#it's almost impossible not to feel implicated as an audience member

[babyboy-buck]

"i’m glad that the show is emphasizing that maddie, chimney, nor buck have done things wrong in this situation" Chimney assaulting Buck isn't wrong?

ok, maybe I needed to be a little more clear on this.

I never claimed that chimney punching buck was justified or right. I actually never said maddie, buck, or chimney were ever "right" because that was not the point of my post at all.

I was highlighting how 911 is treating the ppd storyline and the real life implications it has. I didn't paint buck as some perfect person who can do no wrong and is trapped in some impossible situations. I didn't sit and make him the center of this storyline because he isn't. in that same vein of thought, I didn't center chimney's hurt and fear and place it above maddie's own suffering caused by her mental illness. I didn't blame chimney and buck for not "helping" maddie enough.

because that's a redundant point of view and completely misses my original point. being mentally ill is not an isolated experience. it may seem like it when we are caught in the throes of our own suffering when we're in it, but that's the nature of mental illnesses. mental illness impacts entire families, it impacts your loved ones because that's the nature of relationships. when people love and care about you, they accept the pain of seeing you hurt and suffering. maddie's ppd culminating in her leaving chimney and jee-yun and buck and all of their family showcases that idea on an almost nuclear level.

I'm someone who not only has suffered from mental illnesses but has also had many family members suffer the same. I'm grateful for the way 911 has explicitly decided to portray mental illnesses and their impacts on families because it is realistic and powerful without villainizing the mentally ill. you feel for buck and maddie and chimney without pitting them against each other or hating them. it's a storyline that's handled with care and thought, shaped by gentle, knowing hands.

that being said, I have to confess that when I made my post, I was mostly talking about the pre-blow up. before chimney confronted buck and left to search for maddie. but I'll go into a bit now, for the sake of completing my thoughts. I'm gonna "quote" some of the tags that were left on the original post. @elishareads said "#all of them are in the right #but all of them are also in the wrong", and that is exactly what I was pointing out. they aren't wrong because there was no way to be right. there was no right answer for all three of them.

was maddie leaving and isolating herself further while in such a vulnerable state the "right" choice? no, of course not. was buck attempting to help maddie and chimney by holding back information and "playing both sides" in a sense because he loves them both the "right" choice? no, it wasn't and ended up hurting chimney deeply. was chimney lashing out in pain and anger at buck for trying to respect his sister's wishes while also trying to support him by fighting with him and punching him the "right" decision? no, because violence solves nothing. not the pain you're feeling inside nor the source of their problems.

these characters we love aren't right, but that's because that was an impossible situation, to begin with. @evanbuckleyed tagged "#there was literally no way that situation wasn't going to end in disaster one way or another". they were destined to fail in terms of making some altruistic, perfect decisions.

that's why it's so heartbreaking as an audience to watch. we love these characters and want the best for them, but they're full-fledged characters with complicated and nuanced issues.

so yes, chimney shouldn't have hit buck. the blow-up between them was the culmination of the powder-keg situation they're in. even kin. In the middle of his crisis-induced breakdown, chimney was not in the right state of mind to make clear and reasonable decisions. chimney in any other context would never hit buck (or anyone else). but these aren't normal circumstances, this is a full-fledged crisis. moving forward, buck and chimney will have to come together to talk and work through their problems. they will need to forgive each other and rebuild their trust in one another. but their actions aren't irredeemable and that's an essential aspect of this storyline.

my own personal final addition to this monster of a response: if you watch this complicated, nuanced storyline focusing on mental illness and how that can cause strife and pain within families, and instead focus on condemning and villainizing an Asian man to defend a white man (no matter how beloved), then maybe you need to critically think about your own internal biases and motivations.

[gayfrenchtoast]

Okay fine we're doing this. I havent read the books and I'm probably not going to I've only seen the movies so I'm sorry if anything I say is contradictory or has already been stated.

So! Descendants 3 was kinda shit and I dont like it but especially because of the ending because everybody was like "oh yeah island is open and we're all happy with no worries or implications about free villains or people being spiteful about being imprisoned for years!" In fact if anything they joked about those things.

The island is basically its own culture, I can't say how long it's been around, long enough for some almost adult kids to be about and to develop a kind of community.

The Isle is a place of poverty, people are dirty and on the street, eveyone steals from each other and most people don't put much effort into appearance upkeep (personal or of the sourounding area) not because of laziness or being "evil" but because they clearly don't have time or luxury to do such things or possibly even the clean water. Does the Isle have clean water?? How to they get electricity??? Someone tell me!

Another thing that I've noticed is easy to see but is not much explicitly said is the unique style of those on the Isle. As previously stated they don't have much but those who have the most "power" and such on the Isle are the best example of this As they have the most colourful outfits. However these outfits are often made out of patches and ripped things put together, even salvaged things like nets and chains as we can see on thing like Uma and Harry's outfits in D3 they make the best of what they've got and they do fantastic because their outfits are intricate and detailed and just tell you everything you need to know about them. Which is why it's a damn s h a m e when the original VK's ajust their style to be more like Auradon's. That's not an improvement! Be proud of where you came from!! It's like they forgot what it was like being on the Isle in D3!

Moving on, here's something that was touched on in D2 but not enough. Equality. On the Isle there is basically equal opportunity as in saying everything is shit and nome cares what gender and presumably what sexuality you are as long as you can work. Sexism is shown to be almost casual in aurodon from the looks of it, Chad makes sexist comments and litterally none else says anything or seems to see anything wrong with it except Jay who caves to pressure from peers and expectations. He does redeem himself because he's from the isle and he knows you shouldn't give a shit about anyone's gender or anything. If they can do something and ask to be included you give them that opportunity. The sexism is also implied in the way that the rule book has men written specifically in the first place and that it has taken until then for anyone but boys to be allowed on any kind of sports team. We never see it! It seems to be the hetronormative veiw where the boys do sport and girls do cheerleeding and other genders? What other genders? Never heard of that? BAD AURADON!! I bet there's so many trans folk on the island just living their lives, thinking Aurodon is the better place and not knowing that it's a cis het filled nightmare.

Okay no I'm headcannoning now, if their are now a bunch of Isle kids at auradon prep they find it fucking aweful the way all these preppy royals are treating them and make the first LGBT club in Auradon. There is lots of pushback and they get bullied a fuck ton for making themselves the most prominent queer folk in the school until a fight breaks out and the club demand that they should be treated better, taking all the evidence to fairy godmother who is very hesitant because COME ON she's never been that great she is biased to Auradon kids and if putting away those in the Isle is brought up she is all on it, she is jelly spined about doing anything against the royal kids. So the kids are like "Fine, if you won't help us we'll take this to the King himself!" Well mainly the queer mom's of the group (you know the ones I'm talking about) who lead the others and protect the anxious queers as they storm to Ben at his fucking locker and demand an audience because they are being harassed and bullied and none is doing anything. Ben had no idea there was even a LGBT club (too busy ig) and is gassed there is one for a moment before he's like "wait people are harassing you?" So Bisexual King Ben gets his lovely Bi wife and they start coming to club meetings and investing in the pins and stuff the club makes. Most club members are pleased but the queer mom's are apprehensive that this will help until some assholes come to the club to do their usual bullying only to find King and Queen Beast themselves siting there with rainbow bracelets and bi pins and all trying to have a nice old time eating their fucking cupcakes what the fuck are yall doing? The bullying dies down quick once they realise it ain't gonna fly, the other OG VK's that hear about this become members and very protective over their queer children. Did I mention Dizzy and Ceila are a part of the club? They're girlfriend's. Celia is one of the queer moms. Harry becomes one of the biggest protectors over the group as the pan dad. He's been going around snogging everyone and anyone wholl snog him everyone already knew he was queer they just didn't have the balls to try and bully him over it as much as they bullied the lil club members. But now Harry can often be seen in jackets and shit with pan and general queer patches and pins and running around with his gay children yelling "MOVE WE'RE GAY!!" He totally calls them his queer crew. Anyway as a result lots of queer royals start coming out of the woodwork, obvs Lonnie is one of them, and the club eventually serves to bring members of Auradon and the Isle close together.

Where was I? Yada yada auradon expects girls to be pretty princesses and boys to be brave knights or dashing princes. It's shit and should stop being portrayed as good. Moving on!

Food! One of the things we'll established in all movies is that the food of the Isle is shit compared to food of Auradon. The Isle has no fresh fruit which likely means its almost impossible for things to grow there which is fair because again there doesn't seem to be much fresh water and there are always clouds overhead so no sun. Maybe there is some people trying really hard to grow stuff but the general attitude of the Isle seems to be "there is no time for that" and fruits are forgotten so much that the VK's litterally don't knownwhat they are when they come across them. That and anything containing sugar. Actually it's mention by Dizzy and Celia that they enjoy the fact that the cake dosent have dirt or flies so basically food there is terrible. We don't see much food on the Isle but what we do see seems to be beans, eggs, chips and shellfish. Basically protine and carbs that can be easily stored and produced. To be fair beans are kidna good for you but they're likely a sign that if they get any imports from the mainland it is canned stuff. Prison food. There's probably some chef villain that is trying their best to make good food out of the shit but honestly the Isle dwellers should be angry that they've been deprived of good food for so long not happy they're finally been given decency.

Moving on, music! Auradon dosent have nearly as many musical numbers it seems, the Isle songs have a distinct style, to them, the villains that basically "founded" the place were masters of the dramatic songs (with backup or solo) so banging music is basically ingrained in the music's culture, even for battle as we see with the fight between Mal and Uma in D3. Meanwhile Auradon seems to have mainly romance and "I want" songs. Even Audrey's villain song is basically an I want song.

Okay let's talk about the Villains. We've established that the VK's are not inherently bad. However not all of them can be totally good and there are legit OG Villains just kinda chillin on the Isle. They've obviously lost quite a bit of their power, motivation and sanity (isolation will do that to ya as they lost everything and the VKs know no different) but deadass? They were bad guys. You can try to rehabilitate them sure but you've basically just let them free roam, they could make a runner and you wouldn't get the chance. They were also shitty patents which is brushed over/joked about in the interaction between Carlos and...man I feel bad I forgot her name deadass their relationship seemed to come out of nowhere in the second film she didn't seem interested in them at all and friendzoned them multiple times I'm pretty sure Disney did that becaue queer kids were relating to Carlos and headcanoning them as queer (which they deffinatly are) but deadass their mom is an attempted animal murderer and has hurt her child as we can see from how they're afraid of her and her rhetoric and yet it's "haha I'm afraid to meet your ma!" "Me too cus im a dog! Lol!" Fuuuuck offfffff

I think I'm running out of thoughts so here's a last one for now; with the magical barrier down a bunch of magical Villains kids should be coming out for the woodwork. We know Mal has magic basically stored in her so it's is possible, she technically doesn't need the spellbook to do magic it is just inherent to her. So with the diverse range of people from the isle there are deffinatly magic folk in there. Actually if we're following Disney movie law I saw something mentioning Jay being half Genie and yeah! He should be half Genie! Jafar got turned into a Genie he's probably only human because of the barrier! Oh also Ben should be able to go beast on command as long as he had a better beast form than he did in the movies. And give him back the beard and fangs like fuck you he looked so much better

Okay I'm done for now

[jjheejz]

Posted on 27.8.21

27.8.21 Update

An advice that this is for the mentally strong.

1. Zhao Wei’s(ZW) fandom ban + Withdrawal from her company

“According to Qichacha app (a Chinese app that provides information about companies and enterprises eg. management personnel, stocks etc), Beijing Prince Culture Communication Co., Ltd., which is 70% controlled by Zhao Wei, withdrew from the ranks of shareholders of many companies: the company that recently withdrew was Shanghai Tongtongxin Culture Communication Co., Ltd. with the head person in-charge, changed from Zhao Wei to Wei Qiying. It is reported that Beijing Prince Culture Communication Co., Ltd is a performance agency under Zhao Wei and has signed Zhang Zhe Han and other artists.” - News

For those who know about the video (cut version about ZW), do move on to part 2.

Background:

ZW’s case actually started from an insider information (for those who understand Chinese and have not/did not watch the famous 观棋有语127 CUT version, the link underlined: start at 18:50).��

For international audience who had not read the CUT translation/did not know about this: it was a famous insider information released on 16 August 2021 (the day ZH closed his Instagram) on Bilibili (Youtube equivalent. The nature of this channel is not Entertainment Industry insider information but International Politics/Military, it just so happens that one of the member has connection in the Entertainment Industry and ZH’s case was huge that period so he added what he know about it). 

It was hinted that ZW was involved with ZH’s accident (negatively)

= As ZH’s management company, the first plan they advised when ZH’s news was out, was to not release an apology statement (to remain silent and use capital to push down this news), certain fans (might be in the industry) demanded an apology letter from ZH (but being the inexperienced-in-this-ZH who was also in a shocked state at point of time, the Management team wrote the apology letter (yet to release draft). ZW was not very happy with this plan, so revisions were made before the final public apology was released.

The consensus is that someone ‘bad’ is within the Management Team, and it could possibly be ZW. (For those who have watched original version, feel free to add on more, if any - there seem to be a part I missed out. For international readers, feel free to come back again for updates - it will be in purple)

Further insider information about ZH in his case (comment section: A_Kooist*孤*勇 Link here - commenter's translation)

2. Current Entertainment Industry Campaign

Major Campaign: #饭圈清浪 (fan quan qing lang = literally translated as ‘rice circle clearance = ‘fandom clearance')

Please read this major campaign’s purpose here first (for international fans, use Google’s page translation, the translation is good enough. This article was released on 15 June 2021) This, is essentially a good campaign.

Trends in the name of the greater campaign have emerged ever since, such as the recent ‘Do not give second chances to immoral celebrities (aka no comebacks)’ - this also includes ZW (her rising flag dress incident - look for rumors and controversy part, other celebrities as well eg. Fan Bing Bing, Jackie Chan’s son etc), ‘Educate all celebrities on political affairs’, ‘Prohibiting 16 years old and below from appearing in livestreams’ etc. Some movements seem debatable, some like settling the IWA is very much loved, however, this is an issue we international fans can only watch and keep silent and think about the 40%.

Reminder again to be silent because remember that trend topics are bought daily, and a wonder in the trend I saw was ‘GZfansaregainstthismovement’. 

Today, 27.8.21, the official authorities released their top 10 agenda in this movement.

*Note: Since Google Translate translates the movement as ‘Clearance and Rectification of Chaos in the 'rice circle'’ - will use this term in the translation below. Also, in brackets are my notes (left swipe reading)

Source here (in Chinese)

For the first part - removing rankings is reported on The Guardian as well, source here.

For further reading into part 4 - using algorithms to create fake user accounts/false impressions etc, source here

Note that although they did not address the IWA issue (except their behaviour), the implementations by the Government is generally realistic. This targets real fan's problematic behaviours and they are real problems among the China-Chinese fandom.

Implications to ZW's case:

ZW's withdrawal means she/the company is drawing a line that ZW is no longer a part of the company = whatever happens to her, will be none of the company's concern.

It might be due to her japan rising flag dress in the past or one of the (unofficially announced) trend 'do not give second chance to immoral celebrities' in place or her ongoing 'bad deeds' behind the scenes.

Implications to ZH

First of all, for ZH's case, despite being an obvious ploy by the Capitals, the nature of his case is still political ignorance (which as a public figure, is still not a right influence). Therefore, looking at the industry's landscape and campaign, it is hard/almost impossible to see ZH back in front of the camera these few years. It is not the right time nor the right choice to have a comeback.

Secondly, with the change in Management, have to admit that right now, I have no idea how this will turn out. This only warrants more observations before any implications can be made for ZH and the whole scene.

The campaign is also at its fresh stage so it is hard to know to what extent this will push all affected celebrities, even celebrities who are still in the entertainment industry. At the moment, they are now getting sent to 'Public Figure' classes - which highlights what they should do/not do. And management personnel are checking all their celebrity's accounts (to avoid cancellation of that scale again).

Even though there aren't any official news about the underlying cause - Capitals, they are currently probably being investigated. Perhaps because they are organisations and with ZW's case, it seems a longer crackdown is required (Capitals side definitely requires more time), so waiting for this side of the story to come out or any other relevant ones.

For now, same advice, stay silent. For those who are affected, take time off. For those who are mentally strong, we'll see.

Bonus

Maybe some of you knew, but I only know it today. 4 days ago was apparently the 100th day Xiao Yu slipped.

We are still the same.

[featherwriter]

<< Read from the beginning! >>

In the weeks to follow, Sylvanni’s captivity started to fall into a kind of routine. Not a good routine, but at least predictable. Erxaris’ deal held: so long as Silveks remained obedient, she was no longer subjected to the torturous experiments she’d initially endured. It wasn’t much of a reprieve, but it was better than nothing.

As Uldren had predicted, the shining stay and her new station afforded her a strange kind of status within House Kings. Most of the days, she was requested to be at the Baroness’ side as she held audience with other members of the House. Sylvanni was to be a silent but eye-catching trophy, the Guardian brought to heel. She was a quiet piece of furniture, staying near proceedings so that all present could be reminded that House Kings was powerful enough to accomplish such a feat. Or perhaps, seemingly powerful. The longer Sylvanni observed, the more she began to see just how much pageantry went into propping up a House of ailing numbers and the part she herself was made to play in that act.

On some occasions, when the Baroness truly wished to show off the command she wielded, Sylvanni would be commanded to make another bloody showing of loyalty. Just another death, she’d tell herself when handed a weapon for the deed. That it was by her own hand made no difference, other than that she learned how to do the deed quickly and cleanly. On the other side of the resurrection, she would kneel and hand back her Ghost silently to be contained once more, trying to empty herself of thoughts and emotions as she did so. 

He was there in the audience room with her most of the time, locked away in the containment canister. The Baroness liked to keep the little prison under-claw, tapping it in a clicking wave every so often to draw attention to her prize. Sylvanni tried her best not to look, not to think about him. Sentiment was a distraction she could ill afford before an opportunity to escape came. At this point, keeping herself fully blank was an almost meditative process. There was a strange kind of comfort in it, in the nothingness of it all. 

She watched days of the Baroness’ proceedings without speaking, without reaction, keeping the loose attention pose Erxaris had taught her. The Fallen of the House seemed to find her empty stare intimidating, and she took comfort in that even in this humiliated state, she could still inspire fear. In fact, those who bore witness to her acts of forced self-sacrifice often seemed even more nervous around her than before. She took satisfaction in that as well.

Her silent observations gave her plenty of time to try to decipher the Eliksni conversations which took place around her. Between her appearances in the Baroness’ chamber, when there was no need of her decorative function, she was returned to her cell. Whenever she wasn’t sleeping, she worked with Uldren to study the language, committing the alien sounds and overly intricate grammar to memory with practice and repetition. The lessons gave both of them something to work on, something to focus on other than the circumstances of their captivity. 

During one such lesson, Uldren paused to give her a long look. “May I ask where you were raised, Duv?”

She shifted her posture, trying to find a different position where the metal edges of the stay would dig in at least somewhere else from where they had been. There was never a comfortable position for the ill-fitting contraption, but she’d grown used to shifting it periodically to spread the discomfort out. “You know I have no childhood to remember, so when you say ‘raised’ you mean…?”

“Your first time, back from the dead.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Is this somehow relevant to the usage of the neutral-tone interrogative?”

He gave her a stern smile at the cheeky response. “Indulge me, if you would.”

She let out a long sigh, shaking her head. “It’s not exactly a pleasant story, Uldren.” She looked at him for a long pause, hoping he might let her out of the question, but he simply stared back, expectant of her answer. 

“Do go on.”

“Fine. My Ghost, M-Mandala–” It was still difficult to say his name down here, too present a reminder of his absence from her. “–he found me floating in ship wreckage, 83rd sector on the inner edge of the Reef. Most Guardians would tell you their first resurrection was a difficult, shocking experience. But I can say with certainty that the experience is even less enjoyable when done in the void of space with nothing to breathe.”

Uldren sat up a little more, leaning forward. “What happens in a situation like that? Do you just immediately decompress and die again?”

“No, not exactly.” Sylvanni rubbed a hand over her upper arm, finding the memories difficult to recount. “With the Light, we’re… we’re more resilient than you are. A Guardian doesn’t technically need air to continue living. The Light alone can sustain us, can heal the damage to our bodies constantly enough that we don’t pass away. There was no decompression because there was no air in my lungs to begin with. My corpse was as pressureless as it could be, and so too was I, once I was returned.

“But even if we can survive in the vacuum, it isn’t pleasant. The… the body remembers its former need to breathe, your instincts scream that you’re choking, suffocating, dying. But it doesn’t actually end. I didn’t know who I was. I didn’t know what was happening to me. I didn’t know how to make it stop. Just… trying to gasp for air that wasn’t there, everything empty and silent and agonizing.”

Uldren made a small hum, considering. “I’m surprised a Ghost would do such a thing to his Guardian, especially upon her first resurrection. Would it not have been possible to bring you somewhere with atmosphere before waking you for the first time?”

Sylvanni looked away, her shoulders curling forward slightly. This was a difficult thing to talk about. As terrible as it had been, she couldn’t blame her Ghost for it. She couldn’t. “It… It wasn’t his fault.” She forces firmness into the words, trying to reinforce them for herself as well. “He’s just a little machine; floating through the vacuum of space is no different from him than strolling the streets of the Last City. When he finally found me, after so long searching, he was just so excited to meet me, and Guardians can survive in such conditions. He just… He wasn’t thinking about what it would feel like.

“When he realized what was happening, realized I couldn’t even hear him to explain what was going on, he immediately put out an urgent distress call for ships in the sector. Another Guardian found us eventually, took us both into their ship and ferried me to the Last City. My first real breath in, well, I don’t even know how long it was, it was the most wonderful thing I could imagine. 

“Mandala felt terrible about the whole thing. My first few moments in that ship, catching my first new breaths, were such a mixed jumble of apologies and introductions and explanations about being a Guardian. I don’t like to bring it up, at least not around him. He still feels guilty that my earliest experience as a Guardian was so distressing. Like I said, it wasn’t his fault.”

“That’s quite forgiving of you, Duv. I didn’t realize your resurrection was so… unpleasant.” 

“I did tell you so at the start.” She bristled slightly, wondering if he was mocking her somehow. “Are you satisfied? Have I indulged you well enough, Your Highness?”

He ducked his head. “I’m sorry to have made you recount it then. Though it does offer me some insight. The reason I asked in the first place.”

“And that reason was…?”

“I have a theory,” Uldren said, a touch of his humor returning, “which I believe your experience may corroborate. I think you may have been Reef Awoken before your death.”

Sylvanni stiffened. Given the location of her death, she’d thought along the same lines herself, but never for very long. Seeking out information about one’s life before was forbidden. “Guardians aren’t meant to know our pasts or question what our lives were before. Whatever we once were does not matter. It’s not a topic to speculate upon.”

“Oh, come on, Guardian. You can’t tell me you aren’t even mildly curious about who you once were. I’m certain I would be, if our positions were switched. It’s certainly not impossible to figure some things out.”

“What?” she asked, lifting her chin in a challenge. “Are you saying you think you knew me before I died? Is that it?”

He waves his hand dismissively. “Nothing so specific. I very well may have, but no, you aren’t particularly familiar to me in that way. I simply have a theory that you may have been fluent in Eliksni in your former life. Many Reef Awoken are. I’ve been suspicious of how quickly you seem to be picking up what is, at its heart, a very complicated alien language. We can’t have been down here much more than a month and I’d say you’re at basic fluency, Duv.”

“I, well… I had previously studied some of the written glyph structures. That’s probably what it is.” Sylvanni’s brow furrowed, unnerved by the idea that she might have retained skills from her previous life to such a degree that they would be noticeable to someone else. “I’m sure you’re mistaken.”

“Studying glyphs wouldn’t explain how you learn to pronounce things so well so quickly.” He narrowed his eyes at her, smiling as though pleased to think he might have struck a nerve again. “You seem offended by the implication that you might be Reefborn. Would it really be so bad if it were true?”

Sylvanni took a moment to stand up, pacing a little bit to try to get her blood moving again. Constantly sitting in the cell was terribly stifling. “I simply prefer not to think about it at all. The past is the past, it doesn’t concern me. We should continue the lesson.”

He chuckled, much to her annoyance. “As you wish, Guardian. I believe you were asking about the neutral interrogative?”

The lessons were useful when surrounded constantly by Fallen and their chatter. Clearly, Sylvanni learned, those guarding their cells didn’t care to pay attention to the fact that their prisoners were practicing their language and many in the House seemed to believe she couldn’t understand anything they discussed in front of her. To their detriment, as steadily, more and more, that was becoming no longer the case. She wasn’t by any means a highly proficient speaker, but as Uldren had noticed, her comprehension had come a long way in their short time taking lessons, and she listened in Eliksni better than she spoke. She could grasp the overall meanings of most conversations, and she often kept note of any wholly unfamiliar terms or phrases to later ask Uldren what they meant. 

Between the time in her cell learning with Uldren and her time as an intimidating decoration for the Baroness, only one other assignment was routinely given to her: participation in the arena for the House’s entertainment. These occurrences weren’t frequent, but Sylvanni savored whenever they were given. Against the emotional blankness of most of her days, a chance to fight, to feel even her meager trickle of Light sing to her in the contest, it was the only time she ever felt like herself again. 

It always seemed a tossup whether or not they would give her a weapon before sending her out, but she learned to be just as ruthlessly efficient with only her hands as when armed. Even small amounts of Light, it turned out, could be put to devastating use when employed with precision. Against these hapless foes they sent to die before her, she was wrath unbridled, destruction unchained, and she relished that. She didn’t always win; sometimes the groups she faced managed to rally enough coordination to overwhelm her, but she usually emerged victorious. These days, there were no stealthed swordsmen waiting for her in the wings of the arena. If she made it through alive, she was expected to bow and then make another ‘show of loyalty’ for the audience’s amusement. In those cases, she was always raised again in the preparation room, away from the eyes of all. 

The one true constant of her new life’s routine was that terrible, accursed servitor. Every few hours, she would be subjected to its influence again, draining her reserves of Light before they could get high enough to be dangerous to her captors. Always immediately after her times fighting in the arena, the servitor was ready to catch her in its grasp as soon as she was back to life. This was another detail she wouldn’t have expected the Fallen to know about Guardians: how her Light flourished within her more quickly when she fought and killed enemies. Yet somehow this secret too was known to them, and they were always prepared to ensure she couldn’t use that Light against them after a fight. 

That moment, she realized, was likely her best chance at escape. She could gather Light in Erxaris’ makeshift Prison of Elders, sparingly using her voidlight to pull as much life as she could from those she slayed. She would have her Ghost back after the resurrection, and assuming she fought wisely, she might have enough Light to fully unleash her abilities on her guards and make a break for it. All it would take was a bit of sloppiness in the transition from raising her to the servitor drain, enough of a pause for her to make her move. Their greed for the Light-derived ether they synthesized from her would be their undoing. It would just take one mistake. 

She watched carefully for an opening, but despite her vigilance, time and again it failed to manifest. Over and over, with terrible efficiency, they bade her fight, resurrected her, and then drained her Light away immediately, before it could be useful. 

As these weeks passed, Sylvanni learned of House Kings, all the important conversations she bore witness to, quietly putting these scraps of information together into a picture of what her captors were really like. The House of Kings, despite the Baroness’ showy displays of power and spectacle, was struggling. Its most important members had almost completely retreated down into these warrens to try to escape the scrutiny and scavenging of the other Houses. The crowds Sylvanni saw in the broken arena were apparently almost the entirety of the House, its membership having dwindled to only a few hundred fighting soldiers and half that of untrained civilians.

The Baroness was the only Fallen of her size in the House—aside from their reclusive Kell, of course—and she hoarded their scant ether rations, raising none any higher than captaincy. One of the Kings priests had recently been named an Archon, but had not had his rations increased in measure with his new station. The Baroness herself was greedy, paranoid, and ambitious. She distrusted most of her advisors, aside from the unwavering Erxaris, who apparently was spared suspicion by virtue of technically not being a member of the Kings. House Judgment’s claims to service through neutrality towards the other Houses was a powerful tool in politics, it turned out. The Baroness, meanwhile, saw Sylvanni’s Light-ether as a final opportunity, perhaps, to get out of this mess. It was clear she hoped to glut herself and grow strong enough to supplant the Kell and take his place, whenever he deigned to return. 

Sylvanni thought it clear that the House’s problems almost certainly stemmed from such selfish, short-sighted leadership, but of course made no comment to anyone. She had no desire to see the Kings’ fortunes reversed, after all. She didn’t know whether or not to feel insulted to have been captured by such a weak House, or grateful that their crumbling hierarchy would hopefully lend her greater opportunity to get away. She suspected Uldren had guessed some of the internal political problems here as well, even though he didn’t have nearly the same level of access she did. She never missed how his eyes tracked every exchange from their cells, every expression, every morsel of gossip passed between bored guards that he could witness. He often asked her if she’d heard any valuable information during her time in the audience room, and she shared what she’d learned with him as she could. He turned out to be right after all: down here, they were all each other had. House Kings thought the Prince as beaten down and broken of will as their pet Guardian, but Sylvanni knew he yet had some kind of scheme he hoped to undertake. 

One of them would make it out of this hellish nightmare, of that she was certain. And after months of patience, waiting for something to change, some opportunity to make an attempt at freedom, a whispered rumor brought hope. The message spread quickly through the ranks of the once great House, from the official scout report to the Baroness, overheard by Sylvanni listening blankly at her side, to chatter among the lowest dregs as she was walked back to her cell. The same news was on every alien tongue she passed:  

The House of Kings was to make its highest preparations. The Kell was coming home.

<< Previous || Masterpost || Next >>

[talltales]

            —HE SAYS, "OH, BABY GIRL, DON'T GET CUT ON MY EDGES.             I'M THE KING OF EVERYTHING AND OH, MY TONGUE IS A WEAPON."                                                            request by @atlasbeom!!

"his time is valuable," she is warned the moment she steps into his domain. the guard at her side offers it with a sidelong glance, "worth more than your life and mine combined. whatever you have to say, do it quickly."

he pauses, and she realizes that he is watching her; taking in the elaborate curls trailing down her bare back and the trail of pale, semi-sheer fabric that flows in their wake—rivers of gauzy, glimmering peach-pink. distantly, she is satisfied to know that her dress has caught his eye—

because it means she has a chance of distinguishing herself from the other commoners that come begging for favors.

the ones that leave with empty hands.

she nods because she knows he is seeking affirmation that she has heard his warning—not proof that she'll heed it. her attention is fixed ahead, on the stately double doors that separate what happened before and what happens after.

the delicate jingling of the bracelets on her wrist keep her centered; gifts from the unfortunate souls depending on her to change their fates. they put faith in her ability to sway their cold-hearted king into doing something thought to be impossible.

changing his mind.

"mind yourself, girl," her escort shifts from one foot to the other, grasping one handle with a grip just shy of too tight, "i don't know what brings you here, but i pray that it is worth it."

she says nothing, focused instead on steeling herself against the bubbling of fear rising high in her chest. she squares her shoulders and lifts her chin—a wordless command to open the door.

it comes open with a heavy groan, revealing the room beyond. though the word doesn't do it justice; it is a decadent space, filled to the brim with ornamental gold and rich red. it is typical for royalty—a demonstrative display of power for the benefit of visiting emissaries. still, she finds it difficult to hide her disgust.

by one of the many windows, an elegant chess board sits in the sunlight. as she passes, she suspects the pieces are made of bone. and if there is any truth to the rumors about their young king—

a sigh snaps her line of thought cleanly in two.

her attention comes inevitably to the throne centered at the head of the room and the figure sitting upon it; cheek cradled against his palm and one leg crossed over the other.

for all of the trappings that he is surrounded in, the king himself is a youth no older than herself, and it shows. the crown sits heavy on his head, tilted in a careless sort of way that fills her with unease.

his expression is disinterested, though the look he gives her is as sharp as a razor's edge—she doesn't believe for one moment that it is unintentional. he is known, after all, for wielding his intellect like the most dangerous of weapons.

she lowers her eyes instinctively, setting her hand upon the opposite side of her chest and kneeling, "your majesty, i humbly request your audience."

the proper protocol has been drilled into her, in preparation for this moment.

though it isn't his voice that answers.

"well, speak girl. we have no time for theatrics," the retainer standing to his left demands, nose tilted up as if he smells something foul in the air, "there are more important people on his majesty's agenda."

from the corner of her eye, she watches the king's brow raise—a minute shift in expression, really—and realizes she is glaring at the man. her anger is showing. carefully, she unclenches her jaw and exhales as quietly as she can manage.

"my apologies for the inconvenience," her words are spoken in spite of the outburst, weaved around to find the ears of the one whose judgment matters, "there is a matter that has arisen in my home—there are plans to build an estate over the field where we grow our crops."

not only will they be dirt poor in a matter of weeks, but starved as well.

though she says no more, the implication is clear.

"that isn't our concern," the retainer cuts in again, and she finds herself biting back a frustrated growl, "his majesty's will is beyond reproach—"

"reproach is not my intention," her voice carries further than she thinks it would, weighted with conviction that she holds tight to. she curls her fingers into the delicate fabric of her dress and falls fully to her knees.

ruined. she's ruined it all, because she couldn't keep her mouth shut. it took no more than two minutes.

her king is silent, though she hears him shift in his seat—sitting up a little straighter.

"impudent! you dare to disrespect a member of the court before the king—"

he goes silent, rendered so by a simple gesture. she keeps her head low, but watches as the king raises a single hand and the air itself seems to still.

"quiet," and she takes some small pleasure in watching the man's mouth shut so hard she almost hears the click of his teeth colliding.

"you," he calls, and she feels all of his attention fall back on her. she expects retribution to come with it, swift and certain. the sound of his footsteps comes instead; steadily approaching as he descends the stairs, each movement fluid and effortless. she is certain she only hears him because he wants her to.

"look at me."

fear sits on her tongue, creeps up the column of her spine until her greatest challenge is staying upright.

she lifts her head, though her eyes are slow to follow. he is more patient than they give him credit for. he stands close enough that she smells the spice of his cologne and can map the veins that weave up his swordarm, but he waits for her to obey. she stops at his jaw; comes as close as she dares to looking at his face when she knows where his focus lies.

this is what she had asked for; the undivided attention of the most powerful man she's ever known. now that she has it, she finds the memory of all her prepared speeches slipping through her fingers like water.

"i won't repeat myself," this time, the tip of his thumb hooks under her chin and nudges it upward, "leave." and though his eyes are on her, he is speaking over his shoulder—to the man gaping at them with a blend of horror and what she recognizes as envy.

his hand shifts to hold the curve of her jaw, catching the corner of her lips beneath his thumb. soon she finds the room too hot; stifling in the most dangerous ways.

this is not what she intended.

"i assume," he begins, and his fingertips press into her skin to the point that it aches. her breath hitches; barely audible to her own ears over the uneasy drumming of her heartbeat. his lips curve gently, "that since you're not here to chastise me..."

his laugh is bemused and carries a distinct air of disbelief. who would dare to, with a reputation like his?

"you're here to offer me something in exchange for your precious fields," the way his hand drifts down, across her throat and along her bare shoulder, leaves no question of what he expects to receive for his magnanimity.

this is not what she intended.

but his touch could easily be classified as a different sort of weapon; an act comprised of military precision and exactness. no measure of effort is wasted in the slide of his fingers along the hem of her dress, and the steady trail they make back up to her lips.

when he bends at the waist and meets her eyes—leveling with her, not as a king to his subject but as a man to a woman that he wants, she decides.

tentatively, her tongue flicks out to touch the pad of his thumb as it passes over her mouth, "i offer what you will take."

she savors the surprise in his eyes—the snapping of his composure as he leans forward and takes her lower lip between his teeth, "good."

at least some of the whispers are true, she finds.

he is made of edges; teeth and tongue—strength and the most addictive kind of pressure. he is merciless.

but he is not cold.

[abigailnussbaum]

The Umbrella Academy, S2

I was pretty underwhelmed by the first season of The Umbrella Academy, and if it weren’t high summer with hardly any new TV to be seen, I might not have bothered with the second one. But to my surprise, season 2 of The Umbrella Academy is a massive - and, to my eyes, deliberate - improvement on the first. It’s not great TV by any stretch, but it’s engaging and fun to watch, and you find yourself caring about the characters and wanting to follow along with their story, all things that the dour first season failed to achieve.

My fundamental problem with the first season of The Umbrella Academy is that the show failed to convince me that its core family was worth saving. The basic premise of the show - seven superpowered children raised by an abusive tyrant who saw them purely as instruments to be deployed, and played psychological games intended to grind down their independence and prevent any chance of their feeling a stronger loyalty to one another than to him - is obviously a rich and evocative one (albeit also one that requires a depth and complexity of writing that very few superhero shows evince). But the premise of the first season - the surviving Hargreeves children, reunited at their father’s funeral, have to find a way to overcome their differences and move past their difficult upbringing or the world will literally end - kept bumping up against the simple fact that I didn’t want this family to endure. The Hargreeves were so mean to one another, and seemed to have so little affection for each other, that I couldn’t make myself believe they wouldn’t be better off just going their separate ways.

The show itself seemed to realize this, because it ended the first season with the Hargreeves’ dysfunction and inability to honestly address how badly they’d mistreated one another ultimately being the cause of the apocalypse, and with the siblings deciding that their only possible course of action was to reset their lives and rebuild their relationships from the ground up. It was the show tacitly admitting that the Hargreeves family was unsalvageable, and while that’s a bold storytelling choice, the writing just wasn’t there to support it. I finished the first season feeling rather fatigued with both the story and the characters, and uninterested in watching them relive their lives.

The second season feels like a soft reboot of that premise. The trip through time on which the first season ended is retconned - instead of sending their consciousnesses back to their childhood selves, the Hargreeves instead end up as their own adult versions in the early 1960s. The apocalypse they fled 2019 to avoid and were hoping to prevent by reliving their childhoods and repairing their relationships from first principles is essentially forgotten. Instead the Hargreeves focus on preventing a different, new apocalypse scheduled for November 25th 1963, and once they succeed at that, 2019 is altered in unspecified ways that prevent the end of the world from happening.

Most importantly, the Hargreeves suddenly feel like a family. A dysfunctional family, to be sure, whose members have to figure out how to relate to one another now that the abuser who shaped and poisoned their relationships is finally gone. But there is a suddenly a lot of affection between the siblings, even if most of it is expressed through teasing and needling at one another’s weaknesses. In S1, the Hargreeves felt like people who genuinely had no interest in knowing one another. In S2, they feel like people who don’t know how to relate to each other, but want to figure it out.

You see this in a lot of other things that the second season does to respond to frequently-voiced complaints about the first season. In S1, everyone hated how domineering Luther was and how badly he treated Vanya, so almost the first thing he does in S2 is apologize to her for his failings as a brother, and acknowledge that a large portion of the fault for her breakdown falls on him. Everyone was a bit weirded out by the Luther/Alison ship, so it gets barely any play in S1 (though with a bone thrown to the shippers right at the end). Everyone was charmed by Klaus and Diego, so they both get major storylines (and Diego, in particular, is softened and made more vulnerable, the better to take advantage of David Castañeda’s charisma). Everyone wanted more of Ben, so he becomes more vocal and even gets to interact with characters besides Klaus. Everyone got tired of Alison namechecking a daughter that we had no intrest in, so she barely comes up even though Alison is not only separated from her by a distance of sixty years, but last saw her in a world that was being destroyed by a meteor impact. And everyone came away from the first season saying “no way Vanya is straight”, and lo, she is not straight.

It’s an approach that you see in other Netflix shows - Stranger Things, in particular, is practically defined by its responsiveness to audience complaints, with each season overcorrecting in the direction of whatever reaction was most loudly expressed over the previous one. Ideally, you’d want showrunners to have a strong enough sense of their characters, story, and world that they don’t need the audience to function as a cowriter, but in the case of The Umbrella Academy, these changes are mostly to the good. I might have liked the darker story the show seemed to be telling in the first season, about a group of abused children who genuinely don’t like each other but also can’t relate to anyone outside of their family, but the writing wasn’t there for it. The lighter, softer version of The Umbrella Academy delivered by S2 actually works, so the show should stick with it.

It certainly helps that the second season shoulders several topics that I wouldn’t have expected the show to be able to address with any amount of grace. I have to admit that I cringed when I realized that Alison, trapped in the South in the early 60s, had joined the civil rights movement, because superhero stories do not have a great track record dealing with social justice, much less real-world movements. But the handling of this issue ends up being smarter and more effective than I could ever have hoped. It’s still a side-story to the main event of preventing the end of the world, but in the scenes and episodes that do place it front and center, the show is unflinching. The depiction of the lunch counter protest that Alison and her group organize, and of the vicious hostility they encounter for such a small, simple demand, is unsparing. It establishes both the depth of the hatred and violence that the protest arouses, and the impossibility of resisting “peacefully” against a system the views any assertion of your humanity as an act of violence.

I was also a bit concerned over the placement of Alison, in particular, at the center of a story like this. Obviously, as the only black member of the Hargreeves family, her experience in the 1960s would be unique, but she’s also a character who has been established as being too powerful for her own good, and having abused her power in order to dehumanize others. Placing her in a situation where she is being dehumanized because of her race felt like creating a fruitless tension, where Alison might feel reluctant to use her powers despite the fact that she is all-but powerless against the greater system of white supremacy. But again, the season manages to thread the needle, showing both the allure and the limitations of Alison’s mind control abiliites in the context of Jim Crow. I didn’t love the implication that Alison would almost immediately start misusing her powers once she decided to use them to open doors that racism had closed to her, but the show also makes it clear that her anger is justified, and her targets deserving.

By the same token, I heaved a great sigh when the season introduced Harlan and I realized that he was neuroatypical, because it felt almost inevitable that some aspect of the strangeness that follows the Hargreeves around would result in him being “cured”. But that didn’t happen! The season treats Harlan like a valuable and loved person who doesn’t need to become more “normal” for his life to be worth living. And though he does end up needing to be cured, it’s not of his autism, but of whatever Vanya does to him when she saves his life. I kept expecting the the moment when Harlan would turn to his mother and start speaking, and the fact that the season kept refusing to go there feels almost miraculous.

So yeah, the whole thing feels like a breath of fresh air, and as if the people at the helm are thinking a lot more deeply about their story, what works in it and what needs to be changed for it to work, than I would have said at the end of the first season. It’s still not an amazing story (part of the reason we’re able to spend so much time on subplots like Vanya’s romance with Sissy, Klaus’s cult adventures, Alison’s activism, or Diego and his conflicted relationship with Lila, is that the spine of the season is fairly perfunctory) but it does enough with the characters that I found myself genuinely interested in their relationships and eager to see how they would develop. I’m not used to shows rebuilding themselves like this, and it’s refreshing to see that even in the streaming era, that can still happen.

[fialleril]

snippet from a DAV Mara fic

A while back I promised the excellent @astudyinimagination a pick-me-up drabble about Mara in the Double Agent Vader ‘verse. Because it’s me, and I’m apparently incapable of writing anything short, that’s now turned into a full length fic which is still in progress, but I figured I’d at least give you the first bit. I hope you enjoy!

Some notes going in: the Mara in this fic is...not exactly Mara Jade from the Expanded Universe. She’s more like my version of the concept of Mara, because the idea of that character hits basically all of my buttons. But if you’re a hardcore EU fan who decides to read this, it’s probably better to think of this Mara as an OC who happens to be named Mara, because I won’t be using a lot of the details of her EU backstory.

So in my universe, her name is Mara but she doesn’t remember her last name. She’s one of the first kids taken for the Inquisitor program - taken before Anakin became a double agent, and therefore before he started providing the lists of Force sensitive kids to the Rebellion. Most of the Inquisitors are adults who are either fallen Jedi or else members of other Force traditions, so Mara is in a unique position.

This is either an AU of an AU or...possibly just something that I’ll end up fully incorporating into the Double Agent ‘verse. I honestly haven’t decided yet. Tell me what you think I guess?

Finally, some warnings: There’s really nothing explicit in this, but there are a lot of background implications of harm to children, conditioning, abuse, and injury.

She remembered her parents, at least a little.

The memories were soft and strange, feelings more than images, and she never let herself think of them when any of the older Inquisitors were around, or on the rare occasions when she was brought before the Emperor. They weren’t the sort of things she thought the Emperor would be pleased to hear about. The sound of her mother’s laughter, the gentleness in her father’s hands – those weren’t things that had any bearing on her progress as an Inquisitor. So she kept them locked away.

But she did think about them, sometimes. Mostly when she was alone in her little windowless room, when she stole a few moments away from practicing her marksmanship or dueling with the remotes or studying the holologs she’d be quizzed on the next day.

She wasn’t really sure what to do with the thoughts. They weren’t useful, they wouldn’t make her stronger in the Dark Side or more capable of serving the Empire, and so she should probably put them out of her mind. But she never did, not fully.

She was alone most of the time, except for the droids, but they only ever gave perfectly exact answers when she spoke to them, with no extra information and no room for conversation, so after a while she learned to keep mostly to herself. Except when the older Inquisitors came. Usually it was the Fourth Sister or the Ninth Sister or the Third Brother, but sometimes the Grand Inquisitor was there. He never said anything to her, though. He just watched her at her exercises and looked disapproving.

And then one day there was someone else.

She thought he was another droid at first, although he was much taller than any droid she’d seen before. But he was all dark metal and plastic and he moved stiffly and with just the faintest mechanical whir. His breathing was deep and even and mechanical, too, except that was strange, because droids didn’t need to breathe. That was how she knew he must be organic after all.

He slipped into her little room almost an hour after the Ninth Sister had left, and she knew no one else would likely visit her for hours. It was just her and the training droids, and she hadn’t been expecting him, or anyone, so she was distracted. Without thinking she lowered her blade, and all three of the droids took the opportunity to fire on her at once.

Their bolts never hit her, though. They seemed to ricochet from an invisible wall and then dissipate harmlessly into the air.

She stared up at him, at the droidlike face that was probably a mask, and wondered if he was staring back down at her. It was impossible to tell with the opaque lenses of the mask, but she thought he probably was. She felt much the same way she did when the Grand Inquisitor studied her. Like something was crawling over her spine.

She straightened up and did her best to glare at him. She was an Inquisitor, after all, and she wasn’t going to show deference to some droid-man. “Who are you?” she demanded in her best approximation of the Fourth Sister.

He only went on staring down at her. His left hand clenched, just like a droid’s. “What are you doing here, child?” he said.

His voice was deep and rich and it startled her, because he didn’t sound like a droid but he didn’t sound much like the Inquisitors, either. She wasn’t sure what he did sound like.

“This is my place,” she said, glaring up at him. “You’re trespassing in the rooms of an Imperial Inquisitor. So I’ll ask again, who are you?”

There was something strange in the air, like…like the feeling she had when one of her droids malfunctioned but in a funny way and she was annoyed and amused at the same time. It felt like that, a little, except that it wasn’t her feeling.

She’d had moments like that with the other Inquisitors. It was part of her connection to the Force, they’d said. So this droid-man must be connected to the Force, too. Maybe he was another Inquisitor? Oh, she should have thought of that at first! Now she was probably going to be punished and…

“I am Nobody,” said the droid-man, but he made it sound like a name.

She knew that couldn’t really be who he was, but…she didn’t think he was lying, either. It was strange.

“Do you have a name, child?” he said, and that was strange too. Maybe he just wanted to know what her name was, but the thought came to her that he meant exactly what he’d asked.

And maybe she shouldn’t have told him. Probably she shouldn’t have. But he’d asked the question like that, and something in his voice made her think of the distant memories of warmth she could never acknowledge, and in that moment she decided that, just this once, she didn’t want to be the Fourteenth Sister.

“My name is Mara,” she said.

“Mara,” he repeated, and the echo of her name was like an electric shock. She jolted with it.

He nodded his helmeted head once, abruptly, then turned and swept out of her room without a word.

*

Mara didn’t tell any of the other Inquisitors about her strange visitor. She wasn’t fully sure why. She just knew that she’d liked the sound of her name in his voice, and that she didn’t want to share that secret with anyone.

*

He came back some time later, weeks or maybe months. It was hard to tell time here, sometimes. But he came back, and that was the important thing.

“How long have you been here, Mara?” he asked her. There was something funny in his voice, but she didn’t know what it meant.

“I don’t know,” she said, swinging her legs where she sat perched on the edge of a chair that was still too tall for her. “A long time, I think.” She watched him, but he didn’t react to that, and so she asked, “Are you an Inquisitor?”

“No,” he said. It was only one word, but Mara thought she caught a hint of amusement there, and that made her wonder.

“Oh,” she said. “Did the Emperor send you, then?”

He stiffened, just a little, and she thought it was funny, because it made him look even more like a droid. He didn’t answer her question.

“Do you ever leave this room?” he asked her.

“Sometimes,” she said with a shrug, swinging her legs in even wider arcs because he hadn’t told her to stop. “When there are inspections, or” – her voice sank to an awed whisper – “when I have an audience with the Emperor.”

“Ah,” he said. And then, “What is he like, the Emperor?”

Mara peered up at him, her nose scrunching in confusion. Shouldn’t he know that himself? Of course, he hadn’t ever said that he was a representative of the Emperor, but she’d thought about it a lot since the first time he appeared here, and she was certain he must be.

So…maybe this was a test then? “The Emperor is everything,” she said in a pious whisper.

He was silent, and after a long moment she dared to say, “You still haven’t told me who you are.”

“I am Nobody,” he said again, and then he was gone.

*

She did learn who he was, eventually. It was several weeks-months since he’d last appeared, and she was just starting to think she would never see the strange droid-man again, when suddenly there he was, standing at attention just behind the Emperor’s throne at her next audience.

Mara registered his presence there, but didn’t dare to really look at him, afraid of the appearance of staring too long at the Emperor himself. The older Inquisitors had warned her very firmly about that. She had not yet proven herself in the Emperor’s service, and it was not for her to gaze on the august presence.

She demonstrated her progress as ordered, and then remained kneeling, silent and with eyes cast to the floor, awaiting the Emperor’s pleasure. At last, she heard his sibilant voice murmur, “Rise, my young friend. Come forward.”

Heart in her throat, Mara did as ordered. She kept her eyes on the ground.

“This is Lord Vader,” said the Emperor. “He is the Master of the Inquisitors.”

Mara didn’t dare to look up. “Yes, my Lord,” she whispered.

There was more talk, but it was intended for the other Inquisitors. Vader never said anything. Mara kept her focus on the floor and her mind utterly still, until she was dismissed. And then she went back to her little windowless room.

*

He returned only three days later. Her droids all powered down as he entered, but Mara hardly noticed. She’d leapt to her feet and stumbled into a bow, not as deep a bow as she gave before the Emperor but deeper than the one reserved for the Grand Inquisitor. “Master,” she said, her eyes still cast to the floor.

A sudden cold settled over the room, like a hole ripped through the hull of a capital ship, life and warmth left exposed to the endless void of space. Mara shivered.

“Shall I call you Fourteenth Sister, then?” he rumbled from some terrible distance above her.

She pushed aside her strange and sudden disappointment. That was the proper thing, of course. She was an Inquisitor, albeit still in training, and he was the Master of the Inquisitors. It was absurd to want anything else.

“Yes, Master,” she whispered.

“Do you want to be called Fourteenth Sister?” he demanded, and there was something so strange in his voice, so nearly angry, that she looked up in surprise.

The mask looked the same as it always did. She couldn’t see his eyes, but she could feel them boring into her.

It was impossible to respond with anything less than perfect honesty.

“No,” Mara whispered, and cringed back, awaiting the consequences of her failure.

But only silence followed. Silence, and the slow receding of that terrible cold, as though someone had sealed the hull breach.

“Mara, then,” he said, something warm in his voice that she couldn’t put a name to, something that made her think of impossible memories. “And I am not your Master.”

She forgot herself entirely at that and stared up at him in wonder. “But the Emperor said…”

“The Emperor,” he said with slow, almost mocking deliberation, “says a great many things.” She almost thought she could hear a smile in his voice. “But we know how to hold our silence.”

*

Her training became more strenuous, the stretches between her audiences longer. She saw less of the Ninth Sister, and far more of the Fourth. She grew used to bruises and small burns, learned to overlook them, to fight on in spite of pain. Pain gave her focus, and apart from that it was irrelevant. That’s what the Fourth Sister always said.

But today her entire body felt like one giant bruise, and that was much harder to overlook.

Mara gritted her teeth and wiped the sweat from her eyes with a grunt. Too slow. Another laser blast struck her, this one stinging through the already sore muscle of her left shoulder. She winced and staggered back.

No more blasts followed. Instead there was only a sudden silence as the three droids she’d been dueling powered down, sinking lifelessly to the floor. And then the sound of mechanized breathing.

“You are hurt, Mara,” said that deep rumbling voice. She didn’t recognize the tone.

Mara stepped back with a snarl. “I’m fine!” she growled. “I’m not weak! I can handle it.”

He only looked at her, looming and silent. And then, with a slow creaking of leather and metal, he lowered himself to crouch beside the now inert droids.

Mara stared at him. They were eye-level now, and she could just glimpse, through the red tint of the lenses on his mask, the shape of his eyes beneath.

“Of course you aren’t weak,” he said. “But you do have three cracked ribs.”

She sniffed. “Pain gives me focus,” she recited, and was proud of the way her voice didn’t betray any emotion at all.

“Injury makes you vulnerable,” he snapped. “A refusal to heed the needs of your body is not strength but foolishness.”

Mara drew herself up indignantly, forgetting for a moment who he was and the deference he was owed, but before she could speak, he’d stood with a sweep of his cloak and a groaning of metal joints. “Wait here,” he ordered brusquely, as though she had any other option, and then he stalked from the room without giving her a chance to answer.

At a loss, Mara waited.

He returned less than an hour later, and this time he had a droid with him.

The droid was a perfectly rounded shape, about the same size as Vader’s helmet, floating on silent repulsors just beside him. It looked very much like one of the interrogator droids she’d begun learning to work with last week. Mara held herself very still.

“This is KD-7,” he rumbled. “She is a medic.” Before Mara could think of anything to say, he’d turned to address the droid. “Kadee, this is Mara. She has at least three cracked ribs.”

“And a sprained wrist,” said the droid in a metallic monotone. “Will you let me help you, Mara?”

Mara blinked. No one had ever asked her something like that before. Certainly a droid hadn’t.

She glanced uncertainly at Vader, and his helmeted head nodded once.

“I…okay,” she said.

*

It was a strange feeling, to come out of a training session and not hurt. Stranger still to realize that the pain wasn’t necessary for her to focus. That maybe she could even focus better without it.

“You rely too much on your lightsaber,” Vader said, his back turned to her as Kadee tended to her ribs. “You may not always have it.”

“That’s why I must learn to work through the pain,” Mara said, because that was the correct answer. “To grow stronger in the Dark Side.”

The huff of breath through Vader’s respirator was at once disdainful and almost amused. “Is that what the Inquisitors have taught you?” he asked. “They are more incompetent than I had realized.” There was a weighted, staccato pause, and then, “I will show you another way.”

“No strenuous exercises while she’s healing,” said the droid Kadee.

Mara blinked in shock. Perhaps it was only the droid’s monotone that leant the impression, but that had sounded like an order. She couldn’t imagine that the Master of the Inquisitors, whether he allowed her to call him that or not, would take kindly to being commanded by a droid.

But Vader only released another huff of breath. This one might almost have been a laugh. “No, Kadee. No exercises for her at all. Just a demonstration.”

“All right,” said the droid, extending a pincer claw and patting Mara once on the head before drifting several feet away from her.

Mara blinked again. A distant memory flared: warm, soft hands stroking over her hair and a tender voice singing a tune she couldn’t quite understand. She fought the sudden, absurd urge to ask Kadee to come back.

Vader waved a hand, and her training droids reactivated. They were still set at the highest level, and they were programmed for her specifically. Mara leapt back on instinct, reaching for her lightsaber though she knew she would be too late, as a barrage of laser bolts flew towards her.

But not one of them hit.

They seemed to pause, to hang for an impossible second in the air and then to turn back on themselves, ricocheting away from her to dissipate in the scorched walls of her little room, as though she were wearing some kind personal force field. She stared up at Vader in awe.

“The Force is your ally,” he said as, with a wave of his hand, her droids powered down again. “It surrounds you at all times. Even when you have nothing else, you have the Force. Remember that, use it, and nothing can touch you.”

*

The next time the Fourth Sister came to inspect Mara’s progress, she brought the Grand Inquisitor with her.

He watched Mara with a silent, cruel smile as the Fourth Sister reprogrammed her droids and then set them at the new highest level.

Mara’s back still stung from her exercises with the Eighth Brother yesterday, and the cut on her thigh had reopened when she tore Kadee’s bacta patch off this morning, afraid of what the other Inquisitors would do if they saw it. The used patch was hidden away inside the thin mattress of her cot now. She forced herself not to look toward the bed.

The droids activated, and she knew she would not be able to block all of their bolts. At least, not with her lightsaber.

She closed her eyes and centered herself in the Force, in the memory of a cool metal hand patting her head and the barest hint of something she still couldn’t name in Vader’s voice.

Nothing could touch her.

*

“Who taught you to do that, Fourteenth Sister?” the Grand Inquisitor demanded, his eyes dark with fury. But he had never called her anything other than “girl” before.

Mara held herself straight at attention. She dared to look him in the eye just a split second longer than was truly proper.

“Nobody taught me,” she said.

[dweemeister]

New Orleans (1947)

The city of New Orleans is synonymous with a rich cultural tapestry shaped over centuries. Located on the banks of the Mississippi River, its economic and political influence waned with the spread of railroads and highways. Today, its influences are indigenous American, African, French, Spanish, Creole, Honduran, Vietnamese, and much more. But the city remains an inimitable cultural force. One of the city’s most significant contributions to the world is jazz – a musical genre that, even in the mid-twentieth century, attracted racially-coded disdain.

I must admit that I am instantly suspicious of any film that takes a city’s name as its title. Being not in a sniping mood as I write this sentence, I will not single any certain film out – for now. But to reduce a film title to a city’s name is to heighten expectations that the filmmaker will capture the so-called “soul” of a city (a nearly impossible task). Or perhaps they shall depict a man-made or natural disaster that takes place in that city (how often does a city’s name become shorthand for a mass shooting?). Enter Arthur Lubin’s New Orleans: a quasi-musical that does not have the courage to let the musical numbers guide it. The film stars Louis Armstrong (essentially playing himself) and Billie Holiday (not playing herself in her only credited role in a feature film), in addition to other jazz stalwarts at the time: Woody Herman, drummer Zutty Singleton, clarinetist Barney Bigard, trombonist Kid Ory, guitarist Bud Scott. New Orleans makes the mistake of not having Armstrong and Holiday be the main stars. Instead, the film has a half-baked, predictable romance. For a film title with such enormous implications, New Orleans’ concentration makes no sweeping statements about the eponymous city. Instead, it turns its gaze to jazz’s reputation among high-society white Americans.

It is 1917. The Storyville district of New Orleans is a den of prostitution, drinking, gambling, and – worst of all – jazz. Storyville’s residents are mostly black, but some of its welcome patrons are white. Nick Duquesne (Mexican actor Arturo de Córdova) runs a gambling joint frequented by Mrs. Rutledge Smith (Irene Rich) and classical music conductor/pianist Henry Ferber (Richard Hagerman). Irene avoids the jazz there (one of the regulars is Louis Armstrong and the aforementioned players), but her daughter, Miralee (Dorothy Patrick) – an operatic soprano who has arrived in New Orleans to make her professional classical music debut – is entranced by this radical music. Miralee is also entranced with Nick, against her mother’s wishes. Miralee is staying with her relative when she meets their maid, Endie (Billie Holiday), who surreptitiously plays the piano and sings jazz music when she gets the chance. As you might imagine, Endie’s employers disapprove. The film comes to a head as the U.S. military forcibly shuts down Storyville (evicting hundreds of black residents overnight), Nick leaves New Orleans, and Miralee must contend with her emotions just before she makes her classical music professional debut.

Billie Holiday’s fans might be troubled by the fact she is a maid here, given that she intentionally avoided physically demanding occupations in real life. Her reaction to this casting is unclear, as different reputable sources offer contradictory claims: that she abhorred being cast as a maid (Meg Greene’s Billie Holiday: A Biography), or that she relished the opportunity to be in a motion picture regardless of the role (an interview with music journalist Leonard Feather). So as tough as it may be to see her in a subservient role, Holiday appears to be enjoying herself – especially during the musical numbers she is a part of. She is clearly, other than Louis Armstrong, the most musically accomplished member of the cast. But when her character disappears from the film in the final third, New Orleans heaves due to the hackneyed romance between Nick and Miralee. To toss the one actor making this film worth watching for no sensible reason is a disastrous choice by screenwriters Elliot Paul (1941’s A Woman’s Face, 1945’s Rhapsody in Blue) and Dick Irving Hyland (1947’s Kilroy Was Here).

Even in a film independently released through United Artists (the one major Hollywood studio of Old Hollywood with the least executive interference), she and Armstrong cannot be the central stars. Considering Holiday’s musical talents, one wonders why she never starred in another film. Despite some digging, I could not find the answer. But if any black woman musician could have films centered around her, it would be Holiday. Her contemporaries, Lena Horne and Ethel Waters, could never overcome the terrible beliefs that audiences would not pay to see a film with a black actress in the lead role. But did Holiday – noting how Louis Armstrong also appeared in films – want to make more films? That may be an answer for someone else to uncover.

More than any film of its time that I can recall, New Orleans is overflowing with a disobedient musical energy. When considering musical genres innovated by African-Americans, there is an underground aspect to their initial spread that, at first, appears exclusive. Jazz, R&B, and hip hop have all gone through these motions: a tumultuous, secretive birth; a rebellious adolescence where critics decry the moral fabric of such music; and finally mainstreaming. Jazz in New Orleans lies somewhere within that adolescence. Its troubled reputation is the result of a mixture of musical and racial tensions. New Orleans’ affluent white community, on its surface, disdains jazz and prefers the import that is Western classical music – opinions they express vocally (as an amateur classically-trained musician who learned more about jazz later in life, I can’t stand the gatekeeping behavior exemplified in this film). So any time that jazz music is played in an unorthodox setting – the parlor of the Smith household, an orchestra hall – it feels defiant, dangerous.* These musical-racial dynamics persist in America to this day. To even see a film acknowledge that conflict, however ineloquently, is credit to the screenwriters and director Arthur Lubin understanding aspects about musical popular culture of this time.

But what is New Orleans and New Orleans without music? First sung by Holliday and reprised (one might even say appropriated in the negative sense) multiple times is, “(Do You Know What It Means to Miss) New Orleans”, with music by Louis Alter and lyrics by Edgar De Lange. Louis Armstrong is on his signature trumpet, a phalanx of great jazz instrumentalists play on the flanks, and Billie Holiday’s voice captures the timbre necessary in any song about longing.

Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans And miss it each night and day? I know I’m not wrong, the feeling’s getting stronger The longer I stay away.

It is a song representative of this film’s failed ambitions as an embodiment of New Orleans’ spirit. But it is also a brilliant showcase for some of the great jazz figures working at this time – including instrumental performances by Woody Herman and his orchestra and a virtuosic performance of “Honky Tonk Train Blues” by pianist Meade “Lux” Lewis. Nevertheless, New Orleans’ most soulful performances always revolve around Armstrong and Holiday singing Alter and De Lange’s original compositions. Other soundtrack highlights include “The Blues are Brewin’” and “Farewell to Storyville”. The former exemplifies Holiday’s timeless appeal, her singing voice’s unornamented pathos that elevates the simplest of lyrics. The latter is the most context-dependent song in the soundtrack and occurs as the U.S. military orders the closure of the speakeasies and gambling joints of Storyville – a swinging elegy without defeatism. New Orleans is at its most enjoyable during these musical numbers, and the film just feels lost whenever Armstrong and Holiday are not present or when any of the supposed leads open their mouths to speak.

That Lubin and the film’s producers do not trust the soundtrack to carry New Orleans indicates an ironic misgiving towards jazz music itself. United Artists’ refusal to reward Armstrong and Holiday star billing over de Córdova and Patrick is probably rooted to then-contemporary reality that movie theaters in the American South refused to show films with black leads. In addition, jazz music – like in this film – was not yet completely in the mainstream. If it appeared in a Hollywood film (and elements of jazz often appeared in mid-century American musicals), it almost always would be presented and popularized by a white performer. This development is not exclusive to jazz, let alone artistic medium. The filmmakers, in New Orleans’ final third, muddle their message through such appropriation. “Cultural appropriation” at its most basic definition is a neutral concept, but the developments in the film’s closing scenes – intentional or otherwise – extend this appropriation by presenting a white person’s presentation of jazz as more acceptable to a general audience than a black person’s.

For New Orleans, it remains obscure in terms of Hollywood musicals, African-American cinema, and within the esteemed United Artists filmography. In the present day, it serves best as an exhibition for some of the most acclaimed jazz musicians and performers working in the 1940s. To those fans of the numerous black jazz performers appearing in the film, New Orleans is a bittersweet reminder of what may have been.

My rating: 6.5/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog (as of July 1, 2020, tumblr is not permitting certain posts with links to appear on tag pages, so I cannot provide the URL).

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

* In one scene in an orchestral concert hall, jazz is played as an encore to a classical music concert. It says volumes that the audience is beside themselves and that all of the members of the orchestra (and Richard Hagerman, playing their conductor) are transfixed.

[gracie-p8-officialblog]

Spilling Tea On Phantom of the Opera 2004

DISCLAIMER: I just want to say from the start that it is not my intention to offendanyone, you're entitled to your opinions and I'm allowed to have mine...

Ok, so, I just watched this movie a few days ago on my laptop and it was pretty much my first time sitting through the movie. I watched a few clips of the movie on YouTube but... Then, I decided to watch the whole movie. And this was my reaction.

Don't get me wrong! There WERE parts I liked but... That was just half of the movie... But overall... Um... It was meh. Ahem. Down to business!

My opinion on Gerard Butler as the Phantom? Um, wow. And not in a good way. I feel like this was a case of a talented performer being grossly miscast as the Phantom. I think this Tumblr post best describes on what I thought of his singing.

"He's supposed to have the voice of an angel, but it sounds like he's been gargling vinegar" ~Quoted by @faded-florals

Don't get me wrong. His voice is quite good for an untrained singer but... The Phantom is one of the biggest musical theatre roles of all time! It's right up there with Jean Valjean. It's really not a role that could go a competent singer, someone who's never sang professionally before but could be good once they've been trained up a bit. The role demands a truly great singer... And he wasn't right for the part.

His voice felt too strainy, growly and rock-ish for the Phantom. I didn't like how Joel Schumacher bought into the whole "sexy Phantom" thing and cast a hunky heart-throb, who was nowhere near disfigured enough. It's meant to be a gothic thriller novel with a small romantic subplot, not a B-grade vampire romance movie!

As for Emmy Rossum as Miss Christine Daae... it's true, her voice is good. She should know though, should she wish to excel, she has MUCH still to learn (Heeeeehee. Sorry. Couldn't resist.)

Emmy's Christine had little-to-no character growth and personality but I don't think it reflects her as an actress, but reflects more on the director and casting director because of how young she was (but more on that later)

Not only that, her Christine was SIGNIFICANTLY dumbed down and oversexualized. I mean, the entire point of the story is that Christine grows strong enough to overcome the trauma of an abusive relationship and make sure that her abuser never hurts anyone ever again but still shows the Phantom compassion and sympathy. I mean, her story arc is her becoming strong-willed enough to overcome the Phantom's pull/spell/enchantment/hypnosis or whatever you percieve it as on her! And don't get me started on her costumes because of the SEVERE lack of modesty.

The chemistry was a little flat because she was underage and her two male love interests were both in their 30s (which totally isn't HER fault, of course, but the directors could easily have cast someone else older)

Her voice, too, strikes me as being much too young and undeveloped. She has a very pretty, sweet-sounding quality to her singing but she doesn't sound rich and operatic enough to be a convincing Christine. Rebecca Caine and Amy Manford do the best job of singing the way I think Christine ought to sound- a maturing opera voice! Though POTO is NOT an opera (you wouldn't believe how many people actually think it is...), it does revolve around opera, and Christine is an opera singer, not a pop star.

And now onto... Everyone's favourite vicomte!!!!!!

C'mon people, put your bottles down. It is a truth universally acknowledged (or at least in the wee Raoul Defense Squad Circle) that Raoul is one of the greatest and most underrated boyfriends to ever exist in musical theatre and it's almost impossible to hate him because of how relatable he is.

Ladies, puh-leeze. He's much more relatable than you admit and face it, we all have a little bit of Raoul in us. Failure to see things staring us in the face, saying or doing the wrong thing at the wrong time, having a 'see it to believe it' attitude when we have little-to-no evidence on something... yeah, don't pretend you don't see a trend. Raoul is relatable whether we want him to be or not.

My thoughts on Patrick Wilson as Raoul, he was one of the few redeeming qualities of this not so great movie. Yeah, the swordfight and Tarzan leaps were a little too much but can you blame him?! And though I feel like that foppish wig made him look more like a magic elf prince than a vicomte, he couldn't control that!

His Raoul was so gentle and caring! Yeah, his acting was a bit stiff but at least his voice wasn't a chore to listen to, it has this warm, tender, comforting quality to it which suits Raoul. I really loved the way he sang "Don't throw away your life for my sake" and "I fought so hard to free you" in the Final Lair (😭😭😭) It feels like Raoul is genuinely apologising to Christine.

I know, I know... The Hadley Fraser fans are approaching with menacing expressions as we speak but let me clarify. I still think Hadley is amazing but... His Raoul kinda felt a little too shouty for me and his Raoul was closer to the LND-canon than POTO-canon (not his fault though).

Miranda Richardson (aka. Rita Skeeter) as Madame Giry is kind of weird. I mean, I know Madame Giry's supposed to be a little Strange and Mysterious. But this Mme. wasn't really Strange or Mysterious at all, or even slightly Spooky at all. She was just kind of an oddball. Popping up in random places to give warnings about the Phantom and looking at people as if she were questioning their life choices or something. As for her daughter... well, Jennifer Ellison's Meg was so-so. She's got a sweet-sounding voice and that added scene where she looked for Christine in the lair was a nice touch... But... Her Meg was kinda forgettable and uninteresting. Meg is supposed to prance around shrieking that the Phantom of the Opera is here, not whisper it in a blase manner that you half expect to be followed up with, "by the way, what's for lunch?" Not to mention, she rivaled Christine as far as low-necked costumes went.

Minnie Driver as Carlotta was spot on! Yes, I know she didn't sing the score but her acting was alright. She was very over-the-top and self-centered, which is great for Carlotta, but I felt her portrayal was a little too childish to be accurate. Carlotta is a successful middle-aged diva who's willing to scream and storm when she doesn't get her way, but she isn't a two-year-old pouting and throwing tantrums. (Yes, there's a difference.)

Ciaran Hinds and Simon Callow played Firmin and Andre, respectively. Their managers kinda felt like twits and nothing more. Also, Firmin's masquerade costume was ridiculous. The stupid kind, not the funny kind. ...Well, okay, it was a little funny.

I'm not going to touch on every song here, but I will say that "Hannibal" was beyond awful (if you thought the costumes in the stage version were a bit risque, you should see the movie ones- no, actually you shouldn't) and that "Think of Me," while very nice, was not particularly memorable. Christine's dress, however (despite its less-than-ideal neckline) was GORGEOUS, even though it looks completely out of place in a musical that supposedly takes place in ancient Alexandria.

"Little Lotte" kinda lost its charm by being spoken instead of sung. And Gerard Butler's voice in "The Mirror" was too rough and raspy for my ears and made me cringe in sympathetic shame. The title song was like a cheesy, campy B-grade horror movie tbh, trying way too hard to be spooky and chilling ("ooh, look, Phantom's Lair! It's DARK and SCARY down here!") and succeeding only in being cringeworthy. Not that I've actually ever seen a bad horror movie- or any horror movie at all, for that matter. Unless you count this one.

Christine's costume, too, annoyed me no end. She was basically wearing a corset and drawers under the dressing gown. *facepalm* The dressing gown is supposed to go OVER your COSTUME to keep it CLEAN, peeps. It's not a BATHROBE. And the amount of eye makeup she had on would terrify a raccoon. Yikes.

Though I liked the random horse because of its nod to the Leroux novel.

"Music of the Night" was so blah-slash-touchy-feely that it made me summarily uncomfortable.

I'd like to be able to say something nice about "I remember/Stranger than you dreamt it" but I have none. One thing that bugged me to no end was how Christine is no longer wearing stockings, like dude, that gives some GROSS implications. Anyways, let's skip to Il Muto!

Oh, but first I should say that "Notes" was rather a flop and that "Prima Donna" is unmemorable and indeed should probably be fast-forwarded as there's a rather unsavory bit involving a crew member showing the audience what he thinks of Carlotta's behaviour.

"Il Muto," I must say, was pretty doggone funny. Carlotta's "Your part is silent. Leetle toad," cracked me up into a bunch of giggling little pieces, and the little vignette of the Phantom tinkering with Carlotta's throat spray made her croaking later on a lot more believable.

Now for "All I Ask Of You", SQUEEEEEE!!!!!!!!! I honestly can't understand how anyone could listen to this song and still maintain that Christine and Raoul don't belong together. He represents everything she needs- stability, protection, a guiding hand and affirmed affection. She represents everything he needs, in turn- someone to show affection to and his childhood friend.

One thing I definitely think could have been left out was the scene in which Erik kills Buquet- we totally did not need to see him being chased, terrified, through the rafters and finally strangled. Gross.

And the Phantom and his rose crouching behind that statue... I think this was supposed to be sad, but there was too much snot mixed with tears for it to be sad. It was, again, gross. So was Gerard Butler's pathetic attempt at the "all that the Phantom asked of you" line. And the lack of a chandelier crash in that scene made the song anticlimactic.

And "Masquerade" was so-so but... The Phantom's entrance is anticlimactic somehow, and his Red Death costume (if indeed it's supposed to even BE the Red Death) is unimpressive. I don't like how Raoul just runs off to desert Christine as soon as things start looking ugly (yes, I realize he was going to get his sword, but still... something could have happened to her while he was gone. Duh, did this guy learn anything from "Little Lotte/The Mirror"? Just sayin)

As for Madame Giry's flashback immediately following, I like how it gives us some of the Phantom's backstory, but it seems really abrupt. You don't even realize until she's done that she was talking to Raoul the whole time- it sounds like she's just randomly reminiscing about Stuff, and if you didn't know the story you might be sitting there thinking, "who is this strange woman again?"

Also, Christine leaving wherever-it-is at, like, five in the morning to go to who-knows-where, completely oblivious to the fact that the Phantom is driving her. Whaaaaaaaaa? How'd he know she was planning to go for a graveyard stroll? Was he watching her through the mirror again? THAT'S JUST CREEPY.

"Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again" was rather mediocre and dulled down the fact that it is a Christine Empowerment™ song. Why, exactly, does Christine's father have the biggest monument in the cemetery? If he were a rich and famous violinist as his crypt seems to suggest, why on earth was his daughter struggling along as a chorus girl taking free music lessons?

The swordfight... Well... I had mixed feelings about it. Sword fights are all well and good, but... The swordfight takes away the element of mysterious danger to the Phantom. Okay, fine, Christine getting Raoul to spare the Phantom's life is a nice touch, I guess, but did it strike no one else that his "now let it be war upon you BOTH" makes absolutely NO sense after that? If she just saved his life, why would he suddenly be all, "thanks, but no thanks, I'M GOING TO MURDER YOUUUUUUUUUU"?

And "Twisted Every Way" was after "Wishing" which made ZERO sense. Plus, I didn't like how they cut most of it because in the musical, it gave Christine a spine!

"Point of No Return"? Hooooooo boy....... There are so many things wrong with this number. Let's just a list a few.

*HOW did no one recognise the Phantom through his "disguise"?! At least in the stage play, it made more sense because of how he was wearing a cloak that obscured most of his body.

*Christine's sleeves falling down over and over again were REALLY annoying.

*It was just too touchy-feely for my taste.

*The fact that Emmy Rossum was a teenager during filming made this scene gross because of the way they oversexualized Christine in this scene.

*Gerard Butler's voice in that scene made me cringe and shake my head in sympathetic shame.

*In the stage play, Christine ran from him, showing her own agenda and resistance to his pull! While in the movie, she didn't resist him!

*Now for the one that took the cake... The disfigurement! Or it would be a disfigurement if it actually made him look, y'know, deformed. Instead, as several people have put it, he looks like he got a bad sunburn or something. It's really rather pathetic. It makes him look more like a drama queen than he already is! Yeah.... I really don't like this movie.

On to... Final Lair!!!!!!!! It was a flop. From Raoul's whining and flailing around and his stringy hair flopping about (shallow complaint, I know, but it's so ugly) to Christine's sappy melodramatic "don't make me choooooooose" faces to the Phantom's prancing around with his ropes and maniacal laughter that somehow wasn't really scary at all... yeah, it was a flop. A major, major flop. And though The Kiss wasn't all that bad, all I could think of was, "She's SIXTEEN! SIX! TEEN! THIS IS CREEPY, DISTURBING AND GROSS!"

Which is why it's so difficult for me to admit that, um, I... cried at the end.

I COULDN'T HELP IT GUYS HE WAS ALL ALONE THERE IN HIS LAKE WITH HIS MONKEY AND HIS SMASHED MIRRORS AND HE WAS CRYING AND IT WAS SAD.

And then that rose on the gravestone? That single red rose? And the look on Old Raoul's face (still Patrick Wilson, by the way, under all that makeup) when he saw it and realized he wasn't the only one visiting Christine's grave? Yup, I lost it again there, too. And I really didn't want to. Because I tend to cry over movies I love, y'know? And I didn't love this movie. At all

Yet I still cried at the end. I'm not really sure why. I think perhaps it had something to do with the way the story still "got" me, deep down inside, despite the lousy casting and less-than-perfect singing and ridiculously unnecessary elements that totally didn't need to be there. It's still a tragically beautiful romance, and even a bad film can't kill that.

In conclusion, I think Mary Poppins can best express what I thought of POTO 2004.

In conclusion, I rate it a 2.7/5

[echodrops]

Issues with Voltron Season 6 (Part 2)

A continuation of my extremely long vent about the most recent Voltron season.

<- Part 1 is back here.

This time, it’s all about Lotor!

3) Lotor’s entire character makes no sense.

This is such a mess that I really don’t even know where to start. I’m just gonna make a bullet list and then try to break things down from there:

Lotor’s endless drive to harvest quintessence is never grounded in a visible need; therefore, the extent to which he is willing to go to get that power feels entirely unjustified.

The executive producers, VAs, and the show itself went out of their way to flat out tell us that Lotor is a “genuine” character who meant well and really did want to bring peace to the universe--which leads to the frightening conclusion that the EPs think someone who engages in genocide can actually be genuine about wanting peace.

Lotor’s casual disregard for life is utterly at odds with someone who would genuinely want peace--and even more at odds for someone who had actual Alteans to learn from, which leaves the viewers confused about his motives in a way that is terrible for young watchers and bad even for older viewers.  

The extent to which the rift influenced Lotor’s actions throughout the course of his life is never clarified, leaving viewers completely unsure whether he would have taken any of the actions he did without the influence of the rift. Clone Shiro in this season tells us the rift only amplifies evil that already exists--ergo, Lotor is, contrary to everything we’ve been told--not genuine about wanting peace and is, instead, at his core, evil. The conflicting messages here are ridiculously unorganized.

Lotor’s desperation to regard himself as a member of the Altean race is almost unspeakably horrific in retrospect, and the fact that the show went so far out of its way to portray him as a person who saw himself as Altean and nevertheless chose to murder them by the thousands is disturbing in the extreme. Even more unsavory are the implications this entire thing has for mixed-race people, since the show also went out of its way to treat Lotor as a mixed-race character--and then gave him absolutely nowhere to fit in. And that’s not even mentioning the implications for abuse survivors...

The idea that Lotor’s feelings for Allura were real is so gross I almost can’t even bear it--and this as someone who was FIRMLY on the Lotura ship before season six. If you can go from claiming you love someone to wanting to kill them in one line of dialogue, your feelings weren’t real! That’s all there is to it. “But he was corrupted by the rift!” Except the rift only amplifies what was already there, right?

Okay so, let’s just start with that first idea, because honestly, fixing that problem could actually have fixed many of the others. We know that Lotor’s plan is to harvest the infinite quintessence between universes in the rift. Sure, makes sense. Except for the part where the reasoning behind that plan is never examined in detail. Why does Lotor need that much quintessence? We viewers assume that it’s because the entire Galra Empire runs on quintessence--that the empire will crumble without a constant supply of energy. I can only guess what we, as viewers, are supposed to believe that this will be a terrible thing and that, at this point, the universe actually needs the Galra Empire in order to survive... Except that’s surely only true in a significantly smaller capacity. There are undoubtedly planets that rely on Galra technology in order to ensure survival--but not every planet. Probably not even MOST planets. The Galra Empire does not need to exist in its current capacity by any means--significantly scaling back on the expansion efforts alone would easily save the amount of quintessence necessary to begin transitioning Galra-dependent planets to independence from both the Galra Empire and quintessence use.

The only conclusion I can come to here, and the one I think the writers want us to come to, is that Lotor had no intention of ever dissolving the Galra Empire and freeing the universe from his control. Which is all well and good. Power is appealing, especially to someone like Lotor who likely desired that power his whole life. As far as villains go, this is stock behavior and I totally get it--what I don’t get is why in the world any of our intrepid heroes bought into this? When I said there was an idiot plot raging, this is exactly what I meant.

Viewers accept Lotor’s plan because we know he’s villain-coded. But the team supposedly believed him to be a good guy--in what way, and in what universe, would have supplying the Galra Empire with infinite quintessence helped anyone except the Galra Empire? “No, no,” you might say, “Lotor convinced the team that the Galra Empire was only expanding because they needed to harvest quintessence from other worlds! Without that need, they would have stopped oppressing other planets, obviously!”

Great--except they seemingly weren’t using that quintessence for any purpose but to continue expanding! The show never--at any point--shows us the Galra using the quintessence they harvest for any purposes other than evil. There’s never any moment of “Actually, we need this quintessence to power lifesaving hospital technologies for our sick and elderly!” or “We use this quintessence to amplify our food production so that we can feed all our children!” This isn’t something you should leave it up to the viewers to assume--the writers needed to do this work at least in part, to ensure that Lotor’s entire plan made sense in the first place. Until we really SEE the need for the quintessence, Lotor’s entire scheme looks like nothing more than a power-hungry bid for endless energy to continue fueling his dark empire--and our heroes look like the complete and utter idiots who thought that sounded like a good idea.

Pidge’s lines from this season confirm that Coran really did share the entire story of what happened to Zarkon back in the day with all the paladins. This means that Allura--knowing that it resulted in the zombification of Zarkon and Honerva and ultimately the death of her father--still went with Lotor into the rift in this season. I can hardly fathom the degree of idiocy it would take a real woman to choose this course of action. Poor Allura did not deserve this treatment.

Which leads into the second issue: it’s impossible--literally impossible--to see Lotor as a genuine character who really did want to bring peace to the universe unless a serious need for endless quintessence is properly articulated. There are plenty of powerfully advanced races like the Olkari who do not appear to fuel their creations by harvesting life energy. We, as viewers, cannot buy into the idea that Lotor absolutely needs this quintessence--enough that he is willing to kill thousands of people--without that need being better explained on screen.

Because it never was, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, in the writing of the show that makes Lotor’s treatment of the captive Alteans seem justified. The show didn’t portray this as a difficult choice for Lotor to make, didn’t give him a scene where he had to choose between say... one or two Altean lives and harvesting enough quintessence to save a whole planet or something. We never see him do ANYTHING positive with the quintessence he harvested from the Alteans or even expressing any regret for the act of harvesting it in the first place--and yet we’re somehow supposed to believe that he “genuinely” wanted peace for the universe? That he meant well? That he did what he “had” to do? Are the EPs literally crazy?

Nothing from the many interviews about Lotor’s character makes sense. This is not a portrayal of the nuanced, complex villain we were promised--even the show’s depiction of Zarkon as a semi-well-intentioned extremist was more believable and sympathetic!

By definition, a complex villain is one whose motivations are deeply explored and even more deeply-rooted in their actions, who exhibits enough “human” qualities to make the character compelling even as we recognize his or her evildoing, and whose actions, in turn, have logic behind them--the line separating a complex villain from a complete monster is that the audience can, at the end of the day, understand why the villain made the choices they made, and come to the nerve-wracking realization that, in that specific character’s shoes, we too might have made the same choices.

Because we’re never given deeper insight into Lotor’s motivation--never really shown why that quintessence was so very important to him--any degree of complexity, humanity, sympathy, and relatability Lotor had is chucked wholesale into the garbage after “The Colony.” How are we as viewers supposed to “genuinely” buy into Lotor’s rhetoric after this, to believe he wanted peace despite being seemingly remorseless at the slaughter of thousands of people?

At best, all the EPs’ talk of Lotor being authentic and complex and meaning well was empty air to hype up the audience. At worst, the writers of this series actually think they can actively include Holocaust imagery into their show and then still call the perpetrator of it “genuine.” I don’t know whether to be mildly insulted or outright infuriated.

I won’t even touch on the gross implications this whole thing has for real life abuse survivors, given that it implies they can’t rise above their parents’ actions. (Even worse that Haggar’s motivations continue to be unclear--is she headed to some kind of redemption, instead of being the supreme villainness she SHOULD have been all along?) Other people have posted about this issue and probably have more personal experience with the topic, so they can express that part better than me.

But I do want to talk about the whole super gross implications this has for mixed-race people, since that’s a little closer to my personal realm. In a previous post, I cautioned that Keith should not be read as a mixed-race character and that doing so was dangerously reductive of the show’s narrative. I still hold to that--because the show clearly has NO interest in portraying Keith as a mixed-race person. He’s literal walking, talking proof that you can include something in your show and still not have it be “representation.” Despite his alien mother being shown on screen as part of his life, there is still zero effort on the part of the show to portray Keith as actually part-alien or deal, with any degree of seriousness, with the emotional, psychological, and social implications of his being a mixed-species character. It’s simply not part of his narrative and, at this point, I somewhat doubt it ever is going to be. Keith’s being part-Galra is little more than flavor text and a convenient excuse to get him out of Team Voltron during the Clone Shiro plot line.

But Lotor is a totally different story. The show writers went out of their way to emphasize his existence as part-Galra, part-Altean, and to deliberately portray him as--up until season six--deeply longing to be discover more about his Altean heritage, to be part of that culture, and to seek--supposedly--the same aim as his Altean ancestors: universal peace. We’re led to believe that for him, Altea was something that existed like a fairy tale, something that he desperately craved to learn more about his whole life. Therefore, his coming into contact with Allura was painted (in the show!) as a chance for him to learn more about his other half, to finally come to truly understand what it meant to be Altean, to learn not from artifacts but from a real person who could understand his goals, desires, and beliefs. He began referring to himself as Altean. He called Allura’s people his own. We were supposed to see this part as “genuine.”

And then “The Colony” came in like Miley Cyrus to utterly undermine all this emotional labor the previous seasons had been building up. Lotor didn’t need to learn about Alteans from legends--he had ACTUAL ALTEANS he could have spoken to and spent time with. He didn’t need to treat the Altean culture like an anthropological study--he had real Alteans who were happy enough with him that they would have welcomed him living among them. I’m sorry, let me just go back over this point one more time: By virtue of the location of their colony in the time-space abyss, he could have spent literal years living among the Alteans and no one in the Galra Empire would have noticed.

He had every opportunity to connect to the people he supposedly idealized so much--the people whose values he claimed to espouse--the people he is related to--and he instead chose what? To run some like weird captive breeding program to build up stock for his quintessence draining plans as if they were animals, rather than a people of which he supposedly sees himself a part.

As a pure, complete monster type villain, this is actually pretty compelling. It is indeed the story of many REAL cultures around the world, who now deal with mixed-race individuals (namely half-white/half-minority people) coming back and trying to appropriate or capitalize on the minority culture that makes up their other half. (As a personal aside, I’m half Native American, a registered member of my father’s tribe, with grandparents who were essentially kidnapped and forced to attend Christian schools--and there’s a very good reason that I don’t attend any tribal events or attempt to assert myself into Native American spaces: because I recognize that, by virtue of being mixed with the race of my own grandparents’ oppressors, minority spaces are not a place where I belong.) All that to basically say that if the writers had committed to making Lotor a pure villain, this would actually have been a very realistic and tragic point, and his desire to be seen as Altean could have (should have) been treated as a deeply insidious attempt to gain even further control over his victims and to more potently manipulate Allura.

But the writers didn’t commit to that. They and every additional piece of information about Lotor given outside the show waffles painfully, leading to the implication that Lotor really did want to see himself as Altean, that he really believed he could follow in Alfor’s footsteps to bring peace to the universe. Which is honestly more fucked up than I really have any words for, because it directly implies that mixed-race people do not ever--perhaps cannot ever--fit in. By bringing up this issue of race, placing Lotor in that liminal zone, making him express a desire to be part of one of the cultures that make up his genetic background--and then effectively ending his story with “And then he killed thousands of the people he wanted to be a part of for profit!”--the writers might as well have said “He can’t be Altean because he’s too Galra” while also saying “But honestly, he’s genuine at heart--he’s much too Altean to be Galra!” The writing of the show created a situation in which there was no place for Lotor--and then made Lotor look like the bad guy for it. What the hell kind of message does that send to real mixed-race kids out there? YIKES YIKES YIKES YIKES.

And I’m saying all of this as a Lotor fan! Lotor was a favorite of mine in the original Voltron, and a favorite of mine here in Legendary Defender too. Whether they painted him as a complete monster or a redeemable anti-hero, I wanted to love this character. But the wishy-washy, conflicting messages the writing of the show is giving is beyond frustrating. I would have loved a pure villain Lotor--a true magnificent bastard, a master manipulator. I would have loved a misguided anti-hero Lotor. But a character placed half-way between not by intentional design but by clumsy and callous execution? Sorry, I can’t accept that. I love Lotor, so seeing him done so dirty by bad writing is one of the premiere moments that made me realize I can finally give up on this iteration of Voltron ever truly becoming great. 

I still had more to say, so here’s:

My Issues with Voltron Season 6 (Part 3)

[healthpeak02-blog]

Deborah Eisenberg’s Short Stories Are Sharp Enough to Cut Deep

It isn’t long before an elegiac note sounds in Deborah Eisenberg’s latest book of short fiction, Your Duck Is My Duck. In the first story, the narrator begins:

Way back—oh, not all that long ago, actually, just a couple of years, but back before I’d gotten a glimpse of the gears and levers and pulleys that dredge the future up from the earth’s core to its surface—I was going to a lot of parties.

That retrospection, tinged with rueful wisdom and more than a little melancholy, is central to the collection, Eisenberg’s first in twelve years and her fifth since Transactions in a Foreign Currency heralded her arrival in 1986.

Eisenberg’s early stories often focused on a certain kind of lost girl—bright but slightly overwhelmed, a little too pliable to the people around her—trying to find a place for herself in a rudely inhospitable world. When Eisenberg was working her comic mode, the travails of these women rose to the level of modern-day screwball comedy: thinking of 1987’s “A Cautionary Tale,” a classic account of Manhattan bootstrapping, I still laugh at how the heroine indignantly admits to herself, at the low point of an impossible waitressing gig, that “This was not how she had imagined her adulthood.”

Thirty-some years later, Eisenberg’s protagonists are likely to be women of a certain age, members, however tenuously, of the creative class, and still city dwellers acutely attuned to the mores of a world that’s passing them by. (“No one met people in person any longer—you couldn’t hear what they were saying” is the most concise summary of New York restaurant culture I may ever need to read.) Most saliently, these modern selves find themselves unexpectedly alone (breakups are a recurring motif) and only too aware of the shadows lengthening all around them.

In one new story, “Cross Off and Move On,” a narrator reckoning with the death of her last surviving relative thinks, “Yes, off they go, my old allies, sailing right through the radiant shield at the edge of the universe, blending into darkness.” In “Recalculating,” a former dancer mourning a long-ago lover feels “brittleness fretting her bones, youth streaming from her in galaxies of sparkly molecules.”

These women have even more to contend with than aging and loss. Because they’re Deborah Eisenberg characters, they are also coping with what it feels like to be alive, as educated, alert citizens of a Western society, in the early years of the twenty-first century, when old-fashioned everyday anxieties have given way to something like dread. As in her previous collection, Twilight of the Superheroes (2006), Eisenberg is able to dramatize how the diabolical crawl that appeared on the bottom of TV news screens in the days after 9/11 found a counterpart inside people’s heads—and just what a toll our new normal of permanent crisis is taking on them. In the title story, a painter says to the doctor who’s prescribing her sleeping pills:

“It’s beginning to look like a photo finish—me first, or the world. It’s not so hard to figure out why I’m not sleeping. What I can’t figure out is why everybody else is sleeping.”

(This is from a story, by the way, that was originally published in 2013.)

The painter in “Your Duck Is My Duck” later meets an avant-garde puppeteer whose magnum opus, The Hand That Feeds You, is such a blunt allegory of life under terminal capitalism that it leaves the audience at its premiere, a select handful of one-percenters, momentarily speechless. The scene is bleakly funny in a way that feels just right for our present moment. But the story’s coda fulfills the puppet show’s preemptive title and then some, acknowledging how the two artists’ reliance on those one-percenters for patronage implicates them in the same system—a subtle reshuffling of our assumptions that’s characteristic of Eisenberg’s method throughout these stories.

In real life, the charge “first-world problems” became a reductive cliché almost overnight, so it’s especially gratifying in this book to see the idea explored humanely and from so many angles. Beings of conscience, Eisenberg’s characters are haunted by a suspicion that their relatively well-off lives might somehow be linked to all the hypocrisies, inequities, and worse that are the stuff of daily headlines—the stuff of our malaise, in other words. (As a character in her story “Twilight of the Superheroes” asked himself back in 2004, “Then again, how far away does something have to be before you have the right to not really know about it?”)

The theme gets its most expansive treatment in the novella “Merge,” which traces the shifting fortunes of Keith, a slippery scion of privilege headed for rock bottom after his domineering father, CEO of a rapacious multinational, kicks him out of their home. Eisenberg has long specialized in a comedy of aggrievement, and at first Keith’s indignation, his perplexity at having to fathom how ordinary people go about their lives, yield some of the funniest scenes in this book. When Celeste, an NGO worker who is also a potential romantic interest, tells him she’s about to embark on fieldwork in Slovakia, he thinks: “Slovakia? That was what she meant by Europe?”

Celeste’s trip to Europe—and points beyond, in several senses—is the hinge on which the story turns; it leads to a widening of scope that puts Keith’s struggles in a stark new light. The fascination with multiple perspectives that distinguishes Eisenberg’s later stories comes into full effect in “Merge,” whose changing points of view ask us to consider, among other things, dramatically different definitions of what it might mean to be homeless, and why some people become victims while others, heedless or even undeserving, get to flourish.

That said, even after repeat readings I’m not sure how all of the story’s thematic elements, which grow to include mental illness and theories of language, cohere into a persuasive whole. At the same time, it’s evident that a late Eisenberg story isn’t interested in surrendering its meanings too easily. A case in point here is “The Third Tower,” the outlier in the collection: set in a world both like and unlike our own, it features a young woman receiving treatment for a psychological condition that scans a lot like unfettered creativity. Something other than naturalism, the story testifies to Eisenberg’s formal restlessness, the way she regularly tests the four walls and ceiling of short-story form.

No account of Your Duck Is My Duck is complete without a mention of how gracefully this writer, tagged earlier in her career as a quintessential urban sophisticate, renders the natural world. “Recalculating” includes a beautiful description of a hurricane descending on a Midwestern prairie, and “Your Duck Is My Duck” has this snapshot of a wildfire witnessed from a great height:

Accident had selected me to observe, in whatever way I could, the demonic, vengeful, helpless, ardent fires as they consumed the trees that had replaced the crops—to observe the moment when, at the heart of the conflagration, the trees that sustained it became phantoms, the fire’s memory.

It’s typical that these lyrical outbursts are prompted by natural disasters—appropriately for a collection that regularly glances over its shoulder at environmental collapse along with every other kind of decline.

How much needs to be said about a writer who has very little left to prove? Across four decades Deborah Eisenberg has steadily enlarged her vision while refining her art. Her writing adds to our collective store of wit, empathy, and intelligence. If you haven’t read her yet, by all means start with Your Duck Is My Duck, and then waste no time in getting your hands on her Collected Stories, the chunky 2010 trade paperback that gathers the rest of her singular body of work.

FICTION Your Duck Is My Duck By Deborah Eisenberg Ecco Published September 25, 2018

Deborah Eisenberg is a MacArthur Foundation Fellow and the award-winning author of four previous collections of stories: Transactions in a Foreign Currency (1986), Under the 82nd Airborne (1992), All Around Atlantis (1997), and Twilight of the Superheroes (2006). Her first two story collections were republished in one volume as The Stories (So Far) of Deborah Eisenberg (1997). All four volumes were reprinted in 2010 in The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg (2010). She is a professor of writing at Columbia University.

Source: https://chireviewofbooks.com/2018/10/25/your-duck-is-my-duck-deborah-eisenbergs-review/

[the-garris0n]

barmaids don’t count - pt. 2

I changed my mind and gave the reader a name, hope u don’t mind 

tommy x reader / alfie x reader

summary: working for only one of the most feared gangs in the country seemed hard enough, until you found yourself being blackmailed by Alfie Solomons

part one / part three

‘Eva, I need a favour,’ Louise hurtles towards the bar, her hair half-done and with her dress only half buttoned up. I set down the glasses I was putting away, sighing at my whirlwind of a roommate.

‘Shouldn't you be getting ready?’ I ask mildly, raising an eyebrow at her. There’s less than fifteen minutes before the doors open.

‘Mary’s not coming in, I need you to take her place.’ I scoff.

‘Absolutely not.’ Louise is supposed to be performing her own routine for the first time tonight, after begging Arthur for weeks. Our living room has been turned into a rehearsal space, the furniture draped with even more gauzy slips and glitzy brassieres than usual, and I’ve been dragged into practices every day. Still, the idea of me dancing with Louise and the other girls is so ridiculous it’s almost funny. I have none of their easy confidence, elegance or beauty.

‘There’s no one else. I know you know the routine, you’ve practised with me enough at home. And it’s not like you have to strip or anything. I’m begging you,’ she clasps her hands together, leaning towards me across the bar.

‘Who’s gonna serve drinks?’

‘Get Arthur to do it, just for twenty minutes.’

‘Or get Arthur to dance for you,’ I suggest flatly. Louise snorts. Imagining Arthur in one of her costumes isn't a pretty sight.

‘So you’ll do it?’ Louise presses, flashing a sickly-sweet smile. I huff. ‘Fine, but I better get paid extra.’

I sit in the dressing room, my heart pounding. Staring at the mirror, I barely recognise myself in the pale pink silk robe I’m using to cover the costume Louise has lent me. My hair has been tamed into neat, perfect golden waves and my eyes are lined with smoky kohl. Outside I can hear the commotion of the rowdy club, overrun with the discordant music that plays non-stop.

‘Eva?’ I turn to see Louise with two glasses in hand. ‘You alright?’ I nod, smiling tightly.

‘How long before we go on?’

‘Two minutes.’ I take a deep breath. Louise flops into the chair next to me, grinning. 

‘Relax! Once you get up there you’ll love it. They’ll love the whole demure thing you do.’ I smile, wishing she was right. Every time I think about having the eyes of an actual audience on me a tight ball of panic squeezes my chest.

‘Here, drink this quick. We’re on.’ I swallow the liquor she hands me in one, grimacing as it burns my throat. Taking a deep breath, I plaster a fake smile across my face and follow her through the curtains.

I step onto the stage next to Louise, waiting until the music cue starts with baited breath. The glaring white lights burn my eyes and my exposed skin, and I smile at the audience I can barely see. The first drum beats resonate through my legs and up to my chest and I begin the first steps of the routine. The steps are burnt into my brain, making it easier to focus on them instead, and Lou’s familiar presence next to me is a small reassurance.

I remember the tips Lou gave me, making eye contact with members of the audience. Dancing for one person should be easier than dancing for all of them, at least in theory. My eyes fall on one man in particular, blue eyes watching me coolly as if I’m something mildly interesting, like a newsreel. I turn the routine up a level, needing for some reason to impress this stranger. In time with Lou I pull the tie of the robe, letting it fall open and revealing the impossibly short dress she lent me. The sequinned hem grazes the top of my thigh, sending a shiver down my spine that I try to hide with a smile and another kick of my leg. I turn my body to face him, letting the robe fall to the floor completely. The jeers and applause from the rest of the room have been drowned out. The stranger sits up slightly, his eyes dragging up and down my body. A breath catches in my throat.

The rest of the room has melted away by the time the song finishes, and as the lights go up I feel myself return to my body. The man’s eyes are still on me, but suddenly I feel all too vulnerable. I catch Lou’s eye and she gives me a reassuring smile, wiggling an eyebrow out of view. She grabs my hand, pulling me from the stage when I find that my feet are glued to the floor.

-

From backstage I watch the crowd, my gaze pulled again and again to the blue-eyed man. Louise joins me, tying her silk robe around her waist.

‘You know who that is right?’ 

‘Who?’ I reply absentmindedly.

‘You know who. I’m surprised your eyes haven't burnt any holes in him,’ she teases, elbowing me in the ribs. I yelp in pain, blushing at being caught so easily.

‘Okay, who is he?’ She smiles gleefully.

‘Arthur’s brother, Tommy,’ she tells me. I look back towards him. It’s obvious now she’s pointed it out. He has a calm authority, like he knows that everyone knows how important he is.

‘Just remember the rules, no sleeping with the patrons,’ Louise whispers before dashing away into the dressing room. I scoff to myself at her words, following her to the dressing rooms to change out of the costume.

-

Louise forces me to join her in waitressing for the rest of the night as Arthur is still on the bar, though what she counts as ‘waitressing’ is a loose use of the term. Mostly she sashays between the tables, still in her costume, flirting for tips and occasionally taking a drink order. I follow her example, putting on what I hope is a flirtatious smile. I try avoiding the man, embarrassment burning my throat whenever I think back to the stage, but eventually he catches my eye and signals me over.

‘What can I get for you?’ I ask. He says nothing. Just places a bank note on the table between us, the implication of it taking a second to hit me. He raises an eyebrow.

‘Follow me, Mr Shelby,’ I manage to get out, pulling myself together. I walk with him following me to one of the tables in the shadowy corner of the already-dark room. These tables are small, intimate, with round, plush benches that allow for privacy from the rest of the club. Technically the rules don't allow touching, but I’ve heard Lou’s stories about the kind of things that happen. Arthur isn't particularly strict in enforcing that one, for some reason.

Tommy sits down and I sit next to him, leaving space between us. I can only hope he's not expecting anything from me.

‘You’re new,’ he says, more of a statement than a question. I get a chance to look at him properly for the first time. There are parts of him that remind me of Arthur. His complexion, his eyes, the way he dresses, but it’s like everything has been intensified. Whereas Arthur’s eyes are grey-blue, Tommy’s are sharp and bright. His hair is darker, almost black, contrasting with his pale skin. Arthur’s face is kind, but Tommy’s is colder and calculating. I can’t stop myself from staring.

‘I’ve worked here for a few months now,’ I reply. Luckily he’s not looking back at me.

‘But not as a dancer.’ I blush, embarrassed that he could tell so easily. Hopefully no one else thought I was that disastrous.

‘You could tell?’ I ask, mortified, and a ghost of a smile flits across his lips.

‘The dancing was good,’ he pauses, his eyes flitting almost unnoticeably down to my covered body like he’s remembering the sight. ‘I’ve just seen you at the bar. And Arthur’s definitely not the one keeping those accounts,’ he raises an eyebrow with the last part and I breathe a sigh of relief. Good is enough of a compliment for me.

‘He asked me to do them. He’s always busy.’

‘That must mean he trusts you.’ He turns towards me, looking me in the eyes like he’s daring me to give him a reason not to trust me too. I have already, not that he knows it.

‘I just do my job,’ I shrug. Tommy pulls a silver cigarette case out of his suit pocket and places one between his lips. He holds the case out to me and I shake my head, already filled with enough nervous energy. He lights a match, the tiny flame illuminating his face for a second before he shakes it out.

‘You do it well,’ he says, smoke leaking from his lips in spiralling tendrils. I smile to myself, slightly embarrassed at how pleased the compliment makes me. I never got to finish school but I always dreamed of being an accountant in some chic office, earning enough to be independent.

‘Why did you bring me over here?’ I ask. He takes a long drag from the cigarette before replying, watching me thoughtfully.

‘I make it my business to know everyone who works for me. Especially those who my brother decides he can trust with confidential information.’ Something in his voice makes me think he’s caught me already and I gulp.

‘Paranoid, are you?’ I smile, trying to flirt my way away from the guilt building up, but he just holds me in a firm gaze that makes me feel like a deer trapped in the headlights.

‘Don’t give me a reason to be.’

-

Alfie Solomons calls me at the flat the next day, and I don’t even want to think about the fact that he somehow already has the number. Ollie arrives in the car a few minutes later to take me to the infamous bakery. He doesn't speak this time. The warehouse is different to what I expected, but really it has all the features of an illegal rum distillery; barrels fill most of the available space and huge metal distillation tanks loom out from the corners. Ollie walks me through the shop floor to Alfie’s office, knocking the door.

‘Enter,’ comes the gruff shout from inside. Ollie opens the door for me, ushering me in. Alfie is sitting at a large desk, and he raises an eyebrow when he sees me. 

‘Eva! How lovely.’ I resist the urge to roll my eyes. He’s the one who called me here. Now, in daylight, I can see him properly. He’s not bad looking, under the thick beard and grizzled appearance. His eyes are blue, not as bright as Tommy’s, but they have a manic glint that stands out against his calm exterior.

‘What have you got for me?’ He asks, clasping his hands together over his chest. I dig through my bag reluctantly, pulling out the papers I’ve managed to grab from Arthur’s office. I tried not to take anything too important, maintaining an ounce of imaginary dignity. I put them onto Alfie’s desk.

‘Interesting,’ Alfie mutters as he rifles through the papers. ‘Well done, very well done.’

’I’m not doing it anymore,’ I say, trying to sound authoritative before the huge man in front of me. From behind his desk Alfie sighs and presses his hand to his face, running his fingers over his beard thoughtfully as he appraises me.

‘And why’s that, sweetheart?’ 

‘I don’t want a part in this business. I don’t want to pick a side,’ He chuckles quietly. 

‘Well love, there comes a time when everyone has to pick a side, and your loyalties lie with me now. You’re on my payroll, and I pay you significantly more than Arthur pays his barmaids.’ He sits down in his chair, folding his hands and leaning on the desk. ‘People say you can’t buy loyalty, and those people are fucking stupid, but I do require that loyalty. Alright?’ I don’t respond, but he seems to take it as agreement, leaning back in his chair.

‘I hear Tommy Shelby’s come to town, that wouldn't have anything to do with this, would it?’

‘No.’ I want to convince myself that it’s not, but I can’t deny that it is, at least partly. He’ll be harder to dupe than Arthur, and he already seems suspicious of me.

‘Good, because I want to know what he’s up to as well, alright? Now off you go.’

‘But Mr Solomons-‘ Alfie pulls a drawer open and throws a roll of paper onto the desk. I pick it up, not bothering to count the banknotes before stuffing it into my pocket.

‘There’s your loyalty. See you next week.’ He waves vaguely with his hand, and I know I’m dismissed.

idk i’m still not happy with this but hopefully the formatting will work this time :)))

[its-just-like-the-movies]

Rampart (11, B+)

Why this film?: Natural Born Killers and The Edge of Seventeen were tempting choices, but everything I’d heard about Rampart’s politically rich storyline and ambitious execution made this an easy choice right off the bat. Plus, a character actor like Woody Harrelson in a lead role feels like the kind of treat more films should offer, especially when they’re as chameleonic as him.

The Film: What’s the right way to describe the impactful but imperfectly stitched way that Rampart holds itself together? “Raggedy” seems like a good option, given how the film bounces from character to character and plot strand to plot strand with little to suggest which direction it’s going to take from one scene to the next. “Rabid” might be a better descriptor of how comes across, its risky stylization and mangy narrative informed by an odious protagonist doing his damndest to hold onto a way of life he’s taken advantage of for his entire life and keeps relentlessly sabotaging, and one it frequently seems would be happy to get rid of him. The seams always appear to be showing, and not always in productive ways, though its unpredictable trajectory, ferocious acting and direction, and fascinating decisions about its lensing, editing, and sound mixing are so bracing and frequently impressive that it’s impossible not to notice them. A-list actors orbit Woody Harrelson’s central role as a deranged cop playing the kinds of bit roles that would be just as well served by far less recognizable names, the fact of their celebrity compared to the size of their roles and their whack-a-mole reappearances in the story as disorienting as the in-monologue editing and whiplash narrative turns. Rampart’s ability to disorient its audience is nicely synchronized with the downfall of a character who refusal to accept his defeat is frequently upending, his paranoid inability to grasp the consequences of his violent and prejudiced behavior too ensconced in decades of social acceptability for him to even compute the speed at which he’s being thrown in the trash.

As much as Rampart’s experimental design and pronounced assets are on display at all times, the film is even more confrontational with its politics. In this case, those politics are the tearing open of Dave Brown’s psychology of entitlement and bigotry, and the process by which a man of an era that seemed so alive a second ago is suddenly forced to reckon with his latest crimes, which somehow aren’t the worst things he’s ever done, and must reckon even more so with how changing tides have made what was once durigur behavior now completely unacceptable. His virulent bigotry and the safety he feels wielding it as a members of the LAPD’s Rampart division - even in the middle of a scandal that implicated over seventy officers in everything from bribery to murder - is realized in his very first dialogue scene, as regales tales of former glories with another cop while menacing a female trainee into finishing all of her fries at a lunch stop, asking her invasive questions as he and writer/director Oren Moverman boldly assert that this is the man who emblematizes what the police looked like in late-90’s LA. This is only further emphasized as he joy-rides his police cruiser through a group of Mexican mechanics in the parking lot of their cop and beats a suspect through the cheap, plastic windows of a drug store office to get information out of him, not just certain that he will suffer no consequences for this but even telling this trainee so as if it was an unspoken regulation. The grounded performances, observant shaky-cam and spry editing keep these sequences from becoming cartoonishly over-the-top, depicting Brown’s violent behavior as wholly mundane and completely corrosive at the same time. His teaching that his behavior is the norm of the LAPD to this woman points to a Training Day setup but wholly avoids it by refusing the idea that Brown is in any way a “bad apple” corrupting an otherwise decent system the way that Alonzo Harris was depicted as in his film. Everyone is like this, and there’s no indication a different cop would’ve shown her the ropes any differently.

This sense of entitlement bleeds into his home life, a precarious situation where Dave seems to co-habitat with his two ex-wives - who’re sisters - and the daughter apiece he had with each of them. The women don’t live in the same house, and Dave seems to find out whether he’ll spend the night with either of them or go bar-hopping to find some woman to share a hotel room with when he asks them if they want to have sex. Again, it’s a tribute to the actors for putting over such an unconventional scenario that could’ve died on arrival, but Cynthia Nixon and Anne Heche make the scenario completely credible as the make warm conversation and perry around his advances. Oldest daughter Helen, her hair messy dyed with blue streaks while wearing a 90’s art punk getup, is the only person in Dave’s life who’s openly antagonistic towards him, and the youngest is intuitive and happy to see her dad even if she’s clearly not too keyed in to the tensions around her family.

These establishing scenes of domestic and workplace tension, ones that will evolve and mutate as the story progresses, are just as impactful to watch as the moments where Brown enacts physical violence against an undeserving party or use his power as a cop to threaten some unfortunate employee into giving him a hotel room or pills. Jay Rabinowitz’s editing is so lean yet so spiky that we’re able to feel every shift of mood in Dave’s conversations or confrontations, sometimes cutting scenes as though leaving out bits of a conversation or monologue but more often than not finding unexpected angles to spy on sequences that appear to be playing out in real time. These choices dislodge a scene from any predictable beats as much as the performances do, and the vantage points that show us these sequences alternate between intimately close to the characters or at such a distance that it feeds into the overall mood of paranoia. Even if Dave’s eventual theory that he’s being used as a putz by such an unfathomable web of players from the LAPD higher-ups to family members, hookups, and ostensible allies, feels like nothing more than a right-wing conspiracy theory, the editing expertly plays into these delusions without santifying them. The plot-starting scene of him beating a Hispanic motorist to the brink of death for T-boning his police cruiser and trying to flee the scene is executed with brutal economy, by Dave and the storytellers, and it’s perfectly in tandem with their presentation of non-violent scenes and control of mood throughout the film.

From here Rampart bunny-hops between different plotlines and characters seemingly at random. It’s hard to pinpoint a coherent logic to how these scenes connect to one another - either they do or they don’t, and this disorganization might be Rampart’s most significant hurdle to overcome for viewers to get into the film. Individual plotlines are picked up in bursts and dropped for extended periods of time, creating evocative moods that leave the actors to fill in the gaps between individual characters while the plot moves ever onwards. Even as the methodology behind how these stories scrape against each other is never quite clear on a scene-by-scene level, the cumulative portrait of a man going off the deep end in order to keep his dying way of life intact still hits. The film is merciless in picking apart how Dave is propped up by the status given to him as a white male police officer, his bigotry and paranoia so acidic that the background context of the Rampart scandal almost doesn’t matter in informing who this man is. He’s an endemic source of misogyny and racism, propagating his ideologies with the assurance of systemic cooperation that calling them delusions of grandeur gives them too little credit. His biggest calling card as a police officer, the one that earned him the moniker “Date-Rape” Dave, comes from the fact that he’s all but admitted to having executed an accused serial date-rapist rather than taking the man into custody, fabricating a story that he feared for his life trying to arrest him. An older white cop suggests that Dave facing any consequences is so out of the norm that the whole thing must’ve been a set-up, from the driver he beat to the person who filmed the incident to the government officials seeking to see him punished for his actions. Feeding in to Dave’s already-existing paranoia and neuroses about women and people of color, of any non-cop in any job who disrespects his authority, this conspiracy web soon encompasses his ex-wives, his current fuck buddy, the old man himself, as Dave turns to blackmail and criminal actions to keep himself afloat. Rampart balances a tricky line between objectivity and subjectivity, many of its choices seemingly influenced by the paranoia of its protagonist even as the film is able to stand apart from his rancor and hold it up to a microscope, dissecting his bullshit for all it’s worth.

It helps tremendously that these characters are written and directed so sharply, and that their interpreters make so many specific and charismatic decisions in bringing them to life while avoiding cliche or cartooning. Woody Harrelson, sporting a skinhead-lite haircut and a wiry, muscular physicality, emanates the size and danger of his character’s bigotry while keeping him scaled to uncomfortably human size. Brie Larson’s righteously pissed-off daughter and Robin Wright’s sad, carnal, and increasingly suspect friend with benefits may very well be the most startling performances after Harrelson’s, though Nixon, Heche, Sigourney Weaver, Ned Beatty, Ben Foster, Ice Cube, Steve Buscemi, and Audra McDonald are just as inspiring for evoking such sharp personalities with minimal screen time and unexpected entrances and exits. Everyone is able to keep a firm grip on their characters while connecting threads over gaps in appearance and in information, their relationships to Dave changing dramatically over the course of the film without ever seeming forced. Whatever can be said about Moverman and James Ellroy’s script in terms of its scene-by-scene structure, the trajectory of their story is so powerful and unpredictable that its secrets are worth keeping.

If the preceding paragraphs have repeatedly illustrated how essential Moverman’s direction is in making the script’s shifts of attention in to something potent and coherent and how commendable his negotiation of ensemble is, his dissection of Dave Brown and everything he represents is still feels like the film’s crowning glory. Rampart is not a message film that reduces its characters and scenarios to pandering stereotype or secretly condones the horrific behavior and bigoted mindset it’s supposed to be critiquing. Moverman and Harrelson make Dave Brown a fascinating and rancid character to be attached to for almost two hours, and Rampart proves itself to be a riveting character study that’s able to rip apart everything its lead man represents without dismissing him out of hand. It’s an invaluable study of white male toxicity as enabled by a police uniform, one that surely would have gotten more traction if it had a bigger distribution in 2011, but perhaps even more so if it had come out a few years later. It’s crucial to mention that the beating of the driver is not, ultimately, the crime that brings down Dave Brown, nor is the crime he confesses near the film’s climax to the FBI in the hopes of going out on his own terms what does him in. Rampart’s study of the cops who would almost kill a motorist and bully a fellow officer into eating something she didn’t want to doesn’t say that these are the actions that will cause their betters to kick them out, instead positing that these men will implode from so much internal and external pressure to keep from sinking. The actual ending plays like a leading up to a horror film, as Brown and Helen lock eyes before he slinks off into the unknown with the knowledge he could be arrested at any moment. It’s open-ended to the point of becoming an ellipses, unresolved while suggesting a whole film of possibilities lies on the other side of this scene. So, Rampart ends as it began, messy and unclean and dangerous, its ideologies unimpeachable, its execution so ambitious that what leaves something to be desired can even be construed into a productive part. Technically, Dave Brown ends the film still out in the world. But his clock is ticking faster.

[itspatsy]

Part of me thinks JJS2 didn't want to acknowledge they'd majorly dropped the ball on race in S1, so in S2 they amped up the "Jessica is a part of a minority group" aspect, had a black woman say "you people," to turn the narrative even further away from Jessica's own white privilege, and destroyed Trish, who was a viable target because she wasn't a traumatized white woman like Jessica - she was a RICH white woman. And they were desperate to avoid their fuck-ups so they made Patsy a patsy.

okay, so this turned into a long, generally incoherent rant that starts with “this show absolutely fails at dealing with race” and ends with “wtf were they even trying to do with trish’s story,” and it should probably be separate posts or better yet just not posted at all, but it’s all generally related to this ask, so whatever. it’s a mess, i have a lot of confusing thoughts, ignore me.

rather than acknowledging the mistakes of s1 regarding race and trying to course correct, the show definitely seemed like it decided to double down. before the season started, as it was becoming clear they were going to do this “prejudice against powered people” thing, i was really weary about how they would handle it, and apparently my instinct was right. 

to start with, it felt kind of pulled out of nowhere. realistically, sure, people would be weary of powered individuals, but it hasn’t really been fully built into the fabric of the mcu or the netflix mcu as a realized form of bigotry. it was also really only a thematic element in the first half of the season, and they made no effort to really explore it and its implications before they tossed it out and changed gears. it was just there to be used as a device for conflict and drama. 

and it’s such a ridiculous thing when you only have one powered person in the show that’s experiencing that bigotry and she’s a skinny white heterosexual cis woman? like, the most direct parallel for this wasn’t misogyny or homophobia, but racism, and they didn’t try to tell multiple perspectives about it. having a black woman say “you people” at jessica was the most tone deaf bullshit, like, i could not fucking believe it (and then they later killed her off in the most disposable way, which is a whole other issue, and something this show has done repeatedly). they had oscar, a moc that had been in prison (of course), start out the same way, seemingly expressing bigotry and getting “righteously” called out for it by jessica. then there was pryce, another moc, aggressively going after jessica, trying to steal her business, calling her an animal because of her anger and powers, and he “never takes no for an answer” and jessica gets to be like “how rape-y of you” in what was supposed to be a moment of #femaleempowerment. but it just feels like white lady empowerment at the expense of poc. 

but hey, gotta pile on to show how very oppressed jessica is in every aspect of her life, right? which, yes, she has absolutely been oppressed and violated and traumatized, and that is so important and real and should never be diminished, but the show didn’t attempt to contend with the ways she’s also privileged and the ways she’s been able to use it to her advantage and having her acknowledge it (including the fact that having powers, being able to protect herself, is an incredible privilege instead of only the awful burden it’s been portrayed as and she’s always interpreted it as). i probably wouldn’t have even said they’d need to explicitly deal with this under other circumstances, if they were focused on telling a different story, but they’re the ones that decided to make analogies to racist prejudice and have poc express it towards a white woman, so they put the expectation on themselves to tell a nuanced story about oppression and privilege and intersectionality, and they didn’t do that at all. they clearly weren’t actually interested in talking about prejudice in a serious, meaningful way. 

but here’s the even bigger issue: the show tries to present itself as being feminist, but it can’t be feminist when there are no women of color in main roles or even supporting roles. it makes no effort to tell the stories and perspectives and experiences of woc, and that is an absolute failure. it’s inexcusable that they made no effort to fix this. it absolutely doesn’t help that the woc that are actually present in small roles keep getting killed off unceremoniously. i had some hopes when i saw that they had females directors that actually included some woc, but i don’t think they have any in the writing room, and that matters SO MUCH. it makes such a difference, and they could’ve probably avoided so many of these missteps if they just had other voices represented in the creative process. i just saw a headline with melissa rosenberg where she says, “oh yeah, i totally agree with the criticism we don’t have enough women of color,” okay, except this is not a new criticism, people were saying the same thing after s1, so if she agrees with it and cares about it, why didn’t she do anything about it while they were making s2?

the show has sort of attempted with men of color, in that they actually exist in the cast, but it doesn’t handle them well at all, some of which i mentioned before. then you’ve got malcolm. the only lead character of color in s2. he was set up to be the moral center of the show, but there was no real follow through. he was ultimately treated like an afterthought in most situations. he just? disappeared? constantly? when shit went down? i lost count of the number of times i was like, “umm, where the fuck did malcolm go? is he all right?” and the characters around him were pretty consistently awful to him. jessica almost always treated him like shit. his relationship with trish was a train wreck they both kind of contributed to, but trish turned on him pretty epically, and the emotional fallout for him wasn’t really dealt with. and the writers told his “proxy addiction” story in the laziest, grossest way possible (sex? really? that’s all they could think up? and then to use it as excuse to have him treat women like they’re disposable and faceless?). they just clearly have no respect for him. 

it’s such a mess, and s2 was probably worse than s1 in this regard, and there’s no reason it needed to be. this isn’t an impossible thing. when people tell you, “hey, you fucked up. this is how,” you don’t double down or pretend it didn’t happen, you listen and you do better. this should be a show for everyone, not just white women. 

turning to trish, since you mentioned her: i’ve mostly tried to avoid post-s2 reviews, but one of the few i read described her character arc as a critique of the white savior mindset. i highly doubt that’s what the show had in mind. as we established above, careful thoughtful commentary about race is not this show’s strong suit, and writing a critique of the white savior mold wouldn’t even occur to them. i could kind of see where the reviewer was coming from, there were some flavors of white savior-ism in trish’s behavior, but they had to pretend she had never experienced an ounce of hardship in order to make it fit. this was basically the conclusion: “trish is rich and has a family and could never under poor traumatized orphaned jessica’s life.” nevermind that money doesn’t stop you from being abused and traumatized, that a family member was her primary abuser, and that living in poverty and wanting money was the motivation for her abuser to sell her out. this take also ignores the thing driving trish the most. it wasn’t “i want to help people, and they should listen to me because i know best” or even “i want to be special, i want to matter.” it was “nobody touches me anymore unless i want them to.” she was tired of being the victim, of never feeling safe. that’s why she wanted powers. it was muddied by the writing, but it really is as straight-forward as that.

i think trish being rich has likely had some influence in the audience diminishing how she was violated and abused in most every kind of way (physically, emotionally, sexually, financially), but i definitely don’t think the show went after her for being a rich famous white lady as a cover for its various racial fuck-ups. i don’t think the show even really tried to contend with or acknowledge her rich white privilege anymore than it tried to contend with jessica’s privilege. if anything, it tried to do the opposite by showing her to be belittled and demeaned and disrespected by everyone around her, similar to how they were upping the ante on jessica’s oppression by having her face bigotry about her powers. granted, it’s clear the audience had an easier time relating to jessica (probably partly due to the money and fame aspect again; also partly because the narrative backed her up more: for instance, the dynamic of having trish envy the privilege of jessica’s power, but the show seeming to say “oh, gosh, trish just doesn’t understand it’s not a privilege at all, it’s a terrible burden” even though that’s kind of ridiculous, as i mentioned earlier). the execution was shitty, but they were definitely still trying to show that trish’s life was not good and people treated her like she was nothing and worthless in a way that paralleled jessica’s treatment.

tbh, rather than punishing trish for being rich or whatever, i sometimes got the vibe they were actually punishing her for daring to have ambition, but that probably wasn’t on purpose, just an unfortunate implication of the way they treated her in general. at first, i’d assumed they were trying to tell a story about addiction and the ways it can destroy your life, and they just sucked at handling it with any kind of thoughtfulness, but now i think that’s being too generous. they didn’t even really try to grapple with the reality of her addiction and mental illness, so much as use it as an excuse to make her more unstable and put her in a position where she’d keep escalating things. 

i read an interview before the season dropped where melissa rosenberg talked about female anger (or, as the reality of the show is, white female anger), and anger definitely was a theme for all the female characters. if you recognize trish’s main motivator as mentioned above (protecting herself from further abuses), you can see where it fits into this theme, and that it wasn’t just senseless anger and was driven by vulnerabilities and never feeling safe. so, i don’t know, i guess trish’s story was maybe intended to be about an abused woman finally being so goddamn fed up with victimhood and disrespect and belittlement that she decided to take what she needed instead of quietly waiting for other people to acknowledge her humanity and treat her accordingly. that she finally said “fuck it” and tried to find her own power and become her own hero. except, if that was the story, the way it was executed was, wow… exceptionally awful and not remotely clear and not at all done in a positive way. a storyline like that could’ve had the potential to be powerful and affirming and perhaps empowering (once again, for white women at least), but that’s not the story they ended up telling. 

like, i honestly don’t get what i’m supposed to take away from it. they seemingly gave her what she was after, but they spent the entirety of the season shitting on her and had her destroy everything good in her life to get what she believed she needed, which was really just to feel safe. what’s the point here exactly? you do you boo and fuck everybody else because it’ll pay off? don’t have dreams and ambitions for yourself because they’ll make you heartless and selfish and you’ll hurt other people? the desire for power always corrupts even when you’ve been a victim and just want the power to protect yourself? trauma doesn’t go away and can make you do terrible self-destructive shit that you think is helping you but actually isn’t? drug addicts are awful, amirite? what. are. they. trying. to. say?

[rohwajeong]

Fragments of artistic thoughts on managerial

LEE Sunyoung (Art critic)

In the art world, where much collaboration occurs in the form of exhibitions, the collaborative group RohwaJeong is well known as a unified persona. It almost feels awkward to find out each member’s name. RohwaJeong is a fictional character whose gender-neutral name is a combination of the names of a male and a female artist, JEONG Hyunseok and NOH Yunhee. These two artists, who are the same age of 35, have known each other from their early twenties until the present. However, they claim that working collaboratively does not mean twice the efficiency. In fact, it takes more time to work together, even though each member has his or her own strengths. In other words, it requires a considerable amount of effort to adjust and compromise to each other’s differences in order to make decisions for each step in the process, from the initial idea to the realization of the work. To give an extreme example, they have made a piece in which they fight until their four limbs become disembodied in the process. Fighting (2008) shows the brutal battle between the two, the “ladies first” rule is out the door, ruthlessly breaking the illusion of a harmonic collaboration. There are lots of paired objects or images in RohwaJeong’s works, and these pairs or doppelganger images function as their self-portraits. They often use everyday objects such as real and virtual buckets, hair dryers and watering pot, erasers and pencils, canvases of different sizes, and underwear, as metaphors of their relationship.

Fighting (2007)

https://rohwajeong.com/image/27907895662

Their work is solid, as it is created by mutually interdependent subjects, rather than a single subject alone. Instead of a circle with a single center, it is well balanced like an elliptical orbit with two pivotal points. Their negotiation of different perspectives is not a waste of time, since it provides the solid basis for the work that prevents one another from being lost. The conversation between the two is a discourse that can be reenacted in the relationship with the audience in the future, including careful verifications of each procedure from the initial idea to the actualization of the work. Compared to a single artist who works in solitude — one who might be at a complete loss in spite of working hard, not being able to get feedback — the couple’s collaboration seems to be an alternative working method. The artist aims for clear and simple works by removing unnecessary details, however, the works do not limit themselves merely to logic and intention. RohwaJeong’s style is unique in that its personal realm relates to the public realm, different from the reality that many art works face where they are still self-indulgent in general. The conversation, unlike a monologue, aspires to universality. It ceases to be a truth that only belongs to one, but becomes a sharable fact. 

RohwaJeong’s works are conceptual but not lifeless nor overly complicated, like what is commonly found in other forms of “conceptual art.” Through their connotative works or objects, inspired by real conversations and conversational imagination they suggest fragmentary reflections on something worth seriously thinking about. Their recent work created at Nanji Studio is related to the memories of school days, which is the cornerstone of current power relationships. The work Good answer is made by pulling out the thread after having a text embroidered. Due to the physical force of pulling out the thread, the letters are crumpled and the wooden frame of the canvas is partly revealed. The precedent of this piece is The thing (2014), where the artist pulls out the threads that write the English phrase, “THE THING THAT YOU KNOW, I DO NOT WANT TO KNOW” and allows it to hang in the air like a piece of crumbled paper. The letters no longer become legible, the flat becomes three-dimensional and the virtual becomes real. This work transforms the transparent delivery of the message into an opaque process. The white milk that all elementary school students are obligated to drink, having already passed its expiration date and decomposed, adds weight to the assigned gravity on the rope.

Good Answer (2015)

Standardized education, which is no more than a mechanical process of distributing information from one place to another, causes the unification of individual preferences, like controlling one’s appetite.

Good answer

deals with a common childhood memory, that of smelly milk that every student had to line up in order to drink. The work implies the process of pedagogical instruction, wherein we expect a fixed answer for a pre-assigned question — we learn that this is not limited to childhood. The act of crushing the neat fabric boldly reveals a festering wound that has quietly rotten. The work,

variable dimensions

shows how the various potentiality of a child gets fixed into a socially expected direction. In the black and white picture projected onto the wall we can see the different sizes of black nails stuck in children’s heads. The varied sizes of nails in the image with shown in various perspectives implicate what is happening in the symbolic universe these children have been brought into without choice.  There are metaphoric expressions in the piece as the fixed nails in perspective imply the fixed ideas and the rigidity of a hierarchical ranking system. The classroom is a place where social order is represented. Appearing as an old black and white photograph is a modification of an image — a present day classroom — downloaded from the web. 

Variable Dimensions (2015)

https://rohwajeong.com/post/137866163011

Even though we idealize the vague memories of school days the work implicates the ranking system and stereotypes that are actually initiated, then fixed. The work frame is a frame made out of reclaimed wood found in a landfill near Nanji Studio. The frame is filled with sand paper, used to polish the old wood into the finished frame. The monochrome plane inside the frame appears like an abstract painting where the artist’s soul is nestled. Polished is the frame, not the content. Inversely, the frame turns even a trivial thing into something that looks good. Complicating content and the form, the work focuses interest on the periphery rather than the center, or on the variability of the center-periphery relationship. Is it possible for an education system to aim to go beyond being merely instrumental, like the sand paper carefully preserved in the frame? Could trivial objects, such as sand paper or thrown away wood gain the same attention as a work of art? Frames often appear in RohwaJeong’s recent works, assuming the meaning of education as ultimately a framing process.

Frame (2015)

In the work, Drawing, a monitor playing cartoons is almost covered by the artist’s black drawings and installed on a children’s school desk. Even though it says “drawing” in the title, the result is more like an erasure. Living through the shared memories of children all over the world, the cartoon characters in animated movies from Walt Disney Pictures hide extremely cruel ideas and behaviors behind their cute appearances. This shared cultural product of Disney, in which children access before the language fully develops, trains the senses and attributes. To become global citizens, equates to the representations (like a survival strategy) depicted in the content of the cartoons (shown in the erased screen). The work is positioned in the middle of the desk, like a textbook or an exam paper, which must filled with the contents of the textbook. However, it is well known that the process of being immersed in the one-directional information that pours out of the media causes learning disabilities. Mit-guerim (Under the drawings) is a piece of drawing on a draped roll of paper that records the process of the artist’s drawing while moving. Like a seismometer the work attempts to grasp the impossible gestures in order to represent an unfixable existence. Here, representing the subject becomes a gradually fading trace. Regarding the process of socialization that fixes a subject onto a single point of representation, is this impossibility of representation a fortune or a tragedy?

Drawing (2015) process

As shown in the term the “politics of representation,” systems of representation are not merely a style of art, but also the mode of power that divides and reproduces the subject/object. Departing from classicism and realism, where education and enlightenment played important roles, contemporary art is deeply related to the discourse around the impossibility of representation. RohwaJeong’s message is most directly expressed in live and let live, written in cursive handwriting with black electric wires on a wooden board. The announced message “Let me live the way I want,” is the outcry of an individual, confronting the education system that became “the funnel for an immense unification”(<Art and Discourse>, 1996, LEE Sunyoung). Education is regarded as the most important socialization process. The process of removing the differences of individuals and not allowing one to live naturally as they are, enforces everyone to compete against each other until one dies out. This process presumes a group in power who asks others to devote their labor, sometimes their lives. The term “Citizen School” or “National People’s School (국민학교)” in Korean proves that modern education has settled down as the most fundamental system, turning natural people into “citizens” who can be mobilized as laborers and warriors.  

Live and let Live (2015)

Borrowing from the anti-war slogan during the World Wars and the Vietnam War, the message “live and let live” appeals to us because we live in the world where power tends to turn our everyday lives into a war. This message will become more appealing in the future, in an extended Enlightenment that is combined with the information age. The black electric wires constituting the letters are part of an experiment kit used in science class, and the small light bulb on the tip gradually dims as time passes, expressing an individual’s resistant outcry that fades. Not unlike that of education, the subjectification process in both private and public realms is closely related to the (social) system. The subject and the (social) structure are mutually produced, unlike how romanticism contrasts the two. In Moving-unchangeable1425 (2013), the numbers on the floor plan meet and part to make a wall. Whether it is a school, a military, or a workplace the work speaks about the process of the structuralization of power within social groups. The work is like a cheerful game, but it contains a dark message — that the system, which wields force gained by power, will not easily change. 

Moving - Unchangeable 1425 (2013)

https://rohwajeong.com/post/54583389267

RohwaJeong’s interests are omnidirectional when it comes to the exhibition system and conservative media, etc., since power is scattered everywhere in networks on microscopic and macroscopic levels. However, why is their recent practice focused on the educational system? Wouldn’t their age (mid-30s) influence them to reminisce about school memories with rose-tinted glasses? Doesn’t RohwaJeong belong to the older generation who identifies with the sub cultural rock music phrase “Do not believe people over 30!”? Nonetheless, in the Korean context, artists in their mid-30s have been concerned with school — either they feel victimized or they hold a sense of responsibility towards it. The foundation of our art world is so fragile that we need school as a “lifeline,” not only in our 30s, but also in our 40s. However, schools become the ruling reality rather than a place that can accept a vulnerable position art in the reality. In the current situation where the function and role of art are not fully recognized in society, except for inside of education system, “pedagogically related things” are in fact ongoing problems of today, not problems that have been left behind in the past.

Inside the standing water blocked by society, another dirty system of power, art, will not be able to free people even though we accumulate more knowledge about art. The art works that constantly support and strengthen the existing system are heavy and dismal. The “work,” that is held as mortgage by schools, lacks art’s intrinsic qualities to be able to joyfully run ahead, leaving behind this tangled reality. The people who believe that schools are autonomous and liberating, are only the few privileged by the system. The reality, in which we must become consumers of education and accumulate academic capital long after graduating from university, leaves a deep scar on ones who have dreamt of living their lives as artists. Since the entire society has become rationalized and systemized the tendency of the excessive growth of educational institutions, and furthermore the “school-ization” of the entire society, is interconnected to the trend of dividing all members of society into “manager and being managed” (Susan SONTAG). Regarding their tendency to work with their surrounding daily lives rather than a distanced reality, RohwaJeong’s message, “Let me live the way I want” appears to be a cynical but desperate outcry of the young generation who is confined by school. 

Korean society produces a sense of deprivation, as much as its materialistic excesses. We can affirm the great power of the system from the silent art world, which lacks the “angry youth” who demonstrates an understandable rage towards the system. According to the dictionary definition, the English term “school” and the French term “ecole” comes from the Greek word “schope,” meaning “leisure time.” It’s meaning was related to “the leisure time for learning how to absorb in contemplation.” Later on it relates to a craftsman school or private educational institutes. However, in the age of infinite competition with one’s “Spec.” (short for specifications, used in Korea to refer to an individual’s qualification) , schools are never places full of leisure. Schools demand students to be busier and busier, on the top of their already busy contemporary lives. Furthermore, they have became absurd places that produce “busy-ness” for the sake of being “busy.” Especially, in societies like Korea that are undergoing rapid bureaucratization, schools are gradually expanding in institutional dimensions, revealing social bottleneck phenomena and congestion. Whether positive or not, they are the places where we prepare ourselves or stand by in order to enter society. At the same time they represent society itself. Thus, some people learn the “social world” rather than knowledge of the arts and theories from school.

Schools insist on keeping their exclusive status’ even in the current state of the information society that is full of numerous opened opportunities for education. The (systematic) monopoly of schools is not driven by itself, but relies on the logic of the capital that has the more fundamental superiority. As long as schools stay under the subcategory of the capital, they will remain in eternal shackles to most people. We can see from RohwaJeong’s work, good answer, where the educational curriculum for a good answer is a procedure of internalizing disciplines (of the society), comparing it to the pain of forcefully cramming food that one cannot digest. The milk pack in the piece is (physically) small, but it is a hugely impactful symbol. Assuming that the internalization of power is the precondition for its autonomous execution, the rotten and inflated white milk, which is connected to the lines of composing letters, is a horrifying symbol of monotonous regulation that penetrates our soul, as well as our body. In Drawing, which displays Tom and Jerry chasing and being chased by each other on the screen, we can find an impulse to obliterate the perpetually inescapable process of power.  

In ‘Discipline and Punishment’, Michel FOUCAULT mentions that school is not only a place for education, but also functions as an institution that surveils, builds hierarchies, and dispenses rewards and punishment. Standing for the benefit of the majority, their disciplines are sophisticated techniques of power to control people, namely, a special technique that turns an individual into an instrument as well as a means of executing power. Individuals are produced through a strict observance of the rules, disciplinary punishments, imposed supervision, and restrictions. According to Foucault, discipline is a technique, which not only allocates one’s body, then extracting and accumulating “time” out of it, but also combines different forces to create an effective apparatus. Furthermore, it manages the time of one’s life, accumulates them into an useful form, and employs these controlled times to contribute to the execution of power on people. Indeed, our minds are also produced around, on the surface of, and within the body by the effect of power. RohwaJeong’s recent work emphasizes one of the most important messages today that art must convey to the society and itself, that is, the resistance of the body and soul that is tamed by discipline. 

[onedayatatimeblog]

Episode 2: “Bobos and Mamitas”

One Day at a Time

Sofia Christophel-Lichti

Key Characters in the Episode

↠ Penelope (MC): US Army Nurse Corps Veteran; single mother of two

↠ Elena: Penelope’s daughter

↠ Alex: Penelope’s son

↠ Lydia: Penelope’s mother and Elena and Alex’s grandmother  

↠ Dr. Berkowitz: Penelope’s boss at work

↠ Lori: Penelope’s coworker, secretary

↠ Scott: Penelope’s coworker, nurse

Episode Summary

At the start of the episode, Penelope is discussing her plans for presenting an idea at her staff meeting and her worry about being interrupted by her coworker, Scott. And at the meeting, exactly what she described occurs. She gets ignored. When Penelope shares her experience in the work environment, Elena is astounded by her mother’s lack of anger surrounding the sexism she experienced. As a family, they then unpack their different perspectives on sexism. A sub-storyline emerges at this point about Elena’s lack of being taken seriously at school with her compost initiative, and Lydia encouraging her to wear makeup to gain attention. She does so, but hates it. The next day at work, Scott ends up being praised for the same idea that Penelope proposed the previous day, and it sends her into a fury. Penelope also learns that Scott’s paid five dollars more an hour than her, and after hearing that she quits. The episode concludes with Dr Berkowitz begging for Penelope to come back to work and agrees on a fair and higher salary. Lastly, Lydia shows Elena what she looks like without makeup, and they reconcile.

Racism and Sexism in the Workplace

At the initial staff meeting where her ideas are overshadowed and interrupted by Scott, the white male nurse, nobody seems to be aware of the dynamics of the group. Penelope’s office mates consist of Dr. Berkowitz, an aloof seeming yet loving white male doctor, Scott, the unyielding and self-assured white male nurse, and Lori, the totally oblivious and ditsy white female secretary. When Dr. Berkowitz agrees with Scott’s dismissal of Penelope’s idea, Scott says “there’s a reason why this guy has been running the office for so long” (Wolfe). And Dr. Berkowitz responds with “I must say I'm very attracted to the concept of nothing changing… status quo it is!” (Wolfe). There’s a lot to unpack here. I think sitcoms do a great job at presenting narratives blatantly and clearly to the audience. Watching this episode, it is clear that the takeaway should be thinking critically about how women of color are often overlooked and ignored. The white male characters clearly state that they are happy in the status quo, and that is because it best serves them. I think this scene speaks to a broader sense of society: people of color proposing change and white people in power denying the need for it. The way the patriarchy perpetuates is through people living in a state of denial and rationalization, which is exactly what is exhibited in this scene. “The default is to adopt the dominant version of reality and act as though it is the only one there is” (Johnson). Dr. Berkowitz and Scott clearly implore the status quo because it is built to hold up and empower white cis males like them.

In the scene later in the episode where Penelope opens up with her coworkers about her treatment in the workplace, Scott becomes very defensive. He claims he was completely unaware of how he was treating her and even pulls out the term “reverse sexism.” Since nursing is a field mainly dominated by women, Scott claims that Penelope is being sexist to him by attacking him for his actions. I think this opens up discussion surrounding the system of patriarchy and gender-based oppression. Many men view patriarchy as a criticism of male privilege and take it to mean that all men are oppressive people, and this is clearly how Scott feels. His contention with Penelope’s argument stems from the fact that he doesn’t want to face the consequences of giving up male privilege (Johnson). Outside of the two of them, Lori acts almost helpless. She attempts to back up Penelope's argument by relating to her about motherhood, but as Penelope rebuttals, Lori only has dogs. I think this speaks to the role of white women in the movement to liberate women of color. While good intentioned, white women will never be able to fully relate with the lived experience of women of color. And for that reason, white women should not be speaking for them in any context. What Lori could’ve done was amplified Penelope’s voice in the initial meeting, but she was oblivious to the social dynamics then. I think this reflects the ability of white women to opt in and out of uncomfortable conversations and situations that women of color are forced to live through constantly. Lori got to pick and choose her involvement in and action against the sexist and racist dynamics in the office. The way Penelope is treated at work because she's a woman and because she is Cuban cannot be separated. She lives her life with a sexual identity combined with a racial identity which makes her life situation unique. There is no way to fully separate and analyze the two, as they are fully interconnected.

Gender Identity and Sexuality

All of the characters are presumed to be cis-gender and heterosexual, and this episode doesn’t really dig in or challenge either of those assumptions. Later in other seasons of the the show, I know that comes up, but not in this specific episode.

Unpacking Feminism

Penelope’s experiences at work bring about an interesting conversation at home surrounding feminism and sexism. Elena, an adolescent, has a fervent view that her mother is experiencing sexism in the workplace, but Penelope dismisses it. She describes being catcalled in the army as what real sexism looks like. Elena then retorts “I’m not talking about old people sexism” (Wolfe). She then says that nowadays “men assert their power through micro aggressions and mansplaining” (Wolfe). I think this is a prime example of the generational progress we as a society are making in the sense that younger people are aware and discussing deep social systems and dynamics. Elena attempts to empower her mother to stand up for herself in the face of injustice. This generational divide is stretched even further when Lydia says “you will never win men over by confronting them… they’d be so upset to know you’re the boss” (Wolfe). This receives canned studio laughter, but the message cuts deep. To the generation Lydia’s character represents, this secretive, passive power seemed normal, but to Elena and the young people she represents, this thought is appalling. The conversation concludes with Alex saying “I’m glad I'm a guy so I don’t have to think about sexism” and his family members giving him a side-eye glance (Wolfe). This also reflects the sentiments of many men who hold a “not my problem” attitude. This position is obviously not on the right track. It is a known dynamic shift that when men object to sexist language, they can shake other men’s perception of what is socially acceptable (Johnson). This is what fuels the fire to systemic change, men using their position of privilege to uphold feminist ideas and respectful attitudes. Alex, a young character, doesn’t seem to have a hold on that idea, but because of the family of all women he is in and the look they gave him at the end of the scene, I assume that conversation will continue in later episodes.

The sub-narrative of this episode surrounds Elena and Lydia’s relationships with makeup. Elena’s composting initiative at school is being ignored and Lydia suggests that she wear makeup to gain attention. Lydia reveals that she never lets anyone see her without makeup; it acts as sort of her armor. I think because of the time period in which Lydia’s character grew up, she was expected to fulfill the made up housewife role. The show does a great job at framing her experiences as shocking and outdated. Elena then wears makeup to school, receives attention for it, and then removes it. This concept is almost impossible for Lydia to understand as she sees attention from boys and eyes on her makeup as a positive, but to Elena it is not. To people who have grown up bombarded by messages in the media that we need makeup to be attractive, Lydia’s stance applies. But Elena really breaks the mold by upholding her own self security above others’ opinions. In the media, women often appear in the context of “entertainment, home and personal relationships” (Kirk). And this cultural phenomena has an impact of how women view their role in society. It is directly reflected in the media. I think Elena’s position and self-assurance that she doesn’t need makeup to be taken seriously is a beautiful example of resistance to oppression.

Current Implications

This show in general does a great job at representing the Cuban culture, sexism in the workplace, and covert racism as well. In my opinion, the connections displayed between this show and societal implications are constant. Sitcoms by and large blatantly target specific problems in their stories lines and the characters pretty plainly address them.

Works Cited

Johnson, Allan G. (1997). Patriarchy, The System: an It, Not a He, a Them, or an Us. In Gendered Lives: Intersectional Perspectives (7th ed., pp. 2-17). Oxford University Press.

Kirk, G., & Okazawa-Rey, M. (2020). Creating Knowledge: Media Representations and the Creation of Knowedge. In Gendered Lives: Intersectional Perspectives (7th ed., pp. 2-17). Oxford University Press.

Wolfe, D. (Staff Writer), & Hochman, S. (Co-Producer). (2017, January 6). Bobos and Mamitas (Season 1, Episode 2) [TV series episode]. In N. Lear & B. Miller (Executive Producers), One Day at a Time. Netflix.