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feminismisstillahatemovement · 2 years ago

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Also you seem to say that women are /more/ privileged that men (in westernized societies), not equally so, and the only way I can interpret it is through logic of 'Dangerous jobs are worked almost entirely by men AND in military conflicts it is men who are sent to fight so they have higher risk of death, also men are pressured to always be pragmatic and provide everything whereas the only real demand for women is to cook children and birth food and have sex'. Like, is this something along these lines? Because I often hear men say they'd much rather life a "comfy" less effort life like women and be forgiven for emotional weaknesses or lacking a good job - which confuses me a lot because it feels very depressing and insulting for me as a human being to be seen as 'you don't have to be smart or put effort, just look pretty and do bare minimum'... But I also often hear "you don't count because you are autistic and live in 2nd world country". But if majority of women are CONTENT and it is /minority/ who'd like to work traditionally male jobs or have 'pride' in regards of emotional maturity and intellect - what REALLY happened in western societies where women have ok amount of rights for the past few decades? Did feminists just sorta... spoke for majority and it snowballed? Because to think of it, it doesn't make logical sense for feminists to demand that women LOSE "comfort" and face HIGHER standards for accomplishments, maturity, physical proves, risks for life, etc. Maybe I'm misanthropic but typically humans don't abandon BENEFITS based on honour alone - only singular anomaly humans do. Or gamers, when they want to play harder mode for pride. Was it all REALLY just to, in fact, cover their comfort by claiming this comfort is oppression? (one more time, I speak about 1st world countries specifically (ironically where feminism is the strongest), my neighbour countries are special hell for women)

"you seem to say that women are more privileged that men (in westernized societies), not equally so"

Women in western democracies have every legal right that men in western democracies have and many additional allowances and special protections on top: for instance, women are exempt from military conscription, have far more funding devoted to their healthcare, are routinely given 60% less prison time for the same offences as men, etcetera etcetera. It's a long list. This is not something I'm angry about, or even seek to radically change: it's just a fact of reality that flies in the face of the fundamental premise of the feminist narrative but which needs to be openly acknowledged to understand the world in which we live and make any progress as a species.

“But if majority of women are CONTENT and it is /minority/ who'd like to work traditionally male jobs or have 'pride' in regards of emotional maturity and intellect - what REALLY happened in western societies where women have ok amount of rights for the past few decades? ”

A far larger number of women self-report being NOT content today than when asked 60, 70 - 100 years ago.

“Did feminists just sorta... spoke for majority and it snowballed? “

Feminism has never spoken for the majority of women. It has done a fantastic job of infiltrating and taking over education and media, where it gets to tell women they should be angry and unhappy all the time, but there’s still a great difference between feminists (adherents of a conspiracy theory-based political movement) and women (every second human being on planet earth), and if I remember rightly it’s only about 14% of women who identify as being feminist. The power they wield is far out of proportion to the number of people they actually represent.

"typically humans don't abandon BENEFITS based on honour alone"

There is no honour in feminist thought...

I think it might help you if I lay out how I see our recent history in this regard, as it may differ from the mainstream narrative you will have been indoctrinated with:

Feminism as an actual movement emerged out of the rapidly expanding caste of middle class women living unprecedentedly safe, comfortable and educated existences in the late 19th century, who had cooks to cook their food, nannies to look after their children, housemaids to clean up their houses, and well-to-do fathers or husbands to buy them everything they needed. Unlike the far larger mass of poor working class women, they no longer had work to occupy their time and so they, understandably, grew bored and began to want to have more influence in their community for themselves and other (middle class) women. They, somewhat peculiarly, started to see the burdens and responsibilities their brothers/husbands/fathers were expected to take on as a kind of treat - a privilege being kept from them - seeing jobs as a fun adventure of some kind, rather than the monotonous wage-slavery they have always been for the vast majority of the human race. The tasks these women selected to take on were not the back-breaking labor of coal mines, tree-felling, fishing vessels or construction sites, but light, comfortable and often part-time office duties, organising meetings to police and lecture others, all while demanding special treatment for being women. Which set up the blueprint for all feminist demands to come: all the rights, none of the responsibilities.

Things grumbled along in this way for decades, until the feminist movement (as well as the university system as a whole) was infiltrated and largely taken over by the Marxists in the late 1960s/early 1970s. The main goal of all Marxist-infiltrated movements in the west is to sow discord and create divisions in the populace. This led to the “intersectionalist” model of society, in which EVERYONE but straight white men are told from birth that they are an oppressed underclass who must march in the streets, scream abuse at strangers and feel glee at the suffering of all others outside of their in-group. And that largely explains the madness of today.

“it doesn't make logical sense for feminists to demand that women LOSE "comfort" and face HIGHER standards for accomplishments, maturity, physical proves, risks for life, etc”

For the reasons stated above, the modern (1970s-onwards) feminist movement itself doesn’t primarily care about “women”, only destroying whole families and healthy relationships between the sexes in the west - along with any woman who speaks out against whatever is its present agenda; There’s no sense in the way modern feminism eagerly championed allowing biological males into female spaces and sports and everything else, or how quickly it destroyed and silenced all the old school feminist women who spoke out against it.

I guess the fundamental point I’m making here is modern feminism is a political force entirely separate from women as a class, who, like all the other identity politics movements, it uses only as a human shield to deflect criticism of the agenda it is actually pursuing.

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theunusualchameleon · 2 years ago

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The Narrative Importance of Mag 14: Piecemeal

Mag 14: Piecemeal is important in a narrative sense to prepare listeners for the intensifying of the plot, as an enduring piece of mystery and horror in a sometimes overdefined system, and to shake up and defy that same system, preserving the chaos and inexplicability that makes The Magnus Archives what it truly is.

Episode 14 of the Magnus Archives, Piecemeal, is often dismissed as one of the weird episodes in Season 1, before the general themes were ironed out. It involves a confusing and horrifying death, and brings up a character who, to those experienced in Magnus structure, would be expected to show up again. Indeed, the other character introduced in episode 14 is Mikaele Salesa, who proves instrumental in later plot developments. But we never see Angela again, except for the mildest nod to her continued existence in season 5.

Some say that makes this episode a structural disaster; one of the odd, stupid, confusing episodes that give season 1 its unique charm. Even Jonny, in a Q & A, admitted to the episode being one he wanted to redo. But there’s so much more going on that makes Piecemeal important to the development of the Magnus universe.

Firstly, the statement giver, Lee Rentoul, is a bad person. This is very clearly stated. He’s a career criminal who spent several years in prison, and later kills a man and is happy about it. The statement givers so far have largely been innocent victims, or at least sympathetic protagonists. Even Trevor Herbert, the vampire hunter from Mag 10, considers himself a force of good. Lee Rentoul gives us, the listeners, a gateway into the idea that the statements we hear will not always be given by good people, giving us time to get used to the idea before doing so is narratively vital, such as a statement given by an avatar. Later statements given by avatars, criminals, monsters, or similar are usually filled with vitally important information. If the listener were distracted worrying about the morality of the statement giver, they might miss something. Piecemeal gives listeners a chance to get worrying over morally unsound protagonists out of our systems, and more emotionally prepared for the escalation of the plot further on.

Secondly, the eventual irrelevance of Angela and her assassinations reinforces the idea that Magnus takes place in a larger world than what we can see. In a different Q&A, Jonny laments the fact that to have sufficient payoff in the mystery department, concessions must be made in the horror department. So much horror comes from having no idea what’s happening, and that has to be given up as the story continues and the listener learns more and more.

A prime example of this is the coffin. First introduced in episode 2, the coffin is terrifying and mysterious. We end up knowing nothing about it, and the horror is maximized. Over the course of the story, we learn more and more about the coffin. By the time its arc resolves in season 4, it is well established as dangerous, but not the nameless horror it was at the beginning. We know exactly what fate awaits those who open it, and while it isn’t pretty, it is known. Someone skilled and knowledgeable enough can even escape it.

The occasional inclusion of incidents which are never properly explained provides the proper horrified feeling usually only experienced in first time listeners to those who go back and listen again. Even after 200 full episodes of information, we still have no idea what was going on, which keeps it scary and helps Magnus stand up well to repeat listeners.

Finally, the nebulous nature of what power is involved plays an important role in the later discrediting of Smirke’s Taxonomy. It is initially unclear what power is involved in Piecemeal. Initial readings might sort it firmly into the realm of Flesh, with the fascination with losing body parts. Closer or more thematic readings might pick the Web, for the strange pileup of coincidences, or the Stranger, for the strange woman who is never elaborated on, or even the End, focusing on Lee Rentoul’s struggle and fear of his inevitable demise, and still remaining alive even as more and more bits fall off of him.

But here’s the thing: It’s none of them. The idea of Smirke’s 14 as categories that every manifestation must belong to one, with only the briefest concession for combinations, is ultimately doomed to fail. Smirke’s Taxonomy of Fear is a useful tool for initial cataloging and categorization, but it’s just that. A tool. Again and again, the powers are highlighted as something chaotic and unknowable. Any model used to understand them is limited by our reality. Some statements fit neatly into the 14, which makes sense, as that sort of event would have to be relatively frequent in order for Smirke himself to identify and catalog them, which could be further elaborated on in an entire other essay. But it remains important to have the occasional statement that doesn’t intuitively fit into any of the 14, for the sake of emphasizing the limits of the system. This is also true for various other early episodes, such as Mag 4: Thrown Away, also often dismissed for being nonsensical.

#the magnus archives #tma #tma analysis #tma piecemeal #mag 14 #jon sims #the archivist #literary analysis

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navree · 2 years ago

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If u coukd rewrite hotd what would u change qnd how would u rewrite it?

So, I'm gonna set some limits on myself and decide to follow the vague outline of the show, including the amount of time jumps. Ideally, if we lived in a fantasy land and I'd been made top showrunner (HBO it's not too late I don't need that much money), season 1 would have either been all Emily and Milly to really set everything up, or at the very least with the only time jump being the one between episode 5 and episode 6, and keep the rest of the season in the same timeline so we'd have had more time to develop the Velaryons and ESPECIALLY Jace and Luke and maybe get to see some post-Driftmark things like Aemond's recovery and the aftermath of Daemyra's marriage. But that's a larger undertaking that would require more extensive rewriting, so I'll just stick to the time frame and general plot of their episodes, and just add in my edits and tweaks and cuts and additions. Anything that isn't discussed, assume it's being kept the same as in the show. (And this isn't even taking into account that when I heard "House of the Dragon" I thought it was gonna start with Aegon's Conquest and I was really excited about that and had to temper my disappointment when I realized that wasn't what I was getting).

Episode One - I wouldn't actually change all that much about the pilot, since I think it was actually pretty solid all throughout. The things I would change are a) a different introduction scene for Daemon and Mysaria, or at maximum just cut it, because it doesn't really serve much purpose in the narrative and b) there's no stupid fucking prophecy. I'm not against the idea that Aegon might have had ulterior motives beyond simple Conquest, and we know that Targaryens are capable of having prophetic abilities, but no this should not have been a secret passed down through generations for some fucking reason because that's stupid. And most importantly, considering that HOTD needed to succeed in spite of Game of Thrones, not because of it, because of how awful the last season was and how immediately it faded from the public consciousness and stopped being relevant as a result, the show should honestly not be so frequently be calling back to a disappointing aspect of the show. "A Targaryen must be seated on the Iron Throne" ok but she wasn't and the Long Night ended because some rando had a good ten yard jump according to D&D cuz they wanted to "subvert expectations" stop reminding me of that if I want to be enjoying this new show. Also, we need to set up Rhaenys more, and her issues with being passed over. She needed a scene for herself beyond the tourney, maybe after Aemma's funeral.

Episode Two - Again, don't have the most complaints for this episode either, and most of what I'd change would be adding back in all those scenes they deleted. Keep Criston's induction into the Kingsguard so we can see how sacred it is and how seriously we take it, keep the apparent argument that happens between Alicent and Rhaenyra after Viserys announces the wedding (and have someone remember that seasons can last YEARS in this world so he needs to be more concrete than just saying "at spring's end" when it comes to the wedding), and especially that scene of Rhaenyra helping Alicent get ready for the wedding and that conversation about whether this is what Alicent wants, and I assume her noncommittal answer that's answer enough. I'd also tweak the Dragonstone stuff, keep Daemon and Mysaria's conversation and even the fact that Daemon lied about having a child, but make a lot more comments about how this is mostly an attempt to get Viserys's attention (I know some people find Ryan's interpretation that Daemon's primary motivator in grooming Rhaenyra was just to get the closest thing to Viserys that he could, but I really like it, I think it shows again that Targaryens aren't socialized to view their siblings as siblings, it adds depth to Daemon and his occasional poor little meow meow tendencies, and it'd be an interesting look into Targaryen/Valyrian culture that incest wouldn't be the main issue, same sex attraction would). Daemon should also get in a fight with one of Otto's men on the bridge, someone who's acting too quickly, and we can see Daemon's martial prowess and how deadly he is with Dark Sister outside of the lists. Rhaenyra needs to also work a lot harder to get him to give the dragon egg back, and chiefly, we need to see her relying on Otto more for advice on what to say, like at the Kingsguard scene, so that we can see that Rhaenyra doesn't yet know who might have her best interests at heart, contrasted with Otto's master scheming, and explain why she's so much more hellbent to get him out of KL in later episodes, when she realizes that he doesn't. I'd also maybe add in a scene between Alicent and Criston, maybe after she and Viserys are engaged, maybe having her attend to Kingsguard ceremony and give him a little welcome present she stitched because she's a lil cutie.

Episode Three - This is where things start changing. For one, Rhaenyra and Alicent aren't at odds yet. They're distant, they're uncomfortable and don't know how to talk to each other, but it's more in line with how they feel not just in the OG ep 4 but also in this new timeline where they have that moment before the wedding. For two, my God no White Hart. It's the hokiest of the hoky, it's giving The Last Unicorn, it's giving that one stupid scene from the Kristen Stewart Snow White movie, it's giving baby's first fantasy attempt. We can keep the hunt, and that other deer that Viserys kills and his struggle with it, to show the extending rot in him and that the Targaryens are starting to lose the mandate of Heaven, and we should especially keep the scene with the boar and Rhaenyra. I actually liked that scene, how it's after Rhaenyra is told she needs to marry and breed despite not wanting to, and then an aggressive male pig tries to kill her by forcing himself down on her, and she responds by viciously stabbing it over and over (and also when she said that the boars sound like kids when they die, and we see her having issues with Aegon, and then she kills the boar and hears it die without struggling with it? that's good, that's really good). We should keep Rhaenyra feeling displaced and out of sorts at the attention Aegon is getting and how it seems everyone's disregarding her, or, as one anon put it in a way that still makes me giggle, Rhaenyra being upset at a toddler that he's the protagonist of his own birthday. The stuff between Rhaenyra and Criston can stay the same, and once again, we need another scene between Alicent and Criston, maybe discussing Rhaenyra and whether she's all right. A scene between a knight and a queen with all that formality, but clearly Alicent trying to bridge that gap because she's lonely and she likes him. Once back at KL, we're gonna get that scene where Rhaenyra feels she's gonna be replaced by Aegon, but it's not going to be with Viserys, it's going to be with Alicent. Alicent, possibly after talking with Criston, can go to Rhaenyra, or maybe summon her, cuz she's pregnant and doesn't wanna exercise too much but Rhaenyra can mistake that as Alicent pulling rank, and talk. And that's when Rhaenyra explodes and says that she knows that Otto and Viserys are planning to replace her with Aegon, and it's Alicent who says no because she's still gonna have that scene with Otto where she defends Rhaenyra's claim cuz she wants to keep that friendship. It's not Viserys who says Rhaenyra won't ever be replaced, because Viserys shouldn't say that. Having Viserys constantly reaffirm Rhaenyra's status in private is baffling when you see how he doesn't do anything about it publicly, so we should keep the book thing where he's trying to keep everyone happy, and is either too lazy or too inept to realize the problems it's causing by not falling one way or another. He's not going to reaffirm shit, he's gonna keep the situation as is and, you know, set the seeds for confused succession and civil war.

As to the Stepstones: not getting it. I understand why they wanted it, they want a Game of Thrones style battle sequence, and to show off Daemons' martial prowess (hence why I added a scene of him dueling on the bridge in ep 2, since we're gonna cut all of this), but the Crabfeeder and that whole Stepstones arc is such a nothing problem and doesn't come back in any way and just seems like a forgotten plot. So we'll see Corlys and Laenor in the Stepstones at a war council, to show Corlys's ability and develop Laenor, but Daemon is going to get scenes at Driftmark. He's gonna, idk, bring tidings or some shit to Rhaenys, so we can show her actually in the show since she's a main character, and have her sum up some of the situations at court to Daemon, to show her shrewdness and her capability (since she's supposed to have been better suited to politics than Viserys). This is also where we're gonna get two things: Laena and Vhagar. We're getting that scene where Laena claims Vhagar as a young woman, and Daemon's gonna see it, and he might have a flirtatious conversation with her, something to set up their eventual romance. And for anyone asking why, well this is my rewrite and like Daemon and Laena and I wanted them to get more set up than they did. And it can contrast how Daemon, a man, can flirt with someone he actually desires even though he's married, while Alicent is stuck in a marriage against her will that's tearing her relationship with Rhaenyra apart, while Rhaenyra is still being forced to eventually marry, though she can choose her suitor.

Episode Four - This is another episode I like, so I wouldn't change a whole lot about it. Most of it I'd keep, but I'll add a couple things. We're adding Laena and her betrothed, the Sea Lord of Braavos ('oh but why' it's a surprise tool that can help us later), at court, so we can keep up the tension between her and Daemon, which Rhaenyra might remark on, and that's why she's both more willing to follow him into KL and also why she's angry at him after his abandonment, not just because that's some vile shit he pulled, but also assuming that it's because he wants Laena, not her, even though that flirtation hasn't extended past conversations and discussions of dragons now that Laena has Vhagar. Rhaenys is at court as well, now that Corlys is at Driftmark, so we should get more scenes of her to showcase her abilities as a politician. There should also be a scene with Larys where Rhaenyra might be rude or dismissive of him, maybe not unintentionally but doing it nonetheless, in contrast to Alicent's whole "yeah you can hang out with us Larys" thing during the hunt, to explain why he wants to cause problems for Rhaenyra other than, idk, the cripple is shifty because being crippled means he has to rely on his wits and he's devious because he wishes he wasn't crippled, that whole bullshit. And during the scene between Otto and Viserys (after Rhaenyra has more reason to want Otto fired because she felt he was a false friend in ep 2), when Viserys does his whole thing about Alicent being a manipulation, Otto, already knowing that his job is lost, might fire back (respectfully, but still) about how she was a manipulation Viserys was more than happy to receive. And Viserys, confronted with his own complicity but as always, not wanting to do anything about it, ends the conversation and firmly tells Otto he has to leave King's Landing. And also still no prophecy, Viserys just pulls rank and tells Rhaenyra that after this shit she's marrying Laenor cuz he's king and he says so.

Episode Five - As much as I hate it, let's keep Daemon killing Rhea. There can maybe be more ambiguity about what he actually meant to do, along with new ambiguity about why he's doing it (does he hate her? is he trying to get viserys's attention again? is it to marry rhaenyra like he said he wanted last episode? is it because of this budding Thing with laena? is he just a bastard? is it a combination of all of these?). We'll keep the Driftmark stuff largely the same, though when Corlys does his whole "the crown was stolen from you" thing, rather than Rhaenys saying she doesn't care after we know she does care, we keep the fact that she cares and is still upset with it, because we've had more episodes with her and more content of her being bitter, but her issue is in dragging Laenor into it and potentially putting their children at risk. The stuff in King's Landing is going to be largely the same as well, just with some added gravitas to the Alicole conversation because we've spent more time with them developing a relationship. The big change is going to come during the rehearsal dinner. Because it's a rehearsal dinner, Rhaenyra won't be wearing white, but the red and black colors of House Targaryen, so that we can understand why her side is called "the Blacks" while Alicent's is called "the Greens". We should have Alicent give a smile to her Hightower relatives, but the person who does that "we're glad you're growing strong" talk with her should be Tyland, so that we've now got the bones for all of the allies Alicent'll have for when Aegon takes the throne. Daemon'll show up doing his white boy swagger, and he'll have his dance with Laena and his sexual tension with Rhaenyra, and we'll have Joffrey needle Criston. Also there should be at least one really frosty conversation between Rhaenyra and Alicent, maybe in between the dancing, where Rhaenyra realizes Alicent knows that she lied and Alicent makes it clear, even after the stepdaughter comment, that she's cutting Rhaenyra off.

But remember what I said before about how the Sea Lord of Braavosv is at court with Laena because they're engaged. Well, in the book, Daemon insults him until they have a duel, upon which Daemon kills him and then marries Laena. We're keeping that, and that's the fight at the wedding, but here's the thing: obviously Kingsguard are going to get involved because a foreign ruler and the brother of the King are dueling with swords at a wedding among civilians (including the princess, so we can keep that scene with Harwin because it's fun), and at some point Joffrey can get involved too while Criston's already trying to at least keep people out of the way, and that's when he snaps. Criston still beats Joffrey to death in a rage, but no one notices given what's going on. Then this is where Viserys passes out, shocking everyone, and Daemon gets his kill shot in on the Sea Lord and leaves while everyone's too stunned, and Criston leaves too, horrified but what he's done and how he's completely soiled his cloak, and we get that amazing moment of Laenor wailing over Joffrey's body because that was very affecting. Then we get the wedding, but Viserys isn't there for it cuz he's already passed out and is in the hands of the maesters. We see Alicent save Criston, but this time with the actual conversation involved, have her kneel on the ground and take the knife from him to highlight that Criston thinks she's just the angel brought down to Earth. Have a moment after the wedding where Laenor and his parents decide to sit vigil for Joffrey, and Rhaenyra go to find Alicent but doesn't know where she is (with Criston) and then goes to thank Harwin, to hint at the eventual romance between them. Episode ends with Daemon saddling Caraxes, ready to ride away before someone thinks "hey maybe we should imprison the guy who killed a foreign ally's leader", and then suddenly a great shadow blocks out the sun. Suddenly Vhagar lands in front of him, Laena atop her, and Daemon thinks, oh shit is she gonna try and fight me for killing her betrothed? He's still on the ground, and suddenly Laena climbs down from Vhagar to join him there. She doesn't say anything, but she smiles at him, and Daemon bends to kiss her hand. This is an episode that's scene people throwing their lots one way or another, and now Laena and Daemon are doing it too, to themselves. Interspersed with a moment of Alicent and Rhaenyra at Viserys's sickbed, each on an opposite side and still in their signature colors, the court gathered there too (the Velaryons minus Laenor and Harwin and other Team Blacks behind Rhaenyra, the Hightowers and Lannisters and Criston behind Alicent), Vhagar and Caraxes fly off, almost dancing, into the night. Idk the episode ends with maybe baby Helaena and lil Aegon starting to cry. Part one ending with dragons in the air and children in our ears, to remind us what this show is really going to be: a war of succession that ends with the dragons gone.

Episode Six - Anyway, ten years pass. The first shot isn't Rhaenyra graphically giving birth, cuz I don't want it. Instead, we're gonna see a dragon egg warmed over the fire, and it's gonna be Jacacerys and Lucerys and Laenor waiting in the adjacent chamber, probably having some sort of exposition talk so that we know what's going on and who these kids are. We can hear Rhaenyra doing that screaming birth thing, but one of the first things we see as that her two kids obviously don't look like Laenor, they don't even look like her. We can keep the stuff about Alicent wanting to see the kid and Rhaenyra being petty and bringing her baby herself, and most of the stuff about this episode, not just in KL but also in Pentos with Laena and Daemon. However, we're not going to have anything about Daemon being a distant father (for a reason), or about Daemon regretting marrying Laena. He's a bit directionless, but happy enough, and Rhaena's issues are largely her own because she's a kid and she sees that her twin has something and wants to know why she can't. Since we still need to adhere to stuff we know happened, Laena's still gonna unfortunately die in childbirth, but I'm mixing the show and book versions. We can keep a scene where Daemon refuses a C-section to contrast what happened with Aemma and Viserys, but she still manages to give birth like in the book, though like in the book the baby doesn't survive and she gets childbed fever. And it's in that fever that she goes to Vhagar, weak and knowing she's dying, to ask Vhagar to kill her so she can go out on her own terms. Scene largely plays out the same, but there's more urgency to Daemon when he realizes she's gone, to go along with the fleshed out relationship they have. And when he sees it, he's clearly deeply upset, and we're going to get the scene of him comforting his daughters, since I'm still really annoyed they cut that.

Important changes however, are twofold. For one, it's Lucerys who's going to be showing the most issue with apparently not being Laenor's son, but Harwin's, to give him an emotional through line to work with since we spend the least time with him. For two, the Greens kids. Largely, I'll keep most things the same, that Aegon seems to see himself as an older brother to all of them and helps out with dragon stuff and has a friendship with Rhaenyra's sons (especially Jace, he and Jace should be pretty close), Helaena should still be a dragondreamer, and Aemond should still have been bullied by Aegon and the Velaryons. But. For one, Helaena's getting more personality. She's a dragondreamer, yeah, and I'd keep this coding they're giving her when it comes to autism, but that scene with her and Alicent should have her just kinda babbling and hyperfixating, wanting to talk about her special interest and maybe not necessarily registering Alicent's constant "uh huh" as she tries to follow along, so that we can see more of Helaena's personality, along with her small prophecies later in the scene with regards to Aemond. For two, I'm adding a scene where Aegon goes to Aemond after the Pink Dread thing. He's clearly doing it because Alicent told him to apologize, he's uncomfortable and kinda surly and Aemond's still upset at him, but Aegon tries and does a whole "hey, you'll get a dragon, you can tame a wild one on Dragonstone or something". Neither of them are comfortable in that moment but Aegon is trying to be big brotherly in that way that seems to come more naturally when he's helping the Velaryons, and Aemond's clearly trying to appreciate it. It's so that we can get that same sense that, yeah, these relationships are a bit screwy and these people are all weird but they are still ride or die for each other. The essence of that Alicent line; they can cuff each other as much as they want at home, but they also need to defend each other.

The last scene of the Velaryons should be them preparing to leave for Dragonstone, on top of the world, when they get the twofold news about both Laena and Harwin, interspersed with that scene between Alicent and Larys. And maybe, if I'm allowed to be self indulgent, while at Harrenhal we get a brief, just barely there first glimpse of Alys, for me because I want it since I love her.

Episode Seven - Driftmark I'll play out largely the same, since as much as I hate the choices characters made, it was good storytelling and important anyway. Small changes include Daemon not cracking up at his wife's funeral for no reason, and we're going to hear Vhagar screaming when Aemond gets his eye stabbed out. Some bigger changes are going to include Rhaenyra being more visibly upset that Harwin is dead, along with Lucerys, to tie into his arc about feeling out of place, and that Rhaenyra and Daemon's sex is less about "giving into their ultimate desires" and more an entire mishmash of feelings, desires they've felt and grief for their respective dead loved ones and the two of them seeking power in that moment as well. We're also going to make Jace more of a mediator in that fight between Aemond and the other kids, trying hard to de-escalate it when Baela and Rhaena attack and Luke and Aemond escalating it, and it's Luke who has the knife, not Jace. Jace is still involved, since he also understands the Strong insult, but as the eldest of the four he's the one who most understands that this can turn bad quickly. Additionally, when shit goes down in the throne room, it's largely the same, but while Rhaenys and Corlys protect the Velaryon kids, it's Aegon and Helaena who move to stand in front of Aemond, since he's their baby brother after all and their mother's main protector is trying to get to her and being blocked by Daemon. There's not gonna be a scene between Alicent and Viserys cuz I don't know what that scene was meant to serve.

Lastly, sorry but Laenor needs to die. Like, actually die. It'll foreshadow how ruthless Daemon and Rhaenyra are in their pursuit of power, one of the things that draws them to each other, it gives more weight to Rhaenys and Corlys and their eventual rift, and honestly Laenor's death not being legit is just such a massive plothole. How is Seasmoke free if Laenor isn't actually dead? Did no one ever notice Laenor in the Free Cities ever? Laenor was just fine abandoning his family after they'd already lost Laena? He was fine abandoning the kids he'd raised for ten years? And when he heard about the Dance he never once tried to come back to help them and let them all die, his mother and former wife and the kids they raised? Yeah, no, it doesn't make sense, Rhaenyra and Daemon are just gonna cold blood kill Laenor, and the vibe of the wedding is gonna be less Romance and more about power and old magic, with more emphasis on the blood sacrifices and the flashes to what's happening to Laenor, along with the kids looking weirded out considering that this is way too soon.

Episode Eight - The big thing is that this episode is gonna start with Vaemond's death, and it's going to be much more book accurate. He's going to be talking to Rhaenys about the situation, and then Daemon shows up, in his Crime Hoodie, and kills him (we can keep that he does it from behind so that Vaemond can't fight back). Daemon's spotted leaving by his daughters and we realize that there's a bit of a rift. Both of his daughters live on Driftmark with Rhaenys, and there's clearly love there, though a bit strained because they clearly left due to the swiftness of his marriage to Rhaenyra. On Dragonstone, we see Vaemond's corpse fed to Syrax, and we also see Lucerys kinda being an angry teenager, since his right to Driftmark is being questioned, just a lot more ill at ease than we saw in the show. In contrast, Jacaerys is more comfortable, and instead of learning Valyrian he's teaching it to Aegon and Viserys, who are their normal ages and not little babies because that makes no sense (and Jahaerys and Jahaera and Maelor are all their book ages as well). Rhaenyra's also further along in her preganncy than we see, so that we can see the urgency of why they all go to KL when they get called there to discuss the succession by Otto and Alicent, as well as Vaemond's murder. Meanwhile, in the city, I am keeping Dyana, since as I've said it's a good scene for what it shows us about Alicent and also the world of the court at large, but I'm changing the perpetrator. Instead of Aegon, it's a Hightower guardsman that Alicent has thrown unilaterally in the black cells, to demonstrate to the audience her ultimate power. Aegon's issue is that he is indeed drunk in the middle of the day, and he won't really seem to care about Dyana and what happened even though she's nursemaid to his kids, and that's why Alicent's disappointed in him and where we see that he's a layabout. Aemond's intro is the same, cuz that was good, and I'd also add a scene between Aegon and Helaena with their kids so we can see Aegon's fondness for children (foreshadowing), as well as first hear Helaena's beast beneath the boards prophecy and see more into the dynamics of their marriage, that it's strained because of personalities but they work better when they treat each other as siblings rather than spouses.

There's gonna be more emphasis on Daemon and Viserys, on that relationship, with Rhaenyra and Viserys's more formal, since we nixed any rapprochements in episode 3 and we're not doing the prophecy to bind them together, while leaning more on that idea of Daemon likely loving Viserys the most (and yes keeping the crown thing in the throne room I don't even like Viserys but that scene got to me). The difference is that the issues settled in the throne room aren't just Luke's succession, with Rhaenys being more neutral and just saying she will do what the king wills, which allows the betrothals to move forward (and Luke is the one doing his own arguing, so that we can see more of him and see his anger at having to do this), but also about the Silent Five (for non-book readers, these were five Velaryons who were upset at Vaemond's murder and went to court for justice). One of them likely does that whole "her children are bastards and she is a whore" thing, and in general is way more disrespectful to Rhaenyra than he needs to be, and they're all pressing their own claims, and Viserys does what he does in the book and orders their tongues removed. The feast is also gonna be a mishmash of changes and keeps. For one, the first toaster after Viserys's speech (which doesn't go over as warmly as the Greens kids clearly are angry at him about being a shit dad, even Helaena they should all be sharing a look) is going to be Daemon. Daemon will raise a cup to Viserys, to his brother, call him a good kind as a callback to when he called him a weak king in the first episode. Then that inspires Rhaenyra and Alicent, whose toasts are largely the same. Helaena's toast can be kinda the same, just so we can keep Otto going "good" after she sits down. The key differences are that Jace is going to ask Baela to dance, since they're engaged, and there'll be a scene where Daemon sits himself next to Viserys and the two talk as brothers, on friendly terms once again. Rhaenyra and Alicent share a smile, and then Viserys leaves cuz sick. The Strong toast proceeds largely the same, except what motivates Aemond isn't the pig (Lucerys here is more surly and just generally kinda upset about how he had to defend his claim), but Jace asking Helaena to dance next to provoke Aegon, which sets him off and Aemond does that stand thing that he did earlier in the original ep. And then he makes the excuse for the Strong boys toast, and things go largely the same after that.

And as I've mentioned before, I really hate that Rhaenyra never found out what happened to her mother, so let's change that. After Alicent gives Viserys his medicine, Rhaenyra arrives to say goodbye to him, Alicent and Rhaenyra sharing another silent, almost warm moment before Alicent leaves. And Viserys, addled again, mistakes Rhaenyra for Aemma, and starts going on about how much he missed her, how he hopes she forgives him. Rhaenyra's confused but eventually Viserys's babbling goes on long enough for her to realize what happened, and exactly what he did. And she's horrified, shocked and angry and upset, and tells Viserys she doesn't forgive him, both to hurt him and also because maybe she doesn't, after what she's had to deal with in being the heir to the throne and stealing Alicent and not doing anything about the succession and causing all these problems and also for apparently killing her mother. She leaves then, and Viserys dies alone, the victim of all the awful choices that he made because he was too passive to try his hand at anything. And most importantly, no prophecy, since we nixed that, and no mix-up, he just dies.

Episode Nine - Since there's no prophecy mix-up, Alicent's been involved since the beginning of planning to put Aegon on the throne, and it's clear in the planning stage she wasn't that concerned with what would happen to Rhaenyra after the fall out at Driftmark. But now, she's more aligned with that "what of Rhaenyra" sentiment we see in the show. I'm not changing much for the bulk of the episode, but I am changing the stupid child fighting pits. They exist, yeah, but we don't go there because Aegon likes to watch the fights. We're going there because one of the places where they're held is also the home of a former prostitute who has a bastard of Aegon's (Gaemon perhaps?) and more importantly, while we're there we see Mysaria and we see big, hulking man in a bloody butcher's apron and a huge sword (FORESHADOWING I think we all know who that might be). I might add a scene of the three Green kids after Aegon's found, just a small moment of the three of them, not entirely sure what they'd talk about or if they'd even talk at all instead of just being together, but I want a moment for them. Ideally, I'd make the coronation book accurate, with Sunfyre's flight and Alicent crowning Helaena herself, but as I said I'm making myself stick to the framework of the show, so...

Coronation happens, Rhaenys busts in the through the floor. Everything stays the same up until the roar. After that happens, and Alicent looks up at Rhaenys, they share a glance and maybe...maybe she will...But then we hear a dragon call and descending from the rafters (since we know dragons can make burrows up there, like Viserions did in ADWD) is Sunfyre, flying down to get in front of this hostile dragon and his Aegon, majestic as anything in all his glory, and ready to throw the fuck down. And that's what inspires Rhaenys to leave, realizing this isn't the moment for a fight and she could get trounced, especially as we hear rumbles from within the Dragonpit (Dreamfyre) and a different dragoncall from outside (Vhagar). Rhaenys flies off, and as the doors finally close us to black we hear the sound of all three dragons together, and episode ends.

Episode Ten - Again, another episode where I wouldn't change much. We're making the circumstances of Visenya's birth more book accurate, with Rhaenyra screaming at her to get out and cursing her for a monster, and we'll keep in that scene between Rhaenys and Baela, Baela staying as a matter of principle and because she does love her father and knows that this is the endgame for him. Rhaenys and Corlys also ally with Rhaenyra not because they suddenly prefer her and think she's a good ruler, but because they know that this is the side Rhaena and Baela will choose, and they're the last family they have, the last reminders of their dear children, and so they stay for them, and hope that Rhaenyra knows what she's doing. And since there's no prophecy, that's not what gets Daemon angry enough to get violent, it's specifically that Rhaenyra is thinking of taking Otto's terms and Daemon just goes "no you can't do that to us, to me", all angry like. And he doesn't grab her by the throat, maybe just hard by the arms and shakes her, and Rhaenyra forcefully pushes him and pulls rank on him in that moment, reminding him that, even if she does capitulate, until she does she is Daemon's sworn queen and will not touch her that way. And Daemon's just left kinda gobsmacked, before whirling around and leaving to go to Vermithor, and Rhaenyra takes a vulnerable moment.

I'd also add a scene between Jace and Luke, Jace in this episode I'd keep largely the same, and Luke as well, but with the added surliness and issues he has, and it's Jace who finally snaps him out of it. Jace tells Luke what he himself has always known, that their power comes from their mother, their Queen, and that they're Targaryens before anything else. Jace also says that, if he doesn't have a son, Luke will be his heir, not because he's a Velaryon or a Strong but because he is a Targaryen, Rhaenyra's Targaryen son, Jace's Targaryen brother. And that gives Luke the push he needs to go all in, and then fly to Storm's End after a final conversation with his mother. And Storm's End I'd keep entirely the same, I like all of that and I like how that ends the season and what the means for everyone, especially Aemond going forward.

There's a lot more I would change if I wasn't keeping myself beholden to the episodes and overall structure of the show, as I said I'd probably do less time jumps and do a lot more development of the Strongs and more of the interpersonal relationships between people, and just really slow everything down, to say nothing again of what I actually wanted the show to be about. But all in all, yeah, if I'm beholden to what the show's done and just how would I change and rewrite within those constraints, this is by and large how I would do it.

#personal #answered #anonymous #house of the dragon #this got hideously long but honestly i cut it down #if i'd done a complete 'let's start over from scratch' thing we'd have been here for days #this deadass took me three hours to type out in its entirety #but here ya go have hotd amelie edition

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saltintheseaa · 1 year ago

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miscellaneous thoughts on the sparrow

- some parts of the book were genuinely hilarious. “he loved god but found rough sex… gratifying.” iconic sentence

- also the priests’ realization. how every single one of them assumed emilio fucked up. emilio betrayed god. their reactions when they realize that god was the actual betrayer are kinda hilarious, and so is emilio’s reaction to their reaction. like they fucked up. they fucked up sooooo bad. honestly he could have been a lot more ruthless towards them. they got off so easy.

- “are you not concerned to be in the bedroom of someone so… notorious?” also iconic. assuming the position of christ for an ironic “seduction.” no one is doing it like him.

- the only book i’ve read that contains more pain than the sparrow is fernanda melchor’s hurricane season which if you’ve ever read that book is saying a lot.

- i mean there really is something darkly hilarious about how much pain he was subjected to. i think his accidental murder of askama was a bit contrived. but the shock value is certainly effective.

- the passage when he meets hlavin is absolutely horrific. you have to wonder how much of his initial joy at the situation is his mind frantically trying to deny what’s about to happen to him. one of the worst things i ever read. in a good way.

- i also found anne edwards deeply irritating and was not at all surprised to discover she was modeled on russell herself. her attempts at intellectual humour r so grating. in general the found family was just unconvincing to me for some reason. none of them seemed like real people except emilio, none of their attachments to each other were believable; i wasn’t that sad when they died

- i cannot help but compare this to the left hand of darkness and monster! ofc! i mean it’s kinda the antithesis of those two stories bc in those tales the protsgonists’ efforts to carry out their moral principles is ultimately rewarded, though not without sacrifice. and in the sparrow it’s the complete opposite. u could argue the history of catholicism is ultimately what screws over sandoz— bc he was acting on unstable foundations in the first place.

- he faces the same dilemma as tenma and both are messianic figures but the outcome is different bc tenma isn’t subscribing to a larger set of dubiously moral principles but his own convictions- and genly ai succeeds bc he’s able to do what sandoz/russell couldn’t which is learn to approach the alien culture on their own terms. and he learns how to do that through understanding daoist principles— so different from christian ones

like yes the alien world building is pretty shallow but nothing can compare to le guin so yah. i am being unfair. but when such an essential part of the plot hinges on that alien culture u have to go deeper than “wow! cat people utopia!” like ik the big revelations about the jana’ata and the runa were meant to be shocking and meant to make the reader question their preconceived notions of society and morality but so much of sci fi has explored this notion better. again, le guin. the dispossessed and four ways to forgiveness did it soooo much better

and then in the end they’re like “let’s send yet another mission to run interference because apparently we didn’t wreak enough havoc the first time.” like omg. you idiots.

- do i ascribe emilio’s failure to russell’s colonialist writing or his own ignorance? so hard to say— i mean the narrative is pretty ambiguous on whether it was the missionaries’ fault or god’s fault. but it doesn’t touch on their most essential mistake which was assuming that they knew better than the natives

it’s always the messianic figures that get me, istg!!

#diary #the sparrow #book review

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quirrelli · 2 years ago

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Marvel Rewatch Thread

Originally posted: 25.02.22-14.03.22

Haven't seen most of the Marvel movies since they came out but I have a sudden urge to rewatch them like a TV show, with Endgame as the season finale. And to tweet about it. (Feel free to mute this thread if you're only here for the art.)

Iron Man still fucking rules. It has so much of what I like to call buzz porn. I will never get tired of the suiting up sequences.

Evil Jeff Bridges with a cigar on a Segway. A king.

We've all gotten used to it by now but the way they show Tony's face in the 3D-void with the digital interface over it is actually pretty ingenious.

Speaking of Tony, RDJ may always play himself, but the man oozes charisma from the points of his funky goatee to the bell bottoms of his suit pants.

And Jarvis too! I've never not loved a Paul Bettany performance. I predict I may say this several more times, but the casting carried this franchise from the start.

That final battle is like, what if Transformers but good?

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Ah, the famously maligned Iron Man 2. It's true, it's not as good as the first but nevertheless, the War Machine suit FUCKS. (And so does the song).

I like Whiplash, it's Hammer that's the problem. Everyone, but especially he talks so much that the quippy bickering that is 90% of the dialogue stops being amusing like it was in 1 and becomes draggy.

Also, the narrative structure is much less clean. Iron Man 1's plot is a tight piece of ass, where 2 needs to do some more squats.

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The Incredible Hulk certainly is an odd little duckling in the lineup. Its connection to the rest of the MCU is so tenuous as to almost not be felt at all, especially with Norton's recasting. It's also the only one without a post-credits stinger.

I will say I like Norton!Banner, but there is something off about this Hulk's face. Maybe the technology just wasn't quite there yet in 2008.

Certainly appropriately green color palette throughout though. I'm also noticing a certain grimy, tactile nature to these early entries that's gradually lost as more and more of the sets and even costumes get replaced by pure CGI. Some jumpy editing here and there too.

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Again, the casting in these movies is stellar across the board but man, Chris Evans is such a perfect Captain America in every way. Certainly the best bod in the biz, come at me, rival Chris stans.

That replacement effect they did with pre-serum Steve's body is surprisingly good, especially remembering much more recent travesties like the Super-stache.

The first Cap suit is still lowkey my favorite one. That functional military aesthetic is just my vibe.

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Thor is better than I remember. Everyone, but especially Jane is super likeable actually. Also, I would trust Heimdall with my life savings, my first born, my soul and my browser history.

Besides Tony, Loki arguably carried this franchise more than any other character and he proves yet again that family makes the best villains.

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The Avengers takes me back. It might be old news now, but this is the movie that invented the concept of the "cinematic universe". Like, that wasn't a word before. It was thrilling.

I remember when I got into Marvel after the first Iron Man came out, reading rumors about a potential Avengers movie and thinking that it was never going to happen. It would be too big, too expensive, too much to set up, just unfeasable on every level. And then it... happened.

That first arc of the MCU might have also been the best execution of a cinematic universe to date, bc it was at that point still Tony's story at its core and his arc finishes here. But we'll see as we go along.

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Thor 2 is the first of these that really feels like it only exists to be part of the larger franchise. That is not a good thing. It's what sank the DCU before it even left the shallows.

There's a very noticeable lack of verve compared to the first one, the cinematography and editing is so unexciting, the plot so basic. I mean they whipped out the ol' "when the planets align" chestnut. The only fun idea is the wacky gravity but they don't do enough with it.

Jane, despite being more directly involved in the conflict feels much less like an active agent than the first one and what did they do to rapier-man's hair?

I don't mean to pretend like these movies are high art or anything but this is well below the standards set, like b-tier fantasy at best.

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I have to admit IM3 is better the second time around. The big twist obviously loses its impact but there's some good moments and it's thematically more coherent than I originally gave it credit for.

Having said that, that theme and its resolution requires that this be the end of Iron Man as a character, which it obviously won't be. It's sort of the opposite problem from the last one: Where Thor2 can't exist outside the MCU, IM3 can't exist within it.

What made me absolutely livid when I first saw this movie is that Tony gets the reactor removed. It still doesn't sit right with me, though the reasons have shifted. Then, it was bc Tony and the suit are a unit, if it's not part of him he becomes exactly what cap says he is in A1

Now, contrary to what IM3 posits, the reactor to me symbolizes accepting the wounds of the past as a permanent part of yourself and growing from them, which breaks down as a metaphor if Tony could always get rid of the shrapnel and just didn't, for some reason.

Also, the mark 42 is still fugly.

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CA: winter soldier has some really good hand-to-hand combat and I really like the bromance with Natasha. They make a good team. Same goes for Wilson.

Because the themes of mass surveillance and corruption are more relevant than ever I'm not a huge fan of the conspiratorial bent this movie takes. It's a bit too real a subject to go full wacky Hydra long-con, you know.

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Guardians 1 does a remarkable job being good, considering all the new stuff it has to fit in. I'm not particularly attached to any of the characters but yeah, it works, it's just a solid flick all around.

I'm having flashbacks to baby groot mania

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Guardians 2's opening slaps. Also, de-aged Kurt Russell looks surprisingly convincing.

It's the sequel that's just better in every way. G1 laid a solid foundation that this one builds on a lot. It really digs into the characters' hearts (and makes me mix my metaphors apparently). They even manage to make the goofy tone thematic in that it's Peter's coping mechanism

Ego is the rare antagonist who isn't a foil but a natural evolution of the protagonist. Definitely in the upper echelons of Marvel villains.

I really like the ship with the little movable laser balls. Creative.

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Avengers 2 time! Vision: Awesome! Hulkbuster: Awesome! That shot of Cap ripping a log in two: Awesome! Natasha calling herself a monster bc she can't have children... a choice.

I'm glad they acknowledge from the start how OP Wanda is. I'm less glad her powers are basically reduced to telekinesis when they're so much funkier than that.

Why did they give Ultron so much... face? Especially combined with Spader's expressive performance it would have been much more unsettling to have a motionless mask.

This movie really takes IM3 from a mixed bag to utterly pointless.

It could be on my end but the audio mixing is off. Some of the sfx are weirdly quiet in places.

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Ant-Man is definitely a breath of fresh air after all relentless power escalation of the previous batch of movies. Slows down a little, brings down the scale (hah), you know

Although I do remain a touch salty that they didn't go with original ant-man/yellowjacket, especially since they already transplanted the Ultron storyline to Tony. I would have liked to have seen mad scientist Pym and his merry circus of fucked up alter-egos.

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Movie civil war is better than comic book civil war bc it ties into the characters way more and bc the inciting incident actually directly involves an avenger, and one who is famously volatile to boot. Still perhaps a touch contrived though.

Black Panther!!! The only hero who may out-cool Tony. RIP, king.

Why are the police in Bucharest speaking German? That really threw me, to the point I was unsure where that part was taking place. Pretty serious oversight honestly.

And why did steve kiss this random side character who doesn't matter? In a movie as long as this you can't really afford to keep dead end plot lines like that around.

My aesthetic is steve rogers' biceps.

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Listen, Toby Maguire will always have a special place in my heart, but Holland is the best package as far as spider-men go. Even though obviously no-one here looks their age I do buy Holland as conceptual teenager. Like, the energy is correct, in a way it never was before.

I really enjoy dad!Tony's ineptitude too. There was a touch of that IM3 (keep coming back to that one, huh) but it works better here.

Did they cast Michael Keaton as the Vulture bc of Birdman? I'm gonna choose to believe they did.

If I may nitpick for a second here: The new Avengers HQ was introduced after Ultron, two years before Homecoming takes place, so why would they just now have a "moving day"?

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I really like the tech in Black Panther. The beads, the sand, the cloaks. Really adds to Wakanda's identity separate from the rest of the universe.

Who gave Michael B. Jordan the right to be this attractive and compelling and generally a highlight of the franchise?

WAR RHINOS!!!

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Do I have lingering trauma from being on tumblr in the years 2012-17? Yes. But I still have to admit Cumberbatch is a decent actor. My favorite thing about his casting is that there's probs no one else whose name is as evenly matched in joke potential to their character as him.

The trippy shit is great. Like Inception on LSD. Just fun to watch even if, like me, you're not super invested in the story.

Rachel McAdams is so pretty <3

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Thor Ragnarok summary The aesthetic: impeccable The cast: hideously attractive The humor: so good The tonal shift compared to previous entries: lurching

I guess it only makes sense that the most unique, mould-breaking, complete stories have the most trouble fitting into such a behemoth of a franchise. Ragnarok might be the best MCU movie outside of the context of the MCU.

When Thor lands on the rainbow bridge all electrified, a lightning arch connects between his eye and his chest circle thingy and I love that particular frame so much.

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The size fuckery in Ant-man 2 is even better.

I don't like the ghost's acting. Nothing wrong with the character, but her body language is stiff and awkward. Now scott's daughter, there's a real mvp.

Watching the first after credits stinger before having seen infinity war makes it super ominous actually.

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Captain Marvel aka I'm gaaaaaay, the movie. And not just me. Carol and Maria will get married eventually and finish raising their daughter together, you cannot convince me otherwise.

Aww, I forgot about the Stanley montage. That's sweet.

I do love the mohawk.

Larson leans into the cocky badass persona a bit too far but what I like about Carol is how much joy she finds in her powers. Like so many heroes they get foisted on her but she doesn't get caught up in any "but what if I'm a monster" or "I didn't ask for this" angst.

She discovers she can fly and is like "fuck yeah I can fly! Watch me gooooo!" You know, the correct response. One of my favorite moments in the movie is when she starfishes straight through a spaceship just for shits and giggles.

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The remarkable thing about Infinity War is that while not everyone gets an arc, everyoen at least gets a beat or two and it all makes sense and hits. That's the pinnacle of what can be achieved with a well-designed cinematic universe.

The only thing that feels a touch underdeveloped is Wanda and Vision's relationship. It's a shame bc Wandavision is such a good ship with so much history. At least they have a TV show now. Also, I notice Wanda lost her accent.

Do Strange and Tony have... chemistry? Not to get all shippy for the finale but like, I might have to check AO3 and see if there's anything good.

Why is it that all of my faves specifically have to die :(

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Is Infinity War/Endgame the best two parter finale? A case might be made, I think.

This movie really makes me cognizant of how well structured the power escalation in this franchise is (leaving aside the fact that the sorcers are supremely OP).

Time travel and universe rearrangement is game-breaking and about as far as you can reasonably go in scale. The stakes just lose touch with what's humanly imaginable/ empathizable after that, which is why it's good that they saved it for the very end.

Endgame has a touch of the ol' "too many endings" disease but I'd say it's earned them at this point.

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Wrap up time! First, the perhaps obvious: there's a difference between watching 22 movies and 22 TV eps. They flow different and the movie marathon does get exhausting in a way the equivalent of ~2 TV seasons wouldn't have done.

They are, for the most part, fun flicks in their own right but I'm left wondering if the individual heroes wouldn't have been better served in a semi-canon CU, where weirder titles like Dr. Strange and Ant-Man would have had more freedom to experiment.

Then again, the existence of the MCU doesn't preclude future iterations that do push the envelope a little more. In fact, Wandavision, the only one of the TV shows I've cared to watch, does go in that direction, to the point that it ends up straining against its MCU obligations.

Anyway, I'm not gonna do a ranking of the movies. Instead I'm gonna do sth much more fun and at least 5% less overdone and rank each movie's main villain! It's possible they might correlate more strongly with overall enjoyment than the heroes even. Let's see here:

1. Loki 2. Killmonger 3. Vulture 4. Hela 5. Ego 6. Winter Soldier 7. Obadiah Stane 8. Ultron 9. Thanos 10. Yon-Rogg 11. Kaecilius 12. Yellowjacket 13. Ghost 14. Red Skull 15. Aldrich Kilian 16. Whiplash 17. Zemo 18. Colonel Ross 19. Ronan the Accuser 20. Malekith

#marvel #mcu #text post #my stuff

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motherwasapapafucker · 3 years ago

Note

You've obviously spoke about the Ghost as a Superman figure within the larger context of Doctor Who but do you think the opposite is possible? A Doctor-like figure within a larger superhero setting?

There's been a couple of attempts, never quite as....jarring as the Ghost but that’s pretty much down to mad scientists and time travel being far more commonplace in superhero settings than overtly super-heroic figures are in Who. To the point the handful of times Who has played with that (Conundrum, Starfall, The Return of Doctor Mysterio) all draw at least some of their story out of the jarring presence of a superhero figure within the narrative. There’s a really nice sequence in Conundrum where the Doctor “explains” the presence of the superpowered figures in a way that reads like he’s as much kidding himself because he would like to think it’s possible as genuinely trying to explain how these people have gained their abilities. Which really feels like a deliberate building on “I wish...I wish I believed in wishing wells” given how Conundrum plays out. There’s obviously the conflation of Captain Britain’s Merlin and Who’s Merlin a couple of times, but that’s really overstated even if only in terms of Britain’s Merlin functionally different beast to the point any doctor connection is largely a minor detail as any attempt at creating a Doctor-like figure. I think then, when it comes to your Doctor-like figure the big thing that would distinguish them from other standard mad scientists and science heroes is the face changing, and basically none of your overtly doctor-influenced characters actually do anything with? Your big one in a standard setting is Professor Gamble in Power Man and Iron Fist #79, who really stands out in terms of being the only doctor-lite comic figure overtly building on Classic Who rather than Cultural Juggernaut David Tennant Doctor Who. Some overlap with Dr. Mysterio’s use of the Ghost in the conflation of the real and fictional but in very different directions; Gamble writing a fictitious account of his own life, dreadlox a fictitious account of the Incinerators. Gamble’s personal Dalek-stand in born of rogue temporal cleaning devices that have decided destroying space and time is the only way to clean everything. Where the overlap falls apart is the fact that Power Man and Iron Fist is arguably a far more flexible book at that point in its history than Who is by the point of Doctor Mysterio. So #79 is less of an out of genre moment so much as just more weird shit happening to Danny and Luke. As far as I know Gamble has popped up here and there since then, and is one of a fairly sizable amount of Who references across Marvel/Marvel UK (Yeah yeah we all know about Death’s Head, W.H.O. and aw that pish) The other big, very very direct and direct to Cultural Juggernaut David Teannant Doctor Who is...weirdly…Qubit in Irredeemable. Which is barely relevant to this question because it’s really not a standard superhero setting beyond the superficial, but bares some comment given it’s arguably the most prominent of recent takes and really hard to ignore how much he’s just David Tennant with a James from Twin Peaks forehead and LEGION hair. Also worth commenting on how fucking strange his entire role in the arse end of Irredeeamble is given the final 20 or so issues largely devolve into “The Tenth Doctor fights Evil Superman.” Given how little that aspect is remarked upon, and how incongruous it is with the broader attempt at presenting an Evil Superman story that gradually pairs back to show that the character’s never really been evil superman because for him to have that “turn” you basically have to have it be the tip of an iceberg that sketches back decades and ultimate reveals the character was never really Superman in any way beyond the iconographic. So the fact that happens while he’s fighting David Tennant is really strange, though I do like so much of that spilling out of the Plutonian forcing Quibit into one of those big, painful NuWho moral decisions, but I really struggle to care about Irredeemable beyond thinking Incorruptible was generally the stronger book towards the end. You’ve also got things like the Allred/Slott Silver Surfer that overtly drew influence from contemporary

Doctor Who, but it’s building on an already distinctive character so it can never really function as a direct one for one. I know, vaguely, that Ben 10 had a Doctor Who figure. But having never watched the show I’m not sure how he appears within the show and tbh I don’t care enough to look into it. I suppose the thing is that Doctor-lite easily slides into a superhero setting without losing too much and without drawing too much attention to the homage while someone like the Ghost is, by basic nature, designed to be at least somewhat strange within the larger normality of the show’s present day. The closest point of comparison I can think of is something like Silver Sentry in TMNT; There’s really nothing in TMNT or Doctor WHo that precludes the existence of “proper” superheroes, nether show is exactly the height of realism but the sudden introduction of basically superman presents a fundamental shift in their respective idiosyncrasies. I imagine people would be tempted to draw a comparison between the Milligan Shade the Changing Man revamp under Vertigo and Who, and given it’s MIlligan I’m sure there was some influence their even if only in terms of an English-coded otherworldly figure who undergoes startling changes across the run, but tbh it’s basically a passing resemblance and kinda overlooks the fact that Shade kinda hilariously preempts a lot of where Who as a franchise goes during the 90s and 2000s. It’s presentation of Shade’s changes as far-more psychologically damaging than classic who’s regeneration compared to some overlap with how NuWho treats the event particularly, but also in terms of the EDAs there’s a fairly notable arc where Shade gives up his heart to cope with a torrent of emotional loss and devastated worlds. Make of that what you will. I still haven’t answered the fucking question have I, right since you’ve asked me you’re going to get my shite, because here’s how I’d do it. There’s only one way really, one word Metalek Because the fucking rule don’t they? Morrison’s first, best Dalek-homage. The Xenoformers from Galaxy X, sentient construction vehicles serving masters that no longer exist. Terraforming the Galaxy one world at a time. Bow before Metalek. So yeah, those guys exist and they’re fucking great. I have...more thoughts than I’d like to admit about the “Metalek Empire” that’s really just self-indulgent pish. But that’s DC comics. So they exist, and they present what’s probably the best approach to a Doctor-alike in a superhero setting. In the same way the Ghost might as well be Superman in a setting where he isn’t the soul focus, you’re Doctor Who figure might as well just be Doctor Who in a setting where, building on the fact the key elements aren’t that notable, they really don’t stand out that much, so what then? Well he’s the mad scientist, but a good mad scientist. Counterpart to all the lunatics and madmen with their metal monsters, who is he? Who’s the grant morrison character fighting the dreaded metalek menace when they aren’t intruding on Superman’s narrative? Who spent decades trapped on earth, leading a reformed STAR Labs into a strange, wonderful new world? It’s Leo Quantum isn’t it. Basically, Leo’s one of those characters like Lan-Shin in Smashes the Klan or John Henry Irons who click perfectly into place with the larger idea of Superman’s social network. And given I’m an egotist, I’m going to do what I like with him building out of that admittedly bullshit old idea he’s future lex back to repent. If the Ghost is a version of Superman who’s world exists in the shadow of the Doctor, Leo would be a version of the Doctor that exists in the Shadow of Superman. He’s not literally Lex, he’s your Kristin Wells/Legion/DC One Million figure, possibly a future Luthor, possibly the first child of the Luthor/Kent families coming together in the far off 42nd century. A temporal adventurer who’s early experiments caused all his potential futures to crash down on top of him, transforming him into a hypertime singularity. His technicolor dreamcoat crafted from fifth world

wondertech, regulating his body to ensure each hypertime strand gets its time in sun while keeping the darker fringes in line….most of the time. Or at least, that’s what I’d do, feel free to discard this as mental bastard bullshit.

#doctor who #comics #superman #superheroes #rambling bullshit #leo quantum #grant morrison #metaleks #irredeemable #dc comics #the ghost #the return of doctor mysterio #tmnt #silver sentry is pretty great tbh

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linxuelian · 4 years ago

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I found a Chinese BL Warring States Game of Thrones, three years older than The Untamed

And I just had to write a review about it! It’s 60 episodes long so I haven’t finished it yet at the time I’m writing this - but I decided to just go ahead and recommend it anyway.

Why, you ask?

For one, it’s Romance of the Three Kingdoms with all the Hollywood action and adult HBO things. It’s got explosions:

Horses falling down:

People getting flogged:

Sweaty soldiers getting mauled to death:

Children used as hostages:

Dead bodies presented in court:

Stylish dye jobs:

Loving father figures:

A Jon Snow lookalike:

And very gay innuendo:

That’s right, unlike The Untamed, which was first written as a straight series featuring Wen Qing as the main female lead and then rewritten again after fans of the novel decided to boycott it, this series was written to be gay from the very beginning. It got taken down by the Chinese Censorship Board after twelve episodes and river-crabbed to death, but a good number of scenes survived censorship. Those that did not made it to BiliBili in the form of “hidden” videos and disguised as “music videos”.

That’s not all. For a warring period Wuxia series, it’s got very beautiful actors, backdrops and clothing. It’s dressed like a fairy tale, with different kingdoms sporting different colours and styles in fashion and tastes.

In terms of art direction, it’s pretty low-budget for a series but the team makes good use of existing props, locations and brighter-coloured fabric to make up for the quality. The costume design is more fantasy-based than period, and the vivid takes and angles in the first season add to its charm.

There’s also its complex story line, which brings us to...

Men with Swords is not a title for the faint-hearted. There is an acute absence of black-and-white morality depicted in it.

If you think a BL series with such beautiful backdrops and fairytale-like clothes is for the simple-minded, one-track-good-vs-evil sort, think again. The series is a tale about Murong Li, a vengeful prince disguised as a musician and his rise to power, leaving behind a trail of death and destruction in its wake.

Where The Untamed fails at delivering gray morality unlike the novel it’s adapted from, choosing to alter its script to fit a more general audience (a commercially-wise decision which got it into Netflix), Men with Swords succeeds in faithfully telling a tale where there is no good or evil, only humanity, jealousy, grudges, rebellion, loyalty, life, death, greed and love.

Everyone has both good and bad sides, just different camps and motives. Men with Swords tells the story from not just one person’s perspective, but from the perspective of many different people, all of whom become entangled in a battle for their figurative Iron Throne - to become the king of the world.

There are no “what ifs” in this story, only decisions, reactions and repercussions

A prevailing theme in this series is that there are no “what ifs” and no turning back in life, only things that have happened and will happen. Murong Li starts his journey as a prince who has lost everything and a victim of war, wandering around for three years while being put down and getting sexually harassed, eventually losing it, taking his chances and hardening his heart as he walks down his conniving, badass path of destruction towards the top.

Men with Swords is not a series for the faint-hearted. It’s a game of chess where the main character, Murong Li, is cunning and decisive, cold and ruthless and many recurring characters die horrible, sudden deaths, friend and foe alike, a la Attack on Titan.

The series is filled with political strife and warfare, peppered with some sweet, comedic and romantic undertones. There is a stark contrast between fluffy and dark in its narrative, which is pretty refreshing overall.

With that all aside, I know what you’re probably scrolling down for:

The main characters and their boyfriends

This is it. This is what you’re here for. Most “BL” series are actually bromances, but the real upside for a BL fan is that this show is not a bromance - it’s a BL title, and even with censorship, the love stories prevail.

I’m going to put this under a cut because it’s LONG AF, but what that means is that there is a LOT of BL content available, and not the type that you have to hunt for. They’re very open about it.

While the show itself has a lot of ships, there’s a larger focus on three main ones, namely the beautiful Murong Li and two powerful kings, the fairy-like Ling Guang and his servants, and King Jian Bin with his general.

Murong Li: Da Ji 2.0 and his rich and powerful kings

If you’re a Jin Guangyao fan, you’ll probably enjoy Murong Li and his elegant, charming viles and ruthless scheming. He’s a surprisingly good fighter too, and unlike most elegant and waif-like beauties in dramas and novels alike, he’s a beauty with brains who uses his physical weakness as his strength, bending and seducing his way up to power.

Murong Li only really goes after rich and powerful people, worming his way into the kingdom and taking them down from the inside. Two main love interests are King Zhi Ming, the childish but rich king of Tianquan:

And Yu Xiao, a powerful barbarian king with a soft heart:

Murong Li, while wandering around as a musician, picks up many tricks along the way to hone himself. He’s adept at dressing up, making himself look helpless and alluring to bewitch powerful men, for one:

See that small smile right there? Yes, our boy knows what he’s doing.

Aside from that, Murong Li’s also pretty good at manipulating people by using their jealousies and insecurities, getting them to fight with each other over him.

Murong Li, although modeled after the cruel and beautiful Murong Chong, the Emperor of Wei, is likened to Da Ji, the favorite consort of the King Zhou of Shang. Da Ji was said to be a malevolent fox spirit who started the art of foot-binding to hide her fox feet. Everyone else looking in can see it, but the King was blinded, just like Murong Li’s powerful love interests. In fact, the series draws a direct parallel to it:

The Guo Shi here uses the term “yao”, which alludes to a malevolent spirit.

It’s not that Murong Li doesn’t have a weakness, though. Just like every Jin Guangyao has a Lan Xichen around to cause him to slip now and then, Murong Li surprisingly is weak towards the most naive and childish character in the series, the truant King Zhi Ming, whose only qualities are having purple bangs and being rich and playful.

No matter how calculative and ruthless Murong Li is in the series, he does end up almost slipping up and giving everything away when it comes to this bumbling fellow:

He’s saved only at the nick of time by one of his followers. Murong Li tells a lot of lies, but the one thing he can’t lie about are his feelings towards King Zhi Ming, who is ultimately the one thing he can’t give up next to his kingdom.

There’s a lot more one can write about a complex character such as Murong Li, but the second ship is just as good. It features:

Ling Guang: The Ex-Arrogant Depressed Hamster hung up over a dead ex

Ling Guang, the mortal enemy and foil to Murong Li, is a baby-faced, very-much-older-than-he-looks character whose sole purpose in this series is to wear frilly magenta clothing, destroy the kingdom of Yaoguang, set Murong Li down a path of vengeful destruction and piss off eligible, probably younger bachelors by comparing them to his very handsome, very loyal and very dead boyfriend, his personal guard, Qiu Zhen, who died sometime over thirteen years ago.

The bachelors’ pissed off takes to this are particularly priceless:

Here’s another one from season 2:

That HMPH face is to die for.

Ling Guang’s delusions are met head-on by these eligible bachelors, his ministers and his allies alike:

Only to be met by a, “haha, NO.”

Frustrating, right? It only gets worse as the series progresses. Due to Wuxia’s fantastical existence of sword souls, he begins to actively test his subjects out to see if they’re his dead boyfriend, whose sword soul is still alive:

Gu Shi’an: WTF.

So why do these eligible, handsome bachelors, particularly this guy from season two, jump at his lap every chance they get?

First off, he’s very, very pretty. He’s arguably the prettiest and fanciest king in the series, with a cute rounded face, favoring fluffy organza, frills and feathers in his garb, and sporting fabulous curls like that of a swan princess on a good day.

Secondly, and more importantly, it’s likely because he’s the type loyal dogs adore.

He’s stupidly and openly attached to his bodyguards and servants, unable to hide his feelings or control them. Ling Guang’s relationships are technically the opposite of Murong Li’s. While Murong Li hides his feelings and goes after men of power and tends to use them before leaving them, Ling Guang’s willing to sacrifice everything, including his kingdom, his health and his own life for men who are merely servants.

He's a king who doesn’t know proper protocol. He’s the type who’ll demand to eat with you at the same table:

Creeps outside the palace to see you off:

Hugs your sword around like a pillow while he waddles around listlessly and sleeps with it by his side after you’re long dead (grand total: 13 years):

Coddles you when you’re sick:

Takes arrows for you:

Isn’t afraid to cry and tell you how it is:

Faints violently and won’t rest until he can get your stolen body back:

The results?

If he’s not what loyal bodyguards like, I don’t know what he is. If Murong Li’s love interests have to pit themselves against each other to show how useful they are for his sake, Ling Guang’s love interests need to wrestle with a dead man he can’t let go of... which is hopeless, because you can’t kill a guy who’s already dead.

As a foil to Murong Li, what’s also interesting to note is that it’s alluded to and foreshadowed that he’s exactly the sort the loyal Yu Xiao, the current barbarian king, would have loved to have as a lover - honest, loyal and doting - unlike Murong Li himself. Gongsun Qian, a deputy minister with great foresight, had wanted Ling Guang to go to see the new barbarian kingdom, but he had refused to go outside the palace, shutting himself inside like an otaku. This decision ultimately gave Murong Li a step forward with his plans, at the great cost of four kingdoms, including his own.

Jian Bin: My boyfriend can (REALLY) fight

Next up is Jian Bin and his general. Jian Bin’s the king of Tian Ji, a new kingdom founded by astrologers. The catch here is that Jian Bin and his boyfriend, Qi Zhi Kan, are both men of science, and this tank of a boyfriend is a genius on the battlefield who doesn’t give a single shit about star signs, astrology and superstitions.

A story between a serious, loving king and his handsome general who was once a simple sword-maker in the woods, King Jian Bin meets his handsome ex-lumberjack boyfriend when he’s attacked, falls down from his horse and is rescued by the man himself.

Jian Bin then brings the guy back to his palace and dresses him in armor:

This puts the king’s general on the war path of several ministers and the superstitious people in their kingdom. As lovers, the two go through various trials together in an attempt to run their kingdom their way.

Qi Zhi Kan may seem like a herbivore in front of the king, but he’s really not one at all. He’s terrifying to a degree when it comes to warfare, and very, very difficult to take down. Unlike the other ministers, Qi Zhi Kan knows that he can expand the kingdom quickly and solve problems by waging war.

Even his allies are scared of him:

Ultimately, it’s a ship meant for those who like watching the king teasing his loyal subject and caressing armor whenever he’s around AND not around. Jian Bin even admits to it on-scene:

This loving and devoted couple were originally blessed as the ones with the most piggyback scenes, tender bandaging-your-chest and armor fondling, but they got censored unfortunately.

Scenes like these made the cut, though:

And that’s it! There are actually other minor ships, but these are the main ones for now.

If you’re sold and interested in the show, the series is available online on Rakuten Viki. https://www.viki.com/tv/35524c?locale=zh

#bl series #chinese bl #series recommendations #c-drama #men with sword #chinese period drama

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twilightofthe · 4 years ago

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(oops a little late to the game) Unpopular opinion! Although I think that Padme's death in ROTS wasn't completely out of the realm of possibility (i.e. she absolutely could've given up the will to live, that's a thing that can kill humans!), I also think it was pretty sexist for LF to kill her off because her emotions were too strong/she didn't have the will to live without Anakin anymore.

(Ask game found here)

strongly agree | agree | neutral | disagree | strongly disagree

Thank you for this one! Ok so this is definitely a very complicated answer for me

Firstly, we gotta address the matter of the fact that Padmé, narratively, unfortunately needed to die in Revenge of the Sith. She needed to die because the sad truth was that she was dead, canonically, by the Original Trilogy, as both of her children confirm her as dead. This was a good 8 years before the Disney purchase. There were no other streaming service shows or lesser known comics coming out at this time that would show us what was going to happen in canon after this movie. If you wanted to give Padmé Amidala, one of the three main characters of this movie trilogy, a solid ending to her character and story, she needed to die in Revenge of the Sith.

So yeah, Padmé did HAVE to die here.

Now did Lucas do it well enough to give her character justice? No, in my own opinion I wouldn’t say so. He cut most of her written plot that was about her forming the Rebellion and standing up to Palpatine and actually finding herself on a different side than Anakin, all of that was cut out of the movie. I feel that was detrimental to her character, as what we have left is pretty much just her being the distressed mother to be that Anakin obsesses over. I feel her remaining plot that was left for her in the movie revolving near-entirely around a man is definitely on the sexist side, and her death also revolving completely around a man can be seen as a part of that larger issue.

But Padmé’s death on its own, without the rest of the movie in context? I don’t know if I would call it a particularly sexist death. Like, I really don’t think I could call her death a fridging like I would say other prequels-era Star Wars ladies’ deaths were— notably Shmi, Satine, etc. —because while yes, Padmé’s death did make the male main character sad and drive his motivations afterwards, she was not killed off just to make the male main character sad and drive his plot.

Padmé was killed off for story continuity as she had already been canonically dead before the original trilogy for at this point around 25 years, so she needed to die. Of course it was gonna upset Anakin/Vader because the dumbass decided to pull all his violent murderous bullshit that most male characters with fridged women pull while the woman in question was still alive.

So no, I wouldn’t say Padmé’s death is a fridging. You however mentioned specifically the whole “lost the will to live” part, which is something else, and I don’t know if I would call that sexist either.

Yeah it fuckin’ sucks that in a universe where any old Darth Spite can survive falling down a hole after getting chopped in half/blown up, where the universe personally pulls time travel fixits despite continuity to save you if the director the universe likes you too much to let you die, where the woman in question’s husband just got triple amputated and flambéed and is up and kicking like an hour after getting fixed, where Breha Organa and Fennec Shand can just get brand new roboguts to replace any of their internal organs getting destroyed— it SUCKS that in that universe, Miz Amidala unfortunately cannot escape the diagnosis of Terminal Sad.

But they never say that she can’t go on just because of her emotions over losing Anakin; in fact, her last words are a fervent belief that she hasn’t lost Anakin, that he can still come back, that she still loves him even after he tried to kill her and destroyed her life’s work. I think it’s a combination of all of the different kinds of heartbreak. Her husband helping commit a genocide, yes her entire life’s work she put all of herself into burning to the ground around her, Jedi who were likely her friends all being dead, ALL of that weighed on Padmé. ALL of that was likely a part of her just not having the strength to take any more of this bullshit. Yeah she had two new babies, yeah there was the Rebellion. New children aren’t all sunshine and roses, especially when you’re a newly single parent and your not-so-deadbeat father is trying to hunt you down and is also a murderous fascist. Being part of a rebellion against a corrupt authority??? Fucking SUCKS. Activism and standing up and doing the right thing and fighting to take down the authoritarian power structures is WORK and it’s HARD and it is EXHAUSTING. It’s not a shining crusade of light and hope. It’s gritty and dirty and time consuming and it kills people. Padmé’s been throwing her entire sense of self into serving others, fixing the government, since she was twelve years old. She’s been conditioned to it. It’s all she’s BEEN doing. She has never seen a therapist in her LIFE. She just went through a grueling labor after being strangled by the one she loved most.

The more and more I watch this movie and the more and more I’ve looked back at my own mental bullshit, I can’t help but watch her death now and be like “ok yeah, I get that. I get just not being able to fight anymore, even if it’s The Right Thing To Do to pull yourself back up no matter what.”

I personally actually do subscribe to the theory that Sidious drained Padmé’s life force and used it to save Anakin because I love how it’s a painfully ironic end to the unhealthy and tragic Anidala relationship, that it’s sad for both of them, just because that’s the exact kind of Star Wars bullshit that is fun and makes sense to me. But even if Padmé just genuinely died from not being able to go on, just, I can’t really see that alone as anti-feminist anymore

#so there is your LONG rambling answer I am so sorry if it doesn’t make sense pls ask me to clarify if needed!#this was a really interesting question topic to dive into!#queen of my heart #one (1) hot mess #star-crossed lovers #sw prequels #episode 3 #ask #rots #padmé amidala

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orangeflavoryawp · 3 years ago

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Just finished From Instep to Heel and don't have a ao3 account so had to come to find you on tumblr and WHERE IS MY SEQUEL? First I LOVED the fanfic with everything in me but come on you must have thought about a sequel after all that war against the Iron Throne and Jonsa ruling foreshadowing, tell me it will happen 🙏🙏

I mean...

I'm not gonna lie and say I haven't thought of a sequel. But the honest truth is that I just don't got another longfic in me. Not in the immediate future, at least.

I purposely ended the story the way I did for several reasons, the first and foremost being that the whole point of this story was to show Jon and Sansa going from two into one, without undoing them. Making them a team. Bringing them together. And yes, of course, there were going to be tons of political maneuvers happening throughout the course of this, but ultimately, the story of them finding unity would be far shorter than the story of their kingdoms finding such unity. That is a far greater and more encompassing story. I wanted to provide closure to the important narratives and themes I brought up in this story, but not ignore the larger impact that comes from these events.

It gives me the opportunity to write a sequel, should I find the motivation and time to do so, but also ties off enough ends to give some peace to the readers while simultaneously letting them envision their own future for the duo.

Ultimately, if I ever write a sequel, which I honestly cannot guarantee will ever happen (because I just don't have the drive for longfic right now), it would delve into the inevitable war of the seven kingdoms, the new dynamic between Jon and Aegon, and what that means for the brothers, fighting on opposite sides, how Jon and Sansa deal with separation during war time, relearning intimacy after the grief of losing a child, growing into their new roles both in politics and the family, Rhaenys' journey toward healing, her place between two brothers she's trying to relearn how to nurture the right way, Dorne's role in the conflict, the aftereffects of Daenerys' execution on Aegon, Bran's recovery, Arya's coming of age and eventual talk of betrothal versus her own interests, the direwolves growing with the Starks, the Lannisters plotting their chances, the alliance with the Reach, and the North's ties with the Vale and the Riverlands, Robb and Margaery's roles in the war, and a million other little plot bunnies that need addressing.

So yeah. There's a whole ass novel marinating in my brain about it. But is it gonna happen? Don't put any money on it, I'll tell you that.

This AU is incredibly dear to me, there's no denying that. And I think about this sequel literally all the fucking time. But ya girl's doing massive overtime pretty much every week. Dealing with personal and medical shit. And just, all around, exhausted.

I want to write. I want to do this like you've no idea. But I gotta be real and tell y'all that it's likely not happening. Not anytime soon, that's for sure. Still, all this love, and all this excitement for my work, it keeps me going. It keeps me happy and fulfilled and proud. I just want you to know that.

It means the world to know that my stories have moved any of you. The absolute world, okay? The whole fucking thing.

So thank you. Again. Even though that may never be enough. Thank you. <3

#jonsa #my writing #from instep to heel

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queenerdloser · 4 years ago

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okay i finally (finally!) finished gr*duation after what felt like three hundred years and i have many thoughts that i just.. want to get down to process my own very VERY mixed feelings on this season

overall it was a fun romp at the end with some highly enjoyable goofs. i enjoy fitz maplecourt so much & relished griffin being able to do a character. the firbolg lives in my heart. argo is great.

that said, the plot was, overall, messy as shit, considering at the end i still had very little clear idea of a) what exactly order/chaos wanted to achieve and b) why the fuck they were even doing what they were doing. we spent all that time on a hog heist that, in the end, had... very little to do with what was going on at the time. (would the narrative have been significantly changed without the hog heist? if, instead, hog hadn’t responded due to their internal greed/indifference - something that’s already been established in world and isn’t a stretch to imagine - and thus had the exact same ramifications and end result as the heist gave us? like don’t get me wrong, the heist has some of my favorite goofs in it, but it’s essentially like six episodes of nonsense that, in the end, has almost nothing to do with the main plot & whose end goal could have been summed up in the finale.) the whiplash of suddenly taking gray on as an ally to we’re heisting hog for reasons to actually the real threat was the demons at the castle attacking now for reasons is... bad plot. (look at how many times i have to say ‘reasons’ bc there’s no real in-universe or external force that explains why something is happening at that specific time.)

i haven’t listened to the final ttazz about grad but it kind of felt like travis just gave up on his narrative arc and this sloppy plot mess is what we have left. like, okay order/chaos is a cool concept but what were they actually trying to achieve? why could order just be booted out of their shared body and why didn’t they just do that instead of having that whole climatic battle? why both using fitzroy at all for anything if they could always just take over the world with demons? why did we have all these characters allied together if in the end we were going to op the three pc and have them fight basically one-on-one with order? why did the commodore suddenly and inexplicably switch sides after working with the boys literally like three episodes ago other than to shoehorn in a conclusion to argo’s arc that, ultimately, fell short bc it was so utterly anti-climatic?

and like!!! maybe some of these questions were answered but none of them to an extent that felt grounded enough in the narrative that they made sense, lingered, or didn’t feel like a macguffin to cover a sudden plot twist or plot hole. a lot of plot felt sacrificed for cool concepts and fun character twists and i get that, but when all you have is cool concepts and fun character twists, there’s no real foundation for it to rest on.

i AM going to compare to amnesty bc i do think amnesty is the strongest arc plot-wise of the three major seasons of taz. balance recovers in the back half but the first three parts are very loosely connected to the major plot and then there’s that huge info dump in crystal kingdom so like - it’s also messy there, even though it manages to make it work in a way that graduation doesn’t. but amnesty is tightly plotted from the beginning - there’s a clear trajectory, foreshadowing built in, characters have actual arcs that make sense, most of the major villains and antagonists have motivations that make sense and even the act three twist is something that’s reasonably built in from the beginning. even if it wasn’t ALL planned (such as billy the goat’s involvement) it’s clear that new elements were worked into an already existing framework with an eye towards cohesiveness. i know people complain about the main three not being “together” enough or “friendly” enough with each other (as if that’s all that matters in a good story lmao) but i also think that amnesty has the strongest character arcs of the three seasons because we do see all three major characters start in one place and end up somewhere radically different, make movements in cohesive and reasonable ways, and change in a way that is not off-the-wall or just for a fun twist.

graduation... doesn’t really do that. the main three are a fun time but in the epilogue i was genuinely struggling to get why fitz decided to suddenly be a lawyer or why the firbolg, who has never shown any interest in having a name before that moment (quite the opposite, really) is suddenly emotional over having a name. argo, who has spent all of his time honoring his mother, decides to... run a cruise ship? and even leaving aside the epilogues, these characters... don’t really have an arc. argo is the closest and even his emotional narrative falls flat bc the commodore’s ending is so anti-climatic and bc, other than the trial scene, he and the commodore largely don’t interact. if the commodore had played a larger part in the actual narrative maybe it would have felt less like an aborted attempt at an arc but. he didn’t. fitz also has an attempt at an arc but it also falls flat bc so much of fitz has remained unchanged from when we first meet him. he’s a little more empathetic and better at magic, but how has fitz really changed since the first episode?

(tangent: thinking again about justin having to ask why the firbolg was doing what he was doing during that whole dog-is-the-headmaster reveal portion, to the point of asking travis point-blank why his character was doing the things he was doing. thinking again of how travis just told the boys point-blank that this side character they couldn’t even remember the name of was their best friend. and then again about how that “best friend” just like... fucking disappeared from the narrative after that, never to be seen or heard from again until the epilogue twenty episodes later for two brief seconds. in fact pretty much every character except rainier just disappears from the narrative at a certain point and i’m pretty sure it’s in reaction to the complaints about the numerous characters - but the answer to those complaints wasn’t to just mysteriously cut everyone else from the narrative without warning or reason laksfsafjlfj. what happened to that one villain posh guy from the first episodes???? what about the accounting owl teacher??????)

this is just my rambly processing of grad bc i’m trying to figure out what about it fell so dramatically flat for me that it was a literal slog to get through most of it even though i found the characters themselves delightful and enjoyed the mcelroy goofs as much as ever. and i think the thing is... for some listeners, the most important thing is going to be the interaction with the players or the goofs or how friendly and found family-ish the main group is with each other. which is great and fine! but for me, a good story or good character arcs or something well thought-out and plotted out is always going to be more engaging, no matter how much i like the found family or how much i like the goofs. it’s why i struggled to get why people complained so bitterly about amnesty - who cares if the main three are always together or getting along really well or being friends if they’re having interesting, satisfying character arcs and personal growth set in an interesting, dynamic plot? in graduation, that foundation is just missing and i’m sure part of it was due to the unnecessarily vitriolic backlash against travis (that’s enough to steal anyone’s thunder) but also just like... an underdeveloped plot in an overdeveloped world, a trap so many authors have fallen into. (like travis can describe in minute detail the inner workings of hog that are only applicable for about five episodes but chaos/order’s motivations are largely handwaved despite them being the central antagonists for the entire season.)

anyway. once again, great goofs. i would die for fitzroy maplecourt. but i can’t imagine ever listening to the whole thing again or even more than a couple of episodes here or there (ironically of the hog heist, which, despite how unnecessary it was, was a fun romp and had some of my favorite moments. so, you know. sometimes unnecessary is still good lmao).

#also if literally anyone says that it's all bc of travis' adhd or w/e One More Time i will lose it #look i also have adhd and i am still capable of writing a cohesive plot okay??? having mental illness does not #somehow prevent you from being able to write a cohesive and well-thought-out story #i do think he got some very unnecessary backlash and a lot of the problems in gr*d were also present in early balance #the difference is that balance... balanced out eventually and grew stronger #whereas gr*d collapsed in on itself and became a mess plot-wise #and even tho i enjoyed the characters i felt no real emotional investment in their arcs bc their arcs were... not really arcs #anyway i dont regret listening to it BUT it was a slog & i dont think i'll ever really relisten #taz

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redantsunderneath · 4 years ago

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On Analysis - Introduction (the “why” part)

“He had the feeling that everything he saw was a broken-off piece of some giant blank thing that he had forgotten had happened to him.” ― Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood

Maybe some broader personal context would help understating why in god’s name I write shit about how Age of Ultron is a remake of Eraserhead and Marvel crossovers are inherently about self hating creatives going to war with editorial. Like everyone else, I love a well told story but want to be surprised - seeing Star Wars is still the single biggest event in my life in supercharging my interest in narrative art. But from early on, I had this left brain/right brain conflict going on. I was super interested in details and loved anything that required getting all the pieces to understand (that one episode of Speed Racer where they explain all the buttons I only saw once but I must have excitedly told everyone in the schoolyard about it 2 or 3 times) and I’ve always been down for the even the shittiest world-building that makes you dig for details (maybe this why Star Wars’ gesturing at a larger canvas lit my fuse so hard and how my introduction to Marvel comics became the second stage rocket booster 3 years later - see my retropseudonostalgia post). This also is probably common, especially here.

But it’s the right brain impulse became an overriding unconscious attractor. I saw The Man with the X-Ray eyes very young and had some serious nightmares, but mostly remember actually wanting to recapture that dread. This became a pattern. Anything that unsettled me or made me feel weird, my brain interpreted as a good experience. 1977 was a real flashpoint for me: Star Wars, sure, and 8 is the right age for Thanatos to start haunting you, but I also got super fucking sucked in to the Prisoner and imprinted on BBC’s Dracula (especially the baby eating scene where I remembered the brides actually eating the baby on camera until the clip showed up on YouTube and, turns out, it was just a cut to a flame effect and the baby eating was all in my and Q anon’s head). The thing that unites these later two is a the feeling of Unheimliche, or something - a sort of out of body experience due to transgressive touching of something in the reptile brain, recognizable but hard to formulate in language.

Again, not saying this is an unusual experience, but I sought after this diencephalonic impact aggressively and spent years chasing this particular dragon before I figured out what I was doing. Rank and file horror didn’t cut it because I wanted not only to feel it but to understand what it was telling me and doing to me, to wrestle with it, so needed to something resonant to be there. Kubrick’s one neat trick was having an entirely rational approach to relentlessly assembling this kind of ineffable experience… depth of meaning by design. I think Christopher Nolan is only popular because we have so few architect directors today so we’ll take a B- stab at it (though the thematic waters he sails on are a bit shallow). This is what I was doing receptively, wanting to cognitively reverse engineer the texts that moved me and autopsy my reaction . There were elements the things that got to me had in common - there was an existential abjection that felt like a kind of rapture, a transgressive daring in showing me something I shouldn’t see, a experience of Mark Fisher’s version of the weird and/or the eerie, but most of all a feeling that there was a story underneath there being told in an abstract language that I innately understood but my conscious mind couldn’t quite get to.

On the other side of my brain, I was sparring with narrative structure and was captivated by the way periodical narrative produced this fuzziness and that trashy or disreputable forms were better at doing some really complex things. After a late 70s of consuming everything I could, like sitcoms no-one remembers, 1930s and 40s franchise B movies, Godzilla, ABC hourlongs (it was the time that Fantasy Island and the Bionic Woman strode the airwaves), etc - just absolute garbage - Comics hit me in 1980 and hijacked my brain for half a decade. This mostly satisfied that architectural impulse, though, and the need for the uncanny reasserted itself as a shifting obsession to pop/rock music, “hard” books, and catholic moviegoing (and I guess some of that right brain stuff is intrinsically libidinous and the pubertal timing seems right).

My childhood book consumption till 77 was all atlases, history, and encyclopedias. 77 to 83 it was SF/Fantasy. The one work of fiction I strongly remember as a small child was There’s a Monster at the End of this Book which is a work of absolute intersubjective terror that implicates the crap out you - I never bought the ending and saw it as a necessary contrivance to make it OK for kids but I repeatedly endangered Grover anyway, enjoying the transporting dread, and learned meta in Kindergarten as a bonus! But in 1984 (during the Sarajevo Olympics, that’s etched in my brain) I read Moby Dick, which was my first formative struggle with understanding subliminal story. I was already in love with symbolism and conversant with nuts and bolts MFA program bullshit, as any ironically pretentious HS student would be, but reading that and writing about it and other “tough” books (especially the next year in Junior English where I learned to write, full stop) taught me I could think about this stuff and hold these abstractions in my head long enough to see what was happening under the waterline.

Movies really dominated the late 80s, though, and I became obsessed with everything from the Godfather to Die Hard, but I was only just peaking under the hood, until the left brain brought me back to TV and and thinking about narrative structure. Twin peaks (and Wild at Heart) made me a real Lynch fan and I sensed what I sought was in that direction, but it wasn’t until I watched the whole show and movie in one weekend in 1997 that I had my conversion experience. Moby Dick opened the door a bit, but that weekend kicked it in. My first real resource for understanding (other than HS English, a couple of hits of acid, and dorm room bull sessions with sort of smart people) was alt.tv.twin-peaks where there were many amateur scholars trying to understand the red room and above the convenience store scenes, complete with ascii maps.

The final inciting event was Inland Empire. The thing about David Lynch that is so perfect for my hobbyhorses is that he works within a scene entirely intuitively, connecting to really primordial stuff, and puts everything together by “painting” with feelings instead of paint, never thinking about it, just knowing when it’s right. But he usually works with a writer and editor who helps shape everything into something at least fitfully comprehensible for someone wanting to follow the surface story. You get the general idea and can meditate on the areas that are clearly not “real” in some sense and require either aesthetic surrender or a lot of thought and one hell of an interpretive toolkit - you can see the frame even if you don’t understand every bit of the picture. Inland Empire, which he made with no other behind the camera people, is pretty much all the mind-blowing bits with very little skeleton, an abstract painting with no frame. This forces you, if you want to understand in any way beyond just enjoying the moments viscerally, to effort like hell. The project of this for me, the reason I started this Tumblr, was using the internet for procuring and learning to use interpretive tools and, in so doing, writing my way to constructing an understanding of this one movie. As a result, my approach to all narrative art was changed. I figure it is time to unpack this into a framework and try to recall the specific things that helped me get here.

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olympianpandback · 4 years ago

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April 12 - 15

We got out of Roswell fairly early and headed to White Sands National Park near Holloman Air Force base. We decided to see if they had a spot at the RV park on base. They did but we had to register with the public health officer on base to verify that we had gotten our COVID 19 shots. The Tech sergeant that worked with us was very helpful and we got the paperwork completed on the phone which he forwarded to the visitor center where we had to pick up our pass. We got to the base visitor center and it was a seamless process. It turns out we are both in the Air Force computer system. It’s scary that we are, but makes getting on Air Force bases much easier. Let’s see what happens in California! I'm good to get on base anytime with my ID card and Elizabeth has to get daily or a certain number of days Pass. The campground was very nice with very clean bathrooms and a free laundromat because they are planning an upgrade to larger machines, yea. We checked in and went back to the White Sands National Park to look around. It is an absolutely beautiful place. It’s the largest gypsum area in the world over 200000 acres (275 sq. miles). We took a one-mile walk that has descriptors of the wildlife and how they survive. The definitions and descriptions were very detailed and interesting how animal and insect life survives and thrives in a desert environment. It was difficult to walk certain parts but if you knew to get all the beaten track and walk on the hardpacked sand that the wind had blown flat, it was easier. It was pretty warm and of course dry but we hydrated before we left and had a relatively easy walk. The signs weren’t clear about which direction start so we ended up going backwards. I've always been a contrarian by nature and that didn't bother me at all. We met people coming in the opposite direction, just smiled and kept going. There was a different 600' boardwalk further on with easy walking with more descriptions of how the white sand developed. It turns out that there is moisture only 3' deep according to the signs. We kept driving into the park for a couple of miles until we came to the end of the pavement and turned around because the RV doesn't do well on washboard roads even though the sand was well compacted. We decided turn around and head back to camp. We had an uneventful evening with really good sleeping weather in the high forties to mid-fifties and dry, so dry. During our walk in the morning around the campground we bumped into a woman who had a German accent. I asked her where she was from and she said Illinois. I said where were you born. She said Berlin. We had a nice 30 minute conversation in German, mostl,y so I could practice my German. Marion is a very nice lady and we promised to give her some information about the windows in our house. She may want to upgrade her windows because it is so hard to clean them. That’s what we like about traveling, you meet some of the most interesting people.

April 14

Before we left the Air Force base in the morning and we went to buy some military T-shirts for Nunzio. We decided to go to the commissary to look around. Much to our surprise, we found real German bread from a bakery in El Paso. They had 2 of my favorites, farmers bread and Roggen brot (Rye bread). We snagged a loaf of each and now are trying to figure out how to preserve them for a couple of weeks. We were able to freeze most of the farmers bread and we will be eating ham and cheese on German bread for a couple of days for sure. The refrigerator is starting to get cleared out because we are using what we had there when we left home. On our way to Silver City, we saw something called Dripping Springs National Monument. We decided to take a side trip to look around and ended up taking a 1.5 mile hike up the mountain to see the Dripping Springs area. In the past there had been a hotel and Sanitorium there. It was a pretty strenuous hike but we made it along with couple of other crazy people to see water dripping out of a rock in some abandoned buildings. You will see the pictures below this narrative. We then headed towards Silver City knowing we wouldn’t get there until dinner time so we called ahead and booked two nights at an RV park near downtown. It is a very nice campground and we got a place right across from the bathhouse. We don’t always use full hookups because is too much trouble for 1 or 2 nights especially when we have to disconnect to go sightseeing.

April 15, 2021 we left the campground about 10 o’clock to drive the Cliff dwellings along the trail of the ancients byway. It took us an hour and a half to drive 45 miles because the road was very curvy and crossed the continental divide at 6900 feet. Along the way we ran into the couple we met in Albuquerque again for the third time and had a small chat as they were leaving the pictograph site. We asked if they were staying at the passport America campground and they were not. They ask if we thought the passport America pass was worth it. We said we paid for our annual fee in the first 4 camp sites. We agreed to sponsor them so they can get 6 more months on a regular subscription we will get 6 more months on our current stupid gin plus a $10 rebate. The walk up to the Cliff dwellings was fairly easy except for the 185 feet stairway section which was like climbing an 18 story building. We could not enter the Cliff dwellings, allegedly because of spring break which created spike in COVID 19 cases in New Mexico. I think it was a cop out to keep people out. The brochure says there are 42 rooms that YOU can walk through and investigate in normal times. Oh well, you have to adapt and adjust in this time frame. Before we started our trip to the cliff dwellings, we met a couple who had shipped RV over from Stuttgart to Argentina to start a world tour, probably more a South American in North American tour. They drove along the coast and west of South America all way up to Costa Rica until COVID hit. They were stuck for 5 months in Costa Rica. They shipped their RV to Florida’s east coast and began a journey around America before heading to Alaska via Canada, oops COVID. The RV can stay in America for a year, but they have to leave after 180 days. They cannot get a waiver and there is no other country they can go to for one day. Ironically, they got one of the lottery passes to the wave rock formation in Arizona last year. We know people who have been trying for 10 years to get a pass to walk up to the Wave formation in Arizona. When we get closer, we may try to win the lottery using the formula that they used by registering for Saturday Sunday and Monday where they had 3 lottery drawings. Hey only 1% of people get to go there and we’d like to be in that group. We drove down from the mountain and did the rest of the loop trail of the ancients past Lake Roberts where we stopped for coffee and back to our campground before cocktail hour. That’s all folks through April the 15th.

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lastsonlost · 5 years ago

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After the first episode of "The Mandalorian," the Disney Plus series in the Star Wars universe that became the top streaming hit of 2019, aired on the platform, some Twitter users expressed frustration at how few women spoke, and how few female characters there were in general.

Some of those who tweeted, including well-known feminist critic Anita Sarkeesian, were met with dogpiling and waves of harassment across social media platforms.

The harassment largely stemmed from anti-feminist Star Wars fan accounts who rounded up and highlighted tweets under the pretense that those complaining were "outraged" social justice warriors trying to tear down a successful Star Wars franchise.

The harassment is just the latest instance of feminist fandom voices being shut down online.

Anita Sarkeesian is no stranger to online harassment,

YEA SHES VERY GOOD AT MAKING THEM.

being one of the central figures in Gamergate, the online harassment campaign that resulted in her receiving numerous death and rape threats, along with bomb and shooting threats at her events. But even she was surprised at the amount of vitriol her tweet about "The Mandalorian" received.

After watching the first episode of the Star Wars series for Disney Plus, Sarkeesian tweeted asking if she was just tired, or if there wasn't "a single female speaking character in the first episode."

She was exhausted, Sarkeesian told Insider — missing the one scene where a woman spoke and making a typo in her tweet. In the replies, Sarkeesian corrected herself. Then she went to bed. In the morning, the tweet had more than 3,000 replies. It currently has close to 7,000.

"Maybe you should switch to The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills... I'm sure you'll find much to relate to there...." one top reply read.

"No wonder you're so tired. They say you should stretch before making such reaches, especially at your age," said another, with more than 1,400 likes of its own.

It's an example of dogpiling, a type of online harassment where, on Twitter, someone's replies outnumber likes and retweets, and are mostly filled with repetitive, hurtful comments.

"It's ironic. Women, especially feminists, get accused of being emotional and angry and all of these things when all we said was 'Hey, I noticed this thing. And it's kind of a problem, and I think it's really bad for our society,'" Sarkeesian told Insider. "If they didn't reply to it, my tweet would have just been gone. They made it a much bigger deal."

Sarkeesian is the most prominent figure facing dogpiling and harassment in response to her criticism of the series, but she's not the only one.

People with and without large Twitter followings, some who are verified and many who are not, have found themselves overwhelmed with anti-feminist replies and messages across platforms after tweeting about how few women are in "The Mandalorian."

Specifically, in the first episode, there's one female character wearing a mask who speaks, and two female characters total, along with a few women spotted as extras in the background of shots. More female characters are expected to play larger roles in future episodes.

"Even if you want to give the show the benefit of the doubt and say there's some big, wild justification that's going to come around in episode 7, it feels wrong that the vast majority of this world is populated by men or male-identified characters," Sarkeesian said.

Star Wars fans have a history of harassing women online when faced with criticism

Online harassment in the Star Wars fandom, particularly of women, is nothing new. Actresses like Daisy Ridley and Kelly Marie Tran of the latest Disney-owned Star Wars trilogy have recently talked about the negative aspects of the Star Wars community.

Ridley, who stars in the newest Star Wars trilogy as Rey, "cut off" her Facebook and Instagram accounts "like a Skywalker limb" due to harassment, and Tran faced racist and misogynistic harassment after appearing as the first woman of color in a leading role in the Star Wars franchise.

"It wasn't their words, it's that I started to believe them," Tran wrote for The New York Times after deleting her Instagram posts in 2018. "Their words seemed to confirm what growing up as a woman and a person of color already taught me: that I belonged in margins and spaces, valid only as a minor character in their lives and stories."

In the case of "The Mandalorian," almost anyone who tweets about the show from a feminist perspective is at risk of being targeted, because Star Wars fan accounts are rounding up tweets that criticize things like the amount of time it took for a woman to speak in the first episode.

One account rounded up 33 of these tweets with the caption "SJW's are outraged over the 'lack of female characters' in the first 2 episodes of The Mandalorian. A show with 3 female characters. Feminists only care about counting the number of minutes women are on screen in Star Wars."

Insider spoke with two people whose tweets were featured in the round-up, who said their tweets were mischaracterized, inspiring a wave of online hate.

Both of the people who spoke with Insider said they liked "The Mandalorian" and will continue watching it, but wanted to point out that it could be better in terms of female representation.

One woman who spoke to Insider anonymously, because she is trying to distance her name from the situation, says the harassment began several days after she posted her initial tweet about a lack of women in the first episode.

After receiving anti-feminist replies on Twitter, she also started getting harassed across platforms, in part because other anti-feminist Star Wars accounts picked up screenshots of her tweet after it was first included in the round-up and distributed to an even wider audience, including on Instagram.

One person even left a violent message for her in the email submission form on her professional website. It reads "People like you don't deserve a f---ing opinion, but at least I'm glad you can voice it. Doesn't prevent me from calling you f---ing r-----ed for spouting your misandry. HOW DOES IT F---ING FEEL C---? I hope you expire and never have children."

"I had to put everything on private, for my own mental health," she told Insider. "I just had to shut down my profile. I will never, ever, ever tweet about Star Wars again. And I love baby Yoda so much. But I can't. They won. Life's too short for me to fight this fight."

Even after setting her accounts to private, she was inundated by hundreds of follow requests on Twitter, along with DMs sent to her private Instagram.

Those who tweeted about female representation in 'The Mandalorian' stand by their words, despite the harassment

The person who tweeted the round-up of critics didn't want to share any identifying information with Insider, but did stand behind the tweet, and said they didn't participate in or encourage harassment, but the reach of the account became clear once Insider asked for comment in the replies. Within a few hours, a video had been uploaded about this article (which had not been written yet) to YouTube from a channel with more than 130,000 subscribers.

The video in question has been viewed more than 33,000 times and highlights the mentality in at least one corner of the Star Wars fandom that is male-dominated and is aggressive toward diverse media representation.

"What SJWs do is as soon as this kind of thing happens, they identify [the Twitter account that posted the round-up] as hostile to their narrative [...] I would call them left-wing garbage," the voiceover of YouTuber ComicArtistPro Secrets says in the video. "They are going to come in and write an article smearing [the Twitter account], 'Don't you dare shine a light on these cockroaches in such an effective way ever again,'" The YouTuber mocked, referring to the feminist critics as the "cockroaches" in the situation.

"This is a strategy that these sorts of anti-progressive, very regressive cyber mobs have used for years," Sarkeesian said. "They try to use social justice language against us when we try to bring these issues up but it's so transparent and so obvious what they're trying to do, by undermining our point. It's very bad faith."

Writer and programmer David Ely, a male who's tweet was included in the roundup, told Insider that his replies were pretty tame in comparison to Sarkeesian and the other woman Insider spoke to, although he did receive one unspecified death threat from an account that he blocked.

"Part of the response seems to come from a belief that Star Wars needn't be political. That it be pure entertainment," Ely told Insider. "Star Wars is a made-up universe. If gender inequality exists there, it's either on purpose, or because the creator's biases meant they didn't notice it. Either way, that's political."

Sarkeesian also stood by her original point that "The Mandalorian" should have more female characters, and said a lot of the negative response was because there's so much pushback from people who have historically been over-represented on the screen, and are hostile to the changing expectations for diverse characters that represent the diverse Star Wars fanbase.

"We are so accustomed to male-dominated narratives that it's easy to not even notice glaring omissions," she said. "Unlike if the entire cast had been women, I suspect everyone would have immediately noticed that regardless of what one's opinion would be on that casting choice."

MAYBE ITS NOT FOR YOU ANITA....

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classpect-crew · 5 years ago

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Aspects and Narrative Structure

What exactly are Aspects, anyways? Well, in the comic itself, Aspects are forces of the universe that influence and are influenced by the “Heroes” present in the story. But what does this mean on a broader scale? We all have a pretty good idea of what each Aspect represents in canon, but what if that’s not the whole story?

Before we begin, I’d like to direct you to an excellent video by @revolutionaryduelist (optimistic Duelist on YouTube) that will prime you for what I’m about to discuss. I highly recommend checking out their channel, as it’s extremely informative and fun to watch!

So, now that you’ve no doubt enjoyed the video I’ve linked, let’s get into what each Aspect represents in terms of a broader narrative. One of the big narrative themes of Homestuck is that the story is essentially a stage performance, or an “interactive play,” which we see throughout the comic, from the “Acts” and “Intermissions” to the curtains opening and closing on each Act. There are plenty of times where the “fourth wall” is completely shattered, and the layers between the cast and the audience start to blend together. With this in mind, it’s not difficult to reason that each Aspect not only represents a certain universal force in the comic’s universe, but also represents an aspect of narrative structure. I’ll begin with the definitions shown in optimistic Duelist’s video, and then expand upon them from my own perspective.

Let’s start with some easy ones: Space and Time. Space and Time represent the Setting and Pacing of a story. In our stage play metaphor, we can expand this further. Space is represented by the scenery that tells us where the characters are, but it also represents the physical space that the actors take up. Different prop placement, lighting, and scenery can make the stage feel bigger or smaller to fit the needs of the scene, and a change in these things will naturally translate to us as a scene change. Time, on the other hand, is represented by the progression of the story through actions, dialogue, the opening and closing of curtains, and even the music that accompanies each scene and plays continuously during intermissions. In a musical, this is even more obvious, as each song tells a distinct part of the story and opens up ideas about character motivations, illustrates choices, and so on—though this aspect of Time is merely the lens through which these things are viewed, since choices/motivations/etc. are truly representative of other Aspects entirely. As in real life, these two Aspects intermingle considerably, creating “spacetime” as the spatial and temporal backdrop of all the events we witness as audience members, the framework that allows both depth and progression to occur in the narrative and sets the foundation of the stage itself.

Light and Void represent Relevance and Irrelevance. The difference between the cast and crew on stage is easy to tell because the spotlight will always be on a character, not on a member of the crew, unless ironically referencing a crew member (thus breaking the illusion) is a part of the performance itself. Those who are illuminated hold the attention of the audience, and the light allows us to see their facial expressions, their clothing, their movements, etc. and understand the character better through these things. A character who is self-assured may wear a smug grin, holding themselves upright with confidence. A character who is poor might wear old, ragged clothing. Light is all about which characters are relevant, and it also allows the audience to discern information about the characters and about the larger world within the play itself. On the other hand, Void is represented by the unlit areas of the stage, the shadows behind props and characters, and even the crew itself. The ties between Void and the stage crew can be illustrated through bunraku, also known as ningyō jōruri, a traditional Japanese puppet theatre with a long and fascinating history. Puppeteers are clothed in black robes, often hooded, and blend into the black backdrop in order to direct attention onto the puppets themselves and away from their operators. Stage crews in American theatre will often wear dark clothing for the same reason, moving props and scenery as necessary without drawing attention away from the story itself. Although they’re absolutely vital to the execution of the play itself, the crew is in most cases irrelevant to the play’s narrative, thus they work in the shadows to place pieces where they need to be, going unnoticed by the audience.

Life and Doom represent Agency and Conflict. As every good storyteller knows, both of these are vital to the lifeblood of a story, as characters who have no agency are simply puppets, empty vessels with no will of their own, and a story with no conflict doesn’t go anywhere or challenge the characters in any way. In our stage metaphor, Life is the appearance of each character’s free will. Even though we recognize that a script is in place, and the actors are simply working within the framework of scripted interactions, they bring the characters to life through their performances and give the illusion that the world presented onstage is a vibrant one. A good actor can draw an audience into the story by fully embodying the character in question, stepping into the role and allowing us to relate to them, cheering on the heroes and rallying against the villains as the story progresses. We begin to forget that the world we’re presented is mere fiction, and we come out of the experience feeling much different than when we entered. This is what makes a good stage play so compelling, as we watch these characters grow and change based on what they endure and how the world reacts to their actions. In the same vein, Doom is the conflicts, obstacles, and limits placed in the way of the characters to challenge them and help them to grow. In the case of a tragedy, this can also be the end result, whether through a character failing to achieve their goals, a villain succeeding in their heinous plot, or even the death of a protagonist, which removes their agency in the story itself. No real person becomes stronger without facing hardship, and the same is true in fiction. What sort of character would Hamlet be if he wasn’t challenged to find a way to cope with the death of his father, or the knowledge that his uncle was the one who killed him? These conflicts enrich the stories we’re told and provide roadblocks on the road of success, testing the limits of each character’s willpower and strengthening their resolve, or even forcing them to reconsider their goals entirely. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, and these necessary hardships fill out the story itself, ensuring that something is learned through the experience through delayed—or, in some cases, entirely absent—gratification.

Breath and Blood represent Plot Development and Character Dynamics. As the Aspect of movement and change, Breath translates into our metaphor quite nicely, ensuring that the story is as dynamic as the characters themselves. It’s the sequence of events that takes us from exposition to resolution—in essence, it’s pretty much the story itself, which is why John is able to do what he does, escaping from the narrative of Homestuck entirely in order to affect things from the outside. The plot is the engine that drives the story—the twists and turns that the narrative takes as difference pieces take their turns on the board. Character motivations are explored, actions are taken, unexpected events take place, and lessons are learned. All of this happens within the plot, and it’s a very external force, as opposed to what we’ll explore in a moment with Blood, which hones in on characters specifically, rather than the whole narrative. Breath is also represented by change, and any change in motivations, scenery, tone, and even tempo can be attributed to Breath in addition to the Aspects normally represented by those things. Blood, however, is a matter of interpersonal relations between characters in a story: their feelings about—and for—each other, the various factions within a story, and the natural associations one can make, such as “protagonists/antagonists, nobility/commoners, obedient civilians/ruthless scoundrels, and so on. Part of what makes characters so interesting is their dynamics with other characters. For example, on her own, Elphaba Thropp from Wicked is a very interesting character. Blessed with innate magical skills, but cursed with green skin, she is ostracized by many and reluctantly admired by some, and this makes her interactions with others very dynamic. Her insistence on bringing much-needed attention to the oppression of Animals in Oz, social consequences be damned, comes in direct conflict with a character like Galinda Upland, who strives to maintain her place in the social hierarchy, even if that means masking her true feelings on controversial subjects to paint herself favorably in the eyes of others. As the story progresses, the two find that they have much more in common than they could’ve guessed, and they begin fighting for the same cause, shifting from bitter enemies to best friends through the course of a few excellent musical numbers. This shift in their dynamic is vital to the story, yet this is merely one of many such dynamics.

Let’s move on to two Aspects that are a bit more abstract in our narrative format. Hope and Rage represent Coherence and Contrivance. These words may sound quite different from what we’re used to from these Aspects but hear me out, because there’s a method to my madness. A story’s coherence is how well it can be understood, and furthermore, how well it can be related to by an audience. It also represents the enthusiasm with which an invested audience will respond to the narrative taking place. In our stage play metaphor, this is part of what drives us to immerse ourselves in the story. It’s the excitement we feel when our favorite character completes their goal as set up in the exposition, or the fear we experience when an adversary comes close to unraveling it all. It’s the ability to escape from our own lives and enter the world presented onstage, and a big part of why walking out of a great performance can feel like we’re waking up from an intense lucid dream. It’s the magic of excellent storytelling. Hope is what drives us to overlook mistakes, either in the narrative itself or in the performance, and allows us to enjoy it as a whole. On the other hand, Rage’s contrivance delights in tearing open plot holes, exposing the divide between performers and the audience, and dispelling the illusion that the world on stage is in any way “real.” It’s the heckler at a comedy show, or the critics in the nosebleed seats. It’s the breaking of the fourth wall that occurs when a character in the story directly addresses the audience, or begins to critique the narrative itself. While it can certainly seem like a negative force, this Aspect is what keeps us firmly grounded in reality, pulling us out of “la la land” when the show is over and it’s time to return to our lives. It marks an end to the magic, a disbelief in the “miracles,” and the voice of reason.

Finally, our last two Aspects, Heart and Mind, represent Inner Character and Outer Character. This is fairly obvious, given what we already know from canon, and it translates fairly literally in our metaphor. Heart is represented by a character’s “true self,” or what remains the same in every performance of the play. It’s what makes each character recognizable, no matter how the script, costumes, set design, etc. have been adapted. Peter Pan, for example, is always presented as childlike and carefree, bold in his actions and protective of those he loves. He can also be incredibly naive and immature, which humanizes him and allows room for growth. Regardless of which actor might play him, or whether the story is adapted to a sci-fi setting, or tells the tale of a much older Peter, or is even presented from the perspective of an entirely different culture, these character traits and motivations will always be the same. They’re what make him the “Peter Pan” we all know and love. The “true self” involves every trait that is essential to a character. If these traits were changed in some way, they would cease to be the same character, much like adding or removing a proton from an atom would change its element entirely. On the contrary, Mind is represented by a character’s “projected self,” or how they present themselves in the company of others. For some characters, their “true self” always shines through, and they rarely act in ways that aren’t in accordance with their deeply-held values. For others, such as Billy Flynn from Chicago, the creation and maintenance of a constructed, outward “self” is vital to their survival and prosperity, and sometimes deception is the name of the game. Billy, an incredibly successful defense lawyer, comes across in his musical number as a caring, compassionate man who couldn’t care less about money and values “love” more than anything else. This is extremely ironic, however, as the audience is soon presented with a very different view of Billy: as a stern, ambitious man who’s very concerned with money, but also loves the challenge of winning cases for clients on death row. As his “true self” is revealed, his choices and motivations begin to make sense to the audience, and we gain a deeper understanding of the man behind the mask, so to speak.

Each Aspect plays a vital role in the narrative structure of any story—or performance, in this case—and perhaps we can use these interpretations to further understand what our own Aspect connections are. After all, all the world’s a stage, right?

#classpect analysis #classpect #homestuck #classpects #homestuck analysis #optimisticDuelist #revolutionaryduelist #holy shit this took like two hours to write. i need to sleep now g’night

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