#is it obvious this is the first script ive ever written

[mindisinmars]

unironically my favourite thing ive ever written

[newwavesylviaplath]

more dumb music opinions!! this is long and ik most of u don't care but whatever this is my platform i will post how i see fit. also im not proofreading this at all its 1:26 in the morning and im literally falling asleep as im writing this so apologies in advance if this isn't the most well written or coherent post ive ever made

okay yall i fell down a rabbit hole of people on tiktok criticizing chappell roan and now im all worked up so here i am giving my opinions no one asked for;

so something i've been noticing a real influx of is people bringing up her hot to go performance at outside lands (a festival) where she says something along the lines of "vip thinks they're way too cool to do this.. you're not fun!" mfs have been getting online to talk about how chappell was being SO RUDE!!! and NOT EVERYONE KNOWS HER MUSIC WHO DOES SHE THINK SHE IS!!!! but like anyone with common sense who has seen the vid/heard the audio can tell she was being playful?? like come on now. i also saw someone post abt how she was being mean to jimmy fallon?? 😭 first off, while im not sure abt this one in particular late night shows are usually scripted and secondly im starting to believe more and more that these people have just never interacted with a drag queen before. chappell roan is a STAGE PERSONA and the majority of drag queens are characterized by having this larger than life attitude- take for example that one rupaul /jimmy fallon interview (u guys know which one) like idk i feel like it's very obvious that chappell is playing it up for the sake of entertainment, not cuz she genuinely believes she's above everyone else.

the other thing i've seen ppl whining about is how a) she doesn't wanna take a picture with fans, therefore she believes her shit doesn't stink and b) the two tiktoks she posted a day ago where she was voicing her struggles openly without policing her tone. first off, CELEBRITIES DONT OWE U PICTURES. don't get me wrong, taking a picture with a celeb u are a fan of can be a great experience and a fun story- but people are acting as if it is their god given right to get a photo with whoever they want whenever they want. "oh well she brought this on herself it's the price of being famous" are u stupid omfg acting like chappell signed a contract giving up her autonomy in order to get on the billboard charts. she quite literally did not choose this and even if she did that doesn't mean ur automatically entitled to a pic with her as if she's some kind of zoo animal like?? the two vids she posted to tiktok essentially telling ppl to leave her alone was met with backlash because she 'sounded rude' again im going to put this in perspective for everyone. her family is being stalked. she is being harassed both online and in real life. being upset because she comes off a little brash in a video where she is practically begging yall to stop with the harassment should be the least of your concerns. this is a twenty six year old who was virtually unknown six months ago- her meteoric rise to fame was not something she could have been prepped for in anyway possible. i feel like some people just aren't trying to wrap their heads around how insane the reality of this situation really is. the phrase "fifteen minutes of fame" used to be a lot more hyperbolic than it is now. i'm exhausted

[sedpeccasseiuvat]

i said 'not that good' and have too many thoughts for the tags:

i've encountered the....generalization? that autists who made it to adulthood without a diagnosis were able to do so because of robust masking abilities. especially for explaining why afab ppl are so often not diagnosed, the thought process tends to be that afab ppl are socialized to mask more and therefore tend to mask better.

that certainly makes sense and i believe is true for many (e.g. my wife), and it's never felt quite accurate for me. i'm p sure i've always been bad at masking (possibly relatedly, was never any good at fulfilling gender expectations either!). i think a combo of low support needs & good grades & oldest child goody two shoes syndrome let me get by as just a "weird gifted program kid".

and definitely there was masking involved! mostly an ongoing process of experiencing shame from a social misstep and then learning what to keep hidden to avoid it happening again. generally it always felt like a process of hiding, repression, excision, subtraction. that seems like a form of masking to me, and is certainly part of how my autism went unrecognized (by me and others) until age 25.

AND when i hear other ppl talk about masking, it often seems like an additive process: a series of performed behaviors and personas, putting on a mask like a tragic or comic actor. maybe that is just me taking the metaphor too literally, and i have misunderstood what people mean by 'masking' this whole time (would not be the first time!).

anyway, THAT ^ kind of thing is what i have never done well with. i was always upsetting and offending people, saying too much, speaking too bluntly, having my tone misread, missing the joke, not getting the hint, etc. the most success i ever had with masking was after i started smoking weed, because the "stoner" persona actually required very little active behavioral adjustment! it just changed how it was interpreted.

the context that really made me face how unsuccessful masking tends to be for me was RETAIL. i stopped working at whole foods when i started grad school, but i'm fairly sure if i hadn't i would have literally ended up getting fired. i had already been written up twice for chronic customer complaints. and, yeah, part of that was bc it was snobby and customers had ridiculous expectations for employee behavior - AND ive come to realize that i simply could not sustain the required level of masking, not every day, not for entire shifts (and in such an overstimulating environment too).

even tho cashiering had been its own hell, i actually had much more success with it - because it was so scripted and limited. i still got feedback about my persona slipping, not being cheerful enough, being too obvious in my exhaustion, being too blunt with customers. but it wasn't until i had a job on the floor, with lots of improvised and sudden interactions, that it became actually impossible for me. people didn't respond well to my tone (flat, matter of fact, lacking affect); to my words (to the point, terse, no fluffy niceties); to my bare-bones assistance (no bullshitting, no song and dance, no appeasement). and no matter how much my literal employment was riding on it, i just *could not* maintain a good enough mask, even when i really tried.

so after talking about this with both neurotypical and neurodivergent irls i'm actually curious, as a person who can't mask to save my life:

*While I am mainly seeking answers from other people with autism, answers from people with other neurodiversities that have "noticeable/stereotypical" behavior patterns would also be great!!

I know that there's gonna be a lot of sampling bias here but I think I just wanna hear from others like me. idk i've never run a poll like this before

feel free to elaborate in the tags if you're comfortable <3

[digirainebow]

Can you speak a little bit about what you like about As Dusk Falls? I've only just barely heard about that game

oh absolutely! it just came out like 3 days ago and its the studio's debut game, so i dont blame you!

ive only done one playthrough but from what i can see in the flowcharts, its one of the most in-depth multiple choice games ive ever played! your choices really seem to drastically alter the story and its very transparent about what things that happen are inevitable through the flowcharts. very little railroading & the story itself is easy to follow, intense, and well written! the characters aren't the type you become obsessed with, a handful are supposed to be really unlikable and villainous, but i still cared about a couple of them (the main 2-3 protags you switch through) and they're all well written! i also think the storytelling setup is unique--without spoiling anything, i thought the script had the vibe of the show Arcane, except its a modern day (well 90s to 2010s) story that takes place in the south lol.

its also ridiculously accessible. there are so many things you can do with the settings to tailor the game to your play style, and they're very thorough with letting you know about its disturbing scenes and lets you skip the most upsetting one--defaulting to the "good" conclusion of the scene and giving you a brief summary of what happened.

its also the first multiple choice ive seen that appears to have been written with the players morals in mind and has a mechanic that tracks them, and shapes the ending to the one you really want (if you don't accidentally make a choice you didn't mean to ofc).

the only things i would say just to keep in mind that might not be obvious from the get-go is that 1. its a game that is at its best when played multi-player like i did, though im sure its almost as good on your own! and 2. the game itself is in a sort of watercolor slide-show style, so its more like a visual novel. i, personally, love this and feel it was a genius move in terms of avoiding continuity weirdness that other multiple choice games have struggled with in the past, but i could understand how that would be off-putting for people who didn't expect it or are used to the 3d and even HD models of telltale and supermassive.

hopefully that answered any curiosities you had, but feel free to shoot another ask or reply if you want to know anything else!

[aboveallarescuer]

Daenerys Targaryen in A Storm of Swords vs Game of Thrones - Episodes 3.7 & 3.8: The Bear and the Maiden Fair & Second Sons

In this series of posts, I intend to analyze precisely how the show writers downplayed or erased several key aspects of Daenerys Targaryen’s characterization, even when they had the books to help them write her as the compelling, intelligent, compassionate, frugal, open-minded and self-critical character that GRRM created.

I want to make it clear that these posts are not primarily meant to offer a better alternative to what the show writers gave us. I understand that they had many constraints (e.g. other storylines to handle, a limited amount of time to write the scripts, budget, actors who may have asked for a certain number of lines, etc) working against them. However, considering how disrespectful the show’s ending was to Daenerys Targaryen and how the book material that they left out makes it even more ludicrous to think that she will also become a villain in A Song of Ice and Fire, I believe that these reviews are more than warranted. They are meant to dissect everything about Dany’s characterization that was lost in translation, with a lot of book evidence to corroborate my statements.

Since these reviews will dissect scene by scene, I recommend taking a look at this post because I will use its sequence to order Dany’s scenes.

This post is relevant in case you want to know which chapters were adapted in which GoT episodes (however, I didn’t make the list myself, all the information comes from the GoT Wiki, so I can’t guarantee that it’s 100% reliable).

In general, I will call the Dany from the books “Dany” and the Dany from the TV series “show!Dany”.

Episode 3.7, "The Bear and the Maiden Fair", was written by George R. R. Martin himself and is one of the two scripts that he wrote and that show!Dany appears in (the other is episode 1.8, "The Pointy End"). Because the quality of show!Dany's screentime is obviously improved thanks to the influence of her creator, I decided to talk about episodes 3.7 and 3.8 (which was written by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss) in a single post in order to highlight the former's strengths and the latter's weaknesses.

Episode 3.7: The Bear and the Maiden Fair

Scene 6

JORAH: Your Grace. Yunkai. The Yellow City.

BARRISTAN: The Yunkish train bed slaves, not soldiers. We can defeat them.

JORAH: On the field, with ease. But they won't meet us on the field. They have provisions, patience, and strong walls. If they're wise, they'll hide behind those walls and chip away at us, man by man.

DAENERYS: I don't want half my army killed before I've crossed the Narrow Sea.

Dany's initial conflict in the books is different from that of her show counterpart:

“Are those slave soldiers they lead?”

“In large part. But not the equal of Unsullied. Yunkai is known for training bed slaves, not warriors.”

“What say you? Can we defeat this army?”

“Easily,” Ser Jorah said. “But not bloodlessly.” Blood aplenty had soaked into the bricks of Astapor the day that city fell, though little of it belonged to her or hers.

“We might win a battle here, but at such cost we cannot take the city.”

“That is ever a risk, Khaleesi. Astapor was complacent and vulnerable. Yunkai is forewarned.”

Dany considered. The slaver host seemed small compared to her own numbers, but the sellswords were ahorse. She’d ridden too long with Dothraki not to have a healthy respect for what mounted warriors could do to foot. The Unsullied could withstand their charge, but my freedmen will be slaughtered. (ASOS Daenerys IV)

As the quote shows, in the books, Dany's victory against Yunkai is quite likely, but it comes at the expense of the Astapori freedmen's lives, which Dany isn't willing to risk. Unfortunately, as I mentioned before in previous reviews, the Astapori who decided to follow Dany in the books are not introduced in the show, so this conflict can't exist for show!Dany.

Instead, the show focuses on the possibility of the Yunkish refusing to surrender by staying inside the city and letting show!Dany's army starve. I'm not a fan of this change because it's uninspired; it's too much like Dany's initial problem in Meereen:

“...Perhaps we can starve the city out.”

Ser Jorah looked unhappy. “We’ll starve long before they do, Your Grace. There’s no
food here, nor fodder for our mules and horses. I do not like this river water either. Meereen shits into the Skahazadhan but draws its drinking water from deep wells. Already we’ve had reports of sickness in the camps, fever and brownleg and three cases of the bloody flux. There will be more if we remain. The slaves are weak from the march.”

“Freedmen,” Dany corrected. “They are slaves no longer.”

“Slave or free, they are hungry and they’ll soon be sick. The city is better provisioned than we are, and can be resupplied by water. Your three ships are not enough to deny them access to both the river and the sea.” (ASOS Daenerys V)

It seems that this change was made not just because the Astapori freedmen were not included in show!Dany's story, but also because the events of ASOS Daenerys IV are being stretched out for four episodes (from this one until the season finale). This would explain why the show writers ultimately decided to introduce the sellswords in the next episode instead of in this one, which is another departure from the books, where they're introduced right away:

“Those are sellswords on the flanks. Lances and mounted bowmen, with swords and axes for the close work. The Second Sons on the left wing, the Stormcrows to the right. About five hundred men apiece. See the banners?” (ASOS Daenerys IV)

In the books, Yunkai is already prepared to wage war against Dany if it's necessary. The possibility of a siege is never brought up.

In the show, we'll have two scenes with Dany and her counsellors assessing the enemy forces (one in this episode and another in episode 3.8, which I'll discuss below), unlike the books (which only has one). Each is quite similar to one another, with the second more closely (though not entirely, since, again, the Astapori freedmen are nowhere to be seen) resembling the conflict in the books for actually introducing the sellswords.

Also, it's disappointing that we don't get to see onscreen quite a few moments from the books that showcase Dany's intelligence. The first is that she eagerly wants to apply her lessons with Barristan about how to assess her enemy forces, so she goes with Jorah to see them and then makes a reasonable guess about their strength:

Her Dothraki scouts had told her how it was, but Dany wanted to see for herself. Ser Jorah Mormont rode with her through a birchwood forest and up a slanting sandstone ridge. “Near enough,” he warned her at the crest.

Dany reined in her mare and looked across the fields, to where the Yunkish host lay athwart her path. Whitebeard had been teaching her how best to count the numbers of a foe. “Five thousand,” she said after a moment.

“I’d say so.” (ASOS Daenerys IV)

What's also missing from the show is Dany applying the knowledge she acquired from the Dothraki to contextualize the danger that her Astapori freedmen are going to face against the sellswords:

Dany considered. The slaver host seemed small compared to her own numbers, but the sellswords were ahorse. She’d ridden too long with Dothraki not to have a healthy respect for what mounted warriors could do to foot. The Unsullied could withstand their charge, but my freedmen will be slaughtered. (ASOS Daenerys IV)

Finally, unlike in the books, we don't have a scene on HBO displaying that show!Dany learned important lessons with both the Qartheen and the Astapori. Such lessons inform why she's certain that both Yunkai and the sellswords will at least come and listen to her offer:

“But if they do not come—”

“They’ll come. They will be curious to see the dragons and hear what I might have to say, and the clever ones will see it for a chance to gauge my strength.” (ASOS Daenerys IV)

That being said, there is good in this scene too: 

JORAH: We don't need Yunkai, khaleesi. Taking this city will not bring you any closer to Westeros or the Iron Throne.

DAENERYS: How many slaves are there in Yunkai?

JORAH: 200,000, if not more.

DAENERYS: Then we have 200,000 reasons to take the city.

ASOS Daenerys IV doesn't have a scene where Dany explicitly states that she is in Yunkai because she wants to free the slaves (though her thoughts and actions speak for themselves, making it obvious that she is). The show, on the other hand, makes that fact loud and clear for anyone to grasp it. Dany's selflessness is probably the most important aspect of her characterization, so it's no wonder that this scene (which draws attention to it) was written by GRRM himself. (Benioff, in contrast, focuses on Dany's supposed "Littlefinger style ambition" or on her "divine mission", but never on her moral principles)

*

Before I talk about this show scene in relation to the books, I want to reiterate that yes, it is racist at its core; it employs North African extras as slaves who will be freed by a character played by a British actress, after all. There's no excuse for this and I don't blame any person of color who dislikes show!Dany for this.

That being said, as @yendany​ already laid out in this post, the slaves of the books are of multiple ethnicities; they range from "pale Qartheen" to "ebon-faced Summer Islanders". This stems from the fact that GRRM never meant for the slavery that Dany is battling against to be race-based; he was, instead, inspired by the slavery in the ancient world. Parallels between Dany's storyline and US slavery, on the other hand, are non-racial in nature. Furthermore, it's crucial to notice that Dany is the only major character of ASOIAF interacting with people of color and caring about their struggles in the first place.

All of this is to say that yes, there is racism in this scene (and the books aren't exempt from it), but this is the fault of the show's production. Neither show!Dany nor Dany are white saviors because of it and their storylines still have thematic significance despite GRRM's and D&D's shortcomings. 

In the books, this is not the mode of transportation that the Yunkish envoy chooses to get to Dany:

The envoys from Yunkai arrived as the sun was going down; fifty men on magnificent black horses and one on a great white camel. Their helms were twice as tall as their heads, so as not to crush the bizarre twists and towers and shapes of their oiled hair beneath. They dyed their linen skirts and tunics a deep yellow, and sewed copper disks to their cloaks.

The man on the white camel named himself Grazdan mo Eraz. (ASOS Daenerys IV)

That being said, I would argue that this was a good change because it illustrates the oppression of the Yunkish slaves (who, let's remember, come from lots of different societies and cultures in the books) and reinforces the necessity of show!Dany's revolution.

Meereenese seldom rode within their city walls. They preferred palanquins, litters, and sedan chairs, borne upon the shoulders of their slaves. "Horses befoul the streets," one man of Zakh had told her, "slaves do not." Dany had freed the slaves, yet palanquins, litters, and sedan chairs still choked the streets as before, and none of them floated magically through the air. (ADWD Daenerys VII)

~

The Brazen Beasts did as they were bid. Dany watched them at their work. “Those bearers were slaves before I came. I made them free. Yet that palanquin is no lighter.”

“True,” said Hizdahr, “but those men are paid to bear its weight now. Before you came, that man who fell would have an overseer standing over him, stripping the skin off his back with a whip. Instead he is being given aid.” (ADWD Daenerys IX)

Considering that the palanquins (along with the whip and the tokar) were used to call attention to the mistreatment and the oppression of the unprivileged in the books, it's not surprising that they were also added in the show in an episode written by GRRM to convey the same point.

*

MISSANDEI: Now comes the noble Razdal mo Eraz of that ancient and honorable house, master of men and speaker to savages, to offer terms of peace. Noble lord, you are in the presence of Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, Queen of the Andals and the First Men, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Breaker of Chains, and Mother of Dragons.

Again, thanks to GRRM's influence, Dany's and the envoy's titles are both announced as a formality, not as comic relief (at best) or as a sign of Dany's arrogance (at worst) like, for example, in her first scene with Jon Snow in season seven.

Also, this is not a key detail, but the Yunkish envoy's name was changed from Grazdan mo Eraz in the books to Razdal mo Eraz in the show. I don't see any reason why GRRM would change his name, which makes me question to which extent the show writers altered certain parts of GRRM's script to their convenience (and they certainly did, as I will show below).

*

RAZDAL: Ancient and glorious is Yunkai. Our empire was old before dragons stirred in old Valyria. Many an army has broken against our walls. You shall find no easy conquest here, khaleesi.

In the books, the Yunkish envoy speaks Valyrian like the Astapori did:

“Missandei, what language will these Yunkai’i speak, Valyrian?”

“Yes, Your Grace,” the child said. “A different dialect than Astapor’s, yet close enough to understand. The slavers name themselves the Wise Masters.” (ASOS Daenerys IV)

And yet, we are seeing the actors talk to each other in English, which is used in the show to indicate that the characters are speaking the Common Tongue. On its own, this is a superfluous change. Still, it's irritating that the show writers allow show!Dany and the Yunkish envoy talk to each other in English here and then will later prevent her from speaking to the freedmen in the same language (which she does in the books, because they also speak Valyrian) at court in episode 4.6. The implications that she's too removed from reality (and her subjects, as seasons five and six will imply), that she is actually quite similar to a master and that she should abide to the Meereenese traditions are all distasteful and completely out of line with what happens in the books. Unfortunately, it could be argued that the seeds of these negative implications are in this episode (though they only become negative in retrospect because of later events and not because of GRRM's writing).

*

Unsurprisingly, the Yunkish envoy's words are almost copied word by word from the books:

RAZDAL: Ancient and glorious is Yunkai. Our empire was old before dragons stirred in old Valyria. Many an army has broken against our walls. You shall find no easy conquest here, khaleesi.

~

“Ancient and glorious is Yunkai, the queen of cities,” he said when Dany welcomed him to her tent. “Our walls are strong, our nobles proud and fierce, our common folk without fear. Ours is the blood of ancient Ghis, whose empire was old when Valyria was yet a squalling child. You were wise to sit and speak, Khaleesi. You shall find no easy conquest here.”

Small changes are made in show!Dany's response to his statement, however:

DAENERYS: Good. My Unsullied need practice. I was told to blood them early.

~

“Good. My Unsullied will relish a bit of a fight.” She looked to Grey Worm, who nodded. (ASOS Daenerys IV)

In the books, this is a subtle but affectionate moment between Dany and Grey Worm. Dany is alluding to Grey Worm having previously told her that the Unsullied "thirst[ed] for blood" and that he hoped to show her that "the Unsullied learn the way of the three spears" (in stark contrast to the Yunkish bed slaves).

In the show, while the context surrounding show!Dany's mention of the Unsullied was changed from the books, I would argue that the scene is no less effective for it. It displays show!Dany's intelligence by having her recall Kraznys's advice and be intent on following it.

*

In both versions, the Yunkish envoy attempts to bribe Dany into leaving the city:

“And yet, why should we speak thus harshly to one another? It is true that you committed savageries in Astapor, but we Yunkai’i are a most forgiving people. Your quarrel is not with us, Your Grace. Why squander your strength against our mighty walls when you will need every man to regain your father’s throne in far Westeros? Yunkai wishes you only well in that endeavor. And to prove the truth of that, I have brought you a gift.” He clapped his hands, and two of his escort came forward bearing a heavy cedar chest bound in bronze and gold. They set it at her feet. “Fifty thousand golden marks,” Grazdan said smoothly. “Yours, as a gesture of friendship from the Wise Masters of Yunkai. Gold given freely is better than plunder bought with blood, surely? So I say to you, Daenerys Targaryen, take this chest, and go.”

Dany pushed open the lid of the chest with a small slippered foot. It was full of gold coins, just as the envoy said. She grabbed a handful and let them run through her fingers. They shone brightly as they tumbled and fell; new minted, most of them, stamped with a stepped pyramid on one face and the harpy of Ghis on the other. (ASOS Daenerys IV)

~

RAZDAL: If blood is your desire, blood shall flow. But why? 'Tis true you have committed savageries in Astapor. But the Yunkai are a forgiving and generous people. The wise masters of Yunkai have sent a gift for the silver queen. There is far more than this awaiting you on the deck of your ship.

DAENERYS: My ship?

RAZDAL: Yes, khaleesi. As I said, we are a generous people. You shall have as many ships as you require.

DAENERYS: And what do you ask in return?

RAZDAL: All we ask is that you make use of these ships. Sail them back to Westeros where you belong and leave us to conduct our affairs in peace.

In the show, the envoy offers her even more rewards than he had in the books; while the Dany of the books was offered "fifty thousand golden marks", show!Dany was offered an unspecified amount of gold that fills the deck of a ship and "as many ships as [she] require[s]".

In both versions, Dany declines the offer. Show!Dany is explicitly shown refusing it because of her moral duty towards the slaves (who, let's remember, come from lots of different societies and cultures in the books), which is a callback to episode 3.3:

Even if we don't have show!Dany attempting to spare the Astapori freedmen's lives like she does in the books, GRRM still hammers home that her ultimate goal is selfless - to free the Yunkish slaves and end slavery in the region.

*

Dany's "gift" to the Yunkish envoy was altered from book to show, but her sole request was largely kept the same:  

DAENERYS: I have a gift for you as well. Your life.

RAZDAL: My life?

DAENERYS: And the lives of your wise masters. But I also want something in return. You will release every slave in Yunkai. Every man, woman, and child shall be given as much food, clothing, and property as they can carry as payment for their years of servitude. Reject this gift, and I shall show you no mercy.

~

“I have a gift for you as well.” She slammed the chest shut. “Three days. On the morning of the third day, send out your slaves. All of them. Every man, woman, and child shall be given a weapon, and as much food, clothing, coin, and goods as he or she can carry. These they shall be allowed to choose freely from among their masters’ possessions, as payment for their years of servitude. When all the slaves have departed, you will open your gates and allow my Unsullied to enter and search your city, to make certain none remain in bondage. If you do this, Yunkai will not be burned or plundered, and none of your people shall be molested. The Wise Masters will have the peace they desire, and will have proved themselves wise indeed. What say you?” (ASOS Daenerys IV)

I would say that these scenes have the same spirit, though there are some differences between them as well.

In the books, Dany tells the envoy that she'll give him three days to free the slaves only to deceive the Yunkish and attack them when they least expect it. This, as I've argued before, is no proof of Dany's "tyranny", but rather her prioritization of the freedmen's lives (who would have been slaughtered against mounted warriors if not in a surprise attack) over the nobility's, which is an attitude that she should have maintained throughout the rest of ASOS and the entirety of ADWD.

On HBO, show!Dany will not attack Yunkai in the same night, so having her give the master three days to decide what to do wouldn't have the same significance. One could argue that show!Dany is being more explicitly threatening than Dany ("Reject this gift, and I shall show you no mercy") during her interaction with the envoy, but this line is certainly not out of character for Dany, who tells Barristan that "Yunkai will have war" in the same chapter where her talk with Grazdan takes place.

There are key things in common between the books' depiction of the scene versus the show's as well: Dany promises that "Yunkai will not be burned or plundered, and none of your people shall be molested"; show!Dany's gift is the envoy's life "and the lives of [his] wise masters". Dany asks for as much "food, clothing, coin and goods" as the former slaves can carry "for their years of servitude" after three days; show!Dany asks for "every man, woman and child" to "be given as much food, clothing and property as they can carry for their years of servitude". These show lines exhibit that, ultimately, show!Dany is also primarily focused on freeing the slaves and on attempting to be as conciliatory as possible.

*

One small detail is altered from books to show regarding the envoy's answer to Dany's offer:

RAZDAL: You are mad. We are not Astapor or Qarth.

~

“I say, you are mad.” (ASOS Daenerys IV)

In both versions, the envoy calls Dany mad, but Qarth is never brought up as an example of Dany's "treacherous" nature, only Astapor:

“You took Astapor by treachery, but Yunkai shall not fall so easily.” (ASOS Daenerys IV)

~

“And yet, why should we speak thus harshly to one another? It is true that you committed savageries in Astapor, but we Yunkai’i are a most forgiving people.[”] (ASOS Daenerys IV)

This addition was most likely made because, on HBO, show!Dany locked show!Xaro and show!Doreah inside the former's vault to die. I suppose that it makes sense for the show writers to pay attention to their own continuity, though that makes me question why Kraznys and the other Astapori slavers weren't also aware that show!Dany was not (in their perspective) trustworthy by the time she arrived to negotiate with them. It wasn't convenient to pay attention to the continuity in the beginning of season three, I guess. I also doubt that GRRM wrote this bit of his own volition (unless he was told to do so).

*

Now we get to what some people tend to see as the most controversial parts of Dany's exchange with the envoy. On HBO, it's show!Dany's decision to take the envoy's gold; in the books, it's Dany's burning of the envoy's tokar:

RAZDAL: You are mad. We are not Astapor or Qarth. We are Yunkai and we have powerful friends. Friends who would take great pleasure in destroying you. Those who survive, we shall enslave once more. Perhaps we'll make a slave of you as well.

REZNAK: You swore me safe conduct.

DAENERYS: I did, but my dragons made no promises. And you threatened their mother.

~

“I say, you are mad.”

“Am I?” Dany shrugged, and said, “Dracarys.”

The dragons answered. Rhaegal hissed and smoked, Viserion snapped, and Drogon spat swirling red-black flame. It touched the drape of Grazdan’s tokar, and the silk caught in half a heartbeat. Golden marks spilled across the carpets as the envoy stumbled over the chest, shouting curses and beating at his arm until Whitebeard flung a flagon of water over him to douse the flames. “You swore I should have safe conduct!” the Yunkish envoy wailed.

“Do all the Yunkai’i whine so over a singed tokar? I shall buy you a new one ... if you deliver up your slaves within three days. Elsewise, Drogon shall give you a warmer kiss.” (ASOS Daenerys IV)

People who think that the Dany of the books is more morally grey than show!Dany tend to use the event above as an example that supposedly "proves" their point, since Dany's burning of the envoy's tokar in the books doesn't happen in the show. Not only this conveniently ignores that the show cut so many of Dany's moments of compassion and self-deprecation and that it gave show!Dany many scenes that complicate her character's morality more than any from the books (e.g. her decision to feed one master to her two dragons arbitrarily), it also overlooks the fact that Dany uses her dragons to intimidate the envoy (rather than to punish him in any way). By making sure that he takes her seriously, Dany's threat of a "warmer kiss" becomes much more alarming, which is only necessary in a world where men think that it's normal to underestimate her and dismiss her as a "whore". More importantly, it must be remembered that Dany's threat to the envoy (who was never actually hurt) was made because she wants to free the slaves of Yunkai. All in all, considering a) the level of damage she caused (none), b) her selfless intentions and c) that we're talking about a book series/TV show full of rapists and murderers from a pseudomedieval world, this is not a morally grey action.

It must be noted, however, that GRRM himself observed that show!Dany's burning of the envoy's tokar was a moment cut from his original script and that he wishes that it had been included. I suppose I can understand why the author is frustrated by this particular change, since this has ramifications later when Yunkai remembers what happened to Grazdan and then refuses to accept any peace agreement until Dany marries another slaver.

Still, I think that the exclusion of this moment is compensated by this show change:

RAZDAL: Take the gold.

DAENERYS: My gold. You gave it to me, remember? And I shall put it to good use. You'd be wise to do the same with my gift to you. Now get out.

~

“You’ve soiled yourself. Take your gold and go, and see that the Wise Masters hear my message.” (ASOS Daenerys IV)

In the books, Dany doesn't take the envoy's gold. In the show, however, she does.

Like with Dany's burning of the envoy's tokar, show!Dany's decision to take his gold is not really a morally grey action because it's motivated by (and will finance) her anti-slavery campaign.

Like with Dany's burning of the envoy's tokar, this decision leads many fans to judge show!Dany much more harshly than they should, as this stupid gifset shows. @yendany​ has already exhaustively laid out why neither Dany nor show!Dany (whose actions, albeit often undermined in comparison to her book counterpart, are still in keeping with Dany's motivations) are imperialists, so check out her metas about this issue.

By comparing these two scenes, my intent is to argue that the omission of Dany's burning of the envoy's tokar isn't that detrimental in the grand scheme of things. Its purpose was not to make Dany more morally grey as some people think, it was meant to complicate the negotiations of a peace agreement between Dany and Yunkai (which never occurs in the show). If they wanted something to complicate the peace agreement (which, again, was never added into season five), they could have brought up show!Dany taking Razdal's gold (which, while also not a morally grey action, would certainly piss the Yunkish slavers off), but they would have to have cared about adapting Dany's ADWD storyline well to think about that.

*

BARRISTAN: The Yunkish are a proud people. They will not bend.

DAENERYS: And what happens to things that don't bend?

This response from show!Dany portrays her as more unyielding than the books do. This is not necessarily a bad thing (and it's not as if Dany didn't struggle with accepting the slavers' actions, opinions and customs in the books as well), but it goes against how the books have Dany still developing her political values along the way based on her experiences. Also, while this original line is fine on its own, in light of the show's ending, it may have helped to portray show!Dany as inflexible enough to become a Well-Intentioned Extremist in the eyes of the show writers and some fans (we know, however, that this ending is OOC for show!Dany as well and that it carries many, many horrible implications).

*

DAENERYS: He said he had powerful friends. Who was he talking about?

JORAH: I don't know.

DAENERYS: Find out.

Again, is this from GRRM or the show writers? In the books, as I already said, Dany knows who the Yunkish's "powerful friends" are right away:

“Those are sellswords on the flanks. Lances and mounted bowmen, with swords and axes for the close work. The Second Sons on the left wing, the Stormcrows to the right. About five hundred men apiece. See the banners?” (ASOS Daenerys IV)

This was changed because, again, they want to make the events of ASOS Daenerys IV last for multiple episodes. Still, I wonder if GRRM cared enough to respect the show's continuity or if the show writers made changes to what he wrote.

Episode 3.8: Second Sons

We get back to D&D's writing of show!Dany with "Second Sons".

Scene 7

Remember when I said that we would get two scenes of Dany and her advisors assessing the enemy forces in the show (this only happens once in the books)? Well, we have reached the second one.

BARRISTAN:  Men who fight for gold have neither honour nor loyalty. They cannot be trusted.

JORAH: They can be trusted to kill you if they’re well paid. The Yunkish are paying them well.

Show!Barristan's and show!Jorah's counsels above are show only.

It's not out of character for Barristan to distrust sellswords and men who don't behave in a way that is socially perceived as honorable in general. The problem is that the show writers have him express his feelings only for show!Jorah to question and refute them without show!Barristan being allowed to give any response, which undermines the latter (like they did in episodes 3.3 and 3.5 as well) in the eyes of the audience in favor of show!Jorah's perspective.

In the books, both Jorah and Barristan are shown distrusting sellswords, especially Mero:

But when Mero was gone, Arstan Whitebeard said, “That one has an evil reputation, even in Westeros. Do not be misled by his manner, Your Grace. He will drink three toasts to your health tonight, and rape you on the morrow.”

“The old man’s right for once,” Ser Jorah said. “The Second Sons are an old company, and not without valor, but under Mero they’ve turned near as bad as the Brave Companions. The man is as dangerous to his employers as to his foes. That’s why you find him out here. None of the Free Cities will hire him any longer.” (ASOS Daenerys IV)

What's irritating about this change in show!Jorah's character is that Jorah's attempts to isolate Dany from other men are a key aspect of their relationship in the books. Having show!Jorah trust the sellswords if they're well-paid overlooks this side of their dynamic and portrays him as reasonable rather than often motivated by jealousy like he is in the books. It also helps to popularize stupid takes like this one.

I would also like to call attention to Dany's response to their advice in the books:

“It is not his reputation that I want, it’s his five hundred horse.[”] (ASOS Daenerys IV)

As I said before, I find it interesting that Dany isn't really concerned about the sellswords' lack of morals. Moments like this and the one later in ADWD Daenerys VIII when she finds that being “dishonorable and greedy” can be advantageous if she wants the sellswords to turn to her side show that Dany is actually quite down-to-earth and flexible and doesn’t suffer from moral righteousness like the show writers seem to think.

Show!Dany expresses a similar view by thinking that the Second Sons might turn to her side because she has a larger strength (more on that below). That being said, she is mostly shown listening and making questions:

DAENERYS: You know these men?

~

DAENERYS: Is he more titan or bastard?

~

DAENERYS: How many?

~

DAENERYS: Enough to make a difference?

The books don't show Dany being as dependent on her advisors' feedback as show!Dany is. I don't want to be overly judgmental of show!Dany, but this is something that irks me because Bryan Cogman has said in an interview that he thinks that Dany relies too much on Jorah to obtain information about Essosi culture. It's not untrue that he gives her knowledge that she doesn't have, but this statement ignores the fact that Dany applies that knowledge and has her own (because she's lived in Essos for longer than Jorah) and that she has her own opinions and makes many decisions on her own as well. The show often overlooks these nuances because the writers are intent on making her more ignorant and ineffective than in the books to "compensate" for her strengths and achievements (more on this later).

*

JORAH: Only by the broken swords on their banners. They’re called the Second Sons. A company led by a Braavosi named Mero, the Titan’s Bastard.

DAENERYS: Is he more titan or bastard?

JORAH: He’s a dangerous man, Khaleesi. They all are.

A rare occasion where show!Dany is allowed to have a sense of humor (which her book counterpart displays much more often). What's a shame is that the show writers only know how to write offensive jokes for her (see also this one) and for most of the other characters in general.

I also dislike the implication that show!Dany's joke indicates that she is underestimating the threat that the Second Sons pose. It's certainly not out of character for Jorah to be condescending towards Dany, but I don't think that's how the show writers intended his response to come across; as I've talked about exhaustively by now, the show writers have a much more positive view of Jorah than GRRM does.

*

Another change is that the show writers increased the size of the Second Sons. In the books, the Stormcrows (which was condensed into the Second Sons in the show) have five hundred men and the Second Sons five hundred as well, making them one thousand rather than two thousand men:

“Those are sellswords on the flanks. Lances and mounted bowmen, with swords and axes for the close work. The Second Sons on the left wing, the Stormcrows to the right. About five hundred men apiece.[”]

~

DAENERYS: How many?

BARRISTAN: Two thousand, Your Grace. Armoured and mounted.

As I will show later, this goes in line with the show writers' tendency to undermine Dany against the sellswords in comparison to the books. It also goes in line with how they previously undermined the value of show!Dany's possessions compared to what she has in the books to undermine to extent of her sacrifice.

*

DAENERYS: How many?

BARRISTAN: Two thousand, Your Grace. Armoured and mounted.

DAENERYS: Enough to make a difference? (after Barristan nods "yes") It’s hard to collect wages from a corpse. I’m sure the sellswords prefer to fight for the winning side.

JORAH: I imagine you’re right.

DAENERYS: I’d like to talk to the Titan’s Bastard about winning.

Like in the books, show!Dany is also aware that her military strength vastly surpasses that of the Yunkish's and that this might persuade the sellswords to turn to her side.

My gripe with the show (which I'll talk about below) is that it'll challenge the fact that show!Dany would indeed triumph in a battle against Yunkai more than the books ever did. There, the conflict for Dany was not about whether she would win or not (she certainly would), but rather that winning would have meant allowing more freedmen to die as collateral damage than she's willing to do. Once again, the show writers are going to miss the point, which makes show!Dany seem less effective than her book counterpart.

*

DAENERYS: I’d like to talk to the Titan’s Bastard about winning.

BARRISTAN: He may not agree to meet.

DAENERYS: He will. A man who fights for gold can’t afford to lose to a girl.

In the books, Jorah is the one who questions if the sellswords will meet with Dany:

“The slavers like to talk,” she said. “Send word that I will hear them this evening in my tent. And invite the captains of the sellsword companies to call on me as well. But not together. The Stormcrows at midday, the Second Sons two hours later.”

“As you wish,” Ser Jorah said. “But if they do not come—” (ASOS Daenerys IV)

Which is in line with his tendency to question her authority (though, to be fair, this is one of the least offensive examples). Meanwhile, Barristan is the one who respects Dany as his liege.

Dany's answer to her advisor is also different:

“They’ll come. They will be curious to see the dragons and hear what I might have to say, and the clever ones will see it for a chance to gauge my strength.” She wheeled her silver mare about. “I’ll await them in my pavilion.” (ASOS Daenerys IV)

As I had already mentioned in my review of episode 3.7, this moment indicates that Dany learned important lessons with both the Qartheen and the Astapori, which is why she is sure that they will agree to meet with her.

On HBO, show!Dany brings up the fact that sellswords "can't afford to lose to a girl", which is true, but why would that be a reason for them to agree to meet with her? Isn't it more likely that, because she is a girl and, therefore, not perceived as a threat, they don't even bother going to meet with her because they (think they) know that she will lose? I don't really understand her point, which seems more like a typical moment of faux empowerment from this show.

*

BARRISTAN: Your Grace, allow me to present the captains of the Second Sons, Mero of Braavos, Prendahl na Ghezn, and, um…

DAARIO: Daario Naharis.

Much has been said about how none of the two show versions of Daario resemble his book counterpart in physical appearance (check out his description in the books here), so I'm only making a brief acknowledgement of that (admittedly radical) change in this review and leaving it at that. It's not really relevant to what I want to focus on (i.e., the changes in Dany's characterization and storyline from book to show) and I dislike how some people keep overfocusing on his looks to point out that Dany supposedly has a ~bad taste~ in men. It's much more important to acknowledge that Daario (both versions) gives Dany the chance to have sexual autonomy for the first time in her life.

*

MERO: You are the Mother of Dragons? I swear I fucked you once in a pleasure house in Lys. JORAH: Mind your tongue.

In the books, it's not Jorah who answers this asshole, it's Dany herself:

“I believe I fucked your twin sister in a pleasure house back home. Or was it you?”

“I think not. I would remember a man of such magnificence, I have no doubt.”
 (ASOS Daenerys IV)

His next insult is also adapted word by word from the books, which hints at the show writers' priorities:

MERO: You’ll all be slaves after the battle, unless I save you. Take your clothes off and come and sit on Mero’s lap, and I may give you my Second Sons.

DAENERYS: Give me your Second Sons and I may not have you gelded.

~

“What say you take those clothes off and come sit on my lap? If you please me, I might bring the Second Sons over to your side.”

“If you bring the Second Sons over to my side, I might not have you gelded.” (ASOS Daenerys IV)

Heck, the amount of profanity in the books is already problematic and the show makes it worse by adding even more:

MERO: Why? I didn’t mind hers. She licked my ass like she was born to do it.

~

MERO: Show me your cunt. I want to see if it’s worth fighting for.

~

MERO: After the battle, maybe we’ll all share you. I’ll come looking for you when this is over.

And that's not even considering that the sellswords get one scene for themselves in this episode (more on that later), ugh.

To top this all off, many of Dany's excellent comebacks to the sellswords' remarks in the books are erased in the show:

“Woman?” She chuckled. “Is that meant to insult me? I would return the slap, if I took you for a man.” Dany met his stare. “I am Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, the Unburnt, Mother of Dragons, khaleesi to Drogo’s riders, and queen of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros.”

~

“No need. After my eunuchs cut it off, I can examine it at my leisure.”

~

“So it is from you they get their courage?” Dany turned to Ser Jorah. “When the battle is joined, kill this one first.”

The last remark is included, but is also decontextualized in a way that prevents it from displaying Dany's competence like it does in the books. I'll get to it later.

*

DAENERYS: Give me your Second Sons and I may not have you gelded. Ser Barristan, how many men fight for the Second Sons?

BARRISTAN: Under two thousand, Your Grace.

DAENERYS: We have more, don’t we?

BARRISTAN: Ten thousand, Unsullied.

DAENERYS: I’m only a young girl, new to the ways of war, but perhaps a seasoned captain like yourself can explain to me how you propose to defeat us.

DAARIO: I hope the old man is better with a sword than he is with a lie. You have eight thousand Unsullied.

Like in the books, Dany inflates her number of Unsullied:

“Five hundred of your Stormcrows against ten thousand of my Unsullied,” said Dany. “I am only a young girl and do not understand the ways of war, yet these odds seem poor to me.” (ASOS Daenerys IV)

~

“It is true that I am only a young girl, and do not know the ways of war. Explain to me how you propose to defeat ten thousand Unsullied with your five hundred. Innocent as I am, these odds seem poor to me.” (ASOS Daenerys IV)

However, the show writers have show!Daario find out that show!Dany was lying about her military strength when this never happens in the books. Indeed, they seem hellbent on undermining show!Dany, since they even decreased her actual number of soldiers from eight thousand and six hundred in the books to eight thousand in the show.

This change heavily implies to me that the show writers believe that show!Dany is indeed "only a young girl, new to the ways of war" and that they want the audience to perceive her as one. (see also David Benioff saying that show!Dany goes "back to being a really frightened little girl" when her dragons are stolen in season two or Bryan Cogman's comment on her supposed ignorance of Essosi culture)

And this is just so wrong because this is the opposite of what GRRM is doing in the books.

As I already analyzed in this meta, in the books, Dany is the one who correctly guesses the enemy's military strength (yes, she is the one who gets to do that in the books, not Daario). Dany is the one who is shown applying her knowledge of the Dothraki forces to understand (on her own) that her freedmen are vulnerable against the sellswords. Dany is the one who applies her historical knowledge of the Second Sons to intimidate Mero. Dany is the one who gets to outline the tactical plan to take Yunkai (which the show writers will frustratingly have show!Daario concoct in the next episode). Dany is the one who stayed in the room and listened as her military commanders worked out the details to implement her plan. The latter case is particularly noticeable because GRRM cared to show Dany exposing her plan onpage, but he didn't care to write about how her advisors fleshed it out: that's because he prioritizes the development of his female lead character over his supporting male characters'. Despite certain flaws in his writing, GRRM goes out of his way to portray Dany as more than just a "young girl, new to the ways of war". It's a shame that the show writers can't do the same with her show counterpart.

The thing with Dany (both versions) is that she is a power fantasy in so many ways; she is the female protagonist of ASOIAF, she is genuinely kind and selfless, she is mother to three dragons and to thousands of people, she is a dragonrider and will become an action heroine, she is the only monarch with a claim to the Iron Throne who gets her own POV chapters, she is from a family renowned for their godlike beauty, she is a messianic hero, she fulfills so many prophecies, she has so many titles (and all of them were hard-won), she is the Fire of the song of ice and fire...

To many fans (including the show writers), she just can't be that big of a deal! There must be something wrong with her! If she is holding so much power, there must also be the risk of her becoming a tyrant. If she is a successful conqueror, she must also be ignorant (sometimes she is, sometimes she isn't, like a normal person) and arrogant (she isn't) and not think far enough ahead (she does). If she is a revolutionary who gets to enact her idealism (and deal with the negative results of her mistakes) onpage, she can't be the embodiment of hope for the future at the same time.

What I'm saying is that the show writers' tendency to undermine Dany's positive qualities and overstate her flaws (or create new ones or judge her by unfair double standards) mirror the ASOIAF fandom's and that the underlying assumption behind these attempts (i.e. that Dany can't be as great as she seems to be) is misogynistic at its core.

*

PRENDAHL: Our contract is our bond. If we break our bond, no one will hire the Second Sons again.

This is not a very important change in the grand scheme of things, but, in the books, Mero is the one who says something along those lines:

“You are worth fighting for, it is true,” the Braavosi said, “and I would gladly let you kiss my sword, if I were free. But I have taken Yunkai’s coin and pledged my holy word.” (ASOS Daenerys IV)

Prendahl, on the other hand, brings up that the Stormcrows (which is his company in the books) has the support of Yunkish forces and predictably dismisses Dany as a "whore" in order to explain why he won't join her side:

“The Stormcrows do not stand alone [...] We fight beside the stalwart men of Yunkai.” (ASOS Daenerys IV)

~

“What you are,” said Prendahl na Ghezn, “is a horselord’s whore. When we break you, I will breed you to my stallion.” (ASOS Daenerys IV)

His anger at Dany stems from both his misogyny and the fact that Dany's sack of Astapor led to the deaths of some of his relatives:

“That Prendahl is Ghiscari by blood. Likely he had kin in Astapor.” (ASOS Daenerys IV)

While these changes are not the most significant ones, it's noteworthy that Prendahl only appears in one scene seen through Dany's perspective in the books and receives more detailed motivations than in the show, where he gets a scene of his own (more on that later).

*

DAARIO: You have no ships. You have no siege weapons. You have no cavalry.

DAENERYS: A fortnight ago, I had no army. A year ago, I had no dragons.  

While I like that show!Dany is at least allowed to offer a response to show!Daario's remark, this wasn't supposed to have happened in the first place. Neither Daario nor any of the men that Dany interacts with are shown questioning her in this way in the books. It's another infuriating attempt to undermine show!Dany. Moreover, she is the one who is shown to be conscious of her own limitations in the books, not Daario:

Dany considered. The slaver host seemed small compared to her own numbers, but the sellswords were ahorse. She’d ridden too long with Dothraki not to have a healthy respect for what mounted warriors could do to foot. (ASOS Daenerys IV)

Why was this changed? I'm not sure. Because the show writers are deliberately trying to make show!Dany look worse than her book counterpart? Because they are unaware of the sexism underlying their writing choices? Because this makes show!Daario seem "more interesting" in his introduction (to the detriment of show!Dany's characterization)? All of these reasons or something else entirely?

Also, while I enjoy show!Dany's assertion on its own, I also know that it's probably informed by Benioff's false belief that Dany "feels like she has this almost divine mission and nothing is gonna prevent her from achieving it". The Dany of the books is neither prophecy-driven nor aware of her heroic destiny and, while it wouldn't be a problem if she were, it is a problem in the show because its writers constantly undermine, look down upon and villainize her character for her ambition, her drive and her self-awareness.

*

MERO: Show me your cunt. I want to see if it’s worth fighting for.

GREY WORM: My Queen, shall I slice out his tongue for you?

DAENERYS: These men are our guests.

In the books, as I've already mentioned in my review of episode 3.7 above, Grey Worm and Dany's brief interaction is different. I like how their show interaction displays his protectiveness of her, though it was unnecessary to add more sexual harassment to do so. Also, in the books, Jorah is the one outraged at Mero's treatment of Dany, though not primarily because she doesn't deserve to be treated like this, but rather because he wants to keep her to himself:

“I will like the taste of your tongue, I think.”

She could sense Ser Jorah’s anger. My black bear does not like this talk of kissing. (ASOS Daenerys IV)

*

DAENERYS: You seem to be enjoying my wine. Perhaps you’d like a flagon to help you ponder.

MERO: Only a flagon? And what are my brothers in arms to drink?

DAENERYS: A barrel, then.

MERO: Good. The Titan’s Bastard does not drink alone. In the Second Sons, we share everything.

In the books, Dany gives Mero a wagon of wine too, but there is a strategic reason behind why she does so - it makes them easier targets to attack at night:

“An hour past midnight should be time enough.”

“Yes, Khaleesi,” said Rakharo. “Time for what?”


“To mount our attack.”


Ser Jorah Mormont scowled. “You told the sellswords—”

“—that I wanted their answers on the morrow. I made no promises about tonight. The Stormcrows will be arguing about my offer. The Second Sons will be drunk on the wine I gave Mero. And the Yunkai’i believe they have three days. We will take them under cover of this darkness.” (ASOS Daenerys IV)

In the show, there's no purpose behind her favor, which is ultimately just what it seems to be. Unfortunately, this goes in line with the show writers' tendency to diminish Dany's skills and agency, which I've already criticized above.

*

MERO: In the Second Sons, we share everything. After the battle, maybe we’ll all share you. I’ll come looking for you when this is over. DAENERYS: Ser Barristan, if it comes to battle, kill that one first. BARRISTAN: Gladly, Your Grace.

I've said above that Dany's order to kill Mero first in battle was decontextualized from the books to the show in a way that prevents it from showcasing her competence. Here's why:

“The Second Sons have faced worse odds and run. At Qohor, when the Three Thousand made their stand. Or do you deny it?”

“That was many and more years ago, before the Second Sons were led by the Titan’s Bastard.”

“So it is from you they get their courage?” Dany turned to Ser Jorah. “When the battle is joined, kill this one first.”

The exile knight smiled. “Gladly, Your Grace.” (ASOS Daenerys IV)

As we can see from the quote, in the books, Dany orders Jorah to kill Mero first in battle to Mero's face in response to his poor attempt of self-aggrandizement. By doing so, she aptly manages to undermine him, which makes this a noteworthy display of her rhetoric skills and her self-composure.

On HBO, show!Dany tells show!Barristan (instead of Jorah) to kill Mero first as an emotional response to him slapping show!Missandei's butt. This change is both gratuitous (since it's more harassment that was never in the books to begin with) and superfluous (since we already knew that show!Dany has admirable moral principles, but we didn't get to know more about her capabilities like we do in the books).

Scene 8

This scene is pointless (for being about minor characters who were never meant to have scenes of their own and taking up time that could have been invested on show!Dany's development and storyline), redundant (for not telling us anything about them that we didn't already know) and offensive (for giving us more unnecessary profanity and female sexualization).

First, the scene doesn't even spend that much time on these commanders' decision-making, it's mostly about being gratuitous for its own sake:

MERO: She won’t talk so much when she’s choking on my cock. DAARIO: Eight thousand Unsullied stand between her and your cock. MERO: My cock will find a way. Tell him. Is there any place that my cock can’t reach? DAARIO: She’ll tell me whatever you pay her to tell me.

What does this say about Mero other than the fact that he's a misogynistic prick (which was already abundantly clear)? Why are we getting a scene featuring him that isn't seen through show!Dany's eyes?

PRENDAHL: That dragon bitch. She talks too much. DAARIO: You talk too much.

Like I said above, the show gives us more time with Prendahl and still manages to give him less detailed motivations than in the books (where he's not just driven by misogyny, but also by resentment for the deaths of his relatives during Dany's sack of Astapor).

MERO: Daario Naharis, the whore who doesn’t like whores.

DAARIO: I like them very much. I just refuse to pay them. And I’m no whore, my friend.

MERO: She sells her sheath, and you sell your blade. What’s the difference?

DAARIO: I fight for beauty.

PRENDAHL: For beauty?

MERO: We fight for gold.

DAARIO: The Gods gave men two gifts to entertain ourselves before we die, the thrill of fucking a woman who wants to be fucked and the thrill of killing a man who wants to kill you.

MERO: You’ll die young.

I'm gonna talk more about this when show!Daario meets with show!Dany in the next scene, but I really dislike the implication that he is only motivated to fight for show!Dany because of her beauty rather than because she has more chances to come off as the upcoming battle's winner. In the books, Dany's victory against Yunkai was certain (her main struggle, as I already said, was that she didn't want so many of her freedmen to die in battle).

Show!Daario's hedonistic nature is arguably in character with his book counterpart:

“...I count no day as lived unless I have loved a woman, slain a foeman, and eaten a fine meal ... and the days that I have lived are as numberless as the stars in the sky. I make of slaughter a thing of beauty, and many a tumbler and fire dancer has wept to the gods that they might be half so quick, a quarter so graceful. I would tell you the names of all the men I have slain, but before I could finish your dragons would grow large as castles, the walls of Yunkai would crumble into yellow dust, and winter would come and go and come again.” (ASOS Daenerys IV)

But this is beside the point. Again, why are we spending time with him and these men when they were only meant to service Dany's development and storyline in the books?

Their strategic concerns are only briefly addressed and their plan to solve them is ridiculous and nonsensical:

PRENDAHL: What do we do about the dragon girl? We can’t beat eight thousand Unsullied on the battlefield.

MERO: There won’t be a battle, and we don’t have to deal with her eunuchs. We only have to deal with her.

PRENDAHL: She’s wellguarded.

MERO: Tonight’s a new moon. One of us slips into her camp past her Unsullied and her knights.

What's even stupider than the plan itself is the fact that it works in the show. Yes, the show validated Mero's plan, because it would rather show off his abilities rather than those of its female protagonist. To validate anything that Mero says or does reinforces how tone-deaf the show writers are to the unfortunate implications in their writing.

In the books, Dany's guards are actually competent and catch Daario when he attempts to meet with her, so this plan obviously wouldn't have worked there:

“The Unsullied caught one of the sellswords trying to sneak into the camp.”

“A spy?” That frightened her. If they’d caught one, how many others might have gotten away?

“He claims to come bearing gifts. It’s the yellow fool with the blue hair.”

Daario Naharis. “That one. I’ll hear him, then.” (ASOS Daenerys IV)

To top it all off, their moronic plan is worked out while another woman is being sexualized just for the sake of it:

DAARIO: Which one of us?

MERO: Close your eyes, love. Three coins. A coin from Meereen, a coin from Volantis, and a coin from Braavos. The Braavosi does the deed. One for each of us, darling. No peeking. 

DAARIO: Do you hear me? Follow my voice. I’m right here. You have something for me? Valar Morghulis.

I'm not trying to say that the books are free from gratuitous sexualization and misogyny; they are definitely not. That being said, the military commanders' and the envoy's slut-shaming of Dany stands in contrast with how Dany becomes a mother and a cult figure to the Yunkish freedmen by the end of the same chapter. This contrast could be interpreted as social commentary about how Dany falls prey to a Madonna-whore dichotomy based on whether she's loved or hated by the people of this patriarchal world. The moments where Dany interacts with these men in the books (and the show) add to such social commentary; this show only scene where these men interact with each other without show!Dany's presence don't have anything meaningful to say. It manages to be both pointless and offensive at the same time.

Scene 9

DAENERYS: Nineteen?

MISSANDEI: Yes, Your Grace.

DAENERYS: How can anyone speak languages?

MISSANDEI: It only took Your Grace a year to learn Dothraki reasonably well.

DAENERYS: Yes, well, it was either learn Dothraki or grunt at my husband and hope… What do you mean, “reasonably well”?

MISSANDEI: Dothraki is difficult for the mouth to master. So guttural and harsh.

DAENERYS: Drogo said I spoke Dothraki like one born to it. It gave him great pride.

MISSANDEI: Athjahakar.

DAENERYS: Athjahaka.

MISSANDEI: Athjahakar.

DAENERYS: Athjahakar. Well, I suppose I’m a bit out of practice.

MISSANDEI: Your High Valyrian is very good, Your Grace. The Gods could not devise a more perfect tongue. It is the only proper language for poetry.

I love show!Dany and show!Missandei's relationship and am up for any scene where the two get to interact with each other just for the sake of it. That being said, why does their first bonding moment have to be about how show!Dany's Dothraki language skills aren't as developed as she thought they were? Ugh, she is so lacking in self-awareness because she's too arrogant, amirite? Only a man who's sexually interested in her would praise her skills, amirite (more on this later)? The underlying implications in these show only additions are annoying and unintended at best and offensive and malicious at worst.

Besides, why couldn't they have had show!Dany and show!Missandei talk to each other about their difficult past experiences and how they empathize with one another? Why couldn't the scene have focused on showing that they are growing fond of each other or explored the interesting aspects of their book dynamic (With the necessary adjustments to fit show!Missandei's age, of course)? So much wasted potential.

Also, I hate that they have show!Dany say that her Dothraki is rusty, since it implies that she hasn't been interacting with her khalasar at all (unlike in the books, where she constantly talks to them and/or thinks of them and/or is shown to be in the same room with them).

*

I've already talked about how Daario never successfully invades Dany's camp in the books because her guards are actually qualified there and how this is another way to undermine her character's competence. I'm going to address other things now.

For starters, the setup of show!Dany and show!Daario's second meeting is changed from the books. There, she was fully clothed in the company of her retinue. On HBO, show!Dany is much more vulnerable: she is naked, taking a bath, with only with Missandei by her side and at the mercy of show!Daario's willingness to spare her. It's an unnecessary and offensive change made solely for the sake of hyping up show!Daario's character (at the expense of the female lead character's effectiveness).

I also want to focus on this part of their interaction:

DAENERYS: You were sent here to kill me? So why haven’t you?

DAARIO: I don’t want to.

DAENERYS: What do your captains have to say about that?

DAARIO: You should ask them.

DAENERYS: Why?

DAARIO: We had philosophical differences.

DAENERYS: Over what?

DAARIO: Your beauty. It meant more to me than it did to them.

DAENERYS: You’re a strange man.

DAARIO: I’m the simplest man you’ll ever meet. I only do what I want to do.

DAENERYS: And this is supposed to impress me?

DAARIO: Yes.

It's true that the Daario of the books also brings up Dany's beauty as a reason why he decided to join her, but we shouldn't take his word for granted. Unlike in the show, the books never question that Dany's odds of winning a battle against Yunkai are indeed very high, so it stands to reason that Daario turned to her side primarily because he's opportunistic and, as Dany puts it, "would sooner sup on gold and glory than on death".

Meanwhile, on HBO, because of the writers' numerous attempts to undermine show!Dany's military strength, skills, possessions and accomplishments, show!Daario's statement that he decided to join show!Dany because of her beauty seems like something that we're supposed to take at face value. This is gross and, in light of how they tried to imply that her subjects followed her primarily because of her beauty in the final season, predictable.

*

In the books, Dany is suspicious of Daario for a few reasons: she is initially afraid that he's spying for the sellswords and Yunkai (and that that would lead to her surprise attack backfiring) and considers the possibility that he's not really turning to her side, but rather that he simply wants to save his own skin. She accepts his service because she knows that he would have nothing to gain by betraying her (especially after he had already betrayed his fellow captains and after her dragons themselves failed to convey any hostile reaction against him), that his five hundred men would guarantee a victory against Yunkai and that she must be open-minded and trust other people, in spite of the prophecies about the upcoming treasons.

On HBO, show!Dany is also initially wary of show!Daario:

DAENERYS: You were sent here to kill me? So why haven’t you?

DAARIO: I don’t want to.

DAENERYS: What do your captains have to say about that?

~

DAENERYS: And this is supposed to impress me?

DAARIO: Yes.

DAENERYS: Why would I trust a man who murders his comrades?

However, as we can see, her questions are not the same. Unlike in the books, show!Dany is at show!Daario's mercy, so she questions why he didn't kill her right away (which signals, to her, that he might be trustworthy). Unlike in the books, show!Dany is (rightly) more doubtful of the killings of his fellow captains as indication of his reliability, especially since he could eventually do the same to her (though, again, he never does so when he has the perfect opportunity here) and since, unlike in the books, her dragons are not present in the scene (and, therefore, are not shown to lack any suspicion of him). It's certainly reasonable of show!Dany to accept show!Daario's service, though I wish she had more agency like she does in the books. It's irritating to see show!Dany being threatened (just for the sake of making a male supporting character seem more interesting to the audience) when she never had to be.

*

As a final note, Mero's early death is another change (along with Barristan's early identity reveal) that prevents Jorah's betrayal from being revealed the way it was in the books.

Main differences in GRRM's writing versus D&D's writing

GRRM's episode reinforces show!Dany's selflessness by showing her explicitly put her fight for the Iron Throne aside to focus on freeing thousands of Yunkish slaves and by having the Yunkish envoy offer her even more rewards than in the books (which highlights the extent of the sacrifices she's making for the Ghiscari slaves). D&D have undermined the extent of show!Dany's sacrifice in comparison to the books before and don't care about highlighting this aspect of show!Dany's character in episode 3.8.

GRRM's episode portrays show!Dany as competent and poised in her interactions with the Yunkish envoy. D&D's episode goes out of its way to undermine her and make the sellswords look better.

GRRM's episode features a new scene from the viewpoint of a minor character that adds to the storyline (because it highlights the oppression of the slaves). D&D's episode features a new scene from the viewpoint of minor characters that doesn't add add anything to the storyline (because it's focused on being gratuitous for its own sake).

With crucial differences like these, one can tell that show!Dany's portrayal would have improved if GRRM had been more influential in the show's writing choices. This is not to say that he's flawless or that the medium of a TV series doesn't have its own inherent limitations, only that he cares about her characterization, development and storyline in a way that D&D never did.

My comments on the Inside the Episode 3.7

Weiss: Daenerys is coming into her own in a powerful way in the season. She's always been very negatively predisposed towards slavery because she knows what it feels like to be property, I mean, she was a very fancy slave for all intents and purposes, she was somebody who was sold to another man, taken against her will and I think that her feelings about slavery have started to really inform her reasons for wanting the Iron Throne, it's finally started to occur to her that, if I want to take on this responsibility, it's almost - it's incumbent upon me to do something with it, and she sees this great wrong, probably the greatest possible wrong surrounding her, and she's decided that she's not just going to take back the Iron Throne because it's her right, she's gonna take back the Iron Throne because she is the person to make the world a better place than it is. She is going to not just take it, she's gonna use it for something greater than herself.

This is actually quite an insightful comment from Weiss's part; it's certainly much better than most comments (from him and especially from Benioff) that came before or that will come afterwards. I especially like that he acknowledges show!Dany's past as a sex slave and that he associates these past experiences with her decision to become an abolitionist.

I would only add three things: first, in the books, Dany is always aware that "it's incumbent upon [her] to do something with [power]", it's not something that only occurs to her after she becomes an abolitionist. Second, while show!Dany (and her book counterpart) imposes higher moral standards on herself than most characters of this series do, this doesn't mean that we should do the same. In other words, we shouldn't judge her too harshly if she ever decided to abandon her anti-slavery crusade, for she would simply be doing what any other feudal lord would do: focus on her individual goals. Third, to view show!Dany's attempts to do good (and her reflections about whether she's doing good) as something that anyone could or would do is dismissive of her character's individual principles and experiences and creates a lot of double standards against other characters.

Show!Dany's clothes

A Storm of Swords doesn't give us any description of Dany's outfits during the moments that the show is adapting in these two episodes, so I don't have much to comment. Here's a mosaic of all the outfits show!Dany wears during these two episodes:

I like that the white dress that show!Dany is wearing has a slave collar in homage to her freedmen, for what was once a symbol of oppression becomes one of social justice. Also, that dress is quite similar to show!Missandei's, making this another instance where they are seen with matching outfits: 

Also, @slytarg​ has speculated that show!Dany's clothes in season three were a homage to Mother Mary, which is an interesting possibility.

[mamthew]

A Final Fantasy Ranking

Over the course of the quarantine, and because I had such a good time with the Final Fantasy VII Remake, I've ended up blazing through a ton of Final Fantasy games. Since April, I've played IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XII, and XIII. 6, 7, 9, and 10 I'd beaten before. 4, 12, and 13 I'd played to some capacity before. 5 and 8 were completely new experiences. I had no interest in going further back than IV, since it was the first one to really put any effort into character work, and I didn't play either MMO because MMOs don't really appeal to me (I'm planning to try XIV whenever this new update drops that makes the story mode more accessible, but it keeps getting pushed back so oh well). I also didn't replay XV because I've played XV three times and watched other people play it in its entirety twice, so I have a much better handle on it than any other game in the series.

Anyway, I didn't really have any plans for what I'd do with this, besides get a better understanding of the series as a whole, but I was kinda inspired to do my own Final Fantasy ranking. I'll probably be a bit more detailed than I should be because I tend to overanalyze my media and end up having too much to say. I’m actually not placing VII Remake in this ranking half because I regard it as a spinoff and half because it’s not yet a complete story, even though Part 1 is unquestionably a complete game. If I were to put it somewhere, it would probably be close to the top, possibly even in second place. Also worth noting that this is gonna have SPOILERS for every game I discuss here. I really just wanna use this as a place to nail down some of my thoughts on these games, so they’re pretty stream of consciousness and I didn’t bother avoiding any details from the plots.

10: Final Fantasy VIII.

I don’t think there’s another game in the series with a more obvious corporate hand in it than VIII. It’s kinda the Fant4stic of FF games; there are the bones of a substantive game in there somewhere, but every aspect of the game is such a bald attempt at checking off a 1999 list of “things gamers want” that the whole affair feels hollow and sickening. A major trend I’ve noticed throughout this series is the extent to which FFVII’s success pushed the architects of almost every subsequent game to try to recapture whatever it was that worked about VII, and VIII got the worst of it. It’s got the sullen guy with a special sword. It’s got the sci-fi. It’s got the terrorists with hearts of gold fighting against an oppressive state. It’s got the train scenes. It’s got the case(s) of amnesia that hides the true premise of the story. It’s got the ability to give any character any loadout.

Besides that, they kinda crammed in just a bunch of stuff popular with kids at the time. Jurassic Park? It’s in there. Beauty and the Beast? Here’s the ballroom scene. Hunchback of Notre Dame? Here’s that carnival. Alien? Now you’re alone on a spaceship running away from a horror monster. Saving Private Ryan? The party shares brains with war veterans and dreams of their experiences at war I guess. Half of anime? It’s all about a high school for mercenaries and the party is trying to get back in time for the school festival.  Fandom culture? Zines are a collectible item, and each one you find adds an update to Selphie's Geocities page. It also has astronauts, and transformers, and a haunted castle, and a prison break, and Rome, and Alpine Wakanda, and war crimes, and lion cubs that have attained enlightenment, and there’s almost no connective tissue from one idea to the next.

Also the junction system is convoluted and terrible, using magic makes your stats worse, all enemies level up every time you do, and I couldn’t tell you which character excelled in what stats. The characters were all very flat, and the first time I felt like I was seeing the characters interact in ways that helped me to understand them was in the cutscene that plays during the end credits.

Also the female lead’s role in the story changes entirely with no warning every five hours or so. She’s a terrorist, oh no she’s aristocracy in the country she’s terroristing against, oh no she’s jealous of the others because they grew up together and she didn’t, oh no she’s Sandra Bullock in Gravity, oh no she’s the villain and it’s too dangerous to let her out, oh no it’s actually fine and they were bad for locking her up.

It’s an absolute disaster of a game. However, the music and background art is absolutely beautiful. Maybe they never gave me a good enough reason to be in an evil time traveling haunted castle, but damn is it a gorgeous rendering of an evil time traveling haunted castle.

9: Final Fantasy XII.

I’ve known for years that FFXII had issues in development. The writers came up with a story for it, and execs got scared because there were no young characters and they’d convinced themselves that young protagonists are what makes games sell. So two more characters - Vaan and Penelo - were added, one was framed as the protagonist of the story, and the entire story was rewritten so it could feasibly be from his perspective.

While the two characters they added are egregiously tangential to the plot, XII honestly has no protagonist. The writers originally wanted Basch to be the protagonist, but his entire arc is really just following Ashe around and being sad about his evil twin. Ashe is probably the most important to the story, but doesn’t have much presence for a good chunk of the story, and makes her most character-defining choice offscreen before having it stolen from her by a side character. Balthier has the largest presence in the story, and is most closely related to most of the events of the story, but has pretty much no role in the ending.

Honestly, if I were writing FFXII and told it needed a young protagonist, I would have aged up and expanded the role of Larsa, the brother of the main villain, who shows up as a temporary party member from time to time. The entire game is about family ties, and a journey spotlighting Larsa could have involved his learning about Ashe, Basch, Balthier and Fran’s family situations and using their experiences to grapple with his own. Damn, now I’m sitting here thinking about how good that could have been.

As it is, the game feels disjointed and aimless, and the ending is so bad it’s farcical. When I reached the ending, I watched Basch and Ashe forgive Basch’s evil twin for his villainy rampage, harking back to the moment earlier in the game when Ashe turned down the chance to gain powers that would have allowed her to avenge her country because she realized that those powers could also drive her to hurt innocents in the crossfire. In this moment, I realized how Vaan fit in as the protagonist of the game. “Oh, he’s going to realize that violence begets violence, and that he must break the cycle by forgiving Vayne for the death of his brother. He’s going to let go of that hatred he’s been trying to push onto someone for so long, and it’ll finally allow him to heal.” I realized that even though the road to this point was rocky, the writers had managed to craft a satisfying ending from the seemingly disparate pieces of this uneven plot.

And then Vaan picked up a sword and screamed AAAAAAAAAAA and charged Vayne down and stabbed him, and Vayne turned into a shrapnel robot dragon and exploded all the star wars ships and I threw my controller aside and laughed uncontrollably while my characters beat him up and completed the game on their own without any further input from me.

Oh yeah, the battle system is also incredibly boring. Instead of battling, the player writes up an AI script for each character, then lets them act based on those scripts. I would straight up put the controller down and watch youtube videos whenever a group of enemies showed up. I was pretty excited about the job system, but then there didn’t really feel like much of a difference between jobs, and my characters all behaved pretty much the same as each other.

The hands-off battle system, unfocused story, lethargic voice acting, and tuneless music all left me pretty uninvested in the whole affair. The art style and locations are beautiful, though, and it did make me want to eventually check out some of the Tactics games, which take place in the same universe but are supposed to have excellent stories and gameplay.

8: Final Fantasy XIII.

I’m not sure I’ve ever had two such opposing opinions of a game’s story vs. its gameplay. This game is the only one that plays with a bunch of story elements from FFIX, which did a lot to endear it to me. It’s sort of a game in which the protagonists are Kuja, the villain of IX. Like Kuja, they are created as tools by an uncaring god for the purpose of fighting against one world on behalf of another world, and are subsequently forced to grapple with the horrors of having an artificially shortened lifespan.

The story actually has a lot of Leftist themes, too. The gods of that universe spread ideology among the populace, and the people unquestioningly believe these false stories, as the gods have provided for them for as long as there has been written history. Much of the character arcs center on the characters being forcibly removed from their places within those ideological frameworks and having to unlearn what they’d always believed to be objectively true about the world.

So the story actually is pretty good, but it’s held back by some really clumsy storytelling; it constantly uses undefined jargon, has almost no side characters with which it might flesh out the world, actively fights against players trying to glean information from environmental details, and maintains (at least for me) a weird disconnect between the characters in the gameplay and the characters in the cutscenes. I think this partly stems from Square’s original failed plan for FFXIII to be the first game in a much larger series of games sharing themes and major story details. Despite these issues, however, the characters are all likeable and (mostly) believable, and their interactions are grounded in real emotional weight even while their universe feels intangible.

This all got dragged down by the gameplay, which is total dogshit. It’s got the worst battle system I think I’ve seen in an RPG. The game only stops being doggedly, unflinchingly linear about thirty hours in, the whole game took me about fifty hours, and I spent the last fifteen hours beating my head against each individual battle, waiting until the system hiccuped long enough to accidentally slide me a win. That meant I had about a five hour window of euphoric play, convinced that I actually loved this game, thrilled with every new experience it gave me, and excited to see what would happen next. I guess those five hours are what pushed this game over XII in my ranking.

7: Final Fantasy V.

Until FFXV, this game was the last of the “Warriors of Light” games, in which the game follows a party of four set characters for its entirety. To this day, it’s the last of the “Warriors of Light” games to let the player customize which character holds which roles through the job system.

FFV’s job system is the reason to play the game. Its story is mediocre, and its characters are all fairly flat, but there’s something viscerally satisfying about building party members up in jobs that might enhance the role they ultimately will fill. For my mage character, I maxed out Black Mage, Blue Mage, Mystic Knight, Summoner, and Geomancer. Then at the end, I switched her to a Freelancer with Black Magic and Summoning, and she kept all the passive skills for those jobs and also the highest stats across those jobs.

It was super fun and kind of a shift of focus for me, since I tend to place story above anything else in games. Despite the story not being special, though, the game’s writing is actually a ton of fun. It’s definitely got the most comic relief in the series, and I came away loving Gilgamesh as much as everyone else does.

And while it’s nothing special graphically, it does have some really cool enemy designs, and the final boss design is one of the most memorable ones they’ve ever done. Which is impressive because I keep having to look up Exdeath’s name because the character himself is super forgettable.

6: Final Fantasy IV.

This wasn’t the first game in the series to feature actual characters with names and depth, but I have no interest in playing FFII, so it might as well be. I actually played the DS Remake for this game, so it definitely had some quality of life improvements, like full 3d characters and maps, voice acting, an updated script, the ability to actually see the ATB gauge, and the ability to switch to other characters whose turns are ready without using a turn.

Apparently one thing the remake didn’t do was rebalance the difficulty for more modern sensibilities. Instead, this remake is...harder? It requires more grinding than the original? Why??

Either way, though, the story is actually solid! The game opens on its protagonist, Cecil, committing a war crime on the orders of his king, who raised him as a child. The first ten hours of so of the game follows Cecil as he tries to understand why he was ordered to kill so many innocents, turns his back on his country, and works to redeem himself.

This arc is reinforced by the game mechanics, too, which is super clever. His redemption is marked by a change in job from a Dark Knight to a Paladin, which also resets his level. For a time, his life is considerably harder because he’s finding his footing as a new person, which is marked by battles which had been easy becoming much harder for the player for a time.

This game places storytelling over gameplay more than I think any other game in the series. Each character is locked into a job, which I much prefer in my RPGs to games where characters function pretty much interchangeably. I dunno if it’s because I cut my RPG teeth on Tales, but it really bugs me when I can give Tifa the exact same loadout as Barret. I want the lives of the characters to bleed into their functions as gameplay devices.

However, the developers clearly had a ton of different jobs they wanted to add to their game, but hadn’t figured out how to allow for the player to switch in and out party members in standby. To fix this, they increased the in-battle party to five characters rather than or four (or the later constantly frustrating three), rotated the roster a ton, and had a ton of characters who straight up leave permanently. One character dies and never comes back. Two characters die and only are revived after it’s too late to rejoin the party. Four characters end up too injured to continue traveling.

This let the developers make a ton of jobs, but it doesn’t let the player exploit these jobs to their fullest. Characters’ stats reflect their role in the story, as well. One character is quickly aging out of adventuring, so his magic stats increase on levels, but his attack and defense stats actually decrease, signifying his failing body. Another character has already achieved some form of enlightenment, so he gains no stats when he levels up at all. The purpose of IV is the story, over any other aspect of the game, which makes it even more mindboggling that the remake would have increased the difficulty.

Besides that, the biggest issue I had with this game was the overbearing constant drama of it. While there were a few more lighthearted parts, they were mostly relegated to NPC dialogue and sidequests. The characters in this game don’t become friends so much as they become companions who bonded over shared tragedies, and this makes for quite a few scenes of every character separately wallowing in their own immeasurable sadness. I played FFV directly after this game and the light story and jokey dialogue was a much-needed palette cleanser.

5: Final Fantasy VI.

Before the unexpected success of FFVII irreparably changed the franchise, Square constantly mixed up the story formula for the series. IV, V and VI all handled their stories really differently from each other, and what I remember of III also felt fairly different from the games that came after.

Every game from VII on had a very clear protagonist (except XII, whose botched protagonist was still clearly marketed as the protagonist). The concept of the Dissidia crossover series is built on the idea that every FF has a protagonist at the center of its story. FFVI’s Dissidia character is Terra, but Terra is not the protagonist of FFVI.

Apparently while developing FFVI, the directors decided they didn’t want the game to have a clear protagonist, so they asked the staff to staff to submit concepts for characters, and they’d use as many as they could. This game has fourteen characters, each with their own fun gameplay gimmick in battles. Three of the characters are secret, and one can permanently die halfway through if the player takes the wrong actions. Of these fourteen characters, the main story heavily revolves around 3-6 of them, while five more have substantial character arcs.

There’s kind of a schism in the fandom over whether this game or VII is the best one in the series, and I can see why; this game is absolutely fascinating. No other game in the series has done what this game did, which means it’s one of the two FF games I really want to see remade after they complete this VII remake.

The first half is very linear. It breaks the beginning party into three pieces, then sends each character to a different continent, where they meet more characters and build their own parties before everyone reunites. Once the story has taken the player everywhere in the world, the apocalypse hits. The villain’s evil plan succeeds and tears the entire world apart.

The second half of the game picks up a year later with one character finally getting a raft and escaping the island on which she’s been marooned. In this half, the player navigates the world, which has all the same locations, but in completely different parts of the map. The driving factor for much of the second half is to learn from incidental dialogue where each party member has gone in this new world, to track them down, and to try to fix some of the bad that’s been done to the world before finally stopping the villain who destroyed it.

It’s unique and clever and occasionally legitimately tugs at the heartstrings some, which is impressive for a poorly translated SNES game. The final dungeon is a masterpiece all on its own. It requires the player to make three parties of up to four characters, then send them in and switch between them as new roads open. This way, the game manages to feel like an ensemble piece up to the very end.

4: Final Fantasy VII.

As I previously mentioned, there’s kind of a schism in the fandom over whether FFVI or FFVII is the best game in the series. Neither is the best game in the series. FFVII is better than FFVI. Oops.

When I was first drafting up this list, it was before I’d reached my replays of VI or VII, and I tentatively placed them next to each other, with the strong assumption that I’d end up placing VI a bit higher than VII, since it has so many strongly differentiated characters with solid story arcs, beautiful artwork, great music, etc. etc. Then I reached FFVII and not even four hours in, I realized it would have to be higher on my list than VI.

VI has a better battle system, its characters are much more differentiated by their gameplay, its character sprites have aged much better than VII’s character models, and it has four party members in battles instead of three. But I couldn’t overlook VII’s gorgeous artwork, sharp character work, and character-driven story. In the end, I had to give it the edge.

VII is a strange beast. It simultaneously really holds up and has aged horribly. The story is excellent and I love the characters, but the actual line-to-line writing is pretty bad, making the whole experience of the game a bit like swimming upstream; you’re getting somewhere good, but the age of the game is still pushing you back the best it can. Similarly, the background artwork is fantastic and gives the game locations a sense of place incomparable to anything that had come before it, but the character models are so low-poly that the two are constantly at odds with each other.

Still, the game is more a good game than it is an old one. I think it’s managed to duck the absurd level of hype around it by actually being very different from what the most popular images of it make it out to be, if that makes sense. The super futuristic techno-dystopia city only makes up a very small portion of the larger game, and most newcomers to the game won’t have seen Junon, or Corel, or Cosmo Canyon. Heck, I didn’t know Cait Sith or Red XIII were characters before I played the game for the first time. One of the many reasons I’m excited for the rest of this remake is to see newcomers to the story learning just how much variety there is to the world, events, and characters of this game.

FFVII also began (and pulled off really well) a number of storytelling trends that continued in subsequent games in the series. Obviously, almost every game since this one has a clear protagonist with a cool sword for cosplayers to recreate, and an androgynous villain whose story is closely linked to the protagonist (or one villain who is linked to the protagonist and a second one whose purpose is to look like Sephiroth), but it’s started broader, more quality shifts, too.

FFVII is the first game in the series to try to give all its characters arcs based on a similar theme, for example, a trend that has helped give it and future games a sense of thematic unity, especially in IX, X, and XV. Heck, that trend was why I almost came around on XII before they nuked it. It was also the first game in the series to have a real ending, rather than closing out with essentially a curtain call featuring all the party members, like they did in IV through VI (and I assume earlier).

Another common feature of FF games that it didn’t start with VII but certainly was canonized with it was the mid-game plot twist tying the protagonist to both the villain and the larger story. FFIV had this as well, of course, but I feel like the orphanage twist in VIII, the Zanarkand dream twist in X, and the time skip twist in XV were all meant to recall VII’s twist of Cloud’s…very complex existence (IX’s two worlds twist actually is a clear homage to IV, but it’d be hard to argue that Zidane’s connection to Kuja - and the character of Kuja generally - weren’t more influenced by VII).

2: Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy XV.

Sorry, this one is a two-fer. I’m not gonna spend too much time on why I placed these two together in the #2 spot (I wrote a long thing on it here, if you’re interested). In summary, the games kinda mirror each other, in story and design. Each game can be seen in the negative space of what the other game leaves out, and at the end, the characters react to similar situations in completely opposite ways. For this reason, and that they’re of comparable quality, I think they’re best viewed as companion pieces.

FFX was the first mainline Final Fantasy game I ever completed, six years late. It was the first FF game with voice acting and many fully modeled locations. It also kinda marks the beginning of the series’ constant changes to the battle system.

That’s not to say the previous games’ battle systems didn’t also differ from each other, but they all had the same setup, with levels and an ATB gauge. This was the first game since III not to have any real-time element to its battle system, nor numbered levels gained through experience points. Since X, no two FF battle systems have been remotely comparable, which is cool and innovative and keeps things fresh, but also means I’ve been starved for just a regular ATB FF game for too long.

In many ways, FFX feels like a bridge between the PS1 games and the later games. It feels much more streamlined than VII, VIII, or IX, in terms of both storytelling and design. The game is very linear, pushing the player from one area to the next and not allowing much backtracking until the very end. It also loses the aging look of the PS1 games’ menus and UI, finally updating the classic font and the blue menus with white borders to fully modernized and sleek graphics.

However, movement still feels very similar to movement in VIII and IX, the music definitely evokes the PS1 games more than the later games, and most locations are portrayed with beautifully painted backgrounds, rather than modeled in (which I actually prefer, and I was glad to see that VII Remake has gone back to that in some places).

Voice acting in this game is phenomenal for 2001, and honestly on par with many contemporary games. I can’t think of a voice actor for the main cast who didn’t do a great job. Tidus’s narration, especially, is emotional and evocative in all the right ways. Grounding the plot in a very personal story about Tidus’s difficulty coming to terms with and proving himself to his abusive father keeps the story relatable and real.

Something interesting about my experience with X is that because it was my first Final Fantasy game, I thought for a very long time that the series was about organized religion, and the ways it is used to justify evil acts. This might be the only game of the ones I’ve played that is about organized religion, or even prominently features a religious doctrine, which really sets it apart from the rest of the series.

The game’s thematic unity is on point, even if there is a scene where they state the central themes a bit too plainly. Every character, and even the entire universe of the story, is held back by the past, and every subplot and the main plot revolves around finding ways to move forward and leave the past behind.

I love FFXV. It feels like a return to form after XII and XIII. It’s also probably the furthest any game in the series has strayed from the original formula. Battles are entirely real-time, and the game is a straightforward action game. There is very little time spent with menus, and even the leveling system has been stripped down to a few skill trees. It’s immediately obvious that the game was originally created to be a spinoff, not a main title.

FFXV is also probably too much a product of the current era of microtransactions and payment plans. The full story is spread out across *deep breath* a feature film, an anime series, an anime OVA, a standalone demo, two console games, four DLC story chapters, a multiplayer side game, a VR fishing game, four phone games (though really three phone games because A New Empire straight up isn't in that universe and also is terrible), an expansion including several entirely new dungeons, and finally a novel set to release sometime this year. That’s a whole lot of story. I’ve not played the phone games or the VR fishing game, or read the novel yet, but I’ve experienced all the rest.

But I also played FFXV when it first released, before any patches, before I knew there was a film, just the game all on its own. So you can believe me when I say that without any supplementary material, the game is still great.

It goes back to the FFI, II, III, V “Warriors of Light” system, where the party has four characters who do not change at all throughout the game. While this bugged me at first, I soon came to appreciate having a story where almost all character interactions involved these four characters. It meant I came to understand them well enough to feel like they were my friends, too. Most characterization in this game is understated, presented through small shared moments, dialogue, and body language as they travel the world together. Much like X, the overarching story might be expansive and far-reaching, but the real show is in the personal journeys the friends have.

Much of the first half of the game is spent exploring an open world, driving along the road and getting out of the car for pit stops or to explore the forests nearby. This is one of the very few games where I don’t mind just exploring an area without the promise of an upgrade or a new scene, just to see what’s around the corner, or to hear whatever banter the characters might engage in next.

The entire world of this game is gorgeous, and the orchestrated music is some of the best they’ve ever done. The main plot is beautiful, too. It’s bittersweet and emotional, with a charismatic villain and a twist that blew me away the first time I reached it.

The supplementary material is also mostly really quality. I’d recommend the Royal Edition over the original edition for sure, and to watch Kingsglaive as well. The anime series is quick and fairly fun, and Comrades expands on the universe in some great ways, but neither has as much bearing on the overall plot as the DLC chapters and Kingsglaive. I’m so in love with the DLC chapters, actually, that two years ago I wrote a piece just on how much Episode Ignis affected me (here if you care).

This is definitely getting long, so I guess I’ll move on after saying I’m upset that they patched Chapter 13 to make it easier, and I’m angry at everyone who complained that Chapter 13 was too hard. It was a brilliant piece of storytelling through game mechanics, and it’s mostly been stripped of all that, now.

1: Final Fantasy IX.

It’s IX. It was always IX. I actually did come into this with an open mind, wondering if one of the new games I’d experience (IV, V, VIII, XII, XIII) might end up hitting me harder than Final Fantasy IX, but as I replayed my favorite game in the series I quickly realized that wouldn’t be happening.

There are only a handful of games that make me cry. IX is one of two without voice acting. There are several songs from IX that make me tear up just when I hear them.

The story of the black mages gaining sentience, learning that they can die, and trying to force themselves back into being puppets just to lose that knowledge really moves me. The same goes for the story of Dagger no longer recognizing her mother, setting out to find a place to belong, learning that her birth family is long dead, then watching her mother return to her old self a moment before losing her forever. And Zidane’s story, where he has nowhere to call home, finally discovers the circumstances of his birth, and realizes that had he stayed in his birthplace, he would have become a much worse person than he ultimately did.

More than any other, though, Vivi’s story will always stick with me. He was found as a soulless husk by Quan, a creature with the intention of fattening him up and eating him, but each of them awoke something in the other, and Quan ended up raising Vivi as his grandson. When Quan passed, a rudderless Vivi went to the city to find a new home, and eventually learned he was created as a weapon. Other weapons had also gained sentience, but none had the worldliness that Vivi had gained from his loving relationship with Quan. When Vivi discovers that most weapons like him die after only a few months, he grapples with the possibility that he may die at any time, and eventually decides that he can only take control of what life he has by living each moment to the fullest. He ends up becoming an example for the other weapons to follow.

FFIX is a game about belonging: both yearning to have somewhere to belong and learning that the place where you think you belong is actually toxic and harmful to you. Even the menu theme is a tune called “A Place to Call Home.”

IX ran counter to the trends of the series in a number of ways. It was a return to high fantasy after the more sci-fi VII and VIII, and was also much more lighthearted than those games, while still being heartfelt and occasionally bittersweet. Gameplay-wise, it locked each of its characters into a single job, gave them designs based on their jobs, brought back four-character parties, and introduced a skill system in which characters learn skills from equipment. It also had a much softer, less realistic art style, and mostly avoided the attempts to recapture VII that have plagued most other subsequent titles (besides Kuja’s design, I guess).

The story is also structured so well. It regularly shifts perspective for the first thirty hours, allowing the player to spend ample time with each of the party members, and shaking up character combinations for fun new interactions. It introduced a system similar to the skits from Tales games, showing the player often humorous vignettes of what’s happening to other characters at the time. Once the characters have all come together in one party, the game has earned the sense that all of them (except for the criminally underexplored Amarant) have become a family.

The supporting cast are a blast as well. Zidane’s thief troupe (who double as a theater troupe) are likeable and fun. Kuja’s villain arc allows him to be sympathetic without losing his edge. The black mages are tragic without being overdone.

The development team for this game put so much more work into this game than they had to. The background artwork was all made in such high-definition resolutions that the act of downscaling them to fit in the game removed details. Uematsu traveled to Europe to make sure he’d get the feel of the soundtrack right, and has said it’s his favorite score he’s ever done. Sakaguchi, the creator of Final Fantasy, says IX is his favorite game in the series.

FFIX is one of the two games I would like them to remake after they finish the VII Remake, but I’m terrified they’ll mess it up in some way. Honestly, the game’s only flaws (which I do desperately want them to fix) are a lack of voice acting, the underdeveloped party member Amarant (and to a lesser extent Freya), the dissonance of Beatrix never getting punished in any way for her hand in a genocide, and the fact that very few of the sidequests are story-related because so many of the smaller story details that would normally be relegated to sidequests are covered in the main plot.

Despite the danger, though, I think revisiting IX is absolutely essential moving forward. It represents so much of what made older games like IV and VI great, and its story is much more grounded in real emotion than many current Square stories tend to be. Remaking VII will be good for getting VII out of Square’s system. Remaking IX would be good for putting IX back into Square’s system.

Here’s a IX song as a reward for getting this far. I’m gonna go listen to it and tear up again.

[hanniiesuckle17]

Offstage

A/n: y'all about to get on me for doing another Jisung imagine………..shut up he is my soulmate okay.💕💕💕 if I got request for other people I wouldnt do him as much😂😂 also this is probably one of the longest imagines ive ever written holy crap

Member: Han Jisung ft Bangchan, Felix, Changbin, and Seungmin

WARNINGS: Swearing (it’s me guys come on, also tumblr I put it in the warnings stop flagging my posts), Jisung being the cocky bitch he is.

Summary: The Dance Dept. and Theatre Dept. have never gotten along. It’s just the stereotype of the arts. However, the teachers are done with that and have decided to include the Dance Dept in the school’s musical this year. What happens when the Queen of the Thespians and the King of the Dancers are forced to cooperate?

Genre: fluff, comedy, romance, enemies to lovers, highschool au, theatre au

“WE’RE WHAT?” I screamed at my closest friend, Bangchan. He took a deep breath before putting his hands on my shoulders. “Y/n, it’s not the end of the world.” No. This was the end of the world.

“Chan, we aren’t seriously letting those cocky small-brained dancers into the show are we?” He nodded and placed a stack of papers on the table. “I just got the notice from Mrs.Kwon.” Fuming, I flopped down in one of the auditorium chairs. I had worked my ass off to get to the status I had in the theatre department. This was my third lead and I wasn’t about to let some dancers ruin the show I cared about.

“Think about it this way. Legally Blonde is a huge dance show. Now some of the pressure for choreography is off. I talked to this guy Felix and he said he would choreograph.” Chan was my best friend and he was graduating this year. This was his last chance to direct one of our shows before he left. If he had to compromise….then I guess I could. “How does Seungmin feel about this?” A crash was heard from the wings.

“MINHO! I NEED YOU TO NOT DROP THE $300 SET PIECE! PLEASE!”

We both flinched at Seungmin’s loud voice. “He’ll be fine……probably. He’s the Stage Manager he is used to problems popping up.”

“MINHO! I SWEAR TO GOD!”

He sighed and shifted through the papers on the director’s table. He looked stressed. This was obviously not how he wanted his show to go. “You want me to stay with you for the extra auditions?” Running a hand through his hair, he turned to me with a tired smile. “No, it’s okay. Woojin wanted to go wig shopping with you anyway. We can’t have a brunette, Elle.” Playfully he shoved me up the aisle.

“I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Yeah! List will be posted outside.”

My eyes bore holes into the clock on the wall. I tried to drown out the loud boys next to me. Felix and Hyunjin were part of the dance department and had too much energy in my opinion. The second the bell rang I sprinted out of my seat and raced to the auditorium. Seungmin and Woojin stood in front of the call board when I arrived.

“What’s up?” Seungmin turned to me with a look that could kill. “Why are there dancers in my show?” Shrugging I turned my eyes to the list and scanned through the names.

“Technically it’s Chan’s show-”

“IT’S MY GOD DAMN SHOW TOO!”

“Ah Fuck.”

The two boys turned to me and asked what was wrong. Without another word I pointed to a name next to the male lead spot. “Han Jisung,” Woojin read aloud. A loud laugh could be heard coming down the hall. We all turned to find Jisung, Felix, and Hyunjin strolling down the hall towards the theatre. They stopped when they saw us.

“L/n.”

“Han.”

“Tightass.”

“Douchebag.”

“You want me.”

“To jump of a cliff? Yes.”

Smirking he ran a hand through his brown hair. “See you in there.” If only real daggers ended up in his back instead of my glare. “Can he even sing? How could Bangchan give Emmett to that……asshole.” Sharing a look the two of them shrugged before opening the door of the auditorium and entering.

The house lights were on and Chan was standing at the edge of a stage with a clipboard. I took a seat in the front row next to my friends Irene and Changbin. Seungmin and Jeongin joined Chan on stage and waited for everyone to quiet down.

“Welcome guys and congratulations for making it onto the Legally Blonde cast and crew!” Everyone clapped and cheered as Chan smiled broadly. “I’m Bangchan your director. This is Seungmin, your Stage Manager. And that is Jeongin our Assistant Director. Cast if you have any problems come to me or Jeongin, and crew you can go to Seungmin.”

Chan hesitated before speaking again. “Just make sure it is a real problem before going to Seungmin. We can’t have another Little Mermaid fiasco again.” The theatre kids laughed, but an obvious silence came from the dance crew.

“Okay. Y/n once again is our amazing lead!” I smiled and waved to my friends who were cheering. “And we have a new addition to the cast! Han Jisung will be playing Emmett, and Hwang Hyunjin will be playing Warner.” I felt eyes on me and turned to find Han smirking a few rows back. Rolling my eyes, I turned back around to listen to the rest of the cast being read off. I congratulated Changbin for getting Callahan and continued half-listening to the rest of the speech.

After the welcoming speech, Chan handed out the scripts and wanted to go directly into blocking. He told us the scene number and the characters needed jumped on stage. Chan amazingly lead and directed us through starting positions for the scene while answering Felix’s many questions about choreography.

Han was polite enough. He took Chan’s coaching well and did okay for his first day. I almost forgot that he was a major dickhead for a moment. Bangchan decided to not do musical numbers on the first day but told us to go home and practice for tomorrow’s first Saturday rehearsal where we would start doing choreography and songs.

 My old car sputtered to a stop in the school parking lot. I was maybe an hour early to rehearsal, but that never hurt. I pulled my crop top down and adjusted my leggings and flannel. Reluctantly, I came ready to dance today.

On my way to the auditorium, I passed the dance and stopped when I heard a voice.

She was so close she could taste it

She’s gotta chip on her shoulder

Guess you never can tell

With little Miss Woods comma Elle

Hesitantly I entered the dance studio with my duffle on my shoulder. I was shocked to see Jisung standing in front of the mirror focused on adjusting to the high note, repeating the last few bars over and over again.

“Maybe try singing from your diaphragm.” He jumped at my voice and turned, shocked to see me leaning against the wall. “I mean, you aren’t bad. You just need a little coaching.” I threw my duffle on the ground and walked over to him. It was then I noticed something different about him. That cocky, confident, headass air he had was gone. He looked almost nervous as I came to stand in front of him.

Grabbing his wrist I placed his hand on the upper part of my stomach. “With little Miss Woods comma Elle,” His eyes widened and stared straight into mine. “See. It’s a completely different muscle.” He nodded and continued looking into my eyes.

“Now you.” Placing my hand on top of his I moved it to his own stomach above his diaphragm. “Go on. Try the last stanza.” He looked down at his stomach and took a breath of hair before looking back at me. “Guess you never can tell, with little Miss Woods comma Elle,”

“Yeah! That was great!” I didn’t seem to notice the smile that spread across my face. “Feel better doesn’t it?” He nodded, shocked at his own voice. “That’s actually really cool. Thank you.” He grabbed a water bottle near his bag and handed it to me.

“No problem. You aren’t as bad as I thought you were going to be, Han.”

“Just because I’m a dancer doesn’t mean I can’t sing.”

I shrugged and took a small sip of his water before handing it back to Jisung. “So what is this show actually about?” I laughed and took his script which was sticking out of his bag. Surprisingly it was marked up with notes, and question marks, and highlighted to all hell. “So there is this girl, Elle, that’s me. And after a terrible breakup with her boyfriend, Warner, ‘Hyunjin’, she decides to follow him to Harvard law school so she can win him back.”

“Okay. But he broke up with her?”

“She’s not very smart.”

"Anyway, she goes and she realizes she sucks at law school. So she meets you, Emmett, who is like a Teacher's Assistant who grows a soft spot for her. He helps her study and she actually gets really good at law. So the whole story is about overcoming adversity and stereotype and self-worth and strength. And Elle actually ends up telling Warner off and ends up with Emmett."

Jisung nods along and listens intently the whole time I speak. "This must be your favorite show if you know so much about it." I shook my head and sat down against the mirror. To my surprise, Han sat in front of me. “No. My favorite show is a little more morbid than this.” He scoffed and took a swig of water.

“Aren’t musicals like all happy and we love life and let’s all sing a song!”

“What is it that you think we do?”

“That.”

I sighed, seeing the stubborn personality he had start to shine through. “Listen if you are going to be in this show you have to understand that theatre is a way of expression.” He looked down at the floor. “Like...dance?” My eyes shot up to his face. “Yeah, actually. It’s not enough to just act the character’s feelings. You have to think of them as a real person and find a moment that you can connect to their feelings.”

He seemed kind of spaced and simply stared at me. “Well- um...my friend is in a show next weekend and I think it is a show you might really connect with. Would you maybe want to go? I mean, to see what theatre is actually like.” Why was I offering this to him? I didn’t care. Well, I care about the show.

“With you?”

“It could be like a bonding thing. I’d rather not hate my co-star.”

“Okay. I’ll see you next weekend.”

Looking at the time, we both scrambled to get our things and race to the theater. I couldn’t help but smile at Jisung as we both sat in the back row listening to the schedule being called out.

Nervously I twisted the ring on my right hand. Since when did I become nervous to see Jisung. It had only been a week of rehearsals, but somehow I had grown to like him. He was nice and cracked jokes with me in between scenes. Jisung had also stayed behind several times to help me with choreography.

I smoothed out the dark green dress I had chosen to wear. Was it too tight? Irene did tend to call it my ‘Ass for Days’ dress. The heels I was wearing were also starting to hurt. I stood outside the theater waiting for Jisung. The sun had just started to set and my friend Rocky sent me a text that the show was starting soon and he reserved my seats.

“Holy shit...”

Looking up I saw Jisung stop in his tracks. His eyes looked me up and down, but not in a lustful way. More like a surprised way. I couldn’t help but look at him the same way. He wore a casual fitted black suit and a white dress shirt underneath without a tie. His brown hair which was usually fluffy and tousled was now purposely parted on the side and combed through.

“Hi...”

“Hi...”

“You look grea-” “You look beautiful-”

“Sorry...”

Holy fuck. He only looks hot because he is in a suit. That’s just science. All guys are hot in suits. It’s totally not because his hair looks great and I could see how slim his waist was compared to his chest. Oh fuck. He is in suits for the entire second act. Am I going to think like this every time I see him in a suit?

“We should go in!” I said interrupting my own less than pure thoughts. He cleared his throat and nodded, closing the gap between us as I turned to go inside. I mentally scolded myself for blushing when I felt his slender fingers grazing my lower back.

Once we (mostly me) were emotionally and hormonally safe in our seats, the two of us started talking. “So L/n, what is the show called?” He turned to me with a nervous smile. It’s not cute Y/n. It’s the suit. I swear to god it’s the suit. “It’s called A Chorus Line. It is a very dance-heavy show and the actors don’t leave the stage unless it’s intermission.”He nodded and looked around the auditorium for a moment before turning back to me.

“What’s it about?”

“Oh. Um. Well, it is about an audition for the ensemble of a Broadway show. And it talks about the lives and trials each person has had to go through just to be on stage. It’s a really great show.”

Just as he was about to speak the lights dimmed and the orchestra picked up. Throughout the show, I tried to focus on Rocky as he played Paul San Marco, but I couldn’t keep from glancing at Jisung. I couldn’t help but be fascinated by his reaction. He listened intently to the stories and monologues and when intermission came around he asked me all sorts of questions about the show and which character my friend was.

The lights dimmed once more and I couldn’t help but notice that Jisung’s hand gripped the chair tightly during the scene where Paul fell and injured his knee. Worried I looked up to see slow quiet tears on his cheeks. I turned back to the stage and looked up as the scene progressed. Carefully, I let my hand graze over his and I held it lightly. I heard him take a breath and glance over at me, and I hoped my face still seemed intent on the performance.

I tried to ignore the way my heart started beating faster when he moved his hand to lace his fingers with mine.

“I really do appreciate this opportunity to work with you.” My fingers pushed a piece of blonde hair behind my ear as I sat down on the desk near Changbin. We were running the assault scene in the wig and with full set today for the dress rehearsal. Usually I would have met up with Jisung and worked on lines together, but his call time was later than mine. “I have learned so much.” I could see Changbin give me the signal with his eyebrow. An almost ‘are you ready’ secret message that we had between us.

“No, what you’ve learned isn’t the point. You have instincts...and instincts, legal instincts or otherwise can’t be taught.”

His fingers tapped on the desk while he sustained eye contact. If I hadn’t known it was fake, a shudder would go down my spine. My ears picked up the auditorium door opening and closing, but I remained in character, waiting for Changbin to act on his cue.

“Trust... your instincts.”

There was a pause and I continued acting oblivious. ‘Suddenly’ Changbin’s lips were crashing against mine and his hands were groping at my ass. After waiting for my cue from Hyori, I pushed Bin away and did the slap we practiced. Bin laughed quite sleazily and touched his cheek. “I thought you were smarter than that.”

“Awesome! Let's change the set for Elle and Emmett.” Bangchan called from the director’s desk.

Turning I saw Jisung standing in the middle of the aisle, his grip tight on his backpack. He wore the tank top and sweats he always wore after coming from dance practice and a backwards white cap. Even from the audience I could see a mix of emotions on his face, and none were good. Things between Jisung and I had become more flowing. It turns out it wasn’t just the suit. However, I didn’t want to get into anything serious with my castmate. I didn’t even know if he liked me.

I jumped off of the stage to let Seungmin yell at the underclassmen to move sets. Running up to Jisung I greeted him with a smile. “Hi!” His face still looked sad, but he tried to cover it with a small smile. “Hi...I saw your scene. You were great. I almost couldn’t tell you were acting.”

“Thanks! You look cute in hats.” Playfully I grabbed it, letting his fluffy hair loose and placing the white hat over my blonde wig. “Yeah well, I like your natural hair better.” That same sad smile came over his face. It didn’t quite reach his eyes and I was surprised I took notice of a detail so small.

“Hey...you look nervous. Are you okay?” My hand reached out for his arm and he looked down at the touch. “Yeah. I’m fine, Y/n.” I smirked and looked up at the boy before putting the hat back on his head. “What? No more L/n?” He shrugged, but I saw a flash of a smile. “Will you help me with choreo after rehearsal?” He nodded and tossed his stuff in a chair next to Hyunjin. With a smile I thanked him and walked over to Bangchan who gave me notes on the next scene.

Three hours later Jisung and I were in the dance studio running over the biggest number I had. “And mark the lift, 1 2 3 4. Good!” He smiled and turned off the music.

“I mean, you aren’t bad. You just need a little coaching.”

I couldn’t help but laugh as Jisung used the same thing I said to him on me. “Well what have you been doing the last four weeks, huh? Should I ask Hyunjin to help me instead!” Laughing I jumped onto him and playfully pulled him down to the floor. He rolled me off of his chest and propped himself up on his elbow, looking down at me.

“Nah. I’m much better than him.”

“Really. Should I tell him that?”

“.......Since when are you so close anyway!”

He jokingly yelled. That bright smile beamed on his face and ran all the way up to his eyes. There was a moment of comfortable silence and we just lay looking at each other. In that moment, I started to question if he didn’t have feelings for me. Then he broke the silence.

“So, how do you do that thing?” He looked down at the hardwood floor. “What thing?” “You know...you and Changbin. It wasn’t real.....right?” He looked up at me, almost hopeful. Pushing my self up, I sat cross-legged and looked down at him. “What? The stage kiss. No. Bin is gay. Trust me.”

“Wait what?”

“You haven’t seen Felix and him making out in the light booth?”

“WHAT?”

I laughed at the shocked look on his face and slightly pushed his shoulder. “You’re oblivious.” He shrugged and looked back up at me. “So, how do you do it?” He started playing with the ring on my right hand. “Are you nervous about our kiss--Oh- Have you never kissed anyone!!?” Jisung shot upright.

“I have kissed lots of girls!”

“Oh, okay.”

“I HAVE!”

“Yet, you are still nervous for our kiss.”

He brought his knees up and rested his arms on them. It took every inch of my self control not to stare at his arms. “Well, it’s gonna be in front of hundreds of people so yeah. A little.”

“It’s easy. Ours especially.” I snatched his white hat from him again and he chuckled when it was a little too big for me without my wig. “Explain, good madam.” “Both are at the end of the show,” I said have laughing and him nodding along.

“The first lasts exactly one eight count and then we do the rest of the song. The second is the cue for the blackout. Not long at all.” He nodded again, yet I didn’t think I had put him at rest. “Would it help set you at ease if we rehearsed it? That way you’ve done it when it is just you and me and not six hundred and eighty four people.”

Thinking about it, he nodded and followed my lead when I stood up and cued up the music. “Okay, so I’ve just proposed,” I stated getting done on one knee. I looked up to find him smirking.

“Having fun done there?”

“I will punch you in the nuts and not regret it. You really will be singing tenor then.”

“Okay moving on.”

He laughed and looked down at me slipping the pretend ring on his finger. He sang his line with the track. A real laugh left my lips when he picked me up in a hug and spun me around. The note sounded loud and clear in the dance studio and ended when my feet touched the ground. He looked into my eyes and his hand came up to my cheek before he kissed me.

I tried to ignore the tingling sensation that ran through my body as soon as his lips touched mine. I tried to ignore how even though he had been dancing for hours he still smelled like vanilla and the grass after a storm. I tried to focus on measuring the eight count, but my mind went foggy when I felt his hand bury itself in my hair. Well if I’m not counting he is, so it’s fine. It’s fine.

Jisung subconsciously took the control I gave him. He slowed the kiss from its original pace. Every time I thought he was pulling away he came back to my lips and I thought I could feel him smiling. After a moment he pulled away and looked into my eyes. At that moment I snapped out of it, realizing the song had already ended. He was still looking at me with his big brown eyes.

“The song is over...” His voice was low and almost a whisper. “Yeah...we kinda missed our cue.” What should I do? For once in my life....my mind was blank. “Uh...I’ll see you tomorrow, I guess?” He said with the corner of his lips quirking up. After a nod, he smiled and pulled away from me. Jisung stole glances back at me frozen in place as he picked up his bag and left.

The next day I walked into the auditorium in a crop and shorts. Immediately my eyes found Jisung and a wide smile spread across my face. Slowly it fell when I saw him talking to Hyori, a smirk evident on her small face. Her eyes met mine for a second before she reached out to Han’s arm. Suddenly he turned and saw me. A cold expression resonated over his sharp features.

After saying something to her, Han looked away and headed backstage. While my heart screamed to storm over to Hyori and ask what kind of game she was playing with Han, but my head told me to let it go and focus on tonight’s show.

Woojin caught up with me and helped me get in costume and makeup for the show. Every time I tried to talk to Jisung he would just avoid me and tell me some random excuse. Even Hyunjin came up to ask me what was wrong with his friend. Soon the wig came on and it was time for the start of the show.

The laughs and cheers sounded from the crowd but in the back of my mind and in the corner of my eye I could see Han in the wings, watching me with that cold expression. 

I feel so much better...

Than before

My throat burned and my stomach clenched as I held out the last note. If I couldn’t know what was going on with Jisung, I was damn sure going to give the best show I’ve ever done. Even if it destroyed my vocal cords and my body. My voice was the thing I could control right now, and it would do what I told it to. So, I told it to keep the note strong and not take the second breath.

With the conductor’s cue, I stopped and smiled brightly at the audience before the stage went black for intermission. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Bangchan bolted from his front-row seat in the audience and sprinted backstage. Seungmin and Changbin both rushed up and gave me a bottle of water.

“God damn Y/n! I knew you had pipes but I thought fossil fuel was the reason we were running out of oxygen.”

“Y/n!”

Chan rushed up to me and threw me over his shoulder. “I love you. I love you. I love you, but please save your voice. We kinda need it for the second act.” I smiled and nodded, my eyes looking everywhere for Jisung. I had ten minutes to change costumes, wigs, makeup check, and somehow get him to talk to me.

“Where’s Jisung? I need to-umm...ask him about the costume change for ‘Take it Like a Man’“. I asked as calmly as possible after I had changed. Woojin told me that he was in the guy’s dressing room changing suits. Charging down the dark cramped backstage hall I opened the door to find Changbin and Jisung. With look towards Changbin he scurried out the door leaving me and Jisung alone. 

“We have three minutes until curtain. You better tell me what the fuck is going on, Han.”

“Why don’t you tell me, huh?”

His brows furrowed as he raised his voice. His outburst stunned me for a moment. “Is this just this thing you do? Messing with your co-stars? Huh, L/n?” I could see in his eyes he was truly hurt. “Where the hell did you get that from!” He scoffed and finished doing his tie. “Hyori told me all about you and Jungkook.” 

“Hyori?” 

“Yes.”

“Hyori? The girl who Jungkook cheated on me with? Only so I would so devastated to miss the opening night and she could fill in for me.”

His expression changed drastically. “She lied?” He sank down in one of the cheap metal chairs. “Yeah it’s kind of her shtick.” He ran a hand through his hair before looking up at me again. “Y/n I am so sorry-” “I just can’t believe you trusted her word over anything I would have told you.” A heavy silence came between us and all I could do was stare at him in disbelief.

“Come on people! WARNING is NOT a suggestion! PLACES is NOT a category on jeopardy! GO is NOT A FUCKING OPTION!”

Seungmin yelled down the hall and Jisung sighed and got up from the chair. “Y/n, I-” He stopped when I put up my hand. “Listen...we’ll talk after the show.” I just had to get out of there. 

Han grabbed my arm and blocked the set door. “Hey. Hey. We’ll fix it. We’ll fight it.” Something in his eyes told me the emotion was real. “Emmett. There is no reason for me to stay.” I opened the door and closed it walking onto the other side and closing it. The music started to swell and I could feel all this pent up emotion in my chest. “What about love? You never mentioned love.” 

I could hear the crack in Jisung’s voice that wasn’t usually there. “You never mentioned love. The timing’s bad, I know. But perhaps if I’d made it more clear, that you belong right here, then you wouldn’t have to go.” My throat started to close up but I pushed through it and took a breath for my part of the song where we sang over each other. “Because you know that I’m so much in love-”

Back to the sun

Back to the shore

Back to what I was before

Lie on the beach, dream within reach

Don’t stray beyond

I felt real tears come down my cheeks as I moved downstage to face the lights. In my side vision I saw Jisung do the same. I had thought that I could be different. That he was different. That maybe we could put this unspoken rivalry behind us.

If you can hear, can I just say

How much I want you to stay

We returned to the door, but this time something felt different when I pressed my hand to the door.

It’s not up to me just let me be legally blonde

Seungmin pushed everyone on stage for the final scene and Woojin tugged the graduation camp over my wig and hurriedly covered the curtain call dress with the robe. Throughout the scene I couldn’t help but steal glances at Jisung. It wasn’t his fault. He had no way of knowing about Jungkook and Hyori. 

Walking over to Han, I gave him a genuine smile and got down on one knee. “Emmett Forest please make me the happiest woman I know!” I sang with sureness. He spun me around like once before and took my face in his slender fingers. 

And kissed me.

The grin on my lips was so big that it hurt my cheeks. I had to tap him on the shoulder when we needed to sing, but pulling away his smile was so big and genuine. He knew I had forgiven him. It felt so hard not to just stop singing and just jump into his arms. We both rushed up to the platform upstage and stood in the center.

Jisung smiled down at me and moved the tassel onto the other side of my cap, like he was supposed to. With the final cue of music, I couldn’t take it anymore and I tangled my fingers into his soft brown hair and crashed my lips onto his. I heard the roaring applause which meant the stage lights were in blackout for curtain call, but he was still kissing me. “Curtain call?” I whispered against his lips, in case my mic was still on. I felt him nod and pushed me further back on the platform and behind the center curtain without parting from my lips.

I laughed as he tried to help me pry of the robe for curtain call. “Take a break for a sec,” I said laughing and he joined me. He and I both fumbled with the buttons and tossed the hat and robe off stage to reveal the bright pink and sparkly dress for the closing of show. 

“I’m impatient. Come back here.”

His hands pulled me back by my waist and pressed a heated kiss on my lips once more. Kissing him felt like time stopping. At first, I didn’t notice the cheering audience as the curtain rose again, and I honestly didn’t care. Han pulled away and smiled at me  before doing his bow and then he motioned to me and the audience cheered. We clapped as Bangchan and Seungmin did their bows.

“There’s a party later. Are you going, L/n?”

“Duh. Cast party.”

“You gonna wear that green dress from last time?”

“You gonna wear that suit from last time?”

The entire cast did another bow and the curtain closed fully. When the red fabric touched the floor of the stage the cast and crew went crazy and Jisung wrapped me up in another kiss.

“HEY! NO MAKING OUT ON MY SET!”

“Sorry, Seungmin.”

“THAT DOESN”T MEAN DO IT AGAIN!”

Masterlist

Requests are open!

[impossibleleaf]

The Crimes Of Grindelwald Meta: The Lestrange tragedy

Soooo.... The Crimes of Grindelwald. A highly anticipated movie that missed the mark on several accounts.

Too many characters and plot conveniences, a blatant disregard for the ‘Show, Don’t Tell’ rule, apparent OOC moments. A few WTF moments that, if you think about it for a minute make you scream ‘But that does not make sense!’ At first glance, the entire movie is an utter mess.

And it is. It is a mess. I’m not going to lie, the execution was sometimes badly done and JKR makes you do intellectual acrobatics for points that are actually pointless. The movie has many problems, the first one being that it is a movie. And movies cannot handle so many new arcs at the same time.

Rowling is not a screenwriter. She is a writer and her mistake was ultimately to assume she didn’t need to make any adjustment. As a result, some new characters get accidentally tossed in the bin by the audience because the audience doesn’t care enough yet and has many more problems to deal with. And as it is a movie, you do not have the time to ponder any new point and see how everything fit as a whole.

But if you start looking at it as a book...

Well, if you start looking at the Crimes of Grindelwald as a book and began assuming she knows what she is doing...

A lot of things suddenly start to make sense.

Tighten your belt, we are about to enter the realms of guesswork and speculation. Some of you may even say this is only a headcanon but I really don’t think so. Still, if you want everything to suddenly make sense and several plot holes to magically fill themselves, just bear with me.

There will be of course MAJOR SPOILERS so keep reading at your own risks. Spoilers from CoG, and potential spoilers for the entire FBAWTFT serie. Also, I’m using some part of the original screenplay.

You’ve been warned.

First thing first, I am not going to talk about the reveal at the end of the movie about Credence’s identity. Mostly because, for how everything seems to turn around him, he is at the present moment a puppet. More than that, he is a McGuffin.

He is a McGuffin, only a plot device. The real actor, the key for understanding the entire movie is not Credence but this person.

(Bet you didn’t see this coming).

Yusuf Kama, that new character who falls on our laps telling us he needs to kill Credence because of an Unbreakable Vow and throws at us the entire story about the Lestranges. Spends half his on-screen presence with some insect in his eye, Nobody IRL seems to care about him.

We should. We should really look at him because he is the one who has all the answers even if he doesn’t know it yet.

Let me explain now.

As you must know by now, his entire life went to hell when Corvus Lestrange IV kidnapped his mother to rape her and had a child with her, Leta. His father went mad with grief when she died in childbirth and made him swear an Unbreakable Vow to kill ‘the one Corvus Lestrange loves most’. From the moment Leta, his half-sister, was born, he took the path of an avenger and began trying to fulfill the Unbreakable Vow by finding ‘the one Corvus Lestrange loves most’ and killing them.

He began thinking it would be easy. Problem was, Corvus IV is a shitting piece of work and has never loved his daughter.

But then Lestrange had a son... Corvus Lestrange V. And, according to Yusuf Kama, love began filling his cold and empty heart.

I’m summarizing the rest. To protect his son from Kama, he sent his children in America on a boat with a half house-elf (the script explains why the boat, to leave the least magical traces), the ship sinks, Leta being a brat at that age had switched the baby with another, Baby Corvus sinks. She never tells anybody but shows the family tree in the end to reveal the truth.

So, what now? Does that mean that Kama’s Unbreakable Vow is null and void? If Corvus is dead, then who was Voldemort’s classmate?

Here’s where absolutely everybody has made a dangerous mistake.

At no moment has it been said that Corvus Lestrange IV is dead.

We assume he is dead. But, unless we hear from a reliable character he is dead, we have to assume he is not.

Tom Riddle’s classmate? Tom was born the 31st of december 1926. Most, if not all his classmates were born in 1927. So, it is strongly possible that this Lestrange was not in the family tree only because he has yet to be born. It is 1927 in CoG, he may very well be born next month for them.

And, if you connect the two, Voldemort’s classmate might have just been Corvus Lestrange IV’s son and Leta’s half-brother.

And if Lestrange has another son, then Kama is back in business and will continue his revenge quest. He will try to find ‘the one Lestrange loves most’ and attempt to kill the new baby.

(Careful Kama. Killing babies because of prophecies is bad luck in HP).

Now, we are going to go deeper in the realm of speculations, so bear with me.

Kama’s father made his son swear he would kill the one ‘Lestrange loves most’. Kama had once thought that person would be Leta except he didn’t love her. Kama then started believing Lestrange loved Baby Corvus so he tried to kill him.

We’re going to assume for a moment Lestrange is a real monster (which he is). He used the Unforgiveable on a married woman to bed her, he does not love his own daughter. And, even if he supposedly loved his son, we need to remember he sent him to America to be adopted by Mary Lou Barebone.

He left who he thought to be his ‘beloved’ son so he could be adopted by Mary Lou Barebone. That woman!

A muggle! The leader of the New Salem Philantropic Society, a group which notably hates magic and would love to kill witches!

Don’t believe me? It’s written in the Original Screenplay!

IRMA: I took you to Mrs Barebone because she was supposed to look after you.

It was not an accident! He wasn’t dropped in an orphanage and she adopted him! The Lestrange’s servant was under order to give who she thought to be Baby Corvus to that woman!

And at no moment had the father tried to get any new of his ‘son’ or he would have known what an enormous mistake that was in a minute!

It’s as if he sent him to her and told that woman his mother was a witch so she could abuse him and turn him into a a powerful Obscurius!

No really, considering how bad his plan to send him to Mary Lou Barebone was, the only thing for it to make sense is to assume that Lestrange used the occasion to insure his son would be abused enough to become an obscurus. For how cruel, how despicable it is, that is the only ‘reason’, the only thing that sounds ‘logical’. Lestrange must have wanted an obscurus, probably thinking a pureblood such as his son would manage to control it and be an all powerful weapon.

So no, Kama is wrong. The one Lestrange loves most is not his son either. And even if he had felt even a sliver of paternal love, he wouldn’t be the one he loves most. And there is absolutely no reason at all that the new Lestrange will be loved either. So, someday, Kama after much research will finally get it right and see what should have always been obvious.

The one Corvus Lestrange IV loves most is himself. He is the one Kama is supposed to kill.

Baby Corvus? Even if he had cared, he still loves himself more than he loved his own son. And the whole ‘let’s send him by boat so that Kama cannot find him, love you baby’ suddenly becomes ‘So he thinks he needs to kill my son. Wonderful! Let’s send my son away so he goes on a merry chase and stay far, far away from me!”

And here comes the first part of the prophecy Kama gave us.

The first part, as you remember is: A Son cruelly banished. The Son is Baby Corvus, abandoned by his own father to save his skin and, possibly, to become an obscurus after years of abuse. The only thing that saved him from this horrible fate was that he died before reaching America.

Now come the second part: Despair of the Daughter.

It is obliviously Leta. Leta Lestrange who had accidentally killed her little brother and lived with that guilt all her life.

Question is: are we really sure Lestrange didn’t know what his daughter has done? If all you have to do to know if somebody died is to check the genealogic tree, then Lestrange who has it for years, even decades couldn't have not known Baby Corvus was dead. And for an adult, it is ridiculously easy to see a child like Leta at the time is feeling guilty because she did something very, very bad.

So it is possible that Lestrange has always known his daughter had killed his son. There was no point from then to care about Credence. He was not his son after all, he didn’t matter.

But Lestrange must have used her guilt to torture and manipulate Leta. Just the right allusion at the right moment, and she was his unwilling puppet.

Now, let’s take a look at this picture.

I don’t know for you, but it does not feel like it is the first time the two are seeing each other. There seems to be history there. It is not Queenie Goldstein joining Grindelwald, she’s getting a special treatment here.

The whole hate speech is happening inside the Lestrange Mausoleum, the Lestranges are a dark family. Grindelwald seems to have powerful and utterly loyal followers. So, it is very easy to speculate from there that Corvus Lestrange IV is also one of Grindelwald’s men. And if Lestrange is one of Grindelwald’s, then Leta also had to be one of his followers, whether she liked it or not.

But what could she do for the cause?

Well, she could seduce a rising and very powerful Auror for example. Be their spy, marry somebody high in the Auror Forces and tell them what she learns from him about the British Ministry of Magic’s plans.

It’s just a pity that Auror’s brother happen to be Newt Scamander’s hug-loving brother. She may not love Theseus and only use him, she still loves Newt. He’s probably the only one she has ever loved, in fact.

And because she loved Newts, she’s decided to save them by switching side somewhere around the middle of the movie and attempting to derail Grindelwald and Lestrange’s plan.

If you assume Lestrange knows his son is dead, that his replacement will believe he is Corvus Lestrange and that he is one of Grindelwald’s men, then it becomes extraordinarily obvious that it is Lestrange who told Grindelwald Credence is not Corvus and that he’ll probably try to find Irma Dugard because he took his son’s place and she sighed the adoption papers. From there, Grindelwald had enough time to makes a plan.

The real trick for Grindelwald to ‘seduce’ Credence to his side is to insure he follows his breadcrumbs and learn what they want him to learn at the proper time. Not before, not after. Not less but not more either. We wouldn’t want him to realize Lestrange sent his son to Barebone on purpose. Grindelwald kills Irma Dugard right after she tell Credence Mary Lou Barebone was supposed to look after him so that he doesn’t see this wasn’t an accident and some man sent his own son to hell.

And, when Credence finally despairs at the realization it is a dead end, he tells him he just has to comes to him to know what he is. That was their plan.

For this reason, Leta taking the Lestranges’ book was not a coincidence. She must have figured it out, maybe she was in the plan even if she didn’t know everything and she tried to derail the plan by taking the book before Vinda could. And then she told the truth, hoping it would solve everything, not knowing it was also part of Grindalwald’s plan.

And when all else failed and he was about to kill Newts and his friends, she decided to show her true colours and fight Grindelwald to save them.

Her death was not pointless, it was the natural end of her redemption arc, one that has yet to be told to the Scamander brothers.

So, where does that leave us? Kama, in his quest for revenge will most certainly discover the truth. Instead of killing the baby, he will realize just what kind of monster Lestrange really is and finally get the prophecy right.

A son cruelly banished

Despair of the daughter

Return, great avenger

With wings from the water

He is indeed the great avenger, but he got the prophecy wrong and jumped to conclusions even though he’s correctly identified the ones mentioned here. EDIT: The wings from the water are nothing but his realization that the two Lestrange children (whose family animal is a raven) are the true victims and ‘died’ because of their father in that shipwreck, giving him finally the drive to do the right thing for the right reasons.

Kama was never supposed to kill Lestrange’s children, he is the one supposed to avenge them and kill their father.

And when he does and kills Lestrange, the true culprit and the one that should have always paid for his crimes, he would have fulfilled the Unbreakable Vow he has made to his father and be free.

EDIT: ADDENDUM

The most striking evidence of this theory is the magical creature in Yusuf Kama’s eye.

He lives with some magical creature in his eye and only manages to keep it at bay via the use of his magical eyedrops. How long he’s had that problem, we don’t know, but it is a clear metaphor for him being unable to see clearly things as they are. He tries to keep going despite this, tries to contain the problem, but it stops him for doing what he has to do. He is ‘blind’ to the truth, he cannot see it because of that parasite that according to Newts must come from the sewers, in other words used water, and is in other words fated to fail so long as the parasite is here.

It’s a good thing Newts Scamander got rid of it. His eyes are now ready to finally see clearly what has always been right in front of him.

[bigskydreaming]

A lot of the discussions about AoX and the stuff said about the X-Tremists has altered my view of some elements of all that, I’m not gonna lie. The X-Tremists definitely isn’t what I initially thought it was, and in the context of all the X-Men being heavily brainwashed and operating based on a selectively altered sense of self and reality, even if I still don’t agree with it, I GET the intention behind picking gay and bi characters to be the cast of this particular book. 

Like, I can understand how when focused on the end goal rather than the set up, there’s a satisfying payoff to it being gay and bi characters pissed at being shoved back into the closet who are the ones best positioned to figure out what’s really going on and fight back against it once they do. I can connect those dots, see how that story choice makes sense and has the sense of catharsis Williams talked about getting from writing it. From the angle of gay/bi characters fuck shit up because they’re not gonna take society or some higher authority determining who they can and can’t love, that fits.

In a lot of ways, its the compulsory sexuality story I’ve ranted for months about wanting to see in regards to Bobby’s situation and the fact that Jean’s actions are ultimately the reason he spent so long in the closet.

BUT. At the same time....that’s kinda the problem?

Because that story I talked about wanting to see with Bobby, it didn’t come from nowhere, I didn’t just go ‘oh hey what if.’ It came from just putting together the pieces that were already there. Everything needed to tell this particular story about being pissed at someone overriding your own sense of self and telling you who you needed to be for the sake of society, the timeline, whatever....it was already there. In the main universe. Already written. Every single element needed to tell that specific narrative was already in place.

Completely unacknowledged.

And I think that’s a big part of where my cynicism comes from, beyond just not trusting Marvel as a whole. Because the fact that this specific narrative was already laid out, already in play, hell, already the fallout of a Grey’s choices and mucking around with Bobby’s head.....without it ever being addressed, its hard to see how a five issue mini (that needs at least an issue or two to set up the revelations to the characters) can do for that narrative spread out among three gay/bi characters what nobody bothered to do with just one character in three years worth of opportunities.

(And if in the end it turns out by the time all of this is over NOBODY in-story has drawn the parallel between this and Bobby’s own narrative even before all this, like.....that’s gonna bug.)

But anyway. When you look at it from that perspective, as essentially the same narrative that was already set up and put in place and then completely overlooked for Bobby already.....then its hard to see this as anything other than gratuitous. Because that was already this same narrative, WITHOUT the fascist imagery and associations. Bobby already had every reason to be pissed - just needed those reasons to be raised and acknowledged - WITHOUT needing the trauma of being made unwillingly complicit in storm trooper actions heaped on top of how much he would already be fucked up from just the forced closeting. The painful catharsis of watching a gay hero push back against forces trying to make him something other than he is and wants to be, it was already locked and loaded ready to go - WITHOUT the trauma part of that narrative needing to be added to two other characters’ narratives additionally.

It just feels...unnecessary.

Like, I can’t stop fixating on that damn armband, is one of the things. I understand the in-story logic, that its ultimately one of the clues that makes them wake up to the realization something is very wrong, for Bobby to be wearing that. I understand that the intention there is for it to be a motivating factor for Bobby’s anger, making him intensely furious that this was done to him, put on him. But the thing I can’t understand is what makes the armband necessary to do all that?

Its not needed in order to leave bread crumbs for them to see how things are messed up and where. There are other options available, other ways to portray how things are different or wrong. I’ll never agree its necessary for THAT to be the thing that makes Bobby enraged. Like look at everything I was saying about his main universe storyline. Why not just use this to allow Bobby to have a different perspective on his lack of agency in all that and the how and why of his staying repressed for so long, have this second instance of telepathic meddling with his sense of self make the first more clearly obvious to him. Isn’t that already more than enough to make Bobby furious and intent on beating the fucking shit out of Nate Grey because he’s sick of not knowing how much of his sense of self is actually HIM and how much of it is the result of telepaths sticking their nose where they don’t belong, without any hint of remorse?

When its your perspective that the more offensive elements of this story aren’t necessary, its all but impossible to look at anything else. They’re the elephant in the room. The things your eye can’t stray from in those ‘what in this picture doesn’t belong’ games once you find them, because its so painfully obvious then that they don’t belong.

And the other thing, the big thing that I’m really upset at seeing so many other white LGBTQ+ readers dismiss or just trivialize....personally, I find it impossible to find empowerment in three white gay/bi characters who are used to police the romantic and sexual relationships of characters of color and especially LGBTQ+ characters of color. I get that this isn’t on Williams, that it wasn’t her choice to have the X-Tremists arrest Bishop and Bling specifically, that those happened in other books. But this is an area where editorial oversight - used properly - would not only be useful, but I honestly believe was NECESSARY. If you’re gonna tell a story like this, do an event like this, play with these themes specifically and talk about how its meant to explore intersectionality, about how intersections of power affect how an individual interacts with society and its institutions....you need to bring your fucking A game, and this event just didn’t. At all. 

You need to be conscious of the fact that Marvel has given its readers, particularly its most marginalized ones, NO reason to have any faith in them, give them any benefit of the doubt, after they’ve spent the better part of 20 years deliberately driving this franchise into the ground because they didn’t get any of the X-Men movie profits. Editorial absolutely NEEDED to be aware of the nuances of this story and be prepared to step in where necessary to prevent things like what happened with Bishop and Bling interfering with the intended point of the X-Tremists mini and costing it more readers. There should have been someone watching all the pieces, someone whose JOB it was to look at the script for NextGen and hand it back and say no, Ed, you can’t have the X-Tremists arrest Bling, you need to pick someone else, pick a straight white character. We’re not having three white gay/bi cops arrest a black lesbian teen for impure thoughts. Nuh uh, no way. Not happening. Same with Bishop. If he absolutely had to be imprisoned in order for the events of Prisoner X to unfold, there should have been a different reason, rather than a random out of the blue pairing with Jean Grey that gets him locked up and her a slap on the wrist. Like, how about the fact that Nate Grey - being from the Age of Apocalypse - is aware that Bishop being a time traveler enabled him to know the AoA wasn’t how events were supposed to happen, and preemptively locked him away because he was afraid Bishop would be similarly able to see through this altered reality and warn people?

Like, when you have a character LITERALLY playing God, as in that’s the entire narrative....deus ex machina isn’t a problem. It’s your actual story engine. You can set the stage however the hell you want and Bishop can be wherever the hell you need him to be with the only reason being Nate Grey arranged for him to be there because that’s where he wanted him to be, fearing he could be a threat.

But seriously, white LGBTQ+ fans need to shut the absolute fuck up about the instances with Bishop and Bling and stop talking over fans of color when they bring them up. Stop trying to minimize it or handwave it away as no big deal, like, that is ugly. That is just, plain UGLY. Stop telling fans of color and LGBTQ+ fans of color any issues they have with white characters arresting black characters for ‘impure’ and ‘barbaric’ thoughts and relationships...like, stop acting like these things are no big deal or that they’re not big ENOUGH of a deal to take away from the empowerment you get from three white gay/bi characters’ narratives. Stop saying the latter is what they should be focusing on, as if its the only variable here that matters, and that they’re just blowing things out of proportion.  Some readers developing a dislike for Bobby because they have to read and see him being depicted the way he is at the expense of characters of color - even if its not ‘his fault’ - like, some readers not wanting to read or see Bobby in stories for awhile or ever because they just can’t get that image out of their head, that’s a valid and understandable reaction to what’s on the page, what they can’t avoid if they want to take in this story on any level at all. Its a reaction EARNED by the narrative choices made overall, and if its not a reaction the narrative wanted to earn, different narrative choices needed to be made.

Honestly, the more I think about it, if this event was going to happen like it or not, if writers had to just make the best of it as much as they could, knowing editorial wasn’t going to be interfering on their behalf when other writers used their characters in ways detrimental to the first writer’s intentions....Bobby, Jean-Paul and Betsy should have been in the cast of Prisoner X, I think. Like, they shouldn’t have been the secret police, the guilty parties motivated by outrage at being used to hurt others like them, they should have been part of the ones who already had plenty of motivational outrage based entirely on experience with being told their love was impure and wrong.

LGBTQ+ characters IMO were already a natural fit for seeing through Nate Grey’s changes to reality, to be arrested for engaging in romantic and sexual relationships in defiance of society’s laws and arbitrary morals. It could have easily been built into the event itself that Nate Grey (who has never identified as anything other than straight) viewed the world through a heteronormative lens. And thus when ‘eliminating’ love and memories of it and things like that, he did so according to a straight person’s perception of what that looked like...and thus potentially overlooked where LGBTQ+ peoples’ experiences had taught them how to keep a secret part of themselves hidden away at the core of their being, their mind, where no one would stumble across any truths they weren’t ready to reveal. LGBTQ+ characters were already a natural fit to be caught breaking the rules of this society instead of keeping it to themselves and staying safe if they started to suspect something was wrong with the way things were....because they were the ones who had already defiantly pushed back against unjust rules and restrictions the first time they realized something wasn’t right with the way society told them they should feel.

The same is true of characters of color of any sexual orientation, given past laws against interracial relationships - I’m not expanding on that not to exclude them, but just because imprisonment narratives have a different context and history with characters of color and that’s not my lane.

But like, if the event was structured to remove the variable of mutant oppression and thus explore intersections of power when everyone was on the same field in that respect, its disingenuous to make up forms of oppression to highlight the flaws in a dystopian society when existing marginalizations already exist once the mutant metaphor is removed. Those already marginalized in our society should be the ones marginalized in that society, else you end up with a ‘what if straight white people were the oppressed and sympathetic’ narrative that nobody asked for. And I do suspect that part of the way AoX is structured IS intended to reflect that, to have LGBTQ+ characters like the X-Tremists and characters of color like Bishop play key roles in toppling Nate Grey’s dystopian vision....I just don’t believe making any of them the secret police works in FAVOR of that rather than against. If your marginalized characters are united by common experiences of being oppressed by straight white mutants once they in turn are no longer oppressed by humans, then you also eliminate the stuff I was talking about earlier, the issue of having an oppressed group fight to put things back to where they were more oppressed. Instead of SPLITTING your characters’ identities along different axes, with the world according to Nate Grey being better for them in the sense that they’re no longer persecuted for being mutants but worse for them because it tries to restrain their sexualities...they don’t need to prioritize between their marginalizations at all. These characters don’t have to ‘sacrifice’ a world in which they aren’t oppressed for one where they are, if they’re still oppressed by that society as gay and bi individuals even though they’re no longer persecuted for being mutants. That’s still messy as hell for a variety of reasons this long fucking post doesn’t need to see their unpacking added to it, but like....

Sigh. Thing is, I know I have a tendency to go off and running in some AU direction like “this is what I would do if I were writing this story” every time I’m critical of shit. Its honestly not because I think I’m the greatest writer ever or oh my ideas are so much better than everything else. 

Its just....I don’t know how else to say it, even though it fails to sink in every damn time I have a variation of this argument...I’m not critical so I can hate things, I’m critical cuz I want them to be better. I don’t come up with different ideas for how else to tell a story BECAUSE I’m critical of it and hate it as is. Its the reverse. I’m critical of stuff BECAUSE I can’t turn off my writer brain and I can see where things could be better or at least fail in new and different ways than the same old repeated mistakes (and thus at least get us closer to better, by eliminating more of what doesn’t work).

Like, I’m just so fucking tired of being talked about like I’m this bitter angry dude who just hates everything and is never happy with any content ever. I’m not angry and loud when I criticize shit because I’m thinking like “This thing you like offended these three people and thus its fucking terrible and you should feel bad!” I’m angry and loud when I criticize shit because I’m thinking “This thing you like offended these three people AND IT DIDN’T FUCKING HAVE TO. THAT CAN BE AVOIDED.”

I don’t posit all these alternative scenarios when I criticize shit because I’m thinking that doing it any way other than my way is bad, and I’m just an egotistical jackass who will never be satisfied with any work other than his own. (LMAO, hell no, I’m insecure as hellllllll about my work, like lolol. How critical I am of other shit is nothing compared to how critical I am of my own).

Point is, when I do that, I’m only doing it to say like....see, look. Here are alternatives. If I can find some, other writers can too.

But other writers have to LOOK for alternatives in order to find them. They have to have a REASON to write things differently than what they already wrote. THAT’S WHAT CRITICISM IS FOR. TO GIVE THEM THAT REASON. TO TELL THEM THIS DOESN’T WORK THE WAY IT IS, BUT IT COULD WORK IF YOU DO SOME OF THESE THINGS DIFFERENTLY.

And when people say “lmao some of you just need to go the fuck outside, like calm down and let people enjoy shit for a change,” what that ACTUALLY sounds like to some of us is “well this thing works for me as is, and thus I see no reason to care about it being better for the people it doesn’t work for or actively offends.”

It’s honestly depressing as hell how many people on this site smugly reblog that “I don’t know how to explain to you that you should care about other people” post, only to turn around and five posts later complain about criticisms of a show they like and are perfectly comfortable with as is.

Its not about telling you that you should never enjoy anything ever. Its not about saying well this thing offends us, and if we can’t enjoy it, nobody should.

Its just like.....its great that you enjoy this thing but wouldn’t it be better if you could still enjoy it and all these people who AREN’T able to enjoy it because of these reasons could now enjoy it more too?

People shutting up about the ways content offends or hurts them or people just settling for sucking it up and dealing with the microaggressions in a creative work, like those things shouldn’t be necessary in order for you to enjoy content or be comfortable with what you’re reading or watching. 

And if it is, that’s a you problem and if you could PLEASE stop projecting it on to people who just want things to be better and more enjoyable across the board - like that’d be great kthxbai.

[whileiamdying]

My Own Private Idaho: Private Place

It’s night in the desert. Mike (River Phoenix), a teenage hustler given to bouts of narcolepsy, and Scott (Keanu Reeves), a slumming preppy prince, are huddled over a campfire. “I just want to kiss you, man,” says Mike softly. The words and the barely audible sound of his voice, caught between hope and despair, speak to anyone ever ripped apart by unrequited love. For all its flannel and Gore-Tex, the scene is a startlingly naked expression of lovelorn longing. Credit both Gus Van Sant, the director, and Phoenix, his perfect actor, with the heartbreak that floods My Own Private Idaho.

Released in 1991, Idaho was Van Sant’s third feature film and remains his most anarchic and, in many ways, ambitious. It’s certainly the film in which his art-school sensibility and the postmodernist aesthetics that dominated the art world during the seventies and eighties are most in play. Van Sant attended the Rhode Island School of Design from 1971 to 1975 (among his schoolmates were David Byrne and other members of the Talking Heads), shifting his focus from painting to film partway through his time there. The explosion of the sixties underground film scene was over, but Andy Warhol was still an influence, as were Kenneth Anger and other avant-garde film diarists who toted their 16 mm and Super 8 cameras everywhere. After a brief stab at working in the Hollywood film industry and a stint in advertising in New York, Van Sant made his first released feature, Mala Noche, in 1985, with roughly $20,000 of his own money. A gritty, lyrical black-and-white stunner about a gay skid-row store clerk’s obsession with a Mexican migrant worker, it caught the eye of some discerning Hollywood producers and led to his making his second, slightly more conventional feature, 1989’s Drugstore Cowboy, starring Matt Dillon as the leader of a quartet of junkies who rob pharmacies to feed their habits. The toughness of both films, the director’s obvious empathy for alienated adolescents, and his talent for getting shockingly genuine perfor­mances from his actors helped him land the teenage idols Phoenix and Reeves for My Own Private Idaho.

What is striking about Idaho today, in light of Van Sant’s later films, is its extraordinary hybridity. Where Psycho (1998), Gerry (2002), and Elephant (2003) are each structured by a single daring formal device—the shot-by-shot mimicry of Hitchcock’s original in Psycho; the extended tracking shots in Gerry and Elephant—Idaho is a collage that includes even a kitchen sink and some Dutch Boy cleanser for scrubbing it down. Van Sant mixes and matches scenes of documentary-style realism with campy musical set pieces, improvised dialogue with bowdlerized Shakespeare, dream sequences shot in grainy Super 8 with 35 mm vistas of the Pacific Northwest, and, on the soundtrack, Rudy Vallee with the Pogues. The main source materials for Idaho’s screenplay were two completely separate scripts and a short story, all written by Van Sant. One of the scripts was a modern-day adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henry IV.

Van Sant ties these various elements together by filtering the entire narrative through Mike’s consciousness. The irony is that the narcoleptic Mike is among the most unconscious characters to ever hit the screen. Abandoned by his mother early in life, he was raised by his brutish brother/father (with echoes of Chinatown, although, since Mike’s origins are below the poverty line, his incestuous parentage is no Greek tragedy, just an extra oedipal wrinkle in a disenfranchised existence). Mike’s narcolepsy is his defense against his childhood agony of abandonment. Anything that reminds him of his lost mother triggers a severe psychosomatic reaction. He shakes so violently he looks like he’s going to explode, and then keels over in a stupor. Idaho’s fragmented editing style—its heterogeneous visual associations and dense layering of words, sounds, and music—and its split-second shifts between the burlesqued and the heartfelt evoke Mike’s confusion of inside and outside, past and present, dreams and waking life.

The film opens on the road, for it is, above all, a road movie. It is the road onto which both Mike’s interior journey from fragile adolescence to precarious adulthood and his desultory attempts to find his missing mother are mapped. We look down a long stretch of two-lane highway, bisecting the desert scrubland, curving upward as it disappears into the distant mountain haze. Like a shot, Mike skids into view. His cheek, with its ragged blond sideburn and faint tracing of acne, is disorientingly close. He looks down the road and decides he has been here before. “There’s not another road anywhere that looks like this road . . . It’s one kind of place . . . Like a fucked-up face,” he says, talking not entirely to himself but not quite to us either. Just in case we’re not yet in touch with Mike’s way of seeing, Van Sant helpfully irises down around the relevant features: the eyes are two bushes and the smile the shadow of a passing cloud. Suddenly, Mike collapses in the middle of the road. He dreams a faded home movie of himself as a child, safe in the arms of his mother, a blowsy strawberry blonde with a Mona Lisa smile seated on the porch of a wood-frame house. Clouds rush across the sky, salmon leap in slow motion upriver toward their spawning grounds, and Mike wakes in a Seattle hotel room, being sucked off by a balding, beer-bellied john. Mike reaches orgasm and a wooden barn comes crashing out of the sky, splintering onto the highway.

Having shown us something of Mike’s dreamy mindscape and the way he makes a living, Van Sant then introduces us to his social set, and in particular to the object of his desire, Scott Favor. The son of the mayor, Scott is sowing his wild oats by hanging out with this group of homeless rent boys and turning the occasional trick himself. Scott is the film’s Prince Hal. Its Falstaff is Bob Pigeon (William Richert), a fat, beer-­guzzling chicken hawk who’s got a thing for the narcissistic scion. Scott has also fallen into the habit of taking care of the vulnerable Mike.

It’s on a trip to find Mike’s mother that the two friends spend the night, like so many cowboy duos have done, huddled over the campfire. And Mike, more daring and desperate than those cowboys before him, risks, or perhaps courts, a repetition of his primal loss by confessing his love to Scott. When I interviewed Van Sant at the time of the film’s release, he said that he’d originally thought the scene would be much more casual. “The character of Mike was originally kind of asexual. Sex was something that he traded in, so he had no real sexual identity. But because he’s bored and they’re in the desert, he makes a pass at his friend. And it just sort of goes by, but his friend also notices that he needs something, he needs to be close, so he says, ‘We can be friends,’ and he hugs him. That was all it was going to be. But River makes it more like he’s attracted to his friend, that he’s really in love with him. He made the whole character that way.”

Mike’s raw need is too much for the self-protective Scott to cope with. After a terrifying encounter with Mike’s alcoholic brother/father and an acrobatic bedroom threesome with Hans (Udo Kier)—the ubiquitous john who seems to have pursued them across several states—they wind up in Rome, where Scott, in a homophobic panic, falls in love, not with a French princess but with a mysterious Italian beauty.

Idaho juxtaposes the societal extremes of haves and have-nots. For the first time, Van Sant includes a leading character whose upper-middle-class origins correspond with his own. But unlike Van Sant, who for most of his career has stayed true to his own Americanized version of the “art film,” Scott betrays not only his friends but his sexuality for money and power. The film climaxes with a double funeral. Scott’s two fathers—Mayor Favor and Bob Pigeon—have died one right after the other and are being buried in the same graveyard. The schizoid structure of the scene is, for once, not a projection of Mike’s fragmented psyche but rather a mini-allegory of the economic polarization of America that was already grotesquely evident during the Reagan–Bush I era and is even more pronounced today. Eyes front, spines stiffened, the properly heterosexual Favor clan, now led by Scott and his wife, is desperately trying to ignore the carnivalesque spectacle taking place a few hundred meters away. Mike and his fellow outcasts are furiously dancing on Bob’s grave. One close-up is enough to suggest that Mike’s first eruption of anger is also his first taste of liberation.

Threaded with home-movie images (no filmmaker has ever been better than Van Sant at forging and integrating them), My Own Private Idaho is a crazy quilt of family romances. Everybody is either looking for or escaping from their families, or organizing new families, or poring over photographs of other people’s families. In the campfire scene, Mike prefaces his confession of love by agonizing, “If I had a normal family and a good upbringing, then I would have been a well-adjusted person . . . Didn’t have a dog, or a normal dad, anyway.” “What’s a normal dad?” asks Scott, the sophisticate, with a shrug. Something in the way he says “normal” recalls the moment in Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita—another absurdist road movie about impossible love—when Quilty (Peter Sellers), masquerading as a lonely policeman, terrorizes Humbert (James Mason), who has been passing off the underage Lo as his daughter. “I wish I had a normal, nice, little, normal daughter like that,” leers Sellers.

Deeply regressive, Mike’s desire is for the safety of the mother’s body. “Locked in the arms of love,” the last line of “Deep Night,” the Rudy Vallee recording heard several times during the film, is the last line on Idaho’s soundtrack, played over the closing credits. To what, then, does the film’s title refer? “My Own Private Idaho” is an imaginary place where one is locked in the arms of love—that is, both protected and free. It is the promise of America, chronically out of joint with reality, especially for its most vulnerable inhabitants. At the end of the film, Mike is once again alone, lying unconscious on the highway. The occupants of the first car that stops steal his shoes and leave. A second car pulls up, and the driver gets out, picks him up, deposits him in the backseat, and drives off. It’s the last we see of Mike. Throughout the scene, we hear the strains of “America the Beautiful,” the anthem couched as a prayer for the inhabitants of this natural paradise of “purple mountains” and “fruited plain” to treat one another as brothers. Is it “brotherhood” that Mike finds, or some darker fate? Given the temper of the times, the glimmer of hope in Van Sant’s open ending has all but faded away.

— By Amy Taublin, 07/OCT/2015

[justincaseitmatters]

Rewind: A Man and His Film

L.Q. Jones returns to KC with his cautionary tale, A Boy and His Dog

by Dan Lybarger KCActive.com April 14, 2010

At 82, character actor L.Q. Jones has a lot to be proud of. Even if his name doesn’t sound familiar, it’s a safe bet that he’s been in the movie theater with you or on your TV. The tall Texas-born actor with the craggy voice and a bushy mustache has been in The Wild Bunch, Casino, Gunsmoke, Hell is for Heroes, Rawhide and even the movie version of A Prairie Home Companion, directed by Kansas City’s own Robert Altman.

He’s collaborated with everyone from Elvis Presley to Marlon Brando to Meryl Streep to Martin Scorsese to Charlton Heston to Clint Eastwood to Sir Anthony Hopkins to Antonio Banderas.

Because he’s best known for starring in a long string of television and movie westerns, it initially seems odd that Jones is in his own words “inordinately proud” of having written and directed a 1975 science fiction film that has stayed in theaters like gum under the seats. This is despite the fact that  A Boy and His Dog has been on video and “Netflixable.”

The film received the 1976 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation at the 34th World Science Fiction Convention-Mid America. Jones came to Kansas City to promote the film when it originally opened and will be returning to Cowtown with a new 35mm print on Saturday, 7 p.m., at the Tivoli Theater as part of KC FilmFest. Tickets are available at www.kcjubilee.org.

True vision

If Jones seems an unlikely custodian of science fiction writer Harlan Ellison’s vision of a world where the surface of the earth is a vast wasteland because of World War IV, a few minutes on the phone will let you know the source of the film’s droll, sardonic humor.

While setting up an interview, I told Jones I was looking forward to our conversation. He replied, “You may not think so after we’re through.” Before we eventually talked, he politely told his other caller, “Let me lie to this gentleman, and give me a buzz back in a couple of hours.”

When I informed him that I viewed the film online before the interview, he sounded almost sorry and said, “I can’t blow smoke at you because you’ve seen it. I can lie, but you’ll catch me at it.”

When I talked with him about the film’s print, I found out I hadn’t seen the movie properly. On VHS, the film was presented in pan and scan, which means that nearly a quarter of the picture was removed in order for the movie to fit on a standard television. Through much of the film, a pre-Miami Vice Don Johnson is wandering through the frame with only a dog for company, and the sense of loneliness gets lost in the narrower format.

Even on DVD or Blu-Ray, there are some subtle shots that need the big screen treatment. According to Jones, the opportunity to catch A Boy and His Dog on a theatrical screen was almost lost. “They said, you need to put (the movie on stock) where the negative will last 50 years,” he recalls. “Of course, it cost an arm and a leg, but that’s what we wanted to do, so we took it up. Then, of course, they came back and said, ‘Well, we do have a little problem. It doesn’t last 50 years. It’s barely lasted 30.’

“The picture was sliding off the negative. We were losing our picture. When I say losing it, I don’t mean it was totally falling off of the print. But everything was changing. Blues were going to greens. Greens were going to pinks. And everything’s shifting, which is bad for us.”

The restoration was additionally hampered by the fact that the film was shot in a process known as Technoscope, which was initially cheaper than 35 mm film because it took up half as much space. Unfortunately, the machines necessary to print the negatives aren’t readily available so the film had to be restored one frame at a time. This meant the restoration and the new prints took nearly three to four months to complete. Jones says, “When we got through, you have a product just like you shot the picture yesterday.”

Not your typical dog story

Part of the reason the film required restoration is that Jones and Ellison’s story is tricky and requires a clear image to be properly understood. To say the film is out of the mainstream is an understatement. After a prologue of nuclear warheads exploding (which was added in 1982), we hear a couple of voices talking as a scruffy, battered young man named Vic (Johnson) crawls along the ground along a seemingly endless desert. We hear both Johnson’s familiar nasal drawl with a deeper, unfamiliar voice.

   Tiger and Vic (Don Johnson) in A Boy and His Dog  

Jones says, “We start with the bottom of a shoe. The voice to most people is friendly, courteous, reverent. It’s a father speaking. It’s a brother, a mother. It’s a military man. It’s a professor that’s talking. It’s got all those timbres. And it starts telling you things your eye sees. You go, ‘Ah. It’s the truth. It knows what it’s talking about. It knows what it’s doing.’

“Incidentally, the voice is coming from a dog.”

The animal in question is Blood, played by Tiger, the dog who starred in The Brady Bunch. He has the disembodied voice of Tim McIntire, who also provided some of the film’s music. Blood, through reasons that are only alluded to in the film, can communicate telepathically with Vic and is smarter, more compassionate and more perceptive than any human being left in the world.

“You realize the only smart human thing in the picture is the dog. All the rest of the things have become animals,” says Jones. “Believe it or not, I’m trying to get you to think. If we don’t get our head out of our fanny, what’s on the screen in A Boy and His Dog is going to happen. That’s the way the world’s going to end up if we don’t stop being so damn greedy and beating up on each other.”

This especially applies to the uncouth Vic, who seeks out women for sex when he’s not scrounging for food. Johnson was an unusually brave performer because he played second fiddle to Tiger. Jones recalls Tiger may indeed have been as bright as the character he was playing.

“No matter how brilliant, you can’t teach any animal sequential tricks. You can teach them to do one, maybe even two, but that’s it,” Jones says. “I said, ‘Tiger, god dammit, you’re on the wrong side of the boiler. I can’t see you. I’m talking to the dog. I’m not talking to the trainer. The dog stays glued to (Johnson’s knee). He stays with him. When Don stops, the dog stops, the way an actor should.”

The dog then proceeds to change positions and bursts into tears on cue in a single take. “Now think about that, sports fans. There are eight tricks in a row. I can’t teach a human actor to do that, and the dog did it in one take,” says Jones. “I accused (trainer) Joe Hornok of reading him the script every night because the damn dog knew what to do that day,” Jones says.

Local vibe

Although the film was shot in California, some of the film’s success can be tied to some intended and unintended local ties. Johnson was a born in Flat Creek, MO, grew up in Kansas and went to college at KU. According to Jones, Johnson was seen as a promising talent during the mid-‘70s, even if he wasn’t a household name yet.

“He was doing big pictures, but he wasn’t making an imprint. I talked to a little over 500 people for the male and female (Susanne Benton) leads in the picture. I worked on that for, good heaven, a year and a half to see if I had the right person. In watching Don work, I knew he could do it, and he does a marvelous job. The old adage is don’t ever work with dogs. Nobody’s even saying don’t work with talking dogs, but he did, and he made it work,” says Jones.

Another local connection isn’t immediately obvious. Later in the film, Vic is lured into a subterranean community that seems like a nightmarish parody of small-town life before the nuclear war. The bizarre community resembles Silver Dollar City on crack, only without any willing tourists. Ellison and Jones named it “Topeka.”

As a native of Kansas’ capital, I had to ask him why he and Ellison chose that name for the dystopia, he first quips, “No. Google. You’re now Google.”

“I really don’t. I tried to stay as close to what Harlan what was doing in the book. I’m used to the name. I’ve been there. I know what the people are like. It’s comfortable, Middle America. I said, ‘Hey, it’ll work.’ I’ve asked Harlan. You can talk to Harlan about things like this. Eventually, you realize he doesn’t know what he’s saying anyway.”

According to Jones, Kansas City was where he faced the most puzzling question about his five-year labor of love with A Boy and His Dog. When a radio host asked him why he made it and wouldn’t accept what Jones told him, the director mulled the question for months.

“The real, real answer is they told me I could not do it. That made me so mad that made me say, ‘By God, I’ll show you,’ he says.

While most films or television shows might employ dozens of animals to play a single character. A Boy and His Dog was entirely dependent on Tiger.

“Do you know what we were going to do if the dog didn’t work or if the dog got sick?” Jones asks. He then answers, “Me. I had makeup. I had wardrobe. I was going to be the dog, as a character, not as a dog, of course.”

“We’ve got one dog. His stand-in was a stuffed toy. If he steps on nail or a piece of glass, we’re done. We’ve got 52 tons of crap to build our sets: everything broken, rusty wires, crap, junk from hospitals. If something happens to the dog, I put on the stuff, and I become a human character. That’s losing 99 percent of what’s making it work. But that’s better than not getting the picture done at all. From listening to everybody, they told me it couldn’t be done.”

He laughs, “They were right. I couldn’t do it.

[collage-portfolio-time]

Interview Preparation

Career Choice : Illustrator

Company Choice : FolioArt

1. Tell me about yourself. I am a 16 year old artist who has been working with portraiture, both realistic and cartoonish, since I was very small. I have won 2 consecutive awards for the international government-run ‘Manga Jiman’ competition, both in 2019 and 2020, winning the youths prize in 2019 and both the youths prize and 7th place in 2020, ‘making history’ as I won the youths prize two years running. The music I listen to inspires me a lot as what I draw can sometimes entirely depend on what I am listening to at the time. I have had a major interest in manga and anime since I was young and that has also influenced my style of work and the fandoms I go around to spread my collection of work to different places of the internet.

2. Why do you want to work for us? I love the fact your company will represent a range of illustrators, both well-known and up and coming. That makes you seem much more open to different styles of work and experimentation to me which I find myself drawn to.

3. What can you bring to our company? Why should we hire you? I can bring a range of styles. Like Ive said before, I work in both realism and cartoonish styles of work, which I feel could bring more people in from completely different sides of the art world. I can also work with a wide range of mediums, from digital work to watercolors, although I find myself preferring digital for the clarity you can get in an image.

4. What do you know about our company? You were established in central London in the 1970’s and are now working worldwide. You cover all sides of the art world from traditional works to GIF’s. You say you have a personal relationship with your illustrators. You have also represented artists that have worked with well-known bands for album art which include Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and The Rolling Stones, and have also had artists under your wing work with film studios like when Joe Petagna created the concept for the Facehugger in Alien.

5. Where do you see yourself in 5 years? What are your career goals? I hope to see myself with enough of a following to simply be able to create for myself and be able to make a living, as selfish as that sounds. I don’t enjoy working for others unless I like their concepts and ideas as I will just simply be uninterested in what I create and end up producing something boring as a result. I want to work to the best of my ability, and as much as the art world is ran on what others want to see, I want to dictate what I do in the process while also getting approval from the people who will consume it.

6. Why did you choose this field/career path? I chose this career path as it’s the only thing I know. As I child I would never let myself do anything but draw, I was obsessed with the gratification I got when I saw that I was improving. That was probably a detriment in the long run as now I feel obligated to work in the art industry because if I don’t what have I been doing this whole time. I feel like I owe it to myself and to the people who have funded my interests and hobby.

7. Can you tell me about your role in your current place of work? Right now I am a college student, so my role is to learn. I will create, be criticized and create again. My job is to learn from the criticism and improve upon myself to represent the collage in a good light as well as myself, and hopefully gain recognition so the collage can say that they taught me for better reputation.

8. What are your strengths/weaknesses? My biggest weakness is my pride. I will become quite offended by the slightest bit of criticism that I think isn't warranted, and yet I am so self-critical that I will rip a piece to shreds if I go a touch out of my lines while painting. It hurts to have my fears confirmed that I won't be the gifted child forever and that I will blur into the crowd of other talented artists in my classroom. It's not only that but also the thought that I spent so long on a piece to be told that it didn’t match up to an idea someone else wanted or there wasn’t enough color, and I find myself unconsciously lashing out, but I am trying to work past that and take the criticism thankfully. Despite that, what could be considered one of my greatest strengths from time to time will be my stubbornness, as I will stick to a plan I like no matter what others tell me might go wrong, which sometimes works in my favor. Technically, I am more skilled with watercolors and digital mediums than I thought I was, as the amount of people I hear struggle with them is astonishing to me as I find I work with them with relative ease, but to counter that I now struggle with mediums such as acrylics and colored pencils as Ive laid off them for so long. I hope to get better with those mediums in the future as I practice more with them again.

9. Tell me about a time when you worked in a team? Were you a leader/coordinator/etc.? I studied performing arts when I was at The Academy Grimsby secondary school. We were tasked to create a script or scenario based on a prompt that I can't quite place now, and we were a group of 4 actors as most people there were dancers. I ended up writing up the entire script that I put together, although the others did prompt some ideas, and almost directing practices. I felt I was forced into a leading position as the others weren't engaging as much as they probably should have, apart from one other person who seemed to take it as seriously as I did. I feel despite the fact I was practically shoved into the lead, and even though the script was probably shoddy as I had never really written besides from creative writing in English, I lead them well considering I was known to be quite antisocial and introverted. That situation made me realize that I was better at controlling situations and being assertive to others than I ever thought I would be, although I wasn’t too strict or bossy from what I remember.

10. Tell me about a time when you faced a challenge. What was your reaction? How did you solve it? I faced quite a big challenge when I created the first page of my 2020 Manga Jiman entry. In the first page you get quite a copious amount of building shots, and while it looked good how I imagined it, I realized when I had finished the sketch that I had never really drawn a building before. It took me two days of constant redoing, experimentation and almost scrapping the first page entirely before I finally felt happy with what I had produced. Nowadays I find it much easier to step out of my comfort zone and delve into architecture when drawing backgrounds, and I feel this experience helped me progress as an artist.

11. Tell me about an accomplishment you are most proud of. Ive mentioned this before a copious amount of times, but my Manga Jiman awards. As they are government run and judges by professional mangaka (manga creators) I think it gives my awards that extra flair of pride that makes me cling to them. The thing I will probably particularly cling to is the fact they said I was ‘making history’ with my consecutive youths prize wins, which I think is quite a good thing to be able to say on a resume. Not only that, but my winning submission for the 2020 competition was given a talk about on the award ceremony by a legendary mangaka Kiriko Kubo, who said my ‘line was neat, the layout was good and the main character was charming.’,’the work can be read smoothly’, and that ‘creating atmosphere is important, and being able to do it like this is an exellent talent’. It gives me pride that someone so prestigious in a world I had barely entered would praise my work so highly.

12. What motivates you? What can motivate me most are two things: approval from others and money. I am materialistic at heart but also sensitive to others comments on my work, so the both end up being great pushes in my art career. I feel if I am being paid for my work that it is worth something, because objectively it is, and being praised for what I do makes me feel validated beyond what I thought was possible, so the two can push me to keep going.

13. What was your biggest failure? What did you learn from it? My biggest failure is the many times Ive tried to work with soft pastels. I don’t know what it is with that medium that renders me unable to function with them but I cannot create a good piece with those sticks of chalk in my hands. I learnt that I am not the best with dry mediums and should probably keep to my paints and digital mediums for now, although I'm always open to trying them out again and again until I get used to them.

14. What was your biggest mistake? How did you fix it? My biggest mistake was thinking I was going to get placed in my first Manga Jiman entry in 2019. I was 15 at the time, so there wasn’t much of a chance I was going to be placed within the top 10 because of my age alone but I didn’t realize that at the time. I had gotten so apprehensive about results that should've been obvious from the moment I was shortlisted, but I was aiming for the top 5 in the placings. I still think that my work might've placed in top 5 had I been older, but the embarrassment and sadness about ‘only’ getting youths prize at the time was almost overwhelming. That experience taught me not to get my hopes up on stuff like that and set myself up for the worst when it comes to things like this in the future, which I did in the 2020 entry. I was simply aiming for 10th place as I wasn’t even aware the youths prize was being awarded that year because there was only 11 of us, and one of the prizes was the yonkoma award for people who were between 11 and 13 containing a single 4 panel page which one of the shortlisted entries mirrored. I ended up getting more that I thought I would've in the terms of awards and recognition which I was happy about.

15. Are you willing to relocate/travel? I am willing to relocate and travel, although i would prefer to do so with someone else I trust as I tend to get nervous in new situations should that be possible.

16. Do you have any hobbies? What are they? I don’t really do much other than draw for my social media’s and complete collage work. I do small things such as singing and watching twitch streamers, but those are few and far between or happening while I work so I don’t think they can be considered big hobbies of mine. I used to bake when I had to take a lot of time out of secondary school due to sickness but I had a lot of spare time back then so it was more possible for me to have hobbies other than art.

17. What are your computer skills/technical skills? I know how to work almost all Microsoft programs, office 365/outlook, and various digital art programmes such as medibang paint pro and the basics of photoshop/illustrator. I also know general video editing such as keyframing and audio manipulation in Wondershare Filmora.

18. How did you hear about this position? I chose to contact you for this position as I had found you take submissions for new artists to represent and thought I'd shoot my shot.

19. What are your salary requirements? Minimum wage and whatever you/the client feel I deserve on top of that, even if that’s nothing at all. As long as I get minimum wage for my work and supplies, I am fine with that.

20. Do you have any questions for me? How would you represent me? Would it be a situation where you would recommend me to people looking to commission and leave us to our devices or would you be there the whole process?

[ahouseoflies]

The Best Films of 2019, Part IV

Part III, Part II, Part I PRETTY PRETTY GOOD MOVIES

62. Shazam! (David F. Sandberg)- One of the most comic-booky movies to come around in a while in the sense that it seems to be in fast forward for the first third, using shorthands because it has too much story to tell. I am sad to report that Shazam! has no Movie Stars in it, and I didn't realize how essential those were to the superhero genre. There is a cagey standalone quality to its modest bets though. I like that it's anchored in a real place and isn't afraid to be a little too scary for kids. I would see it mostly as a product of potential though, for a funny Jack Dylan Grazer, for the filmmakers, and for the studio. As a student of weird billing, I have so many questions about Adam Brody getting awarded fifth lead for a bit part.

61. Fighting with My Family (Stephen Merchant)- Dwayne Johnson as producer feels like the auteur here, since the formulaic story has more to do with his combed-over, please-everyone persona than with Stephen Merchant's more messy, improvisatory style. I couldn't care less about the time spent on Jack Lowden's brother character, but I was impressed with the physical part of Florence Pugh's performance. This is a movie you've seen a hundred times, but it hits most of its marks skillfully. 60. Spider-Man: Far From Home (Jon Watts)- This is a movie in which a spurned tech innovator uses drone projectors to stage a battle in which he defeats an elemental water monster to save Venice. The best sequence is one in which a boy tries to trick his friends into letting him sit next to the girl he likes on a flight.  59. John Wick: Chapter 3- Parabellum (Chad Stahelski)- What a criticism it is to claim that the filmmakers give in too much to fanservice, especially since I don't know what that word means anymore if something like this is the monoculture. So they gave us, the audience, what we wanted, and I was upset that it was two hours and ten minutes? Seriously though, have you ever eaten too much ice cream? 58. Fyre (Chris Smith)- An interesting yarn that gets at the foolishness of Internet influencing better than anything else that I've seen. I was surprised by how distant many of the subjects seemed, as if only the Big Bad Billy was responsible for any misleading. And I was grateful that, despite the level of criminality on display, it was still as funny as the tweets were at the time. The film lacks shape though, and it would be nice to have somebody smart on hand to answer questions. Can someone explain to me why it's so important that the island used to be Pablo Escobar's? Why should I want to be like Pablo Escobar? 57. Leaving Neverland (Dan Reed)- Part 1 works because of the striking similarities in the parallel stories, as well as the subjects' perspicacious understanding of their own emotions and childhood psychology. So Part 2 gets extremely frustrating when these men, who have already proven how articulate they are, seem puzzled by the obvious psychological problems they have as adults. 56. Diane (Kent Jones)- This movie is kind of good when it's purely slice-of-life, before it declares what it is. It's very good once it declares itself as a routine of self-flagellation, a sort of Raging Bull for women with multiple recipes for tater tot hotdish. It's a little less good when it speeds up and goes back on that thesis near the end. For the record, I think Mary Kay Place is fine. I don't get the critical adoration.

55. Rocketman (Dexter Fletcher)- If the choice is Bohemian Rhapsody or this, then I'll take this every time. Unlike the former, Elton John's life doesn't present an obvious high point in the second half or easy conflict for the first half. As a result, the relationships within John's family seem broad with manufactured conflict. (His birth father's hardness isn't that far off from Walk Hard's "wrong kid died.") But there's an authenticity here that's refreshing, a respect to the unique friendship between Elton and Bernie and a respect for the transformative power of the music. That sincerity extends to Egerton's generous performance, which nails the self-effacing Elton John smile. So there are some biopic structural problems that can't be helped, but if only to admire the '80s fits that Elton gets off, attention must be paid. 54. Triple Frontier (J.C. Chandor)- A useful example for differentiating between tropes and cliches of the action drama genre. For someone who gets less amped than I do for dudes meeting in a shipping container to have a conversation about how "now is the time to get out," it's probably full of cliches. For fans of hyper-masculine parables about getting a team together (that are also sort of meta-commentaries on their lead actor's fallen star), it's full of tropes. 53. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part (Mike Mitchell)- The plot is nearly incoherent, and the sequel isn't really satirizing anything like the first one was. But the jokes come at a Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker clip. A character in a car chase saying, "It's like she knows my every move" before a cut reveals he's been using turn signals? That's some Frank Drebin stuff. 52. Long Shot (Jonathan Levine)- Jonathan Levine has carved out an interesting directorial space for himself, with a career far different from what I imagined when I saw and loved The Wackness, a film to which I'm a little afraid to return. Levine is making, at the highest level possible ($40 million budget?), the types of movies that we claim don't get made anymore. A one-crazy-night Christmas comedy, an adventure comedy, and now a political romantic comedy, all with top flight Movie Stars. Long Shot seems like a rare opportunity to put Seth Rogen and Charlize Theron together and do something special, and what we come out with is...cute. For every good decision the film makes--what a supporting cast, all playing rounded characters--it makes a bad one--leaning too heavily into Rogen's patented "I don't really know what we're yelling about" delivery. The music is uninspired, but the presidential satire is pretty clever. The rhythm of the film is jagged and doesn't really cut together, but the script is very fair to the Theron character. Even in the general tone of the film's politics, it declares a few ideals, but those positions are still too neutral and obvious. I had a good time, but in a more capable director's hands, this experience wouldn't feel like math. 51. Isn’t It Romantic (Todd Strauss-Schulson)- So frothy that it almost doesn't believe in itself, especially near the end, but I found myself laughing a lot. Regarding the gay best friend, I'm very interested in the space of politically incorrect humor that is acceptable only because the work has built up self-awareness in other areas. That's a difficult negotiation, but this movie balances it. 50. Yesterday (Danny Boyle)- There's one twist that stretches the moral center of the film, and two minutes later there's a twist that's probably just a bridge too far in good taste. Other than that, this is a really cute Richard Curtis script, and it's nice to hear "Hey Jude" on movie speakers. 49. Ready or Not (Radio Silence)- Short and spicy, despite one or two too many twists. I'm in the front row of the Adam Brody Revival, but I appreciated the movie more as an exercise in the paranoid misery built into wealth. I wish I could have written the line down, but Alex says something like, "I didn't realize how much you could do just because your family said that it was okay," and that's the whole film. If you can, see it without watching the trailer first.

48. The Laundromat (Steven Soderbergh)- Mary Ann Bernard is a Steven Soderbergh pseudonym, but what if he did hire an outside editor? What if someone saved him from himself? It's hard to believe that Meryl Streep is the heart of the film--if the film's thesis is "The meek will inherit the Earth?"--if we go on a twenty-minute detour to an African family and a ten-minute detour to China. I laughed quite a bit, and I admire the audacity of the ending. But this is a movie that knows what it's about without knowing how to be about it.

47. High Flying Bird (Steven Soderbergh)- As a person who can cite most NBA players' cap figures off the top of my head, I should love High Flying Bird, a movie about a sports agent who tries to topple the system during an NBA lockout. Instead I liked it okay. It takes an hour to kick into high gear, but once it does, some self-contained scenes are powerhouses, and the writer of Moonlight was always going to provide an emotional kick that is sometimes absent from Soderbergh's work. Like Soderbergh's Unsane from last year, High Flying Bird is shot on an iPhone, an appropriate form given that the execution is a do-it-yourself parable that takes place mostly inside. Soderbergh is a man who has always tried to trade the ossified system of moviemaking for experimentation, so most reviews have pointed toward the meta quality of capturing a character doing that same thing in another medium. Like most of his post-retirement work, however, I find myself asking one question: "Would anyone care if this were made by another director?" 46. Piercing (Nicolas Pesce)- Good sick fun with a taste for the theatrical. I saw twist one and twist three coming, but twist two was ingenious. It ends the only way it can, which is okay. 45. Booksmart (Olivia Wilde)- At first the film is hard to acclimate to, stylized as it is into a very specific but absurd setting, counteracted by a very specific and realistic relationship. The music cues are all awful until the Perfume Genius one, which is so perfect that it erases the half-dozen clunkers.But it's smartly funny, funnily warm, and warmly smart. The screenplay does some clever things with swapping the protagonists' wants and needs at crucial times. Molly will have an obvious drive that overrides Amy's fear, and then a few scenes later, there will be an organic reversal. 44. Joker (Todd Phillips)- Joker presents more ideas than it cogently lands. I don't disagree with Amanda Dobbins's burn that it feels more like a vision board than a coherent story. Still, its success kind of fascinates me. This dark provocation, shot on real locations, has way more in common with Phoenix entries like You Were Never Really Here than it does with the DCEU. In fact, the comic book shoehorns feel like intrusions into a story about a guy who likes to Jame Gumb skinny-dance. Dunk on me if you want, but I think it's most eerie and affecting as a portrait of mental illness. Whereas Joker is a criminal mastermind in Batman lore, this is a guy helpless enough to scrawl into a notebook, "The worst part about having a mental illness is pretending to people that you don't." And that idea gets borne out in a scene in which he's pausing and rewinding a tape to study how a talk show guest sits and waves like a regular person. It's rare enough to see a person this mentally ill depicted on screen; it's even rarer to see someone this aware of his own isolation and otherness.

[eye-holesinapaperbag]

You know what I’m not gonna pretend that Joss Whedon is a perfect writer, I think it’d be unfair to say that about any writer but that’s not the point, for now Joss Whedon is not a perfect writer. There are certainly issues in his scripts, the occasional racism being a big one (although one thing I think we should all bear in mind: don’t think it’s ever been intentional. Not an excuse by any means, but there’s a big difference between being a racist writer and being a flawed writer who fucks up every so often because they don’t get the intricacies of the issue).

However I do not understand the sudden hatred of him on this site. Like actually stop and think it through for a second here. Go back to buffy, actually think it through. Again, not perfect writing, and some stuff in the early seasons could potentially be interpreted as slut-shaming (although I genuinely believe if you go and watch it again without a closed mind, that was absolutely not the intention). But can we just not forget how fucking important that show was? How much that show paved the way for better representation in tv and movies. It was one of the earliest shows to have an openly lesbian relationship within the main cast (and especially in a main stream show), which honestly I think was handled really well for the time (late 90s, early 2000s, really not a good time for this stuff on tv). It was never sexualised, like even remotely, it was just shown as a normal relationship. The one time it was slightly sexualised was in a dream sequence in Zanders mind which was intended to show the grossness of straight cis dudes. And also to the people complaining that almost no lesbian kisses were shown and the characters were always referred to as “gay” without a mention of the possibility of being bi, REMEMBER WHEN THIS SHOW CAME OUT. Honestly it’s astounding that they got away with showing what they did. Seriously shows we’re being pulled around that time for being less explicit than that.

In terms of buffy as a female character, again there are certainly flaws but AGAIN think about when this came out. Think about other shows around then. Buffy was as good as it got then for feminism. And sure, it could have been better for that stuff but if it wasn’t for buffy we would not be at the point we are at now. We’d be several years behind. She gave young girls a role model, who was tough and a badass but also vulnerable and could be very feminine. She was a well rounded, well written character. A female character who was given an opportunity to be flawed.

Buffy is the reason for so much of the the advancements we’ve had in tv representation and how these characters are written and developed. Yes it would’ve been nice if a non straight white dude was given the opportunity to pave that path, but again at that point in time that was simply not going to happen. That isn’t Joss Whedons fault, and you know what he did a damn good job as a replacement. I mean what do you want him to do? Not write parts for women and lgbtq characters? Sure he’s not the most qualified but speaking as part of the latter community I’d much rather he tried than just didn’t bother, and so far he’s done a good job by me.

Touching on firefly for a second, here’s a mainstream sci-fi show with an ensemble cast with a 50/50 split between male and female characters. Again, that was not common back then. All the female characters are well written, well rounded, interesting and diverse characters. Each one was distinctly different from each other and never once blended together, arguably even more so than the male characters. A point I forgot to mention with buffy was that these were characters who were able to enjoy their sexuality and were never put down for that, except to make a point about a male character being gross. Mal makes comments about Inara’s occupation as a companion but this is always shown as kinda gross and as a representation of a certain way of thinking about things that was separated from what was expected from the audience (mal was frequently shown to be NOT a representative of the audience, hence why he was able to be a very flawed character). Also, while less obvious and less talked about, Inara is a canonically bi character (Kaylee may also be, although that’s a bit more implication than with Inara). I say it again, all of this was a fucking big and frankly brave move when these shows came out and helped a whole fucking lot with improving writing quality and representation.

On top of all of this, both of these shows were just really fucking good. All of this was handled brilliantly, because they just got on with their stories and character development. The lesbian relationship in buffy was a big plot line but the plot line was never “look willows gay now”, it was 100% of the time “willows in a happy relationship, isn’t that nice” and the fact that it was with a girl was talked about exactly as much as it should be which means, if we are talking about true representation here, not very often. Like, a realistic amount. When willow comes out to buffy she’s surprised for like 10 seconds and then the show moves on, which is how it fucking should be. It wasn’t a lazily thrown together “coming out and dealing with my lesbianism” plot line, it just got on with things because that how real relationships work. Even today, how many mainstream shows can you think of which handle this subject that well?

And very quickly on avengers, DOES EVERYBODY REMEMBER HOW FUCKING WELL WRITTEN AVENGERS 1 IS? And then sure, he made some bad choices in AOU, but that was around the time that marvel was cracking down on its writers and directors to make sure that the films fitted into the wider mcu. Marvel had full creative control over AOU, and completely crushed whedons creativity. That’s why he left marvel if you remember, because he wasn’t able to make his film, he made a film put together by money people. I 100% believe that’s where the concerning choice about Natasha’s character came from. Not him.

Ive only seen bits and pieces of whedons scrapped Wonder Woman script. I’m not going to deny that it sucks because it does. It really does. I’m a whedon fan, but it sucks. But what we really need to hear in mind is:

A) It was written 10 years ago. Yes firefly and buffy were before that but in the course of 10 years chances are he’s improved. B) it was a first draft. Pretty much every script ever sucks in its first draft, because it hasn’t been refined but also because writers have to include the shit that keeps the producers happy in their first draft, and then they can figure out how to improve it once it’s green light. C) This is one bad script. 1. Writers fuck up sometimes. Are we really gonna throw a writer under the bus based on 1 dodgy script? Honestly that’s a fucked up way of judging art and a scary precedent to set. “Awh ya fucked up once? Awh well, fuck you forever.” Like seriously? Get a grip.

We don’t know what the justice league scenes he’s doing are going to be like yet (and let’s be fucking real here, they’re going to be a hell of a lot better than whatever awful, steaming pile of shit a puke that Snyder has come up with), and we know nothing about his batgirl movie yet. How about we all climb down of the high horse for a second and just wait and see instead of pre-judging him like a bunch of whiny entitled babies.

Yes I’m a fan. Yes I’m biased. But I also recognise the concern. I get it. But can we please calm the fuck down and just wait and see for once? That’d be nice.

In fact can we just marathon buffy and firefly?

Holy fuck that’s a long post

[geekade]

Geekade Top Ten: Best Treehouse of Horror segments EVER!

Here we are once again with another Geekade Top Ten, this time around highlighting what may be the most obvious column we've never done. First hitting the air way back on October 25th, 1990, the "Treehouse of Horror" Halloween specials have become a part of the very fabric of American Halloween celebrations. The Simpsons, at this point the longest running animated show AND longest running sitcom AND longest running scripted primetime show in American history, has been many things over the years. And while the quality of show has been all over the map the last few years, the "Treehouse of Horror" episode has consistently been a highlight of each season. Looking back over the segments we've gotten brought back some amazing memories and a few cringes. Ranking the top ten episodes seemed a bit silly, since it's a special based around individual segments. So, obvious choice being obvious, Geekade.com proudly brings to you the definitive top ten segments from the "Treehouse of Horror" ever.  

#10: The Raven - Treehouse of Horror 

With any list like this there are bound to be disagreements and no one segment may split people more than this one. A straight reading, by the excellent James Earl Jones, of Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven," this segment is light on gags or inventiveness. What we get, and why I love it so, is a wonderfully animated version of one of the greatest poems ever written. Bart as the titular raven is as iconic an image as the show has ever produced. 

#09: Homer3 - Treehouse of Horror VI

When this episode first aired, it was a huge deal. There had simply never really been anything like this before on network television, much less on a cartoon. The visual gags are still great, even if computer animation isn't the holy-shit-big-deal they were when they first showed up. Plus, the moments of everyone trying to find Homer are great. Definitely one of my favorites and deserving of a spot in this top ten.

#08: Clown Without Pity - Treehouse of Horror III

One word: frogurt. This episode brought frogurt mainstream, for better or worse, as a result of a hysterical exchange between Homer and a horribly stereotypical Chinese man. Homer had neglected to get Bart a birthday present, see, and like any good yet regretful father, he rushes right out to the local oddities shop owned by the mysterious foreigner.  The Krusty he buys turns out to be, in the words of Grandpa, evil... EEEVVVVIIIILLLLL. Damn good stuff here.

#07: Oh the Places You'll D'oh - Treehouse of Horror XXIV

One of the more recent segments that made this list, "Oh the Places You'll D'oh" is odd even for a Treehouse of Horror segment. Being a parody of Dr. Suess was never going to be easy, but the writing on this segment is so sharp, it's as if the man himself was contributing. Add in the fact that the animation is fantastic and the realization that The Cat in the Hat is actually super creepy and you have a slam dunk segment. 

#06: A Clockwork Yellow - Treehouse of Horror XXV 

The other more recent segment on this list, "A Clockwork Yellow" makes this list higher than a lot of other, better, segments because of the slew of Kubrick references contained within. The language hits spot on, the visual gags are great, and the depth of the references are obscure in the best of ways. This is a dense segment that requires multiple viewings. If you are a Kubrick fan though, there's more than enough to love. 

#05: Bart Simpson's Dracula - Treehouse of Horror IV

Bram Stoker's Dracula is one of the more iconic horror flicks of all time and this parody does the source material justice. There are some very, very good jokes in this episode with none being more iconic than the, "He's a vampire..." line. It's still hilarious today and something my friends and I quoted to death back in school. This segment gets bonus points for being pretty creepy as well, with the image of Bart floating outside of Lisa's window being particularly scary.

#04: Nightmare Cafeteria - Treehouse of Horror V

One of the bloodiest segments ever aired, "Nightmare Cafeteria" plays on an old trope of humans being delicious which, to be fair, we probably are. Due to budget cuts, the school cafeteria needs a new source of meat and it just so happens that misbehaving students fit perfectly in the meat grinder. The adults in the school go a bit overboard and start killing kids left and right, leading to Principal Skinner delivering one of the most hilarious moments in the history of the show. Alas, poor Uter. So delicious.

#03: Time and Punishment - Treehouse of Horror V

Oh, time travel. So hard to do well because of all of the possible consequences inherent in changing one little thing in the past. A concept so beautifully realized by Homer when he's had enough of trying to find his way back the "right" way. There are some truly disturbing timelines in this segment, some truly hilarious ones, and Homer left-hooks a giant mosquito. What more do you need? Also, more James Earl Jones.

#02: Citizen Kang - Treehouse of Horror VII

The Simpsons have always done their part to criticize and critique culture. It may not have always been “in the moment,” but the message was clear. Citizen Kang however went right at the election of 96 featuring both Bob Dole and President Clinton. The episode has some truly poignant commentary on our political system as well as some of my favorite lines in the series, "Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos" and "Twirling towards the future" have been part of my shtick since. 

#01: The Shinning - Treehouse of Horror V

I'm not sure there was any doubt in my mind that this would be number one. As soon as I said I would write this top ten, this was my choice for number one. It's just absolutely perfect storytelling. The jokes hit big, the visuals are gorgeous, the delivery is wonderful, and it is as quotable as could be. This is movie parody done right. It's an episode that manages to be tense, dramatic, and silly all at the same time.

So there you have it; the definitive guide to the top ten Treehouse of Horror segments ever. All of "Treehouse of Horror V" made the cut and was the primary reason it made more sense to break these up by segment than episode. Only two newer segments made my top ten, but a bunch of others were damn close. What's your top ten? Follow me on twitter and instagram, @geekadedan, and let me know and make sure to drop us a line at mail@geekade.com to let us know what you think. As always feel free to share and spread the word, please and thank you.

[gokinjeespot]

off the rack #1156

Monday, March 20, 2017

 It's the first day of spring but you would still think it's the dead of winter here in Ottawa. I hear it snowed in Vancouver recently too. I don't consider spring starting until I can't see anymore snow on the ground around our neighbourhood. I figure that will be the middle of April this year. I've already seen a robin at our house though. We put up a bird feeder last fall and it attracts many birds. Mostly house sparrows but we see finches, juncos, nuthatches, chickadee-dee-dees and our favourites the cardinals and woodpeckers. The male cardinals are bright red-orange and the females are a mocha coffee colour. We have had downy, hairy and pileated woodpeckers come and feed. Watching the birds outside our window is like watching fish swim around an aquarium. Very calming. Until the undesirables show up. Starlings and squirrels snark up a lot of feed and scare away the little birdies. The squirrels have gotten so brazen now that I have to go outside to shoo them off the feeder. I used to be able to do that just by banging on the window. Stupid squirrels.

 We lost one of the greatest comic book artists on March 18 when Bernie Wrightson succumbed to cancer and passed away. I have always been a bigger fan of the art side of our hobby and Bernie's art gave me goosebumps. His pen and ink work was stunning. Rest in peace Mr. Wrightson.

 Punisher #10 - Becky Cloonan (writer) Matt Horak (art) Frank Martin with Guru-eFX (colours) VC's Cory Petit (letters). I'm disappointed in Matt. This whole issue takes place at a sea port in Newfoundland and he didn't put one Canadian flag in any of the panels. Even a little one would have been nice. It looks like another dire situation for Frank but the bad guys screwed themselves. You'll see the obvious giveaway, but maybe I'm wrong.

 Uncanny Avengers #21 - Gerry Duggan (writer) Kevin Libranda (art) Dono Sanchez Almara with Protobunker (colours) VC's Clayton Cowles (letters). If there's a fill-in artist who makes me just as happy to read this book as when regular artist Pepe Larraz draws it, then it's Kevin Libranda. I liked how Deadpool found a way to defeat the Red Skull's Professor X powers. I wonder if they're going to bring back old Charles.

 Batman #19 - Tom King (writer) David Finch (pencils) Danny Miki, Trevor Scott & Sandra Hope (inks) Jordie Bellaire (colours) Deron Bennett (letters). The art in this issue is pretty awesome. Part 4 of "I Am Bane" has the big bad guy wading through Batman's rogues gallery one by one. Almost every Bat villain you can think of get's his licks in. odd that there are no women. I was also bothered by the fact that they're all loose inside Arkham asylum. How are they going to be get back in custody? The last page leads into the inevitable final battle between Bane and Batman and I want to see who wins. Like I couldn't guess.

 American Gods #1 - Neil Gaiman (writer) P. Craig Russell (script & layouts) Scott Hampton (art) Rick Parker (letters). I started a list of books I want to read after the Snail closed because I found myself with a lot of extra time. American Gods by Neil Gaiman is on that list. I've been told what the premise of the book is so I had a bit of background going into reading this first issue of the comic book adaptation. Reading the comic book is going to enhance my reading of the novel when I get around to it because I will visualize Scott's depictions of the characters in my head and they are very nice ones. The back-up story "Somewhere in America" by P. Craig Russell (script & art) and Lovern Kindzierski (colours) was a hot piece of erotica about unsafe sex. This gets added to my "must read" list.

 Totally Awesome Hulk #17 - Greg Pak (writer) Mahmud Asrar (art) Nolan Woodard (colours) Cory Petit (letters). This hasn't been a solo book for the last few issues with Amadeus hanging out with his friends but I am still enjoying it. This issue is a good place to start as the team has to figure out a way to save themselves and some civilians from being eaten by aliens. You could call these guys the Asian Avengers because what happens in this issue gives them something to avenge. If you jump on here you won't want to jump off until you read the next issue.

 Batwoman #1 - Marguerite Bennett & James Tynion IV (writers) Steve Epting (art) Jeromy Cox (colours) Deron Bennett (letters). Kate chases after a mystery woman from her past after dealing with a terrorist in Istanbul. I like how she's teamed up with Julia Pennyworth.

 Kill or be Killed #7 - Ed Brubaker (writer) Sean Phillips (art) Elizabeth Breitweiser (colours). This issue features Dylan's ex-girlfriend Kira, now with purple hair instead of red. I'm glad she's still hanging around because boy does she have problems. We start off during a session with her therapist and get a lot of background. I love this kind of stuff because it makes the characters more engaging. Kira might need an emergency session after she decides to do something stupid at Dylan's place.

 Monsters Unleashed #5 - Cullen Bunn (writer) Adam Kubert (art) David Curiel & Michael Garland (colours) VC's Travis Lanham (letters). Okay, Kid Kaiju comes through to save the world from the Leviathon Mother, showing up all the Marvel super heroes. I guess that's why he's getting his own book. Look for it to hit the racks on April 19. Unless it's drawn by an artist that I really like I will take a pass. The Kid's creations are more suited to fans of action figures or Saturday morning cartoons than an old coot like me.

 Super Sons #2 - Peter J. Tomasi (writer) Jorge Jimenez (art) Alejandro Sanchez (colours) Rob Leigh (letters). This is great. I don't know why but I love really well written comics about young super heroes like this and Champions. Maybe it's because I can't let go of being a kid. Damian and Jonathan have to deal with Super Lex in order to get a lead on Kid Amazo, the very bad boy they're after. Everything doesn't go smoothly and then, uh-oh, their dads find out about what they're doing. I can't wait to see what happens next.

 Wild Storm #2 - Warren Ellis (writer) John Davis-Hunt (art) Steve Buccellato (colours) Simon Bowland (letters). This 24 issue series is very ambitious and there are a lot of players involved. If I was a new reader I would be wondering who are these people? Some people work for International Operations (IO) and some people work for Halo. The two organisations don't like each other and they're both after Angela Spica, the Engineer. I hope that helps with getting into this story. One of my favourite things from the old series was the Door which could transport people to different places. I think we're introduced to a new Door this issue and she's a lot better looking than Lockjaw.

 Ms. Marvel #16 - G. Willow Wilson (writer) Takeshi Miyazawa (art) Ian Herring (colours) VC's Joe Caramagna (letters). I like this story about a malevolent computer virus and it looks like Kamala can't defeat it. That is until she gets a clue from her old pal Bruno. I can't wait to find out how Doc.x gets deleted.

 Superman #19 - Peter J. Tomasi & Patrick Gleason (writers) Patrick Gleason (pencils) Mick Gray (inks) John Kalisz (colours) Rob Leigh (letters). Part 3 of "Superman Reborn" looks like it might resurrect the pre-New 52 Lois and Clark. I hope not. That would confuse me to no end and then I would get annoyed and stop reading these amazing Superman books. Patrick draws the creepiest Mr. Mxyzptlk ever. I wonder if they're going to do the saying the imp's name backwards thing?

 Guardians of the Galaxy #18 - Brian Michael Bendis (writer) Valerio Schiti (art) Richard Isanove (colours) VC's Cory Petit (letters). I love these issues featuring one team member. Angela's up this time around and it's a beautifully drawn fight scene between her and some alien bounty hunter. The issue ends with a major threat heading for Earth. It starts with Th and rhymes with anus.

 Spider-Man #14 - Brian Michael Bendis (writer) Sara Pichelli (art) Justin Ponsor (colours) VC's Cory Petit (letters). Nothing serious between Miles and Gwen despite what the cover shows. This is one of those issues that annoy Bendis detractors because nothing really happens. The heroes hop from one dimension to another and each wind up in different ones by the end of this issue. I can easily forgive because of Sara's art.

 Mighty Thor #17 - Jason Aaron (writer) Russell Dauterman (art) Matthew Wilson (colours) VC's Joe Sabino (letters). The gods of Asgard and the Imperial Guard of the Shi'Ar finally come to blows in part 3 of "The Asgard/Shi'Ar War". Meanwhile Thor can't seem to win much in the challenge of the gads against the Shi'Ar gods Sharra and K'ythri. Mjolnir is sure getting a workout though. This book is not only chock full of action but it's visually stunning as well.

 Amazing Spider-Man #25 - Dan Slott (writer) Stuart Immonen (pencils) Wade von Grawbadger (inks) Marte Gracia (colours) VC's Joe Caramagna (letters). I wish you didn't have to pay $9.99 US for this one issue starting off "The Osborn Identity" story. That's a bit much for one comic book don't you think? Sure you get a bunch of back-up stories but none of those really matter to the main story. You do get 40 pages of Stuart and Wade goodness though, so why couldn't they have printed just that and charged $4.99 US? As you can probably tell Norman Osborn is back so the Green Goblin can't be far behind. I did like the team-up with Mockingbird with a hint of Peter and Bobbi possibly becoming more than friends. Here are the other stories that pad this issue. A fight with Clash by Christos Gage (writer) Todd Nauck (art) Rachelle Rosenberg (colours) VC's Travis Lanham (letters) which has the old "it's not what you think" twist at the end. A silly Tsum-Tsum story for the younger readers by Jacob Chabot (writer) Ray-Anthony Height (pencils) Walden Wong (inks) Jim Campbell (colours) VC's Cory Petit (letters). Thank Thor that was a blessedly short 6 pages. A Parker Industries mishap at their Shanghai facility by James Asmus (writer) Tana Ford (art) Andres Mossa (colours) VC's Travis Lanham (letters). A young Spider-Man story about a boy and his dog by Hannah Blumenreich (writer & pencils) Jordan Gibson (inks) Jordie Bellaire (colours) VC's Clayton Cowles (letters). Some Aunt May gags by Cale Atkinson which were even sillier than the Tsum-Tsum story. And finally to ease the pain of having to buy an overpriced comic book, the return of another Spider-Man nemesis. One thing that "The Clone Conspiracy" did was bring back Otto Octavius, Doc Ock. He now has a youthful body thanks to Miles Warren's cloning process. So meet The Superior Octopus by Dan Slott (writer) Giuseppe Camuncoli (pencils) Cam Smith (inks) Jason Keith (colours) VC's Joe Caramagna (letters). He's bad-ass now plus he's got Hydra backing. Here's a prediction: Somewhere in the future Peter and Norman have to team up to fight Otto and Hydra.

 Archie #18 - Mark Waid (writer) Pete Woods (art & colours) Jack Morelli (letters). This issue proves that love is blind. Archie and Veronica have nothing in common and should not be together. Betty and Dilton Doiley are more compatible. I wish I was Dilton Doiley.