paragraphs that no one is ever going to read about how interesting the show's moves are. It has the weird problem where it understands what happens when you lock a bunch of women together in a high-pressure situation keyed to a brutal hierarchy -- but it doesn't ever appear to quite get why. At least, not beyond the sense that people will claw their way to the top of any hierarchy they have access to, just because it's there. (Watch how it treats the few exceptions to this, the rare nonambitious characters. See how long they stay nonambitious.)

As I said when I labeled this point, the show is just on the edge of a smart conclusion, and that smart conclusion has to do with how awful it is that women are both the people who suffer most under heteropatriarchy and the people who work the hardest to uphold it.

Yes, the world into which these women have been thrust is awful. But they make it ten times more awful because they're all semi-voluntarily engaged in a vicious, Highlander-esque zero-sum competition. They could cut one another some slack, but they're more invested in continuing the cycle of abuse to maintain an intense, repressive order. The ones that try to be kind about it get repeatedly fucked by the ones who have no interest in kindness. They all have to engage in performative rituals that mimic sincerity without actually producing a single genuine emotion toward one another. It's horrifying and paranoia-inducing in the extreme. And they're doing most of it to themselves.

If it were really feminist, the moral of the Story of Yanxi Palace would be it does't have to be like this. This dynamic is not inevitable; this is a choice perpetuated by generations of people who benefit from it just enough not to question its correctness.

Sadly, there's still enough promise in patriarchy that being a Good Girl will save you from the shit we put the Bad Girls through -- so don't you want to be a Good Girl? All we need you to do is throw all those icky Bad Girls under the bus. It's their fault for being Bad Girls anyway. But you? You don't have to be afraid. We're not going to hurt you. You deserve all the good things we're giving you. You're not like all the other girls. You're different. You're special.

Just don't forget to watch your back.

If anything, I think the CCP is terribly wrong: This show is an excellent demonstration of communist values, in that if these women had just joined together in solidarity, all their lives would have been so much better! The Emperor should have been posting helplessly on Reddit like "My (55M) consorts (40F, 36F, 31F, 28F, 22F, 19F) have unionized" so the entire internet could come for his ass.

Care to watch?

This is another of those shows you can find in a whole bunch of places! Here's the ones I know about:

YouTube

TVBAnywhere

Viki

Tubi

iQiyi

I know seventy episodes is a commitment. I know eighteenth-century palace drama is a lot. I know that last selling point of mine seemed to go on for-fucking-ever and you probably didn't read any of it. But this show is a beautiful work that I think more people should see, warts and all. Besides, if all we ever consume is ideologically "pure" media, how do we learn to think critically about anything?

True story: My Chinese colleague, knowing I was watching this show, taught me slang for "lesbian." It's 拉拉 (lala). Very useful.

[xyxofspades]

Has anyone written a character study about Castiel and his predisposition to addiction yet?? Like I don’t mean just endverse!Cas- I mean aaaaaaall of Cas.

Yeah sure in endverse with the drugs and the sec and the etc etc but throughout the series Cas doesn’t seem to understand how to handle human luxuries and so when he’s at his lowest he indulges in really normal things like TV, but he does it so derangedly indulgently.

In S11 when he’s Casifer and we see him in his head when Crowley pops in there to try and pull him out he is glued to that little TV he’s got. He says Lucifer “mostly leaves him alone” and with the way he talks it sounds like he is literally not processing anything except what’s on that TV. He’s not processing Lucifer Rowena’s death, whatever the hell Lucifer was doing to Crowley that whole time, the attempts on the Winchester’s lives. Dude was not seeing any of it.

And that’s not the first time he’s done that either. In the season prior when Rowena had basically given him rabies, after he’d healed, he stuck himself to the TV in the bunker watching show after show on Netflix and trash cable. He’d seemed to develop a sort of agoraphobia and coped with it via television addiction.

Then there’s the scene in early season whatever number I can’t remember where the term “Team Free Will” was coined for the first time. Cas’s famous line of “I found a liquor store.” “And?” “And I drank it.” Cas seeing nothing but hopelessness in the face of the coming apocalypse decided to indulge himself in the human luxury of alcohol. This is the beginning of the timeline leading to the endverse but it still happens in the canon timeline.

Season 5(?) (same season?) (dude idk it’s been a while) around the time all those reapers were gathering Cas said something along the lines of “the world is ending, pick a vice and stick to it” and I cannot for the love of god remember what episode it’s in but if I find it I’ll edit this post.

And of course we all love Cas from that time he absolutely lost his shit and went around doing side quests like beekeeping- but Cas was doing all that as a coping mechanism for the guilt of releasing the leviathans. The sudden shift in personality, the listening to music in the car while Dean puts a lid on his exasperation, pondering the importance of lipstick, the boop he gives Kevin- all human things, or at least things he perceives to be human.

When Cas becomes human he throws himself into this little job at a gas station. He takes absurd, meticulous care of this gas station like he’s preening some sort of million dollar garden. It’s not about the job though, it’s about the humanity of the job. The human experience of working a garbage job for near nothing pay, that’s what he’s hooked into.

The bees, the TV, the minimum wage job, and of course the sex and drugs of the endverse- Every single time we see Castiel at a low point in the show, without fail, he throws himself into a new “humane” addiction. As much as I hate the finale I do think it’s fits his pattern for the last human vice he allows is to be Dean, himself.

There’s so much more little bits and pieces throughout the show I could bring up to touch on this, but these are just the ones off the top of my head. If anyone at all has a character study or a fic about this I would love to read it. The only fics I’ve found that ever touch on this are all about endverse and the sex and drugs thing- which is fine, but it goes so much further than that. If anyone else wants to add to this post please please please- there can be SO MUCH to be said about an angel of the lord with an addiction- honest to god addiction- to humanity.

[mwagneto]

okay phew. my thoughts on watson episode 1. might put a readmore coz it'll probably get long. anyway um

so 💥 IN MY OPINION 💥 it was not good but it wasn't bad either it's the exact perfect mid i usually get with american episodic tv especially one trying to adapt something from england. not even a complaint btw i would've been shocked if it was good. i do think they needed a much stronger pilot but it was like... fine? like i had a good time with it overall and then sometimes i went HRHRGH WHAT. but anyway let's go category by category otherwise this'll be even more incoherent than it already is. so yeah cut incoming this is gonna be long as hell i was right

1) characters

watson: i elaborated on this topic in an earlier post but to sum it up, i think watson's personhood, by nature of being the pov character in the novels, revolves so strongly around holmes that it's an incredibly difficult task to define who he is without holmes, and especially to portray it. so far nothing this watson has said or done made me go "he wouldn't fucking say that" but at the same time nothing's made me go "he WOULD fucking say that" either. no actually him immediately jumping into a waterfall without any hesitation coz he saw holmes go in was extremely in character he would fucking do that. but like that just comes back to the whole issue of like, that's in character for him bc it's about holmes. but the rest? like who even is he? esp here where he can't even be defined by his position in his society or his era or his city because he's in modern day americatown instead of victorian england. so like overall i like the guy but as soon as the scene isn't about holmes he stops being watson and just becomes generic medical show leading man. i'm very curious to see if they can manage to make me feel like i really am watching dr john watson instead of just a random guy. but again outside of not really being watson i like him he seems fun

adam and stephens: i don't know why the showrunners would fuck themselves like this like why are you making your job so much harder by having 1 guy play 2 guys. edit ok apparently it's literally coz the showrunner wanted something challenging. well i hate it. also i don't think the twin thing works on any front it just makes me very uncomfortable to watch a guy trying his absolute hardest to pretend to be two separate people. it sucks. hopefully their plots will be interesting at least. calling it now there's gonna be a plot where they switch places

ingrid: i like her she's really hot imean interesting but her energy is so millenial i feel like she's gonna drop an umm that just happened! any second now. but that's not the character's or the actor's fault it's just a vibe i get

sasha: i had to look up her name on wikipedia icl but i only know the other people's names because every time a name was mentioned i rewound and paused and said OK THATS [insert name]. DONT FORGET. she just didnt get a proper namedrop ig. anyway i have 0 thoughts abt her other than her first line being about her accent which then proceeded to completely disappear in her 3rd line and then come and go as it pleased for the rest of the episode was really funny. the adoption thing is interesting tho let's see where they go with that

mary: mary-s (maries?) tend to be very strangely written bc every time they're included the writer wants to do a subversion of the generic irrelevant wife from the victorian era stories so she's usually a plot relevant badass which like. i don't think that's necessary. like you don't have to be doing all that. like i don't mind i'm usually neutral abt any given mary i just think it's annoying that they all default to that instead of doing literally anything interesting. so it's a relief that i actually like this mary coz even though she's still the usual plot relevant badass, it's not accompanied by her being watson's epic cool girlfriend she gets to be her own person. like as far as i can tell they're not gonna get back together #i ❤️ divorce. she's even bisexual!! sweep

shinwell: whyyyyy does he talk like that omg. please. also guy from the east end is a criminal duuuuude thats crazy however do they come up with these. sucks so bad. i'm gonna like him out of spite but he's such a bad character what are we doing

moriarty: what can i fucking say man. why is he here. also the acting was so bad??? like wh??? ???? why was it this bad. i guess you could blame the script but like, second takes exist yknow. you can do another one if the first take sucks. are you aware. anyway i hate it when moriarty is a big bad but we'll get into that in a later section... can't say much abt his character he was only in 1 scene. usually i'm a huge fan of colourblind casting but i don't get making him a poc if you're gonna make him the horrible evil mastermind but hey at least he's not a black woman killing orphans for money like in enola. still don't know why they did that. getting off topic anyway why did he also get hit with the yankify beam. does anyone remember england. sherlock holmes was there

2) the plot

the episode's plot: it was... fine? like it was stupid as hell but it's a medical drama so whatever. patient needs mouse bites to live. this vexes me. etc. i do think the whole today☝️ we're 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 NOT ❌ doctors ⚕️ we're 😎 detectives 🕵️ was kinda cringe but it's like the entire premise of the show so it's very much a megszoksz vagy megszöksz situation. how do you say that in english. my way or the highway. take it or leave it. you get what i mean

the overarching plot: i mean obviously this was one episode so i can't reflect on the entire thing but i CAN look at the setups and think about them. it's nice that a major part of this show seems to be watson coping with the absence of holmes. i think they should focus on it slightly more, like acd watson's life was essentially over and pointless post reichenbach and i don't think they fully emphasise the severity of that but we only have one episode so we'll see. i am very very annoyed that moriarty is a presence at all in this show and especially that they didn't even have enough faith either in the audience or their own material to wait a bit before revealing him. episode one bam he's there and he's immediately named. it sucks. we do not need him. hold my hand. look me in the eye. it's ok to write a holmes adaptation where moriarty doesn't keep coming back from the dead. it's ok to have a different villain. or just regular ass criminals that aren't masterminds. it's fine. it's ok. you can just have moran if you're desperate. in fact you SHOULD have moran we're literally post final problem pre empty house this is moran's main time in the spotlight. but whatever what's done is done. i just think what's done is dumb as hell

3) the technical stuff that reviewers love talking about to make themselves sound smarter

the dialogue: chief. it's not good. like it's not outstandingly bad but there were some lines that made me go 😬 and some of them are just. so bad. eugh. like i alluded to in ingrid's section, if a script feels like it could smoothly fit an mcu style quip without it feeling out of place, maybe reconsider the lines you're writing.

the lighting/colours: i actually really like this, i think it gives the show a very distinctive look. i do think it's weird how ambient all the lighting is in this hospital but it's a lot nicer than the horrible white and blue you'd normally get, plus as a serial surgery haver i would much prefer to have this to the inhumane buzzing leds. not to mention i'm eastern european so compared to our hospitals, this place is like a spaceship.

cinnamon topography: i just watched brilliant minds last week which had some of the most beautiful shots i have ever seen and easily the most beautiful shots i've ever seen in an episodic medical drama which is unfortunate for this show because it's also very competent in this field but my standards are all the way up. but yea overall the shots range from generic-good to pretty good so no complaints there. i really liked the shot of watson and mary talking with the garage pillar separating them, and the overhead shot of a board that says WE LIE in big red letters made me laugh really hard

4) miscellaneous

my cat just crawled into my lap while i was trying to spell meschallenios everyone shut up. ok she was there for an hour and then left so back to it

acd story references: i always think these are fun and very satisfying to clock, and by god there were a lot of them in just this one ep. my episode was like 240p so i couldn't really observe the background details (to be remedied once i get my paws on 1080p) but even then there was a ton of stuff to go duuude 🫵 at. the 1881 robot (year study in scarlet is set in) which was then immediately revealed to be called clyde (elementary turtle) was really funny like why are we referencemaxxing. like i mentioned in the john watson post, i hope they won't overly rely on them, but it was fun to pay a little extra attention to everything to see if there was a reference hidden anywhere

5) overall

my general faith in this is. very little. a lot of people have a lot of goodwill for this show, both because of elementary (which i haven't seen sorry) and because of morris chestnut (who i didn't know before this but i'm very much the kinda person who prefers to not even know the names of actors) but neither of those have any impact on my opinion or my trust in the show, nor do i think it should. even if elementary was my favourite show, i'd still expect watson to win me over just by itself. i'm also very worried about some comments the showrunner made, especially the one abt adler being holmes's lover (what?? 💀) none of which inspire confidence but again that's not part of the show either and if the show itself is good, i don't care what the showrunner thinks.

but is the show itself good? i mean, it's not bad and i never expected it to be good. i'm a huge fan of holmes adaptations and have seen way too many of them (pretty much every single one that's not unwatchably bad, and then some) so i'm always hyped when there's a new one. i don't hate this by any means, i'm glad it exists and it was a fun way to spend 2 hours watching something that's 40 minutes long and then an entire day writing a review of it.

like i said at the beginning of this unnecessarily long post, it's perfectly mid with some tentative swings in both positive and negative directions which is probably why i was able to write this much about it. if it was good i would've just said IT SLAPS YAYY YIPPIE and if it was bad i would've said "holy shit this is the worst thing i have ever seen" and that would've been it but instead here we are. hope you're glad you spent the past 7 hours reading this instead of war and peace. thank you for coming and hopefully my review of episode 2 will be a more managable size coz lowkey what the hell am i doing lol. goodbye

[froggerland]

For the cold boys ask please tell me how you feel about Ned Little ❤️❤️❤️ Thank You!

THANK YOU FOR ASKING!!!

I am so normal about him you can't imagine how normal I am about that man.

Anyways:

First Impression: I think almost everyone has the same experience with this one: when you first watch the show you don't really register him for the first five episodes or so and then you either love him or are very much neutral about him. I vaguely remember the scene where he's standing next to Jopson looking like a kicked dog while Crozier yells at him and I think that's when I took note of him like "ohh poor boy let me give you a hug :(" I really fell for him in the second half of the season (first mainly bc hes pretty. Im a simple woman sometimes and im not afraid to admit it) and I cannot stress this enough how much the last scene where Crozier finds him half frozen with the chains on his face has altered my brain chemistry. That was the fr the point where I was like "okay so I'll never be normal again EVER huh"

Impression Now: I love him. I love him so so much on so many layers. For one I need him biblically bc I believe I can fix his ass and his sad energy and big cow eyes have bewitched me body and soul. Matthew McNulty was born to sport mutton chops and look increasingly disheveled while on a death march in the canadian arctic. But I can't put into words how much I relate to him. I am him, he is me. Genuinely if I was put on that stupid expedition in his place I would've made all the same (bad) decisions. I can literally name two other characters in media I relate to and those are Kat from Euphoria (only the first season version and I think if I watched the show now I would throw her off this list) and Connel from Normal People (him just,, big time). They just don't make characters that messy, pathetic and sad very often!! Or I'm not watching enough tv to find them but when I saw Ned throughout the season I was like "wow I relate to him so much and idk what that says about me". I feel like I went on a tangent there but I love him he is such a dear. He tried so so hard to do right and keep things under control bc he hates chaos but he was just so overwhelmed and had to deal with Croziers shit for way too long (I'm trying to sound smart rn bc people have very nuanced but sometimes also kinda weird takes on his character. Believe me I see him as more than sad wet puppy man but I don't have the words in the english language to express that)

Favorite Moment: Any scene he's in ever? Duh?? No but if I had to pick one I'd say the dundy intervention when he finally tries to put a foot down to rescue Crozier but they all just dismiss him. The way his eyes water. I. Mmh. I think I'm obligated to name his last scene as well bc that one makes me cry everytime even if I just see a gif of it, it's just so haunting and so so sad

Idea For A Story: Oh. Uhmmmmm. I'm really not a writer so I can't come up with anything cool on top of my head except let Ned be happy and comfy and warm. Tuck him into bed and give him soup. That's all

Unpopular Opinion: I can't really tell what's an unpopular opinion bc I've seen basically every take ever on him from "he is a pushover how did he even get his job" to "he's actually a meanie with big time anger issues" so. Maybe that I think he would've been a good lieutenant with a different captain on a more chill cruise. He'd do very well keeping order and the respect of the crew if he didn't have to be the doormat and errands boy for his alcoholic captain while starving in the arctic. I'd dare say 99.9% of life on a ship was more chill than the franklin expedition so maybe he wasn't the best lieutenant ever but he would've done a good job if the stakes weren't THAT high

Favorite Relationship: Started as a Joplittle stan, became a Sojoplittle truther and now my favorite is Solittle. I love my two dog boys, I love how they parallel each other (they were narrative foils your honor). But honestly anything goes, everyone deserves a bite out of nedward <3

Favorite Headcanon: That animals love him. Saw that on my feed a few days ago and yeah, agreed. He's definitely a cat person and they just flock towards him (extended hc that jirv loves animals so so much but they just hate him for some reason. So when the ships cat sneaks in during meetings jirv tries to get her to come towards him but the cat's like "ew no church boy" and jumps into Ned's lap who pets her but also prays he won't get yelled at by Crozier for this)