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deltaengineering · 5 months ago

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Spring Anime 2024: A Wizard is never late

Shuumatsu Train Doko e Iku (Train to the End of the World)

If you want a reason for why this post is woefully late, it’s this show: since we’re going in ascending order of quality here, it must come first, yet I have a hard time saying anything about it. I suppose I can start with the most obvious problem: I will probably watch your original anime, but I do that to get away from light novel levels of insufferable dialogue. Yet this one definitely goes with the NisioisiN school of writing, which is to say, talk a lot first, then figure out a point at your convenience. This definitely doesn’t endear the show to me and makes it mildly annoying right from the start, but it could still be salvageable - but then Shuumatsu Train just turns out to be not particularly good at any of its selling points. For a weird show it’s not weird enough. For a comedy it’s not funny enough. For a character drama the characters are too superficial. For a profound allegory, it's much too vague. And even though the parts are hardly stellar, the result somehow still ends up as less than the sum of them. It‘s not a total write-off since at least there is some ambition here, but I really can’t say that being more meaningful than not at all is enough of a payoff for something that is mostly just basic attempts at wacky humor presented in an annoying fashion. 4/10

Yuru Camp S3

So, speaking of ambition. My last contact with Yuru Camp was me getting very mad at S2‘s incessant products and services shilling. Admittedly S3 turns this down to an acceptable level, but that only makes the deeper issue more apparent: Yuru Camp is and has always been astonishingly vapid, and three seasons and a movie in all the vibes in the world can no longer make up for it. I won’t even complain that the show is no longer about camping in any meaningful capacity (since I never cared and at least the local-tourism-and-food lane we‘re in now doesn’t require purchase of specialized gear), but godammit if personality-free blobs looking at small footbridges for three episodes didn’t kill my enthusiasm for any of this mush. It‘s still broadly inoffensive, but at this point I feel like I’ve thoroughly exhausted anything this show is ever willing to offer. And Yama no Susume shows that you can have all the theoretical positives of a Yuru Camp with compelling enough characters, so there’s really no excuse. 5/10

Yoru no Kurage wa Oyogenai (Jellyfish Can't Swim in the Night)

I don’t know where this recent trend of cute but reasonably serious girl band anime came from (I would like to think MyGO, but more likely it‘s Bocchi the Rock + the most blatantly obvious and viable way to improve on Bocchi). But here is Jellyfish and uh… it certainly makes an attempt. The first impression is very positive, since Doga Kobo provides pleasant visuals (per usual), but it quickly becomes apparent that it’s the writing that is really holding this one back. It’s not even bad ideas or a lack of ideas, since the concepts this show wants to tackle are generally quite good. But pretty much every execution on those plot ideas is botched in some way, be it by resolving them in a stupidly simple way (impostor syndrome? just do your best!) or by just having a character read out their character arc really dramatically. A bunch of plot points don't even make sense when you look at them in context of the ostensibly real world this show takes place in, and the ending is a massive nothingburger. It's all stuff that's barely passable when something like Love Live does it, but in something that aims higher it seems like a first draft at best and more likely just extremely amateurish. One can only wonder if you gave such a concept to a seasoned veteran like Jukki Hanada... 6/10

Tonari no Youkai-san

Tonari no Youkai-san started out as a rather simple show that I really liked: a mostly but not exclusively lighthearted depiction of a world where Youkai are real and the weird situations that can create, with likeable characters carrying it along. But then it became apparent that what it really wants to do is back-to-back KEY-style sadpiano scenarios. While those aren't bad in moderate amounts, the fact that every scenario now had to be about some heartbreaking backstory no matter what quickly became rather tiring. And then, if it wasn't apparent enough that this show was writing itself into the weeds, it capped the season off with a completely bizarre sci-fi multiverse action arc where everyone dies (very sad!) but then comes back alive because power of friendship beats entropy or something. Well, at least I prefer laughing at this nonsense to being annoyed at contrived tearjerkers, I suppose. I wouldn't call it quality though. 6/10

Dungeon Meshi (Delicious in Dungeon)

When the Dungeon Meshi started, I just didn't get it. The hyperbole around this show (mostly coming from manga fans, I think) was clearly not befitting a very mediocre gimmick anime where even the gimmick had been done better elsewhere multiple times. I do have to admit that as it went on, I could start to see where people were coming from: Once the cooking dies down a bit, the characters start to develop a bit and it finds its pace, Dungeon Meshi's "default mode" is an entertaining adventure anime with some nice characters, decent humor and engaging action. So far so good. However, I'll still call the show merely above average because it's in its default mode less often than you'd think. Every time I started to like something, Dungeon Meshi immediately had to head off in some random other direction that I don't care for: The cooking I did not care for in the beginning becomes vestigial but never stops taking up airtime nonetheless. The nerdy exposition about dungeon mechanics should not merit more than a footnote in a splatbook, but never stops taking up a lot of airtime nonetheless (it's also a painful reminder of the "worldbuilding over narrative" nonsense that I hate, but Dungeon Meshi isn't the worst offender here so I'll let it slide). The show expects me to care about other, far less interesting parties after I just barely mustered up enough enthusiasm to see Chilchuck as more than a spare Marcille when Marcille can't play the tsukkomi herself. Falin turns into a tragic zombie chicken. They adopt an annoying cat. It goes on and on and I'm not thrilled. I will admit though that I will likely still watch the sequel, mostly because Trigger really does a fantastic job with this adaptation on all levels, which at the very least manages to keep it watchable even in the doldrums. I just wish the source material was more consistent. 6/10

Kaiju No. 8

Every season there's some random anime that isn't particularly great, but still competent enough to merit a watch. It's usually some light comedy like Torture Princess, but every once in a while it's something else. This season it's Isekai QC, but in spring it was something even less likely: Kaiju #8, a Jump-brand premium shounen. Yeah, that's a surprise. It just doesn't do anything particularly wrong, apart from the genre staples that it must do wrong: The pacing is bad, but just regular bad. The tone is all over the place, but just regular all over the place. The protagonist isn't as good as he first seems, but not as bad as he could be either. It starts out as "less miserable Attack on Titan where people shoot at huge monsters with guns at shounen powerlevel efficiency", which is extremely awkward, but eventually it settles into a more standard "hit bad guy with sick special attacks" groove, which isn't exactly exciting but at least clearly something the show wants to be. In short, nothing special but the bullshit does not exceed the maximum level I will tolerate as the price of entry to epic dudes epically fighting in an epic fashion. There always is a point with these where you have to ruthlessly cut your losses, but it did not reach it in its first season when the average genremate reaches it within the first episode. That's... something. 6/10

Nijiyon S2

I wasn't even going to write about this because what is there to say about Nijiyon, except that Nijiyon is that rare mini spinoff that actually gets better and starts to outshine the main show at points. Half the time. The other half is still very basic and very arbitrary 4koma hijinks, but an improvement is an improvement. 6/10

Bartender: Glass of God

Why did they make a second Bartender anime in 2024? I can't answer this conclusively but I will say that if Suntory didn't pay for at least half of this production, they got something for free. With that out of the way, the most interesting thing I can say about Bartender is how it compares to Gin & Sonic '06. The old one was certainly ambitious, but in a rather obvious way: Treating the Bartender mystique as somthing close to supernatural and presenting it in a very abstract and stagey way. This is great when it works, but just as often merely comes off as extremely pretentious. The new one... just doesn't do any of that. It's a very straightforward, simple story with actual characters and stuff. It's workable enough with some stronger and some weaker episodes, and even though it does not even attempt to reach the highs of the old one, it doesn't sniff its own farts and does its best to avoid the old man machismo stank that faintly polluted the first adaptation. So I will actually call it better in some ways, maybe even on average, but it still can't compete with a show that had a better reason to exist than to get you excited for Yamazaki whiskey. 6/10

Euphonium S3

I've had my ups and downs with Yoof, and I will say that while some nags remain, I am satisfied with how it managed to (hopefully) wrap up. In fact, S3 might be the best the show has ever been. We were never going to get the cartoonish and quite frankly more entertaining presentation of S1 back, but for what it's worth, S3 takes the overcooked presentation and histrionic character writing of S2 and brings them down to a palatable level, and that makes it at least worth thinking about. Another big point in its favor is that it's now finally truly the Kumiko show, and not just the Kumiko stumbles into other people's drama show. Cast additions like Kanade and Mayu are prety great as well so yeah, I had a good time. Really my biggest complaint is that S3 might actually be a little too good at character drama, because at one point it seemed it was on the verge of starting to question a few of its core assumptions. I never expected it to have doubts over whether letting your school club control your entire existence is in fact a good thing, but ideas like Reina actually being as insane as she comes across and that Taki actually being as terrible as a teacher as he comes across seemed extremely promising. But nah, of course Kumiko just had to be honest with herself, that solved all the problems and then the show just coasted to the most predictable ending imaginable. Euphonium always seemed like it could be way better with a bit more risk-taking, but this was a particularly disappointing moment for the show to be itself. Anyway, if you just expect Euphoinum you're getting the good Euphonium here. 7/10

Girls Band Cry

So, about that "Hanada writing Jellyfish" quip I made earlier? What if that actually happened, in the same season no less? Yeah, these two shows are shockingly similar but unlike Jellyfsh, Girls Band Cry does things right... for the most part. You need to get used to the somewhat janky CG animation, but you're getting some great expressiveness in the deal so that's no problem. You'll also have to put up with Hanada's trademark yuribaiting, a pretty weak ending (as if these two shows didn't already copy each other's homework enough) and music that is much too obvously coming from the Vocaloid camp for my liking. Apart from that, GBC is very good. Not quite as good as MyGO (which has even better character dynamics and I still can't get past how shockingly high its quality is for a franchise anime), but it's really close. So close in fact that I don't even feel like pointing out in detail why GBC is good, because it really is MyGO again: Very flawed yet likeable girls try to get their mental in order while swinging between goofy and depressed and occasionally making music. It's not complicated, but when the character writing delivers (i.e., by seasoned pros like Yuniko Ayana or Jukki Hanada), it just works. If this is a trend now, I'll gladly take it. 8/10

#anime #review #spring2024 #Shuumatsu Train Doko e Iku #Yuru Camp #Yoru no Kurage wa Oyogenai #Tonari no Youkai-san #Kaiju No. 8 #bartender #hibike euphonium #Girls Band Cry #nijiyon

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thehubby · 1 month ago

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So I heard that you've recently watched Digimon The Movie and I would like to know your thoughts about it.

Since I was a guest along for this incredible ride, I felt it appropriate to wait until Doc said something about the Digimon Movie. She has, and now I can.

One of the all-time great Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes is Riding With Death, which is a 1970s movie formed from piecing together two unrelated episodes of a failed television series called Gemini Man. The movie involves a law school graduate played by Ben Murphy who was ostensibly a cross between, I dunno, James Bond and Steve McQueen? But not good or cool in any way, don't be fooled. In this case the whole was definitely far less than the sum of its parts. The plot of each individual episode bordered on insipid, and when added together became incomprehensible and insulting. The characters were one-dimensional, the dialogue was tedious, and extra pains had to be made to explain things that as an audience member you should have known but could not possibly unless you had significant experience in the original material.

Watching Digimon the Movie is like watching Riding With Death, except without the benefit of the MST3K mockery. It is at least two, possibly more, completely different animated features squeezed into one baffling mishmash. It has characters whose actions range from the boring to bizarre with backstories (such as throwing up into your love interest's hat and then forgetting to tell them that fact before they put it on their head) that are more interesting than what's going on in front of you.

The plot of the first half apparently involves some sort of evil digimon attempting to take over and destroy the internet. Fine, let him, we can make another one, this really didn't seem like an Earth-shaking deal, especially in 2000, three years before the launch of MySpace, and when Amazon was still known as "The World's Largest Bookstore." The second half is a road trip with several characters going to Colorado because they're worried or something about one of the digimon who seems to have malfunctioned. (Digimon are organic, but they seem to come from cyberspace, so I'm going to say malfunctioning if I want to.) Neither of these stories is all that compelling and there were points where I was potentially more confused than with any other anime ever, and I've watched Serial Experiments Lain, End of Evangelion and the original Ghost in the Shell stuff.

All of this is compounded by two problems: first, and immediately noticeable, is that the dub of this movie, which is what we watched, hails from the dark ages before anime had fully transitioned into being a serious business. The writing, combined with spastic delivery of lines that may have in fact been too literal to the original translations, is grating to listen to and sounds like something designed for children who cannot spend two seconds digesting a thought before you have to throw another at them. Remember that South Park episode about Chinpokomon where there was this stereotypical way of fast-speak that the children adopted? It felt like two hours of that. In my time, I've watched iffy dubs like Project A-Ko and horrific ones like Cyber City Oedo. This brought me back to a place I thought we had left behind us. (Turns out we mostly have, because this movie is old enough to have a master's degree from a university.)

Second is the weird-ass nature of the digimon themselves, which feels so incredibly arbitrary that the logic feels made up as they go along. They're living creatures in our world...but they also live in computers? They have at least human intellect and can speak and pretty much evolve on command but for reasons unexplained in the movie, they frequently choose to de-evolve to weaker forms? They attach themselves to these chosen one children (with the awkward title of "digi-destined") for reasons beyond our comprehension. And the world doesn't seem to care about this. The opening of the movie features essentially a t-rex fighting a giant parrot in Tokyo and the crowd is just, "meh." I am not a child and I require just a little more rationality out of my media.

For those that enjoy the Digimon movie and series, awesome, more power to you. I am not part of its target audience. I have my fair share of guilty pleasures that could be charitably described as garbage. This isn't going to be one of them. All that said, I had a great time watching this in a group setting with support and encouragement, and sangria.

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corellianhounds · 2 months ago

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🍁 Thanks so much for the ask! In turn, I ask of you…

17. What highly specific AU do you want to read or write even though you might be the only person to appreciate it?

45. What’s something you’ve improved on since you started writing fic?

Ask Game

I’ll answer the second one first because it’s shorter!

45. In terms of writing I think my narration and prose is stronger. My writing used to have fun bits and pieces, but there wasn’t much connective tissue between actions and dialogue, so the payoff of my ideas wasn’t as impactful because I was filling in too many of the blanks that I should have just trusted readers to do on their own. There were a lot of actions describing emotions or expressions without a lot actually happening in the scene; I had the problem of trying to ‘direct’ the characters as though it were a visual medium instead of just getting to the necessary bits. I’m more judicious with those now and I’ve been able to write some more impactful, concise pieces because of it

NOW

17. My favorite highly specific AU is my MODERN STAR WARS WWF AU!!

Hear me out

One of the problems with translating Star Wars to a modern setting is figuring out how to include the violence and oppression— Fascists still exist and they’re not fun to contend with in a modern setting because they still exist in our world and they’re not fun to contend with in real life. Star Wars should be fun in one way or another, and it’s difficult to make a satisfying modern AU if you just take all of the violence out of the equation entirely

HOWEVER

With a lighter, more humorous wrestling entertainment AU that has kayfabe built into its very nature, you get the freedom of heightened performance and drama and fighting without having to include fascism as the antagonists’ motivations and without having to kill people. You can pick and choose what parts of the story are real life and which parts are the storylines crafted for the characters the performers are portraying in the ring!!

Some highlights below:

Set in the 80s-90s, playing a little fast and loose with the timeline for a lot of stuff, but the main pro wrestling flavor is what came before the Attitude Era, the main story mostly focusing on the OG trilogy up through The Mandalorian, but with some of the Rogue One and Solo movie characters in the mix. There’s also some old first season TBB ideas floating around that aren’t connected to the loose ‘main’ story

This will all be a combination of the wrestling performance storylines like the supposedly deceased brother of the Undertaker who set fire to their childhood home and killed their parents reappearing as an adult to challenge the Undertaker in the ring, combined with some celebrity drama and news stories and public scandals. Fun and dramatic stakes that are still real for the people involved, but without having to deal with what the Imperials actually are and what they represent

Palpatine is the head of the Empire federation à la Vince McMahon, Vader as his (mostly retired) prize fighter and face of the company. The Empire’s been buying out and/or shutting down rival federations, becoming this monopoly in the industry that few people are able to oppose without finding their careers and lives financially ruined

Jango Fett was hired and paid a lot of money to start the primary wrestling school where he trained a lot of the folks in his own community first that the Empire used as the baseline for their roster. He’s bitter about having to retire after an accidental neck injury sustained during a match against Mace Windu, and is also bitter about the clauses in the contract put in place by Palpatine (or I guess Dooku acting on Palpatine’s behalf as his lawyer/accountant) that dictate that anybody who trains in his gym (the rest of the clone characters) aren’t allowed to work for the opposition since Jango was privy to trade secrets that are considered proprietary knowledge of the Empire. Jango’s company is so caught up in extensive legalese that he can’t break the contract or start a new wrestling school anywhere else.

ACCOUNTANT DOOKU

Jango later worked as private security in the latter half of Boba’s childhood, skills and contacts he passed on to Boba. Boba trained as a fighter under his father and has a lot of the same skills and disciplines as Jango but since he’s Jango’s kid and was never enrolled at the gym, he’s technically free from the reach of the Empire’s contract

The Jedi Order in this universe is more of an actual trained martial art, not really professional entertainers. There are still people who leave to go into MMA/UFC style matches, but their training is in actual fighting, not professional wrestling entertainment. Sensei are usually disappointed to see their fighters go into professional wrestling with their skills because they don’t think it’s very dignified, but it’s not like they’re forbidden from doing it or whatever

Jedi like pro wrestlers who DO have either classical wrestling or martial arts training make for better performers and athletes in the wrestling federations because they know how to do the choreography the safest way possible since they have an athletic background and know what will or won’t actually cause their partner long lasting harm in the ring

Wrestling costumes allow for characters to retain some of the flair and armor and heightened stylization of their original costumes. Same with greasepaint and tattoos and elaborate hairstyles

Palpatine retains his Naboo/Coruscanti style though it transitions from blues and purples to black and charcoal gray over the years. Big gold rings and coiffed hair, slick black shoes, a stylish walking cane with the top looking like the hilt of his saber

Don’t even get me started on hot intimidating modern mid-forties Anakin. I don’t even find Hayden Christensen hot personally but the idea I have in mind for how he looks here is so cool. THE GRAVITAS.

COOL WRESTLING NAMES!!

Boba Fett has a couple of nicknames/personas, the later ones being “The Wrath of Tatooine” and “The Wraith of Tatooine” (after he comes back from the dead)

The Sons of Dathomir: Maul and Savage tag team duo, lots of grease paint and kabuki-style masks to keep the Zabrak look

Performances also mean you could easily incorporate the musical motifs of the characters. Enfys Nest is one of the most popular crowd favorites; her theme song is this piece with the vocalizations just after the 30 second mark, her intro into the ring being heralded by drumroll and singing that’s echoed back by the fans in the auditorium. She comes in accompanied by a ton of fog rolling down the platform on her entrance (alluding to the Cloud Riders)

Heck, I could just steal one of the Undertaker’s intros and have her ride down on a motorcycle through the fog. Her costume and color scheme would also translate really well

(Enfys Nest’s finishing move is called The Savareen Standoff. The music comes back in as she stands on the top ropes of one corner, the crowd ramping back up with excitement as she jumps and does a flip in midair before landing on her opponent and getting them pinned)

Carbonite plaque = Casket matches

Speederbike chases end up being motorcycle chases

Not everybody’s a wrestler! C-3PO and R2 are the ringside announcers. I can’t decide whether it’s better if R2 is at the Spanish announcers table, C-3PO translating as well as adding his commentary for the folks watching, or if R2 just gets overly excited while announcing to the point the production team/editors end up having to add the censor beeps over his commentary for how much he swears lol

One of the matches with Anakin ends up breaking out into side beefs with other people in and outside the ring and he can be heard yelling at the announcers, saying “I made you who you are today! You’d be nothing without me!”

Leia’s a safety inspector with a degree in journalism/entertainment law who’s investigating the dangerously unsafe practices the Empire federation has been having their employees take part in in the hopes of shutting them down. She and Bail (an entertainment lawyer) having been trying to get evidence on them for years. Dangerous stunts and gimmicks that have gone too far or ended badly are only a piece of the vast amount of rumors and accusations levied their way (to say nothing of the Fett school and other companies like it under similar impossible-to-escape contracts and NDAs). The Empire has been buying out and shutting down rival federations, becoming this monopoly in the industry; Palpatine has a lot of money and he can afford good lawyers and good press

But also: VERY satisfactory news story of Bail Organa being photographed throwing hands with renown WWF celebrity Anakin Skywalker in the streets for the shady/illegal stuff Anakin has been complicit in that has now put Leia directly in harm’s way lolol. Leia’s adoptive father vs. her real dad. So many juicy responsibilities.

Han Solo is a roadie basically in a steep debt to the Hutt Syndicate, Jabba catching up to him and threatening him into working for him. Jabba works him like a dog for weeks on the road so by the time it comes to RotJ he’s so out of it he’s basically dead on his feet before his friends manage to rescue him. He’s been working 16 hr days nonstop just chugging energy drinks to stay awake— The equivalent of Han knocking Boba into the Sarlacc pit here is him not legitimately not seeing Boba when he puts the tour truck into reverse trying to peal out of the parking lot and he ends up hitting him with the truck

Tbh you really don’t have to change much of his costume. He’s got a tool pack on his belt instead of a holster

Lando’s the head of his own moderately sized federation either in the Windy City or somewhere up in the PNW where it’s cloudy all the time. None of that’s relevant to the wrestling side of things, I just think it gives flavor.

The Cloud City match ends with Han (who audiences know is only part of the tech crew [or is he? 👀]) getting pulled into a casket match as it’s going ‘wrong’ (wrong?) and getting knocked out before Boba carts him off out of the ring. Still debating on how much of this will end up being real and how much is performance, some of that is dependent on how much of the original and prequel trilogies are real

Mask reveals are given the same gravity as they are in canon. Lots of performers aren’t seen outside the ring without their masks when they’re doing a work or a locker room interview. Allows for a lot of characters to just have regular lives outside the ring AND it keeps from breaking kayfabe when people end up traveling together on tour lol

The first time we see the Armorer it’s with Mando going to see her in the workshop where she’s got a welding mask on while she works on the props, costumes, and improvised weapons for the ring

The Mandalorian covert is a small independent wrestling/fighting company/gym. All of them have legitimate training too but work freelance and it’s not uncommon to see them in improvised arenas. Mando’s single and doesn’t have an immediate family and since he’s one of the better-known fighters he’s traveling out of town more often than the rest of them. His carefully crafted contracts and travel arrangements organized by either Karga or the Armorer as his manager allow him to retain some measure of anonymity and he’s never shown his face in the public eye as his wrestling persona, the mask he wears in the ring both a part of the character and actual practical identity protection

Ditching his work with the Guild federation could mean he ends up doing actual cage matches on the side until he’s picked up as a heel by the Empire

Gideon is on the creative team as a writer/manager for the Empire, and though Mando’s been incorporated into the choreographed storylines against other wrestlers, Gideon wants to include Mando’s real kid in some of the future stories, which Mando obviously vetoes.

So maybe there’s a title match between surprise contender Boba Fett and Mando where Gideon literally just decides to go grab the kid from the green room to include as a faked kidnapping plot line at the end of the fight, thinking it’d be okay to improvise because the publicity would be really good, but Mando wasn’t consulted at all beforehand so you can imagine how that plays out

Either Mando or Boba take the Undertaker’s place as the judge of the unofficial wrestler’s court (where arguments and petty squabbles between wrestlers are sorted out with good-natured punishments without having to go to upper management), known for being objectively fair and able to resolve things as a mediator (a stand-in parallel for being Mand’alor)

I have a whole side story for the first season of TBB. Echo used to be a wrestler until a pyro effect went dangerously wrong and he wound up out of commission as a performer (though the Empire at least covered the medical bills and prostheses. They may put their people at risk but they provide good health insurance). Works as the team’s production manager/trainer/technician. Tech’s also had training but he’s more of a roadie/technician/special effects guy too. Wrecker and Hunter are a tag team duo and Crosshair was part of the team for a while before they split from the Empire federation and the lawyers went after them for breaking their contract (because they found out some information they weren’t supposed to know). They’re actually semi on the run in their tour bus trying to figure things out and reach out to others of Fett’s school as they go and oh whoops why do we have a stowaway oh nO WE’VE CROSSED SO MANY STATE LINES, WE ARE SO DEAD—

Crosshair stays with the Empire as a paparazzo/trade spy, investigating whoever the Empire sends him to spy on, but is mainly trying to catch up with the rest of the crew. I figured a long range camera was a good substitute for the rifle. He’s a genuinely good photographer but the Empire pays well and he doesn’t mind doing some dirty work. “Did the Traitors of Kamino KIDNAP a CHILD? More Telling Info On the Messy Corporate Breakup page 11…”

I also have a bunch of ideas for Rogue One and the Mandalorian characters, but this answer is already waaaaay longer than anticipated 😆 Long story short, petty criminal/illegal cage fighter Jyn Erso has been put in contact with her estranged father (Galen stuck working for the Empire under similar NDAs and contracts and possibly even blackmail) who manages to leak insider information regarding the Empire’s increasingly unsafe stunts and demands of the performers and crew to Jyn and the Rogue One crew, who in turn act as investigative reporters and spies for Leia’s mounting legal case.

Bodhi’s a blacklisted ex-crew member and technician who worked on tour for the Empire, sent by Galen to meet up with Saw at his own boxing ring in order to get some pretty damning evidence to Bail Organa. Most of the Rogue One crew are technicians or former employees blacklisted from the federation and most of the industry, or are somehow connected and end up on an impromptu roadtrip happening in the background as the main story starts heating up

Basically making a professional wrestling AU allows for a lot of the heightened drama and fantasy elements to remain in play and for people to be grouped together in ways they are in canon, but there’s a freedom to being able to pick and choose which parts of the canon story are real in this universe and which are parts of the storylines being written for the matches. You still get to see showdowns between characters both in and out of the ring, and you can still have those juicy story reveals given the drama they deserve but without them needing to actually affect the characters in ways that they would if they were actually happening in just regular day-to-day life. You can have the missing twin reveals, the family drama, the betrayals, all of that, and still have it be fun and potentially very funny at the end of the day

#Star Wars WWF AU #hounds speaks #This got ABSURDLY long I am SO SORRY #Q&A #I don’t feel justified in tagging everybody bc that feels like it will clutter up the tags so I’ll just do the highlights #Din Djarin #original trilogy #Leia Organa #Han Solo #Jango Fett #Boba Fett #Enfy Nest #Palpatine #ask games #Star wars AU

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whetstonefires · 2 years ago

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oh sorry for sending you down a random and inane internet rabbit hole that's what i get for speed typing on a tiny iphone screen and just sending it without checking lol. i think i mean to write what if instead of the batman 2022 it was the owlman 2022 movie. because i think pattinson could play a very scary villain if they gave him the material.

🤣 ahahaha oh, I see!

okay, then...i think an owlman movie in the style of the batman 2022 could be great, that is fun, but crucially i would want it made in the context of battinson already existing.

mirror universe rpatz, just taking his already hingeless and vaguely stunted yet deeply sincere portrayal of the character and upping it to true detached-door levels.

since the official position is to not have owlman be mirror bruce, but his brother thomas jr, they obviously would never make this, even leaving budget considerations aside.

but there just haven't been enough owlmans for batman 2022's specific treatment of the material to work as a dialogue in the same way, so i think it could only really land if it was done as a dialogue with their own, existing film.

so then, what would an owlman launching from the world established in the battinson film want? he believes all the worst things about his father, i guess. he believes all the worst things about everything and thinks it makes him rational and clear-eyed; he's got to be the most self-congratulatory cynic ever, and also walk around in a bird hat in total seriousness.

he's out to master the Gotham underworld and also control its politics. you could do something with his owning the mayor?

or with a contrast to battinson's hatred of being in public etc where owlman is the one running for mayor?

if we pursue the themes around Riddler in that movie, battinson owlman probably encourages the bitterness and disillusionment of The Youth and their radicalization, and takes advantage of it to turn them into weapons against society. very modern and yet utterly traditional!

idk, owlman is a hard villain protagonist to work with imo, because he's such a control freak and so selfish you need a big external problem to get any story out of him. absent the 'thomas jr vs police commissioner thomas dad' drama at least, which is hacky but hey it's comics ig. otherwise he just keeps chugging along doing evil, unless you want to chase down the nietzche multiverse breakdown from the Crisis on Two Earths or something.

i'd want to pitch a version of jokester at him to get some dynamism in there, but realistically then i'm just using battinson as a set of action figures to play out my fanfic lmao.

robert patttinson could certainly do a good villain, in that he seems to revel in the camp end of melodrama without checking out on acting while doing so, and also he has the capacity to be quite threatening because he's demonstrated that he can go ham while maintaining character. which is not actually easy to do.

but i'm not sure how well drawing the audience's attention to the fundamental idiocy of owlman as a concept would work when he's not uh. very lovable. because battinson works because he attracts our derision and our affection simultaneously, you know?

and i've never seen pattinson play anything he wasn't making fun of--i've only seen snippets of him as cullen, come to think of it, and if i saw the fourth harry potter movie i formed no memories, but anyway.

mostly what i'm coming away with here is i'm now curious to see what pattinson would do with an actual serious dramatic role. which is not how i would describe owlman.

#ask #hoc est meum #Anonymous #owlman #battinson #hypothetical films #unsure to what degree contempt upon the world is pattinson's actual baseline setting #and to what degree he plays it up because it's his brand #but it's definitely not all fake so idk how much he can turn it off?#would be interesting to see #but i appreciate that for all it harnesses the energy of irony poisoning batman 2022 is a pretty sincere film #and you can't really capture that balance with a villain movie in the same way #...i'm thinking maybe owlman dies at the end #batman #i guess #it feels off to have the owlman movie be a refutation of owlman #but i can't imagine what else it would be

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billveusay · 9 days ago

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Just watched Hathaway's Spark and...

I am currently making my way through basically all of Gundam, and having now watched almost all of pre-CCA Universal Century (CCA included), Hathaway was next on my list. And my conclusion is, it certainly is a true successor to Char's Counterattack. The problem is I didn't like Char's Counterattack very much. I'd even go as far as to say it's my least favourite piece of Gundam media I've watched, and felt like Hathaway shared several issues with it, the most prominent being the insufferable main female character, and a plot that seems cramped inside it's runtime. It starts in medias res and has relatively little exposition, which I sometimes like when it's handled well, but there I had to regularly alt-tab to the wiki summary just to understand some parts of the plot.

Sometimes crucial information will be shared casually through a line of dialogue or a shot that seems to be of minor importance. But then, that piece of information will be referenced in a way that implied I was supposed to have fully internalized it and extrapolated on its implications. Though maybe it was also because I was watching it subbed, and some stuff got lost in translation. But I won't accept that excuse for one aspect: Too many characters, especially in the Mafty squad that gets introduced around the halfway point. However, that was less of an issue in CCA (mostly because many of them where recurring from MSG and Zeta) and more in G-Witch. The in medias res aspect also has the problem of making it feel like we're catching Hathaway mid-character arc, so it feels less of a realization when he decides to stop keeping both of his identities because of his encounter with Gigi. Though maybe it would have helped if Gigi wasn't... well... Cue shot from HTTYD where Stoic gestures at "all of Hiccup". And of course, my biggest beef: Yes, what better climax than a battle between two of the ugliest and most overdesigned gundams ever imagined. With the same overall indistinct silhouette. At night. A shame cause the fight would probably have been great if it was somewhat readable, and the city battle was really incredible, probably the best execution of the classic scene civilians trying not to die while mobile suits are fighting it out. In fact, the animation and directing was absolutely fantastic overall. Even in terms of cinematography and pacing, it had the vibe of a contemplative thriller movie, and in the first act I was half-expecting to learn that it was made by an acclaimed author with a strong identity like Mamoru Ooshi, Satoshi Kon or Hideaki Anno, having a crack at Gundam the same way Naoki Urasawa reinterpreted Astro-Boy with Pluto. But no, it's a veteran of the franchise. At least it made me want to see his previous movie and what he'll do next, cause I'm betting a lot of the problems come from the novels it was adapted from, since it shares many of them with CCA and they were written around the time it came out. Anyways, that's my opinion, to each his own taste etc. I can definitely see this being many people's favourites and would absolutely not consider it bad, or say that I didn't a least enjoy parts of it. Now on to Turn A Gundam! I may write some reviews of the other shows I watched, cause I have thoughts, and hotter takes than this one. ... ...Zeta is vastly overrated. Bye!

#mobile suit gundam #gundam #hathaway's flash #hathaway noa #gigi andalucia #movie review

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gaming · 5 years ago

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Indie Game Spotlight: The Haunted Island, a Frog Detective Game

Spoopy season isn’t quite over in this week’s Indie Game Spotlight. In The Haunted Island, a small sloth has been haunted for weeks by a mysterious ghost that nobody can seem to track down. There’s a mystery afoot, and the only one who can solve it is the renowned investigator known simply as The Detective. Finding clues and questioning suspects is just part of the job for such an experienced frog, but this case is a tough fly to catch.

We spoke to Grace Bruxner, who is the creative director of Worm Club, and responsible for the art, writing, and design, among other things. Also in Worm Club is her partner Thomas Bowker, who works on the UX and programming, and their composer Dan Golding, who makes lovely jazzy tunes (fun fact: Dan also did the music for Untitled Goose Game).

The Haunted Island looks like it has a lot of different animal friends. What kind of animals can we expect to meet?

So many animals! We have a sheep, a duck, a sloth, a wombat, a koala (gotta get that Australian representation in somewhere!), and, of course, a frog. I am probably forgetting a few. We basically chose animals that wouldn’t look horrifying standing up. Some people still think they’re horrifying, but that’s not my problem, really.

What kinds of gameplay mechanics can we expect?

In terms of mechanics, The Haunted Island is a super simple game that focuses on talking to silly characters and helping everyone out, in order to solve the mystery. It does have several un-skippable cutscenes, which have been described as “why can’t I skip the cutscenes.” Mechanics—who needs ‘em! Except for, like, car mechanics, I guess.

Are there any detective-genre movies, books, or games that helped inspire the game?

We had a volunteer at PAX West who described the game as “Animal Crossing meets LA Noire," which is kind of true. I haven’t played Animal Crossing yet, but I really liked LA Noire. It has so many silly moments that aren’t intentional, and I wanted to sort of emulate those moments in my game. I also love Agatha Christie novels, as well as the live-action Poirot TV show, but unfortunately, a lot of those older detective shows and books have some problematic content. As far as I know, we have no weirdly racist bits in the game (I really hope we don’t, as I am the one who wrote it). Frog Detective doesn’t take itself very seriously, but all the characters do. I find inspiration from shows that I find sort of accidentally funny because of the dialogue. For example, Degrassi and Riverdale both have very funny dialogue, which seems mostly unintentional, though I’m sure the writers have fun with it.

Have you learned any interesting frog facts while working on the game?

Frog Detective isn’t a super educational game, so I haven’t done a whole lot of frog-related research, but I will say I recently learned that frogs and toads are basically the same creatures, biologically speaking. They’re classified as frogs or toads depending on their size!

What do you hope players will take away from your game?

That it’s OK to be second best.

Ready to hop on in? You can find out more about The Haunted Island, as well as its successor, Frog Detective 2: The Case of the Invisible Wizard, over on Worm Club’s website, or simply check it out at your favorite online vendors.

#Frog Detective #The Haunted Island #Worm Club

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magnificent-nerd · 3 years ago

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Why Naqib in The Boys sucked

Image description: fictional character Naqib in Amazon Prime’s show The Boys.

(Is the fire in the background an excuse to use racist Yellow Filter to show how exotic he is? Hmm.)

I first posted this on my blog in Dec 2020, and since nothing in superhero media has changed for the better at this time (September 5th, 2021), I’m going to keep talking about it.

Because nobody else does. So, without further ado:

WHY NAQIB SUCKS.

I was a big fan of The Boys season 1; I love superheroes, I love deconstructing a genre. Sure, it has its problems, but overall I enjoyed season 1 and thought the show had potential.

(That’ll learn me for being hopeful!)

When season 1 ended with this big build up of mostly nameless brown and background characters as Muslim terrorists (deep sigh) we the audience are left thinking this one Muslim character (Naqib) whose superpower is to blow himself up repeatedly (insert another long deep sigh here) is going to be The Big Bad of season 2.

I had my misgivings about that direction. Firstly, as you can see from the image of Naqib, he is highly exoticised and is walking around bare chested with Arabic writing on his chest. He looks more like a generic western media depiction of a genie than he does a supervillain.

And yet he's the first prominent Muslim character in superhero media I've seen in YEARS.

(See my post about MENA and Muslim character good guys, including Joe played by Marwan Kenzari in The Old Guard, which is technically a comic book movie but it’s not what I’d call ‘caped and costumed’ superheroes so it’s more... superhero adjacent.)

I follow superhero content closely and as far as I'm aware the last time we saw any named Muslim characters in superhero movies WITH SPEAKING LINES was:

Instance 1) Iron Man 1 back in 2008 with The Ten Rings in Afghanistan, showing multiple Muslim characters as baddies/terrorists, but only two of them as a named character and with any meaningful lines to say. And despite one of them, Yinsen (actor Shaun Toub), being a good guy he still dies! Which is common in western media for Muslim and MENA characters.

Note: Fellow Iron Man 1 castmate, actor Sayed Badreya, makes an important point in this GQ article: "I die in Iron Man, I die in Executive Decision. I get shot by everyone. George Clooney kills me in Three Kings. Arnold blows me up in True Lies…" (x)

Instance 2) A more recent instalment in Batman V. Superman in 2016, with some unnamed 'General' character and mercenaries/terrorists in Nairomi, Africa, referred to only as "the desert" throughout the movie. All reference to the General's actual name are available in an extended/deleted scene only, so a very poor and vague depiction in the final cut.

Instance 3) The generic and badly written ‘bad guys’ in Wonder Woman 1984 (2020 movie), which was honestly such a racist depiction of Arabs and Muslims that many critics pointed out we hadn’t seen a depiction this terrible since 1994′s True Lies. (At least most critics were in agreement that WW84 movie was generally terrible, so there’s that.)

And that's it, those are the only major instances showing any Muslim actors or characters in a caped and costumed superhero movie.

Some other fleeting glimpses of Muslims onscreen:

Glimpse 1) I spotted a girl wearing a hijab among the nameless and unspeaking background characters of Peter Parker's class in Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019). A first for Marvel movies, apparently.

Glimpse 2) Disney Plus show Falcon and Winter Soldier (2021) had two nameless Muslim characters walk by in a scene that’s supposed to be Tunisia (using Yellow Filter), and ‘thank’ the present American Air Force (eye-roll).

Glimpse 3) Netflix show Jupiter’s Legacy (2021) had a nameless Muslim sailor conversing with one of the main characters in a scene, with meaningful dialogue about racism. (WOW. Really good.) Bonus: no yellow filter. It’s a pity he’s a nameless background character because this brief instance is the least problematic MENA rep I’ve seen in ages, but it is very brief.

I just wrote about Glimpses 2 and 3, and how the Netflix show outdid Disney when it comes to these nameless walk-on Muslim characters.

This is pretty pathetic overall, these small crumbs, especially compared to better rep and probably the only instance of legit MENA superheroes in a ‘costumes and capes’ style superhero show, the Tarazi siblings on DC’s Legends of Tomorrow.

Anyway, now I’ve listed what crumbs are available across the live action superhero genre, back to The Boys.

I was intrigued about how season 2 would handle Naqib and any characters relating to him, and what storyline they'd use.

Was I excited at the possibility of seeing Muslim supers onscreen? Damn straight I was. Did I mind that they were baddies? Well, yes and no. When you only ever get crumbs or no crumbs at all, you tend to get excited over one stale old crumb.

After the build up for season 2, I eagerly sat down to watch the first episode, only to have the first five minutes of episode 1 Trigon him.

Note: who's Trigon, you ask? Well if you didn't watch the DCEU's Titans show, Trigon was The Big Bad who was hyped up throughout season 1, introduced in the season 1 cliff-hanger episode as this big 'oh shit!' moment for the cast of heroes, only for him to fizzle out like a wet fart in the first episode of season 2 while the show pivots wildly in another direction.

Exactly what happened to Naqib in the first five minutes of The Boys season 2.

Erm, so, Naqib. Farewell, I guess? As a character you briefly appeared in 2 episodes, portrayed by a different actor in each (Krishan Dutt, and Samer Salem). It seems the writers used you as a plot device when they needed a cheap cliff-hanger for a direction that ultimately went nowhere.

Am I disappointed? Yeah, I am. Overall I thought season 2 of The Boys was weaker than season 1, but I'm not here to talk about the whole season: I want to talk about Naqib and this missed opportunity.

The Boys and its showrunners sell the show as being a satire of recent and well known superhero content, of all the big movies and TV shows. There's been a lot of patting themselves on the back for calling out overused tropes in superhero media (and sometimes they've done this satire well: see the LGBT marketing scene with Queen Maeve in season 2), but my issue with the show on their Muslim rep, or should I say lack thereof, is if your show has even less Muslim character rep than the content you're trying to parody, how is this a win for satire?

Naqib and that whole angle came across as a lazy, half-assed swing from the writer's room. Sure, perhaps a lot of the non-Muslim and non-MENA audience won't even notice, as we've been ignored by western media or made into nameless, generic, vacuous baddies for decades now. Non-Muslims and non-MENA just accept that we're always the baddies for no particular reason at all (which feeds into Islamophobia, by the way) and The Boys' writers could say they are simply satirising the tropes already present in media...

But, and this is a big but, the media that The Boys is satirising has already made a step toward better inclusion and representation: Ms. Marvel (Kamala Khan), Marvel comics' first Muslim superhero, is entering the MCU as a lead character in her own Disney Plus show, debuting in 2022.

Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan is also cited to appear in upcoming Captain Marvel sequel, The Marvels (2022), which will be a major movie.

The MCU has also cast a Muslim actor (Mahershala Ali) as the lead in a reboot of Blade. That's going to be big news when it starts filming.

So to the showrunners on The Boys, I say this: now you've done this small angle of 'all Muslim characters are terrorists, yuckity-yuck!' like we've seen in major superhero movies thus far, and you've brushed that aside in favor of focusing on other whiter villains, my question is will you come back to Muslim and MENA characters again? Or is that all you got?

Because if that was ALL, then the current score is Disney/MCU:02, Netflix:02, DCEU:02, and The Boys: a big ZERO as far as Muslim and MENA rep goes.

Originally posted on my blog, magnificently nerdy.

If you, like me, are always on the lookout for onscreen Muslim and MENA characters in superhero media, and have spotted any characters in superhero TV shows I haven’t watched yet, let me know about them!

Here is my post on good guys, featuring Old Guard’s Joe, and Blindspot’s Rich Dotcom.

Here’s my post about the Tarazi siblings on DC’s Legends of Tomorrow TV show.

And, if Marvels’ Eternals gets released on schedule for 2021, we will have a MENA actor portraying a supporting character. I just hope Marvel gives him a name.

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florrickandassociates · 3 years ago

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TGF Thoughts: 5x10-- And the violence spread.

So, that’s it for season five. I’m still trying to sort out how I feel about the season as a whole and Wackner’s arc. I’m hopeful that writing this will help me decide.

This episode has a Previously, and it’s rather conventional. I’m guessing it’s here to bookend the season, with conveying information being only a secondary objective.

Did we see Rivi scream, “You’re done, Wacko, you’re done! Canceled! Canceled!” in the last episode or is that new to this previously? I feel like I absolutely would’ve had things to say about a) Wackner being called “Wacko,” which has been RIGHT THERE this whole time, and b) the use of “Canceled,” which is a thing Rivi would never say but is VERY thematic (you know, cancel culture and also Wackner having a TV show and also this being a TV show that’s wrapping up* Wackner’s arc).

* The way things end this episode, I’d say we’re done with Wackner. The Kings have said they aren’t sure about the plan for season six, so never say never, but I think that if we see Wackner again, it will be as part of a different arc.

I went back to 5x09 and while we do see the same shots of Rivi screaming, whatever he’s saying in 5x09 is in Spanish. So either he was saying this in Spanish or the dialogue here is totally new.

I’m a little sad that I knew in advance Robert King had directed this episode, because I want to know how long it would’ve taken me to guess. I’d like to think this first shot, of Diane flopping down on her bed in a very pretty floral print dress, then Kurt flopping down in the opposite direction, would’ve given it away. We usually don’t get shots that are both striking and kinda balanced unless RK’s directing.

This also has some big season three opener vibes—the scene where Diane turns to Kurt and says, “I’m happy,” thus jinxing the entire season.

Diane and Kurt are about to go on vacation, which means, of course, that Diane and Kurt are definitely not about to go on vacation. I’ve watched 12 seasons of this show; I know all the tricks!

If I didn’t get it from the initial staging of the opening shot, the camera panning to Diane and Kurt’s suitcases and then back would’ve been another clue that RK directed. He ALWAYS has the camera in motion.

I love that Diane’s travel outfit is a dress you could wear to a fancy party and a statement necklace. Of course it is.

And if I needed evidence that RK and MK wrote this episode (which I didn’t; it is a finale so I knew they wrote it), Diane quoting Waiting for Godot is a clue there.

I really should read Waiting for Godot, shouldn’t I?

“Wow. Educated and a good lay,” Kurt responds. I know that the political stuff between Diane and Kurt can get more than a little murky, but banter like this reminds me why they stay together and why politics never drive them apart. Also, it’s really nice to see Diane and Kurt have some fun banter that isn’t about politics.

And Diane making kissing noises and asking Kurt to meet her halfway! This just feels like I’m spying on someone’s private life and I love it. Not in a voyeuristic way, since this is actually a little uncomfortably private, but in a, “ah, yes, these do feel like real people” way. This is the kind of “a little goes a long way” character moment I always want more of, and Kings episodes ALWAYS include stuff like this.

And there it is. The phone rings as Diane and Kurt are about to start out for the airport. Diane thinks the call must be for Kurt, but it’s for her. It’s a very flustered Liz, informing her that STR Laurie’s execs are on their way to the office for a surprise visit.

If the Diane/Kurt scene didn’t tell me that Robert King directed, I almost certainly would’ve gotten it from the sudden cut to Liz, walking through the hallways and doing a million things at once with a ton of background noise. No one loves chaos the way Robert King loves chaos.

This episode STRONGLY reminds me of the Wife season five finale. It is equally chaotic and also spins a ton of plates. But, mostly, the similarity I see between the two episodes is that they are both extremely fun and captivating to watch because of how much momentum they have, but everything just feels slightly hollow and not exactly focused on the thing you want to see.

(Shout out to my friend Ryan, who messaged me the 5x22 comparison before I could message it to him!)

I decided I should rewatch the first few minutes of 5x22. I am now 15 minutes into 5x22 of Wife and 2 minutes into 5x10 of Fight. Oops.

Apparently, STR Laurie planned a surprise visit because they heard RL was dysfunctional. You don’t say!

I felt like 5x09 concluded with STR Laurie being won over by Allegra and the RL team, so this is a bit of a surprising place to start the episode. But, since Diane seems surprised too, I’ll allow it.

Now Liz and Diane have 90 minutes to agree on a financial plan! Kurt’s on the phone with the airline before Diane even hangs up with Liz.

Diane is determined not to lose out on her vacation and asks Kurt to change the flight to 8:00. “Kurt, we are going on this vacation if it kills me!” is a line I would worry was foreshadowing on basically any other show.

The RL/STRL PowerPoint template is pretty ugly. They want to call 2021 their best year yet, thanks to the deal between Rivi and Plum Meadow Farms we saw last week. Even though we saw champagne and signatures, the deal isn’t done yet because Plum Meadow can back out if Rivi goes to jail.

RK also loves close-ups more than any other director on the show; I do not love close-ups.

The Plum Meadow deal is such a big deal that for the quarter, they go from $45 million to $5 million without it. They should just not say numbers. I can believe it’s big enough to take them from a modest profit to being behind projections or whatever, but I can’t believe that they have $5 million in other business and $40 million on this one deal.

It seems that Rivi was arrested. I don’t think it is ever said in this episode why. I assume the arrest relates to his behavior in Wackner’s court, since there were police officers there, and I suppose that Rivi is a big enough deal the police would actually take him to real court, but are we not going to address the weirdness of Rivi being arrested in a fake court where his employees are being tried, then taken to a real court by the same people who just an episode ago were disillusioned with real court? This seems like a plot point.

Carmen on a frantic phone call in the backseat of a car feels very 7x22.

Who is James that Carmen has in her contacts!? And why does everyone always put Liz in their contacts as “Elizabeth Reddick” when everyone calls her Liz?

Carmen calls Marissa to go argue in Vinetta’s court since she’s on Rivi duty. Carmen doesn’t take Marissa’s job in Wackner’s court seriously and then notes that this instruction is coming straight from Liz, so Marissa falls in line.

Wackner’s case of the week is about rural Illinois wanting to form its own state separate from Chicago. There’s a farmer who feels like his tax money is only going to the big city and he wants it to stay in his community.

They’ve just now added stage lighting to the set of Wackner Rules, dunno why they wouldn’t have done that earlier!

I don’t know what standing you’d have to have to bring a case about wanting to divide the state in two to court, or if this is even something a court would or should decide, but, sure, Wackner and Cord, go for it. There are no rules!

This map splitting Illinois into two new states that Cord is holding is a dumb prop because Galena, where this farmer is from, is in the same section as Chicago. Do I pause every reference to Chicago on this show and then google information to see if the writers bothered to look it up or pretend they’ve ever set foot in Chicago? You know I do.

“Secession!” the audience screams. Does the audience of Wackner Rules really want to see this?

A Good Fight Short! And it really is short: “Stop this obsession with secession and breaking up the Union. It’s boring and it’s dumb, end of song.” I feel like that’s the thesis statement for this episode, or one of them (that this episode seems to have about ten thesis statements is kind of my problem with this episode, tbh). This episode is very much about danger of things becoming too fractured—the COTW, the copycat courts, the firm drama—and I feel like the writers come around to just saying no, this is enough, we need structure and consistency.

But more on that later. MUCH more on that later.

Marissa is swearing more because “the world has required it.” She notes this to Wackner as she calls him out on the secession case. Cord barges in.

Take a look at the employee of the month poster on the back of the door at 5:39. Then at 5:40, look at what’s in the box just to the right of the center of the screen: it’s an employee of the month poster with Wackner on it! Cute easter egg. (Would Marissa definitely notice this and have questions? Yes. Is this here as a cute easter egg for eagle-eyed fans? Almost certainly.)

“Insane is just one step away from reality if you get people to believe, and you know what makes people believe? TV.” Cord explains when Marissa asks how they can possibly be litigating this case. That’s thesis statements two and three, folks. The first is that if you get people to believe, then anything is possible, which sounds like a tagline for a Disney movie but is actually super dangerous; the second is that reality TV is a way to persuade people and change opinions.

So we’ve got: (1) Factions are bad. (2) People are persuadable and the rules don’t actually matter. (3) Reality TV changes minds. Let’s see if there are more.

(Yes, these theses do kind of add up to a whole—The rules don’t matter, so if you persuade people, through reality tv, you get factions of people believing their own sets of rules and facts—but what I'm interested in tracking throughout this episode is how well the writers actually bring these theses together.)

(And this is setting aside that key themes in previous episodes, that I think many of us were looking for resolution on, included outlining the flaws with the extant “real” justice system and exploring the role of prison in the justice system. From this episode, I don’t think the writers ever intended to really tackle either of those issues. That’s fine—I'm not sure that TGF has something to say about prison abolition and I don’t want a thought experiment where the writers actually try to fix the legal system—but feels a bit disjointed. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, but 5x08 and 5x09 needed to do a better, clearer job of setting up this finale. The key themes of Wackner’s arc were always present, but they needed to slowly narrow the scope so the resolution felt inevitable and clear. Instead, we spent time on things like parking spaces (when we could’ve had a real plot about how Wackner’s court gains legitimacy through violence, incarceration, and playing on people’s frustration with the real systems) and Del’s focus groups (when we could’ve instead done a plot about Wackner gaining fans who wanted to use his methods to do ill). Everything I just mentioned in the parentheticals is in the show! It’s not subtext! We see it all! We see Cord use violence and prisons to enforce Wackner’s rulings; we see the cops turn to Wackner out of frustration; we see that the people drawn to Wackner Rules and to Wackner’s court are increasingly sounding more and more like right-wing populists! I can’t be too hard on this arc because, again, all these ideas are there. I’m not coming up with them on my own!)

I’m just saying: this ending would’ve been a lot clearer and a lot more interesting had the writers focused on what I mentioned above instead of the distractions of the last two episodes.

Whew, that was a ramble. Hope you’re ready for more rambles.

On a similar note, I’d like to reiterate my problems with how the writers used Marissa after the private prison reveal. I don’t have much more to say than what I wrote last week, but it’s another example of the same problem. Marissa objecting to Wackner’s court because she notices what it’s becoming and how Cord plans to use it for political gain (two Illinoises (??) changes the Senate and the Electoral College...) always was going to be part of the endgame. Marissa only seriously objecting after the fourth or fifth line Wackner crosses feels bizarre.

Cord does NOT like that there is another court, and wants to protect Wackner’s IP. Wackner, as we saw last episode, does not feel threatened by the other court. In fact, he seems to be excited by it.

I love Liz questioning Diane’s outfit like it’s unprofessional. It’s a little low-cut and showy, but I don’t think unprofessional is the word I’d use for it.

Now they have 45 minutes to decide The Future Of The Firm and Diane wants to be considered a name partner. Oh, that debate is still raging?! Every time I think it’s done it comes back, which should probably be a sign to Diane that her options are to leave and start something new, jettison Madeline and the others, or step down. Staying on as name partner and calling it a black firm is just not an option.

“Diane, there is a split in the firm that...” Liz starts, before asking some associates to leave the room. Ha! The reveal Liz and Diane aren’t alone is a pretty fun touch.

“The Black equity partners don’t want to be in your work group,” Liz informs Diane. “Because they think they’ll be punished by this firm?” Diane asks. “No, that’s paranoia. We don’t punish here,” Liz responds. “Of course you do. My fracking client. My union client. The Black lawyers who work on those cases—they're considered traitors” Diane says. “Because those CEOs are racists,” Liz counters.

Lots going on here, and I’m not sure I understand it all. Why would the equity partners—who are partners—feel like they’re being punished by being in Diane’s work group? (And also what does a “work group” mean and why haven’t they talked about it in the past?) When Diane starts talking about the lawyers who staff her clients, she’s not talking about equity partners; she is talking about associates.

And people are giving associates shit for working on Diane’s clients whom they happen to be staffed on!? That’s sad, though believable.

“So what do we do? Only bring in clients who can pass the racial smell test?” Diane asks. I mean, actually, yes. IF the goal is to be a black firm and to have that designation mean something in moral terms rather than marketing terms, then yes.

“It’s okay if you’re a drug kingpin like Rivi, but it’s not okay if you want me as lead attorney?” Diane says. Also, yes. Diane makes good points here.

“Diane, this is not about you,” Liz counters. Um, sure, but it has to be about something, Liz. Unless you’re trying to build a firm you don’t control that makes 88% of its revenue from a drug dealer (40 million out of 45 million this quarter = 88%; I told you they shouldn’t give me numbers) but happens to have black people in charge, you have to grapple with this question. I don’t think anyone who’s fighting for the firm to be a black-led (not owned, bc STRL) business is the type of person who thinks that having a black-led firm that does all the same shit as any other firm is in itself a good thing, so you NEED to address your client list. Madeline is anti-Rivi, anti-Cord, anti-Wolfe-Coleman (the rapist guy), pro-social justice, and pro having a black led firm.

“I mean, why... why do white people personalize this?” Liz asks. “Oh, now I’m just a white person?” Diane responds. I... don’t know what to do with this! Liz is right that Diane is taking this personally; Diane is right that Liz needs to deal with the rest of the client list. But no one is saying the things that REALLY need to be said: That all their decisions are meaningless in the shadow of STRL, and that deciding to be a black led firm isn’t the end of the discussion if they haven’t decided what types of clients they want to have.

“What happened, Liz? Last year we were intent on an all-female-run law firm,” Diane starts. Oh, THIS AGAIN! Diane never learns, does she? She never seems to realize that no one she’s approached with this idea is NEARLY as in love with it as she is. She probably still wonders to herself why Alicia—who partnered with her at the end of season seven basically just because it was the easiest, most frictionless thing to do—didn't seem more committed to their firm.

“Diane, there is history here that we are trying to...” Liz says, but Diane cuts in to note that women (women like Diane Lockhart!) have history too! In fact, she’s spent “35 years fighting gender discrimination to get to this position.” “And we have spent 400 years fighting racial discrimination to try and, you know...” Liz starts, before cutting herself off to get back to the ticking clock.

Sigh. Just talk about the actual thing instead of talking around the thing, guys. Diane is obviously deserving of A name partnership, in the abstract. This is an undeniable fact. And while Diane is definitely making this about herself rather than the big picture, I don’t think Liz trying to trump Diane’s 35 year career with the history of black people is going to win her any arguments? Like, just say what you mean and say it clearly. What Liz, I think, wants to express is that Diane’s individual accomplishments aren’t the issue here and everyone thinks she’s deserving (though Liz suggested Diane was not deserving a few episodes ago, which I didn’t understand then and don’t understand now). The problem is that Diane is trying to fight a battle that’s about something much larger than herself with, “but I'm a good lawyer!”

And that’s KIND OF what Liz is saying here, if I add all her sentences up and read between the lines, but, again, why not just say it?

“Alright, now we have 43 minutes to fix race relations, gender relations. STR Laurie’s gonna fire our asses, and you know it,” Liz says. I am curious what that would look like. Wouldn’t that just mean that STRL wouldn’t control them anymore? I’m sure being fired would be bad and all, but wouldn’t it free them from the contract they wanted out of last year?

“Let’s split the firm down the middle. I hire half the lawyers, you hire the other half,” Diane suggests. What does this mean? Why are you hiring your employees? Huh?

“You hire the white associates, and I hire the black associates?” Liz confirms. This seems like a very bad idea that would make things a lot worse and open them up to lawsuits! I also still do not know what they’re even talking about. And I don’t know why Allegra isn’t a part of this conversation.

“I’m not saying it’s good. I’m just saying it’s what we’re left with. It's what we can agree on,” Diane says. I really wish I understood what “hire” meant in this context because I don’t understand why they have to split anything or why this has to be done now and I don’t understand why this would possibly be a good solution. Can you imagine the backlash when people realize all the white people report to Diane and all the black people to Liz and that people were taken off of the accounts they’ve worked on for years to accomplish this? And this must be something that the employees would know about eventually; otherwise they could just randomly assign half to Liz and half to Diane.

I’m sad Madeline isn’t in this episode because I feel like we needed to see more of her POV as well as the associate POV. I don’t really understand the divides at play within the firm or what the staff and other partners are asking for, but I suspect it isn’t this.

Hallucination Jesus is back, and at least there’s actually a point to him this time (he shows up when Jay is in Vinetta’s court and reminds Jay that Vinetta will rule based on her religious beliefs). I still dislike the hallucinations.

Jay advises Marissa, who is Jewish, to talk a lot about Jesus in her defense.

Charmaine Bingwa is really great as Carmen, and obviously she is not fluent in Spanish, but it’s so funny to me that the only time you can hear that she’s Australian is when she’s trying to say Oscar like she’s speaking Spanish.

"I know you’re hiding something when you speak English,” Rivi says to Carmen. Heh.

“Community court” is such a nice, unthreatening term for referring to Wackner and his copy cats. Thanks for that, Carmen!

It’s a smart plan to mention Jesus a lot, I guess, but Jay and Marissa both should’ve realized that Vinetta is too smart to tolerate obvious pandering. I’m a little surprised Jay doesn’t get up and argue since Marissa is, obviously, not familiar with the New Testament.

Marissa wins this round with facts and logic.

Why is the judge who was handling Rivi’s previous charge now in bond court? Make it make sense.

I like that Carmen calls out the ASA for swearing hahaha

Why... would this Matteo kid just casually mention he was holding a gun, omg.

In Vinetta’s court, you can be charged with murder and tried because... you had a gun and also there were murders at other times. Coolcoolcool no problems here.

Community courts for civil cases? Sure. That’s basically arbitration. Community courts for criminal cases? Bad, bad, bad idea.

Vinetta’s reasoning: “Those murders happened on our street, and the police haven’t convicted anyone because they don’t care. We care. This is self-defense. And how is it different from your court?” Aside from the whole imprisoning people in her basement thing, Vinetta’s not wrong. I almost brought this up last week but hesitated because I couldn’t remember the details enough to decide if I wanted to recommend it, but there’s a book I read a few years ago that seems relevant here: Ghettoside by Jill Leovy. Again, been a while so don’t take this as a wholehearted endorsement or anything, but from what I remember, the central issue at the heart of the book (it’s non-fiction) is that a poor black community (I think in LA?) doesn’t trust the police (in part) because the police don’t solve murders, and then with no way of getting justice through the court system, there’s more violence as a stand-in for justice. https://www.vox.com/2016/8/26/12631962/ghettoside-jill-leovy-black-crime

I’m not sure if that’s QUITE what Vinetta is saying but it seems similar, and it’s a decent point (though not a justification for her court). Why should she trust the system to improve her community when it’s ignored her community for years?

I like that the writers chose two very different, very understandable characters for their community courts. It’s easy to see why Wackner and Vinetta feel the need for alternative courts; it’s easy to see why others would trust them. This arc doesn’t really work unless there’s a legitimate frustration with existing systems...

Marissa calls Wackner’s court a “joke,” which she should understand by now isn’t the case. (Marissa’s smart; she knew it wasn’t a joke the second she saw David Cord get involved.)

Vinetta accuses Wackner of copying her court, which alarms Marissa. This isn’t addressed again, and I don’t know if it’s true! I could really go either way on this. On the one hand, I absolutely believe that Wackner saw/heard about it, liked it, and did it himself without thinking much of it—and if this is the case, then the ending where Vinetta gets in trouble for violating Wackner’s IP is a lot more of a gut punch. On the other hand, I don’t really feel like the seeds for this were planted. We see Wackner innovate a lot and try new things and he has an explanation for why he does everything—how much of that is Vinetta? And Vinetta clearly watches the show and likes it or she wouldn’t have recognized Marissa, so it’s a little hard for me to just believe her claim when literally all I know about her is she has a court that looks like Wackner’s and she is aware of and feels positively towards Wackner rules. Also, Wackner knows about Vinetta’s court (from Marissa) and sounded excited about it last episode. Sure, he didn’t necessarily know which one it was, exactly, but I assume if he’d copied the idea and then heard about a case involving people from the exact same community where he found the idea... his reaction would be different. So IDK. My reasons for doubting Vinetta’s claim are probably based a little too much in things I’m not meant to spend that much time paying attention to.

“I fucked up. It’s in the same court, but now it’s a murder case,” Marissa tells Diane. I do like hearing characters admit when they fucked up!

Diane hears that STRL is delayed, so she heads out to help Matteo. When she goes to change into her pantsuit, she finds that she’s grabbed Kurt’s bag by mistake. “Of course. That makes sense,” she reacts.

Diane pushes her flight to the next day, also telling Kurt, “And yes, for some reason, I took your suit instead of mine, so fuck it.” I love it when the characters feel like real people.

I am not sure why Kurt is getting to the office when Diane is leaving or why Kurt is there—to pick Diane up on the way to the airport, maybe?

Carter Schmidt walks into RL at the worst possible time, threating to blow up the Plum Meadow deal. Another 5x10 to Wife 5x22 similarity: he’s in both episodes.

Liz heads out to help Carmen with Rivi, and then STRL arrives. Oops.

Credits!

One thing about Wackner’s court that should definitely be a warning sign even though it seems noble: he ignores just about every warning sign, like this rowdy crowd screaming WE LOVE YOU WACKNER or the potential interests at play in a case about secession, because he thinks his fair judgement can overcome these obstacles. If the world worked that way, there’d be no need for his court in the first place.

Is anyone representing the State of Illinois in this trial? If not, then... how is it happening?

Dr. Goat, some dude who claims to have some hidden historical document about how Illinois is actually two states, is clearly making stuff up and yet Wackner indulges him and Cord. I feel about this the same way as I feel about the Devil’s Advocate: That Wackner would not allow this to go on for more than five seconds before calling bullshit and therefore there is no reason I should have to sit through it.

Why is some guy screaming, “No taxation without representation” like dude you absolutely have representation. But of course, I’m expecting him to be logical, and the point is that he is not.

Dr. Goat’s Latin phrases—shock!-- don’t actually translate into anything like what he said. Even though this information is verifiable by a quick google search, the crowd starts screaming “Liar!!!!” at Marissa. If only I could say this felt unrealistic.

Wackner asks Dr. Goat to bring in the document.

“You look like you’re heading to the beach,” Vinetta says to Diane, who looks like she’s heading somewhere but definitely not to the beach. Vinetta asks where Diane was headed on vacation. Diane says she’s headed to Lake Como, and unnecessarily clarifies that “It’s in Italy.” She assumes Vinetta doesn’t know that... but Vinetta does.

“So you’ve been there before?” Vinetta probes when Diane says it’s beautiful there. “Just once. We don’t get away often. We thought we’d splurge,” Diane says. Vinetta stares at her and smiles, and Diane hits her head on a basket that’s hanging in Vinetta’s kitchen. If I just write out the dialogue here, it sounds like a perfectly average conversation, but everything about this conversation is so charged: Diane is afraid to look like a wealthy white woman; Vinetta’s pleasantness is pretty clearly also a way of sizing up Diane.

Vinetta shows Diane pictures of neighborhood children and young adults killed as a consequence of gang violence. You can see she’s not trying to do anything other than help her community, even if her methods are highly questionable.

Diane argues that Matteo should be given over to the police; Vinetta disagrees: “The police haven’t arrested anyone for those murders, any of these. Since the BLM movement, they’ve pulled back from our streets. No one’s coming to help. That’s why I started this court. It’s not a joke to us.” Wait I’m sorry did Vinetta just blame lack of good detective work in black communities on... the BLM movement?!?!?! Is there any foundation to this!? Why can’t it just be that the police weren’t actually doing a good job of policing/finding justice and were being antagonistic towards the community instead of being helpful and no one trusted them?? That explanation is literally right there.

Jay suggests the Jesus strategy, again.

“It’s women! We could just move on, install men,” STRL guy says. I don’t know if he’s joking, but ugh. Also, what is RL if it has neither Diane nor Liz? A bunch of lawyers who will all promptly quit when they see their bosses get fired and a few opportunists?

Kurt is watching golf in Diane’s office, and the STRL people love it. Of course Kurt accidentally makes friends with them.

Court stuff happens. It’s not good for Rivi, and then Liz and Carmen come up with a theory: Plum Meadow is stalling the deal so they can find Rivi’s more stable second and make a deal with them instead.

Wackner giving Dr. Goat a single point on his stupid little board, for any reason related to his obviously fake totally unverified document, is dangerous. Why would you signal to a crowd that’s clearly not interested in fact that they have a point? That’s basically egging them on.

I know Wackner’s judgment is obviously not 100% sound—need I remind you of the PRIVATE PRISONS?-- but I thought it was more sound than this.

Wackner shows off his knowledge of paper and proves that Dr. Goat’s document is a fake. Why... did he just give Dr. Goat a point???

Or is he moving the point from Dr. Goat to Marissa?

Dr. Goat sounds like a fake name I would call a character in my recaps long past the point of anyone other than myself remembering the joke. (See: Mr. Elk)

“The truth is ugly. The only thing uglier is not pursuing it,” Wackner tells Marissa. How is taking on a case about very obvious falsehoods, funded by someone with a vested interest in the case, that gets people riled up, some noble pursuit of truth?

STRL and Kurt are now drinking and discussing hunting, while Diane’s arguing for Matteo in Vinetta’s living room. Vinetta is—as was always obvious, sorry Jay—far too smart to fall for this patronizing bullshit. She screams at Diane and plays back a recording (on a baby monitor) of Diane coaching Matteo to lie about his faith.

Soooooo yeah no you can’t do that, that is bad, recording conversations between lawyers and their clients is not good even if it leads to you exposing their schemes...

Then Vinetta places Diane under arrest, which obviously isn’t going to end well for Vinetta.

Liz and Carmen suggest a post-nup to Rivi to see if Isabel is planning on turning on him.

“I’m going to have to kill her,” Rivi says sadly. I don’t think Rivi will ever kill Isabel because we already did that with Bishop.

I’m going to assume that Diane chooses to stay in basement prison instead of calling one of the many, MANY, MANY people she could call to get her out/take down Vinetta because she doesn’t want the situation to be publicized or further deteriorate. That said, it’s really not clear why Diane just accepts being sentenced to basement prison with a cell phone.

Love the STRL man looking at that picture of Diane and HRC. They’ve gotten so much mileage out of that photo.

Wackner’s court has no rules, but at least since it has no rules, I can’t complain about how its rules make no sense!

What is this, debate practice?! Ugggghhhhh I can’t deal with this case for much longer.

Marissa takes a breath, then decides to pursue a strategy she knows could blow everything up.

“Then why care what Judge Wackner decides? Why should you defer to him? Why defer to anyone?” Cord says that’s the point—the people have decided to trust Wackner. “So if you don’t like this court’s decision, you’ll just start a new one?” Marissa asks. “I guess,” Cord concedes.

“So then why does this matter? This court?” “It matters only insofar as we continue to agree that it matters,” Cord says. “So if you don’t like Judge Wackner’s rulings, you can just ignore them and create a new court?”

Good point, Marissa. Good point. (Does this count as a thesis?)

“I’m guessing that I will like the way the judge decides,” Cord says. Well, that’s basically a threat.

Wackner takes a break and heads to chambers—without Marissa.

Kurt goes to visit Diane in basement jail. He’s granted a conjugal visit, which means Matteo gets moved up to the bedroom so Diane and Kurt can have some alone time.

Diane is staring at an image of Lake Como in her cell. I thought it was odd she brought a printout of her vacation destination with her, so I LOVED the line where she explains that Vinetta printed it out for her. COLD. (You know who also would’ve done this if they’d for some reason had a basement prison? Bree Van de Kamp. You know what show DID do a basement prison arc I’d rather forget? Desperate Housewives!)

I love how Diane responds to basement prison by making jokes non-stop.

“I thought the craziness would end with 2020,” Diane says. Nope.

Kurt brought alcohol; Diane brought pot gummies.

I love that Kurt has never had pot before. I was going to say that I bet Diane’s had a few experiences with recreational drugs when I remembered we had a whole damn season of Diane microdosing.

Christine and Gary’s acting and their chemistry really bring these basement prison scenes to life. The writing and directing are really sharp, but it’s the actors who make these scenes something special. You can tell Diane and Kurt love each other a lot. You can tell they’re disappointed about their vacation and exhausted by the chaos of the day. You can tell they’re in disbelief over this situation but also find it funny.

Didn’t Rivi and Isabel have an adult daughter who died of COVID a few episodes ago? Weird she isn’t mentioned in this scene. Maybe from a different marriage/relationship?

Isabel called the SA’s office because she thinks Rivi’s a threat? I think this is a power play.

Heh, Carmen saying, “Shut a black woman up!?” in disbelief in court. Love it.

Isabel instead flips her story and supports her husband and fights for his release. With no intervention from Plum Meadow, this gets the judge to free Rivi. I don’t really understand what’s happened here or why. I get the resolution, but I don’t get why Isabel called the SA or why this went away so quickly. I still don’t even get why Rivi’s been arrested.

Diane and Kurt put up Christmas lights for ambiance and talk about how they never go on vacation.

“I wanna see the pyramids on this coast!” drunk & high Kurt insists, hilariously. “I mean hemisphere. I like the Aztecs. They, they care about people.” I’m not going to transcribe the rest of the dialogue because it loses its magic when you’re not watching the scene.

After some fun banter about travel and movies, Diane changes the topic. “I should quit, shouldn’t I? That judge upstairs? She looked at me like I was the most entitled white bitch on the planet. And that’s the way they look at me at work.”

Kurt tries to say that’s not true, but Diane knows it is: “Yes they do. I’m the top Karen. And why do I care? I mean, I... I could find another firm. I could quit. I can’t impose my will on people who don’t want me.”

YES. I see a lot of debate over what the “right” thing to do is here. But I think we are long past “right” and “wrong.” At a certain point, this stops being about absolute moral truths. If Diane doesn’t have the respect of her partners and employees, that is a very real problem for the firm and for Diane. How can she continue to impose her will on a firm that doesn’t want her, all the while claiming to be an ally? (The back half of that sentence is the most important part.) Forget whether or not Diane “should” have to step down. Forget what’s “fair.” If the non-Diane leadership of RL thinks the firm should be a black firm, and the employees of RL think so too, and Diane just doubles down on her white feminism, she’s creating an even bigger problem for herself and ruining her reputation in the process.

Kurt stands up on the prison cot and warns Diane she might make a decision she’ll regret. This scene is so cute. Why can’t other shows do drug trips where the characters just act silly and have great chemistry? Why does it always have to be some profound meditation on death whenever characters get high?

“I think I like starting over. I like the chutes and ladders of life. I mean, I want the corner office, but then I wanna slip back to the beginning and fight for the corner office. I mean, I think maybe it’s better that I don’t get the top spot,” Diane says. LOVE to hear her admit this. I’m not sure I would’ve come to this conclusion on my own, and it sounds like it’s a bit more about how the writers like to write (you know, the “we love our characters to always be underdogs”) than Diane, but... you know what? I believe it. I fully believe it. Diane LOVES to fight, LOVES to feel like she’s in the right, LOVES power plays and to be making progress. She LOVES winning. The fact that she isn’t just choosing to retire right now, even though she’s past retirement age and has a great reputation, is in itself enough for me to believe that she would find it fun to repeatedly start over.

Plus, it’s a fun new direction for the show to take in season six, because they’ll get the same sense of conflict without the actual conflict. This season’s arc was firm drama and resulted in a firm name change... but it didn’t feel like a knock-off of Hitting the Fan. Diane trying to work her way back into power (I assume by becoming a better actual ally, otherwise doesn’t she just end up in the same exact situation?) should also provide conflict without being repetitive.

Hahahahahaha Kurt immediately reacting to this serious statement by being incredibly silly and horny and then Diane singing “I Touch Myself” to him, man, I love these two. I want to know the story behind this song choice.

Wackner emerges from his chambers. The score is tied. Wackner calls Cord corrupt and notes that they can’t just decide to call Downstate Illinois a new state based on his ruling. Now it’s thesis time!

“I was taken by Mr. Cord’s arguments of individualism. So much of our country has been built on people finding their own way, not being held back by bureaucracy. Yet, if we only follow individualism, that way lies chaos. And that was not the point of this court. Or at least not my point. Judgment for the defense. There will be no Downstate Illinois.”

“If we only follow individualism, that way lies chaos.” is probably the clearest of the many theses of this episode. To recap, we have:

(1) Factions are bad. (2) People are persuadable and the rules don’t actually matter. (3) Reality TV changes minds. (4) Institutions only exist when we collectively agree they exist (5) Individualism = chaos.

But let’s put a pin in this for now and let the chaos of individualism play out.

The crowd does not like Wackner’s decision, and decides that an appropriate way to express their displeasure is to make anti-Semitic remarks towards Marissa and then start throwing chairs. What nice people.

As the crowd goes totally 1/6 on Wackner’s court (thanks for pointing this out to me, Ryan—I cannot believe I didn’t make the connection myself!), the door slamming into the desk finally pays off since Marissa and Wackner are able to use it to keep the crowd from reaching them.

They immediately turn to the police, or they would, if they could get service. I’m sure it’s not a coincidence that as soon as things get bad, they want to involve the existing system.

Wackner Rules is, somehow, still taping in the midst of all the chaos. I don’t know if I think they’d air this, but someone certainly would. (I wonder if any of the cameras we see in these scenes are actually the cameras filming the other angles of the riot.)

Cord shakes his head and walks out, unharmed.

“You think they’ll kill us?” “I think they might,” Marissa and Wackner fret.

“My dad said the whole world would be a better place if everybody realized they were in the minority. ‘No matter where you are,’ he said, ‘Make sure you keep an eye on the exits, and make sure you’re closer to the exit than the Cossacks are to the entrance.’” Marissa says. Love Eli Gold coming through with thesis number 6 (and maybe thesis number 7).

“Your dad sounds a little paranoid,” Wackner says, correctly. Remember how I mentioned I accidentally wound up watching 5x22? Eli calls Alicia and responds to her hello with, “DISASTER!!!!” I miss him.

“He was, but he wasn’t wrong. He said, ‘Stay away from parades. They’re cute until they’re not. And don’t trust any pope who was Hitler Youth.” “What’s that law called?” “Godwin’s Law. My dad said anybody who argued for Godwin’s Law has never been near an actual crowd. Crowds love you, they hug you. Then they grab a gun and try to kill you.”

“Why? Why do they do that?” “I don’t know. Hate is fun. It’s clear-cut.”

I really like all of this. It is a little preachy, but it isn’t wrong and it’s self-aware. And, more importantly, it’s in character. I absolutely believe that Marissa would tell lots of stories about Eli in a moment of extreme stress. It’s nostalgic, probably comforting, and it also helps her feel like she’s on the right side with the right arguments. So, even backed into a corner, she’s still a winner: she has theory on her side.

Wackner speaks a foreign language (I do not know what language but I wish I did) and says, “A guy could get killed doing this,” which makes him and Marissa laugh as things crash around them.

Idk about you all, but I couldn’t really get myself to actually worry about their safety during this scene. Maybe Wackner’s, just a little, but I got the sense we were supposed to focus more on the chaos and destruction and monologuing than on the actual danger. That’s not to say the stakes didn’t feel high, but rather to say that this didn’t feel like an action sequence where you don’t know what’s going to happen next. The point was to watch the court fall and think about why it fell, not to worry about if Marissa would live.

Diane and Kurt are woken up by sirens and loud noises. The cops arrive and are shocked to find professionally dressed white people in a basement cell. They let Diane and Kurt out with compassion, but scream, “don’t you fucking move” to the people on the floor.

“It’s okay, they didn’t do anything,” Diane says. This is, as I theorized earlier, probably why Diane just sits there until her punishment blows over instead of escalating things.

If the cops weren’t there to free Diane, why were they there? Why, because they like David Cord and David Cord has gotten Chicago PD officers to protect Wackner’s IP.

If I had to say one thing in favor of Vinetta being the originator of the community court idea, it would be that it’s SUCH a gut punch to watch Diane and Kurt walk away from their bizarre little adventure as Vinetta gets arrested in the background, and it hits ten times as hard if Vinetta’s only being charged because some white guy is claiming IP that’s actually hers.

(I think Vinetta is probably, at this point, actually being arrested for imprisoning people illegally, but, still.)

“Pfft. Some judge,” one of the cops who adores Wackner says of Vinetta. Racist much?

Marissa and Wackner emerge from the backroom. “I think I better get back to work,” she says, meaning her RL job. "Me too,” Wackner says, grabbing a Copy Coop apron. He’s an employee of ten years.

I don’t think this lands as well as it’s meant to. I think the point is supposed to be that Wackner’s just some guy��not a billionaire, not an academic, not a judge, not a lawyer—with an idea. But it’s a little too neat. And it doesn’t explain how Wackner financed his court initially, nor does it explain why he has basically unlimited access to Copy Coop space and resources. I’d buy it if he were the OWNER of Copy Coop, but I have so many questions about him being an employee.

Diane tells Liz she’s actually going on vacation this time, and they laugh about how Kurt bonded with STRL.

“I want you and Allegra to be name partners. I’ll be an equity partner,” Diane says. “Why?” Liz asks. “Five years ago, when I hit rock bottom, this firm took me in. So I don’t like the idea of splitting this firm in two. And I can’t lead if no one will follow.” “And your clients?” “We’ll manage them together.” YES! I love this. I don’t love it because I necessarily think it had to go this way, but because it’s so refreshing to see Diane say that she actually is willing to take a step back because she cares about the firm and the people there more than she cares about being a name partner. This isn’t something we usually see. When we hear “this firm took x in” it’s usually being said incredulously against someone who’s decided to leave and steal clients (cough, Hitting the Fan, cough).

It’s been pretty clear for most of this arc that Diane and Liz like working together and they like their firm, but that no one (other than Diane, I guess) is willing to let RL lose its status as a black firm, and that the employees and equity partners weren’t going to be satisfied until Diane stepped down. Diane really had three options: Stay and piss everyone off and claim the whole firm for herself, quit and go somewhere else and totally abandon the good working dynamic she had, or step down and put her money where her mouth is.

Also yeah the clients were never actually going to be an issue! They were only an issue because Diane intentionally went about informing them she was stepping down in a way she knew would make them worry!

“I think I need to prove myself,” Diane says. I’m not sure that’s the key issue or that she can ever prove herself fully, but we’ll worry about that next year.

“I missed you,” Liz says. “I’m here,” Diane replies. “I know. Thank you,” Liz says.

Diane decides she’s going to move downstairs so Allegra can have her office. I think there’s another office on this floor, since she, Adrian and Liz all had offices. This feels a little bit like Diane’s in love with the idea of making things difficult for herself and maybe hasn’t fully grasped the point, but, you know, I’ll take it.

Diane tells Kurt her decision and he asks if it was the right thing to do. She says she doesn’t know—but she says it with a smile. Kurt notes he’s going hunting next month with the STRL folks and will put in a good word for her. Ah, yes, because STRL still controls all of this and all of this is moot! Thanks for the reminder Kurt! Diane says she wants in on the hunting trip. Of course.

And the elevator doors close. Remember how closing elevator doors was a motif earlier this season??? It’s back!

Then we get a little coda with Wackner Rules airing a new episode that’s just violence and destruction. This sequence seems to straddle the line between being there for thematic reasons for the viewers and there to show what happened in the show’s universe, but I think it’s main purpose is theme, so I will not go on a full rant questioning why Del would want to air this.

A white blonde lady in an apron watches the destruction of Wackner Rules. She looks concerned. “That was violet,” she says with dismay. And then we see she’s holding a guy in a jail cell in her kitchen.

And then we see other courts, as America the Beautiful plays. One’s in a garage debating kicking someone out of the neighborhood; another is across the street about the same case. There’s one in Oregon about secession. There’s one among Tiki Torch Nazis deciding only white people can own property. There’s (inexplicably) one about pronouns. There’s one with arm wrestling, one that happens while sky diving, and a bunch of others. It’s pretty ridiculous, and not necessarily in a good way. It feels at once like the natural extension of the Wackner Rules show and like an over the top parody you’d see on another show. Tiki Torch Nazis screaming “only white people can own property!” is the opposite of subtle writing. Tonally, this sequence feels more like the zany humor of Desperate Housewives or the insanity of BrainDead than anything TGF has done before (and TGF’s been plenty surreal), and it doesn’t quite work for me. It feels like it is trying to prove a point in the corniest, most on the nose way possible. It almost feels like it’s parodying its own plotlines.

On my first watch, this ending for Wackner left me stumped. I knew the writers were making an argument against individualism (Wackner’s speech + the repeated references to The Apprentice) and cults of personality. But I couldn’t figure out a real life analogue to Wackner’s court, and since this ending was so obviously trying to be About Something, that bugged me. Sure, that last sequence could be an argument against people making community courts, but WERE people making community courts? I didn’t see the urgency.

And then I talked to @mimeparadox. And as soon as he said that it was about factions and people playing by their own sets of rules beyond the justice system, it clicked. I’d been looking for Wackner’s plot to be a commentary on the legal system. It is much broader than that. It’s a commentary on the weakening of democratic systems (the Big Lie, etc.), more broadly, and Wackner and his common-sense approach are just a way to get liberal viewers to go along for the ride.

Now that I understand the point, or what I think is the point, I like this conclusion. Circumventing the system leads to chaos; that’s why we have institutions and bureaucracy, and I think the show is arguing that these institutions should still be respected despite their flaws. The many theses of this episode all come together to make this point (though the reality TV stuff is a little more tenuous and I'm a little shocked we got through all of this without any commentary on social media?): If we stop having a shared belief in institutions and instead follow individual leaders (whom we may learn about through reality TV), the rules will stop mattering and we’ll end up with a fractured country and widespread violence.

But, and maybe this is just about me being upset I missed both the obvious 1/6 parallels AND the point of the arc the first time through this episode (my defensive side feels the need to also note I first watched this episode at like 5 am when I was barely awake), I don’t know that I actually think this episode does a great job of driving its point home. There are SO many moving pieces to the Wackner plot and SO many references. There are so many threads we never return to from earlier in the season, and there’s so much that strains credulity (like Wackner taking Dr. Goat seriously for more than a split second). It’s pretty clear what the themes are—even though I’m saying I missed the point my first time through, I've hit on all these themes separately in past recaps and posts—but, I dunno, something about this episode just feels scattered. Maybe it’s all the moving pieces, maybe it’s all the moments where it sounds like the characters are voicing related ideas that don’t quite snap together to form one coherent picture, or maybe it’s that Wackner’s plot gets two endings (the actual ending + the coda) and it’s up to the viewer to put together how they relate.

I really don’t know. At the end of the day, I think there was a little too much going on with Wackner and that the writers needed to use the episodes between the private prison reveal and the finale to narrow—not broaden—the scope of what they were trying to do with Wackner. But I also think that what they were doing with Wackner was really, really smart and original. I don’t think I can overstate how impressed I am that the writers took an idea that sounded, frankly, awful when I first heard about it and turned it into something captivating and insightful that I was happy to spend nine weeks watching.

Overall, a few bad episodes aside, I thought season five was the strongest season of TGF yet. I haven’t seen this show be so focused in... well, maybe ever. Having two overarching plots that received consistent development and felt like they were happening in the same universe at the same time REALLY helps make season five feel like a coherent whole, and I can’t wait to rewatch it.

#tgf thoughts #the good fight

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lilydalexf · 4 years ago

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

Interview with Circe Invidiosa

Circe Invidiosa has 11 stories at Gossamer, but there are even more X-Files stories at her website. Some of my favs I’ve recced here before, like Make It Worse and Slap a Goatee On Me and Call Me Evil. She also made a bunch of X-Files collage art, including some cover art for fics (hers and others), which you probably saw if you were reading fic back when authors posted fics on their own websites where art could be shared. Big thanks to Circe Invidiosa for doing this interview.

Does it surprise you that people are still interested in reading your X-Files fanfics and others that were posted during the original run of the show (1993-2002)?

Well, it would surprise me if people did read my fic. As it happens, I don't hear much feedback from my fic these days. Probably because the bulk of it is on Gossamer and my own site rather than AO3. Also, I was never a BNA. I worked a lot behind the scenes – hosting other authors' sites and making fanart and dustjackets. I think that's what I'd be remembered for, if anything.

What do you think of when you think about your X-Files fandom experience?

I miss the collective excitement and discussions we had as groups. When you got in with a group in the XF fandom, you felt like you knew everybody there. Now the fandom feels a little faceless except for the people I still follow from my old groups.

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

Most of my experience was on Yahoo Groups. I joined Scullyfic while it was still there and then E-muse when it became an e-mail list, which I'm still a part of. I was part of several Yahoo Groups (can't remember all of them now), where I'd post my fic, RealPlayer slideshows (remember those?!), and collages. I never really took part in discourse because I'm shy and don't think anyone cares about my opinions (still don't!). The e-mail address I used for those groups was purged a couple of years ago, so I've lost all those messages.

What did you take away from your experience with X-Files fic or with the fandom in general?

My take away is that fanfic made me a better writer, thanks to having some great betas, and it made me a better professional writer for it (my real-life work is writing but not fun writing) because I learned to take criticism.

I also used to make a lot of fanart, collages and dustjackets for fic mostly. My big take away from that was that I really got into graphics and I got super proficient at Photoshop, which helped my own artistic endeavours and photography. I didn't realize how much skill I had developed until I've had to help someone with their graphics or photo editing.

What was it that got you hooked on the X-Files as a show?

My mother was watching X-Files before I was and she was raving about it. I don't have a great relationship with my mom, but one thing she was usually right about was TV shows. It's where I got my love of Sci-Fi.

I think the first episode I watched was Ice, which definitely hooked me. As for when the shipping started, I remember we were watching Lazarus, and when Mulder was yelling at Lula (I had to look that up) about hurting the hostage Scully, my mom said, "Oh, he's so in love with her." And I was all, "What?! Pfff." But then I could not stop thinking about it. And then I thought about it way, way too much.

What got you involved with X-Files fanfic?

I was in my late 20s, and it was around the end of S7 and I kept thinking about what if these two dumb idiots actually talked one day. And I kept thinking about dialogue in my head about what they'd actually say. The internet was still in its infancy back then, but I'd seen fan sites here and there. So I decided to search around to see if other people were talking about it and thinking about it like I was. I was such a noob I'd never even heard of fanfic. Imagine my delight when I discovered it. I found a few stories and thought, 'Well, I can do that.' And I wrote up my first story, found a place to post it (wasn't Ephemeral the best?), got some kind feedback, found a really nice person (not sure she wants to be named since she used her real name in the fandom back in the day) who encouraged me a lot and directed me to all the e-mail lists and Yahoo Groups that I needed to be on, and then, Bob's your uncle, I wrote more and more.

What is your relationship like now to X-Files fandom?

Periphery. Most of my experience in any fandom is now on Tumblr because that's where my attention span is. Show me pretty pictures and funny stuff. I am old now and don't want to think hard.

Were you involved with any fandoms after the X-Files? If so, what was it like compared to X-Files?

Veronica Mars was my next fandom experience. A number of my XF friends got me hooked on VM. The VM fandom was a LOT younger compared to the XF fandom. When I joined the XF fandom, I was the kid compared to most of the other fans who were all goddesses and royalty in my eyes. But in the VM fandom, I was in my 30s and the rest of the fandom were all in their early 20s if not younger. It often showed, so I stayed out of discussions and just posted my fic once I started writing it. I took a new handle (invida) when I started writing VM fic. Just in case these kids felt like my writing sucked, I didn't want it getting back to the XF fandom that I’d branched out and failed spectacularly.

By then fandom experiences had moved over to LiveJournal. I never really got involved in the discourse or the fandom fights. I knew what people were saying and where the schisms were, but I was all about the fanfic and the pretty pictures. Most of my LJ friends just discussed the episodes and posted their fic and that was good with me.

What got me writing fic for VM was Anjou's brilliant VM fic Into the Blue. Seriously, if you love VM S1, read her fic. Just so beautiful.

VM was also where started writing a WIP, which was a wild trip. I wrote a much-loved WIP called Damn, Damn the Circumstance which people still ask me about finishing to this day. Someday…*wistful sighs*

Who are some of your favorite fictional characters? Why?

Scully. She was everything! Lapsed Catholic, degrees in science, skeptic, always trying to work within the rules but still not taking crap. Yeah, she was the best.

Veronica Mars was great until she wasn't. I have a lot of issues with her beyond S2. And don't even talk to me about S4. For me, S1 was the best, I enjoyed the movie, the books were okay, but nothing else happened after that. NOTHING.

And the first character I ever loved was Princess Leia. She was also everything to me growing up. I wanted to be her. I still do.

Do you ever still watch The X-Files or think about Mulder and Scully?

Now and then. Not as much as I used to. I sometimes have it on in the background when I'm doing other things. Back before the pandemic, my BFF and I would have get togethers where we would play Scrabble, eat a lot of candy, and binge several XF episodes. I miss doing that. Hopefully, we will get back to that soon.

Do you ever still read X-Files fic? Fic in another fandom?

I am not an active XF fanfic reader right now. I will read any stories my friends put out. Otherwise, I only occasionally read some I come across on Tumblr in my feed, but I am not seeking them out. I will beta for any XF author who asks me as well.

I am reading fic in other fandoms though – Endeavour, Broadchurch, Sherlock…huh, I'm just realizing that's a lot of British stuff. I have been really into British detective series for the last few years.

Do you have any favorite X-Files fanfic stories or authors?

I used to run an XF fic recommendation site called How Will It End usually with at least one other person (I went through at least 4 partners on that project because I'm a control freak). We'd compile our recs and then I'd post them on my site. We'd also feature authors we really liked and interview them. Not unlike these interviews!

I'm terrible at giving feedback/comments. So I solved that problem by making a rec site. That way I could tell authors I loved their fics by recommending them. I didn't have to comment, I'd just say, 'I'd like to rec your fic'. And then they'd get promotion. Win-win. Back in those days, the fandom would absolutely roast you for promoting your own fic, so to get on a rec site was a big deal. Not that I had a popular rec site or anything. But I think authors really enjoyed being asked.

All that to say I've liked a lot of fics. I can pull up the archives of HWIE and show you all the faves I liked. :)

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

Back in the day, E-muse would hold Improv Challenges, where other members would give you a prompt that you had to include in your fic. I was always really proud of the stories I created from those challenges (No Earthly Means and Elephant in the Room if you want to read them).

I enjoyed writing Dead to Rights which is an XF/Dead Like Me crossover because I loved the challenge of writing a crossover. It was the first crossover I ever tried writing even though I only recently published it.

Otherwise, I like re-reading In a Graveyard, Importuning Life for Life, and Some By Virtue Fall. Of my more recent fic, I like Slap a Goatee on Me and Call Me Evil because the premise was ridiculous and I think it's funny as all get out.

Probably my favourite of my VM fic was Stay Outta Riverdale. Because: 1. The title is a Simpsons reference who doesn't love a Simpsons reference? And 2. I think I was hilarious throughout it.

Do you think you'll ever write another X-Files story? Or dust off and post an oldie that for whatever reason never made it online?

I'm always open to writing more fic (and, of course, I don't mean my WIPs…don't look at me like that). Lately, my only motivation has been from writing prompts on Tumblr. I haven't had anyone give me a prompt in over a year, so here we are. I have snippets of dialogue in journals and word documents that have never found their way into stories. I'd be happy to dust off any of those and shoehorn them into a new story.

Do you still write fic now? Or other creative work?

The last fanfic I wrote was a mini-fic over a year ago (with a prompt from Lilydale!). I've written a bit of original fiction but I haven't been able to finish it. Otherwise, I do have a number of real life hobbies which are where my creative outlets lie now.

Where do you get ideas for stories?

Lately, challenges and prompts. It used to be from wanting to see more from a scene. I really had a thing for fill-in-the-blanks or scene continuations. And sometimes my motivation is just plain old spite. :)

What's the story behind your pen name?

Circe Invidiosa is the title of a painting by John William Waterhouse. Love the colours and the absolute malice on the face of the subject. It felt like a good pen name – the envious witch. That's me!

I chose it when I posted my first XF fic (which I cringe to read now, ugh so terrible) without knowing there was already a Circe in the fandom. Whoops. I tried to go by the full Circe Invidiosa or Invidiosa as much as possible after realizing that (invidiosa is my url and my username on a lot of sites, etc.). Now I think that I've been around long enough that it doesn't matter as much but I still like it.

As I said, I took the name Invida for the VM fandom which is just a shortening of Invidiosa.

Do your friends and family know about your fic and, if so, what have been their reactions?

My significant other knows and that was quite a reveal (oh how awkward). However, the SO has been very supportive and has read all my stories since the reveal and sometimes betas them. The SO also wants us to collaborate on writing some original fiction but we haven't found a project that works for both of us creatively or timewise.

My BFF knows because I dragged her into the online fandom. We've known each other since we were 14, but our love of XF really solidified our bond in our 20s. She wrote some short but sweet fics under the penname Helen Quilley which I bullied her into posting, and we wrote Of Ladies Most Deject and Wretched together. She is mostly embarrassed that she wrote fanfic now but we still fangirl together.

No one else really knows other than fandom folks I've met in real life. And some friends know I've written 'short stories' but I don't elaborate. I work in a stodgy, uptight industry where anything fun or actually having a life is frowned upon.

Is there a place online (tumblr, twitter, AO3, etc.) where people can find you and/or your stories now?

Over the first lockdown, I got my shit together and got my fic site, invidiosa.com, up and running again. My site houses fic by Rain (now @doctorhelena on Tumblr and AO3), Helen Quilley, ML (who I miss so much), Folieadeux, Shelba, TLynn, Oracle, Piper Sargasso, Diehard, and me. And I made all their dustjackets (except Folie's). The site got hacked a few years back and it was so much work to get running again that I put it off for years and years. I still feel terrible that I did not get the site back up before ML passed away, especially when ML had asked me about it a few months before she passed.

Anyway, all my XF fic is here: circe.invidiosa.com. I have 3 of my newer XF stories on AO3. And my fic-LJ also has some of my stories. Some of the newer stories are on Tumblr but the tagging is so erratic that I'd have to list several tags before you'd find them all. I don't know why I haven't moved everything over to AO3. Probably laziness.

I'm @invidiosa on Tumblr. I'm still on E-muse. I'm still on LJ. I'm always reachable by e-mail (invidiosa at gmail).

Is there anything else you'd like to share with fans of X-Files fic?

Thanks for reading, writing, and commenting. It is always appreciated.

(Posted by Lilydale on January 5, 2021)

#new post #old school x #xfiles fanfic #xf fanfic #xf fanfic author interviews #circe invidiosa

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abigailnussbaum · 4 years ago

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The Watch 1x01 - 1x02

The first two episodes of BBC America’s The Watch aired this weekend, and I’ve seen basically zero discussion of them on my twitter and tumblr feeds. Which I assume is because most of the people I follow are Pratchett fans who have been horrified by the press releases and the trailer (or, for that matter, the lackluster reviews) and decided to write the show off before it even started airing. To be clear, this is an entirely reasonable approach, but there’s nothing else on right now and I was bored.

Quick verdict? It’s not dire, but also not so interesting that you’d feel compelled to keep going with it. In fact, my most powerful reaction after the first two episodes is puzzlement - I can’t understand who the intended audience for this show is. The thinking seems to have been “everyone will be interested in a brash, in your face, rudely comedic fantasy cop show!” And maybe that’s true, but The Watch isn’t particularly brash, in your face, or even that comedic, so what’s left are fans of the genre(s), who are reasonably spoiled for choice right now (the show The Watch most closely resembles is Carnival Row, which is not amazing but still has a greater depth of emotion and a more interesting world). Why anyone would go out of their way to watch a show that seems to be working so hard to stamp out anything original about itself is a question the creators don’t seem to have asked themselves.

More thoughts below the cut.

First, something positive: I quite like the look of the show. There was obviously a lot of pressure from previous adaptations, not to mention the famous illustrations associated with the books, to strike out in an original direction, and I think the show really found one. Instead of fantasized-medieval-through-Victorian, The Watch’s Ankh Morpork combines those period and genre elements with modern ones. So The Mended Drum is now a seedy nightclub with DJ lighting and an open mike stage, and the city’s walls are covered with graffiti tags. The more distinctive settings - the Patrician’s palace, the Unseen University library - are not as interesting, possibly because the budget wouldn’t stretch to make them look really spectacular. But the core approach of the series, that Ankh Morpork is an old but modern city where there are also a lot of fantasy elements, is a fun and refreshing one.

Second, despite all the prevarication and spin in the run-up to the show, this is a Pratchett adaptation. It isn’t merely “inspired by” Pratchett’s novels, as the show’s title screen insists. It isn’t taking Pratchett’s ideas and making its own things with them. I can only assume that these claims were made in response to the backlash against stuff like “Sybil Ramkin, young, hot vigilante”. But despite changes like that, this is actually a fairly straightforward adaptation of Guards! Guards!, which also incorporates elements from Night Watch, plus some rather deep cuts from the rest of the Discworld corpus (the second episode, for example, implies that the ultimate villains of the series are the Auditors of Reality). So yeah, The Watch doesn’t have the excuse of being its own thing. It is a Discworld adaptation, but a bad one, that fails to understand a lot of fundamental thing about the world and the characters.

Third, I think the thing that most strikes about the show is how low-energy it feels. Despite billing itself as something outrageous, and despite some work on the visual front (and in Richard Dormer’s Jack Sparrow-esque performance as Vimes), the show itself feels almost bland. You see this in particular when it comes to the humor. It’s not that The Watch isn’t trying to be funny. There are jokes, and a few of them - mostly the ones original to the series - are mildly amusing. But when it comes to Pratchett’s own humor, the show simply has the actors deliver the gags and references in the most low-key way, and unsurprisingly the result is that hardly any of it lands.

Now, to be fair, this has been a problem with Pratchett adaptations since the 90s. Most of Pratchett’s humor is based in what his third-person narrator tells us about the world, and is hard to convey in a dramatic presentation (Good Omens tried to solve this problem by putting a lot of Pratchett’s narration in its voiceover, with only limited success). But even the dialogue-based jokes are so arch and stagey, that to deliver them successfully would require committing to a lot of very specific, demanding choices from the actors and writers (off the top of my head, the only show that even comes close to that kind of humor is Brooklyn Nine-Nine). It would have to be a high-concept, meticulously executed sitcom, whereas most Pratchett adaptations have been fantasy dramas with jokes.

So it’s not entirely The Watch’s fault that it isn’t managing to convey the zany energy of Pratchett’s novels, but at the same time, it also clearly isn’t trying to. Its attitude seems to be that simply the existence of things like troll cops or assassins’ guilds who leave a receipt are funny in their own right. And sure, even in a media landscape in which fantasy has been mainstreamed by Harry Potter, the Lord of the Rings movies, and Game of Thrones, not a lot of fantasy settings have an orangutan librarian who only says “ook”. But what makes The Librarian funny isn’t that he’s a librarian who is an orangutan. It’s that he’s a librarian who is an orangutan who still behaves exactly like a librarian (while also doing ape things like swinging from the bookshelves and eating bananas), and that “ook” can convey almost any concept in existence. The Watch doesn’t seem to realize this. It seems to be assuming that just putting that stuff on screen, or parroting Pratchett’s lines, will be hilarious in and of itself, while leaving out a lot of the specificity of setting, character, and tone that made the books sing.

You see this also in how it handles its characters. Everyone fixated on Lady Sybil when the promos came out, because that’s the most egregious misreading of the original (and rooted in the most boring assumptions about what audiences want and will respond to). But it’s everywhere. Take Carrot, for example. In the books, Carrot is fascinating because he’s never entirely what you take him for. He’s innocent, but not naive. Principled, but not a zealot. A goody-two-shoes, but not a prig. He’s always a lot smarter than you think he is, and most importantly, he genuinely likes and is interested in people.

The Watch delivers none of this, and instead makes Carrot your basic hothead rookie who just wants to take down bad guys and sees the more seasoned, cynical officers who keep trying to slow him down as hopelessly corrupted. There’s none of Carrot’s openness, or his genuine love of the city, in this character. Instead he’s sullen and judgmental. And look, we could have a long conversation about which one of these characters is more useful to us and our ongoing conversation about policing (as well as a much shorter conversation about which one of them is truer to the ideas Pratchett was trying to convey about policing). But what feels more important to me, when coming to evaluate a new series that is trying to make an argument for why you should keep watching it, is the simple fact that there are a million places where you could find a character like The Watch’s Carrot, and hardly anywhere where you could find one like Pratchett’s.

Again and again, it feels as if, in the pursuit of what it thinks of as outrageous, risk-taking storytelling, The Watch jettisons the unique characters from the books and replaces them with ones that we’ve seen a million times before. Angua in the books is kind of neurotic, and extremely thoughtful about the way her condition can incline her to see other people as objects to be used and consumed (which Pratchett later develops into an aspect of his theme of monsters-as-aristocrats). In the show, she’s obsessed with how her lycanthropy makes her “the real monster”. Oh boy, I’ve never seen a werewolf worry about being a monster before! I’ve never seen a scene where they send their friends away just as they’re about to transform! This is cutting edge stuff, I tell you. And while we’re on the subject, it gives me no pleasure to report that Anna Chancellor as Patrician Vetinari is thoroughly meh, because no effort has been taken to convey the character’s intelligence, near-omniscience, and constant scheming. Vimes is intimidated by her because she’s his boss and she’s posh, not because of anything specific to her. She feels almost identical to a million other posh rulers whose job it is to infodump to and threaten scrappy, working class heroes.

Which brings me back to my original observation: that I do not get who this show is for. It’s not for Pratchett fans, because it deliberately drops a great deal of what made his writing and characters special in favor of the most generic, predictable choices. But I can’t help but feel that anyone who is into this sort of extremely familiar cop story will be put off by the dragons and the wizards and the orangutan librarian, not to mention Dormer’s gurning performance. The whole thing is almost fascinating to watch - a work that clearly believes itself to be boundary-pushing and different, when really it’s just dull but with dragons.

#the watch

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reachexceedinggrasp · 4 years ago

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Would love to hear about your beefs with Lucas because I have beefs with Lucas

(Sorry it took me three thousand years to answer this, anon.)

They mainly fall under a few headings, with the third being the most serious and the thing that I am genuinely irl furious about at least biannually (and feeling unable to adequately sum up The Problem with it after yelling about it so often is a huge part of why this post has been in my drafts for such a long time):

1. His self-mythologising and the subsequent uncritical repetition of his bullshit in the fandom. Obvious lies like that he had some master plan for 10 films when it’s clear he did not have anything like a plot outline at any point. We all know the thing was written at the seat of various people’s pants, it’s blatantly self-evident that’s the case. There’s also plenty of public record about how the OT was written. Even dumber, more obvious lies, like that Anakin was ‘always the protagonist’ and the entire 6 films were his story from the beginning. This is preposterous and every time someone brings it up (usually with palpable smugness) as fanboys ‘not understanding star wars’ because they don't get that ‘the OT is not Luke's story’... Yeah, I just... I cannot.

Vader wasn’t Anakin Skywalker until ESB, it’s a retcon. It’s a brilliant retcon and it works perfectly, it elevated SW into something timeless and special it otherwise would not have been, but you can tell it wasn’t the original plan and there’s proof it wasn’t the original plan. Let’s not pretend. And Luke is the protagonist. No amount of waffling about such esoteric flights of theory as ‘ring structure’ is going to get away from the rigidly orthodox narrative and the indisputable fact that it is Luke’s hero’s journey. Vader’s redemption isn’t about his character development (he has almost none) and has no basis in any kind of convincing psychological reality for his character, but it doesn’t need to be because it’s part of Luke’s arc, because Vader is entirely a foil in Luke’s story. It’s a coming-of-age myth about confronting and growing beyond the father.

All attempts to de-centre Luke in RotJ just break the OT’s narrative logic. It’s a character-driven story and the character driving is Luke. Trying to read it as Anakin’s victory, the moral culmination of his choices rather than Luke’s and putting all the agency into Anakin’s hands just destroys the trilogy’s coherence and ignores most of its content in favour of appropriating a handful of scenes into an arc existing only in the prequels. The dilemma of RotJ is how Luke will define ethical adulthood after learning and growing through two previous films worth of challenge, education, failure, and triumph; it’s his choice to love his father and throw down his sword which answers the question the entire story has been asking. Vader’s redemption and the restoration of the galaxy are the consequences of that choice which tell us what kind of world we’re in, but the major dramatic conflict was resolved by Luke’s decision not the response to it.

And, just all over, the idea of Lucas as an infallible auteur is inaccurate and annoying to me. Obviously he’s a tremendous creative force and we wouldn’t have sw without him, but he didn’t create it alone or out of whole cloth. The OT was a very collaborative effort and that’s why it’s what it is and the prequels are what they are. Speaking of which.

2. The hubris of the prequels in general and all the damage their many terrible, protected-from-editors choices do to the symbolic fabric of the sw universe. Midicholrians, Yoda fighting with a lightsabre, Obi-wan as Anakin's surrogate father instead of his peer, incoherent and unmotivated character arcs, the laundry list of serious and meaningful continuity errors, the bad storytelling, the bad direction, the bad characterisation, the shallowness of the parallels which undermine the OT’s imagery, the very clumsy and contradictory way the A/P romance was handled, the weird attitude to romance in general, it goeth on. I don’t want to re-litigate the entire PT here and I’m not going to, but they are both bad as films and bad as prequels. The main idea of them, to add Anakin’s pov and create an actual arc for him as well as to flesh out the themes of compassion and redemption, was totally appropriate. The concept works as a narrative unit, there are lots of powerful thematic elements they introduce, they have a lot of cool building blocks, it’s only in execution and detail that they do a bunch of irreparable harm.

But the constant refrain that only ageing fanboys don’t like them and they only don’t like them because of their themes or because they humanise Anakin... can we not. The shoddy film making in the prequels is an objective fact. If you want to overlook the bad parts for the good or prioritise ideas over technique, that’s fine, but don’t sit here and tell me they’re masterworks of cinema there can be no valid reason to criticise. I was the exact right age for them when I saw them, I am fully on board with the fairy tale nature of sw, I am fully on board with humanising Anakin- the prequels just have a lot of very big problems with a) their scripts and b) their direction, especially of dialogue scenes. If Lucas had acknowledged his limitations like he did back in the day instead of believing his own press, he could have again had the help he obviously needed instead of embarrassing himself.

3. Killing and suppressing the original original trilogy. I consider the fact that the actual original films are not currently available in any form, have never been available in an archival format, and have not been presented in acceptable quality since the VHS release a very troubling case study in the problems of corporate-owned art. LF seizing prints of the films whenever they are shown, destroying the in-camera negatives to make the special editions with no plans to restore them, and doing all in the company’s considerable power to suppress the original versions is something I consider an act of cultural vandalism. The OT defined a whole generation of Hollywood. It had a global impact on popular entertainment. ANH is considered so historically significant it was one of the first films added to the US Library of Congress (Lucas refused to provide even them with a print of the theatrical release, so they made their own viewable scan from the 70s copyright submission).

The fact that the films which made that impact cannot be legally accessed by the public is offensive to me. The fact that Lucas has seen fit to dub over or composite out entire performances (deleting certain actors from the films), to dramatically alter the composition of shots chosen by the original directors, to radically change the entire stylistic tone by completely reinventing the films’ colour timing in attempt to make them match the plasticy palate of the prequels, to shoot new scenes for movies he DID NOT DIRECT, add entire sequences or re-edit existing sequences to the point of being unrecognisable etc. etc. is NOT OKAY WITH ME when he insists that his versions be the ONLY ones available.

I’m okay with the Special Editions existing, though I think they’re mostly... not good... but I’m not okay with them replacing the original films. And all people can say is ‘well, they’re his movies’.

Lucas may have clear legal ownership in the capitalistic sense, but in no way does he have clear artistic ownership. Forget the fans, I’m not one of those people who argue the fans are owed something: A film is always a collaborative exercise and almost never can it be said that the end product is the ultimate responsibility and possession of one person. Even the auteur directors aren't the sole creative vision, even a triple threat like Orson Welles still had cinematographers and production designers, etc. Hundreds of artists work on films. Neither a writer nor a director (nor one person who is both) is The Artist behind a film the way a novelist is The Artist behind a novel. And Lucas did NOT write the screenplays for or direct ESB or RotJ. So in what sense does he have a moral right to alter those films from what the people primarily involved in making them deemed the final product? In what sense would he have the right to make a years-later revision the ONLY version even if he WERE the director?

Then you get into the issue of the immeasurable cultural impact those films had in their original form and the imperative to preserve something that is defining to the history of film and the state of the zeitgeist. I don't think there is any ‘fan entitlement’ involved in saying the originals belonged to the world after being part of its consciousness for decades and it is doing violence to the artistic record to try to erase the films which actually occupied that space. It's exactly like trying to replace every copy of It's a Wonderful Life with a colourised version (well, it's worse but still), and that was something Lucas himself railed against. It’s like if Michaelangelo were miraculously resuscitated and he decided to repaint the Sistine Ceiling to add a gunfight and change his style to something contemporary.

I get genuinely very upset at the cold reality that generations of people are watching sw for the first time and it’s the fucking SE-except-worse they’re seeing. And as fewer people keep physical media and the US corporate oligarchy continues to perform censorship and rewrite history on its streaming services unchecked by any kind of public welfare concerns, you’ll see more and more ‘real Mandela effect’ type shit where the cultural record has suddenly ‘always’ been in line with whatever they want it to be just now. And US media continues to infect us all with its insidious ubiquity. I think misrepresenting and censoring the past is an objectively bad thing and we can’t learn from things we pretend never happened, but apparently not many people are worried about handing the keys to our collective experience to Disney and Amazon.

4. The ‘Jedi don’t marry’ thing and how he wanted this to continue with Luke post-RotJ, so it’s obviously not meant to be part of what was wrong with the order in the prequels. I find this... incoherent on a storytelling level. The moral of the anidala story then indeed becomes just plain ‘romantic love is bad and will make you crazy’, rather than the charitable reading of the prequels which I ascribe to, which is that the problem isn’t Anakin’s love for Padmé, it’s that he ceased to love her and began to covet her. And I can’t help but feel this attitude is maybe an expression of GL’s issues with women following his divorce. I don’t remember if there’s evidence to contradict that take, since it’s been some time since I read about this but yeah. ANH absolutely does sow seeds for possible Luke/Leia development and GL was still married while working on that film. Subsequently he was dead set against Luke ever having a relationship and decided Jedi could not marry. Coincidence?

There’s a lot of blinking red ‘issues with women’ warning signs all over Lucas’s work, but the prequels are really... egregious.

#sw #salt #more unhinged rambling #anyway dowload the despecialised editions #unsubscribe from Disney+#be free #usually we'd be having a big family thing for Boxing Day but you know #so God bless us all at home separately #I hope everyone had as happy a Christmas as possible in keeping with the situation #I should see if I can drag my brother outside to build a snowman

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loopy777 · 4 years ago

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Sorry if this is a repeat question, but have you ever read anything from the Mistborn trilogy? I’m making my way through the first volume, and am beginning to form an opinion on it. I find it a very easy read; the writing is certainly humorous, especially the dialogue of Kelsier’s character. I’m not sure if I’m 100% in love with the story, but I might as well finish (at least) this volume. Do you like the series? It’s a bit of a heist story which might interest you.

Okay, finally time to properly answer this. WARNING: contains structure spoilers, as in (fake example) "3/8ths of the way through the first book, a twist happens."

So I’ll start by saying I’ve become a big fan of Sanderson, and I think the Mistborn trilogy is his best stuff. His writing is overall functional, but I think his storytelling is great- provided you make an investment. Also, as you note, he’s good at working humor into things without it feeling inappropriate to the seriousness around it; this humor is character-based, so it feels a part of things.

There's a Horror quality to Mistborn that I think is mostly unique in his writings and gave me a different impression of him compared to what I’ve found in his other stuff. See, in most fantasy stories written for adults, even if the rest of the content is perfectly PG or PG-13, they have NC-17-level violence. Mistborn mostly isn’t particularly violent, but when dudes showed up walking around with giant spikes in their eyeholes, I was just like, “Yup, here it is, as expected.” Overall, ythough, I found it fairly mild as far as fantasy for adults goes. The violence wasn't dwelt upon or fetishized, and the Horror stuff actually felt like it was integrated in the story being told, rather than just having something scary for its own sake- it felt like part of the worldbuilding, even if the reasoning wasn't immediately apparent.

The action is where I found the books to first stumble. The magic system here, Allomancy, is unique and interesting and fun, and I think the way the Mistborn move and fight would look great in a movie adaptation, but the problem is that Sanderson is actually kind of bad at writing action. He's detailed and literal, but the problem is that I don't need to know every single move that a character makes during a big brawl in a single unbroken POV segment. The key to writing interesting action scenes is to use problem and solution sets- a character encounters a problem with no apparent solution and then solves it. If the solution is "characters shoots the bad guy with a gun," then that's not interesting because I can predict it and I've seen it a thousand times. The lack of predictable solution is how tension is created and released. Mistborn has a number of sequences where characters are mowing down mooks, and it’s always tedious. But having fight scenes that can be skimmed is hardly the worst crime in fantasy writing. Fortunately, Sanderson doesn't overfill these books with action.

No, what made me increasingly skeptical as I made my way through Mistborn was how much Sanderson was obviously holding back with the story. Without getting too spoilery, as things start to ramp up in the first book, a number of questions are raised that had my antenna up, but the first book closed without many explanations. Okay, fair enough, there's a whole trilogy we need to set up, and the book did have a real ending rather than a cliffhanger or simply stopping. So I moved on to the second book, deciding that the first could be rated as Okay But Subject To Being Called Bad If The Mysteries Don't Pan Out.

But then the second book had a slower-moving plot, IMO, and what was already a dark setting got heavier and darker. And without answering most of the questions from the first book, it started throwing out even more questions and mysteries. This is where I started to get worried. This was before I experienced the crime against storytelling that was JJ Abrams' Rise of Skywalker, but that's hardly been the only thing I've encountered that starts by promising intriguing mystery and then can only offer a shrug when it came time to start providing solutions and explanations. In fact, it’s very common. So we had a slower, less fun plot, an increasing pile of mysteries, and no solution in sight- very worrying signs.

Still, it was possible, in my opinion, to save things. I figured the third book would have to start by providing those answers, though, if it was going to have the time to deal with everything.

Instead, the third book opens with more mysteries and brand new subplots.

"Hoo boy," was my reaction.

I kept reading, of course. I was already into the third novel of a trilogy, and a novel is nothing to me, a week's work at most and only a day or two if I work at it. (Purely talking about free time, of course. If I devoted an entire day just to reading, I'd be able to pound down several thick novels. I read fast, to the point where I've had to train myself to go slower.) At the very least, finishing the book would allow me to properly criticize it. And I was still enjoying the characters, even as things got darker. The plot was moving faster than the in the second book, and the additional POVs and subplots were helping to keep things interesting. I was almost looking forward to the mess that was going to be the ending.

Then, about halfway through the third book, the explanations start coming. And from that point, it's like watching one of those cool elaborate domino sequences. And in the end, not only is everything explained, but all the subplots dovetail into a satisfying epic. Details that I didn’t think were important turned out to be hinges for the whole storytelling mechanism, and what I thought were new mysteries were actually the avenues to the explanations for old mysteries. It all turns out to be a very unique twist on typical Fantasy narratives. This is what I mean when I say that Sanderson’s works are worth the investment. Even when they seem like they’re falling apart or going nowhere, they’re probably setting up a knockout punch.

Of course, I took so long to answer the Ask that you might already know that or disagree. In that case, perhaps future generations will benefit from your suffering.

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rvb-is-gay · 4 years ago

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ok so now that the final episode of rvb0 is out for everyone, lets get into some discussion about it! please note that post isnt a topic of debate but rather just my personal thoughts about everything, so dont go arguing in the replies

(fair warning ahead of time for any fans, this is mostly criticism and negative feelings about it, so keep scrolling if you dont wanna read it)

When RVB0 was first announced, I remember everyone was first upset that the Reds and Blues weren't in it, including me. But now that I've watched the whole thing, I can say with confidence that my only issue with RVB0 isn't the lack of the Reds and Blues, but rather everything. the dialogue, some of the animation, the characters, the delivery, the pacing, the ridiculous amount of clichés, etc. I don't dislike RVB0 just because there's no Reds and Blues. I dislike it because I just found the entirety of it bad.

When I first started watching it, I went in with an open mind that maybe this season could actually be really good. I’d also be lying if I said that there wasn't a single scene that I liked. There were actually a few, but they still didn't make up for just the overall badness of the season. But please note that I don't blame the voice actors for any of this or even just Torrian Crawford for the season coming out a giant mess. Many people worked for this season and always had the opportunity to improve or change things but didn't. But anyways, let’s get into some of the criticisms I have for this season.

1. Smaller and more opinion oriented criticisms

This isn’t really criticism or anything important, but rather just a few things I found a bit weird to me personally.

First, the term “ragtag team of misfits” was used to describe Shatter Squad (and was even actually said out loud by One in the last episode, which sounded just so cliché and dumb in my opinion). I don't think this describes them at all?? Everyone has, at the very least, decent relationships with each other (save for One and East who were competitive with each other (which I also fucking hate in RVB that all the girl characters are always competitive with each other)), but that still doesn't really fit the term ragtag) and they all fight very well. I think ragtag fits the Reds and Blues more than it does Shatter Squad; they're bad at fighting, they argue and fight all the time, they're idiots, and that's why we love them. If they had just stuck with “a team of misfits”, that would've made more sense, but again, this is more of a personal opinion than genuine criticism.

Second, I don’t really like the aesthetics this season had. Everything felt a bit too neon and bright and then some stuff just felt like it came straight out of World of Warcraft or something. It didn’t really feel like RVB.

Third, my feelings about Carolina constantly calling Wash David can be summed up by what Michael said in the first episode of Halo 4 LASO: “Now we’re just gonna throw his name around all willy nilly. It used to be a secret.” When someone is called by their real name in RVB or just any story in general where everyone goes by code names, it’s usually a big deal and indicates something serious. Carolina wore out Wash’s name the first time she said it and it just got more and more irritating from then on out and lost its value.

Fourth, who was the blue and purple soldier in the first teaser we got? Was that One? Did they decide to change her armour colour? I don’t know, I just randomly remembered that and thought it was weird but I guess it must’ve just been a colour change.

Now, onto the more serious criticism.

2. Animation and dialogue

The second thing I wanna talk about is the animation. Don't get me wrong, the fighting animation is probably the best compared to everything else and it was pretty good to watch, but the talking and idle animations and gestures were..... kinda yikes. I know that it could be chalked up to “well we’re not used to seeing animated gestures since all of RVB usually has everyone just holding their gun and using the regular Halo models” but there were still some pretty bad parts.

Take the scene from Encounter at 3:26 as an example (I uploaded the scene to YT to put here, but obviously it was blocked for copyright):

This scene is probably one of the worst when it comes to not only the animations, but the dialogue, pacing, and delivery. When I first saw this, I honestly laughed. Here's a list of my problems with this scene and what made it so laughable:

The overexaggerated hand gestures. I get that because everyone's in armour and a helmet, it can be hard to show expression, but this feels like a bit much. Especially when One says “what? You’re pulling us off the mission? You cant do that!” I think that one scene in season 15 when Grif stays behind on Iris while everyone leaves and it slowly zooms in on Simmons’ visor somehow does a lot better at expressing feelings than this.

East immediately making the connection between Axel and Zero feels weird. I don't know if its just me who feels this way, but I think it should've been a little bit longer before she immediately is just like “you know Zero don't you”

Axel saying “I... I do... I did” also sounds weird and like he was trying a bit too hard to sound dramatic. I don't really know how to describe it its just such a weird delivery of the line.

The way they all immediately start yelling at each other.

One saying “Axe, I trusted you” right after saying “tell us the truth”. Girl, you gave him no opportunity to explain and just immediately jumped to not trusting him anymore. Speaking of which, I don't think this was ever really mentioned again and had no meaning or importance to it.

The echoing of “I trusted you” also feels cliché to me, but this is more of a minor thing.

I think this one comment on one of the episodes on the RT site that says the dialogue “seemed acted rather than natural. It didn't really sound like how people normally talk, more how actors talk in plays” is how I feel about all of the dialogue in RVB0.

3. The villains

Zero and Diesel both felt like they didn't really have any motivation at all for being villains. Phase is probably the best when it comes to this. She was essentially abused by her father as a child and forced to undergo being experimented on. This is an actual good and understandable motivation.

Diesel we know basically nothing about, and then on the other hand, all Zero wants is power. But for what? Why? I can understand that power is a pretty common thing for people to want, but it still kind of felt like there wasn't really anything there.

Some previous good villains in RVB include:

Temple: Temple witnessed his best friend be brutally murdered right in front of him by 2 soldiers who didn't give a shit and just left him to die, especially right after he told him he was having a baby. Of course it’s understandable that he has a hatred of Freelancers after this. Any normal person would.

Felix: Felix was probably the best villain of all of RVB, to be honest (right beside the Director). He was just somehow so likeable and had so much personality, despite being an asshole. His ultimate motivation was money and being rich, which is another thing I can understand; the more money you have, the more you can essentially do whatever you want and live in luxury. I mean, even so many people in real life do horrible things just for money. I don't even have to give examples for this. Felix in general is also just a psychopath.

The Director: The whole reason the Director did what he did was because he lost the person he loved most in the world: his wife. He was willing to do literally anything to bring her back, leading to all of his actions in the Project Freelancer saga. You can find many examples of movie/TV/book/etc characters/villains seeking vengeance as a result of loss of a loved one and grief. Despite being a horrible person, the Director actually managed to be a villain you could even sympathize with, making him even better.

Sharkface: Although a bit of a more minor villain, similar to Temple, Sharkface is a villain because he wants revenge on the people that killed his team, the people he considered to be the only family he’s ever had.

4. Tucker & the swords

The fourth thing I wanna talk about is the whole thing with Tucker and the swords. I always found it kinda weird how both Tuckers sword and now Locus’ sword in the chorus trilogy were the same, but then in RVB0, Zero’s sword looks and acts completely different, but that might just be a little nitpick of mine.

As for Tucker, it was so good to see him. Although I don’t know if it was just me, but he seemed a little OOC. What I didn't like about seeing Tucker again was that he did literally nothing the entire episode. He was useless. He said “I can fight” at one point but then all he does during the battle is get held at knife point, run away, and then get stabbed and have his sword taken. Tucker isn't an amazing fighter, but he’s definitely a lot more capable than just this. We’ve seen him in action many times and I just feel like he could've done a bit more. It almost feels like he was purposefully nerfed and tossed aside just to advance the plot.

Another thing that I and probably a lot of people are upset about is the fact that Tucker might not even own his sword anymore?? When East stabbed him, he apparently died and the sword was rebound to Phase, but it wasn't very clear that this was the case. Although the beginning of the next episode starts with hospital beeps and a flatline, I don't think it was still really clear enough that Tucker actually died long enough for Phase to reclaim the sword because I saw a handful of people confused in the comments and, like me, even thought it was just bad writing at first and that the writers completely forgot about the rules of the sword established over several prior seasons.

When in the hospital, Wash tells Tucker that he almost died. Although I actually liked this scene because it was nice to see wash and tucker bantering again, I think it could've been made better and made the plot clearer if instead of saying he almost died, Wash said something along the lines of “Tucker, you died. Your heart stopped, but they were able to bring you back thanks to their advanced medical tech” and then in response Tucker freaks out because that means his sword will now work for Phase and now they know how urgent the situation is.

I really really hate that Phase just has Tucker’s sword now and nothing is even said about it. If Tucker was to give his sword away to someone, I think many people would prefer that it was at least someone close to him, like Junior for example, but instead it goes to a random girl he hardly knows.

5. Pacing

The fifth thing I wanna talk about is the pacing. This season was definitely a lot shorter than normal and I think that’s one of the things that really prevented it from being good. The entire story just feels rushed and while I understand that it can be really difficult to build a good story and characters in such a short time, I think there’s still ways you can do it without it feeling like there’s so much missing. I think the long intros and outros are also responsible for less time and maybe they should’ve considered cutting them to give more actual episode time. Here’s a few things that were poorly done as a result of bad pacing:

The final battle against Zero: The whole battle just somehow felt like a typical video game boss battle that ends super quickly to me. Shatter Squad didn’t even defeat Zero, he just up and got disintegrated or whatever from Black Lotus.

Shatter Squad giving up on their mission: After receiving the silly deep voice filtered message from Zero, everyone on Shatter Squad just immediately gives up on finding him.

One’s speech: One’s speech wasn’t awful or anything and I didn’t really have any problems with the speech itself, but rather just how quickly the team went from “we can’t do it.. it’s over..” to “you’re right! I’m in! Let’s go get them!” Compare this to Doc and Sarge’s speech to the Reds and Blues after Church and Carolina leave in season 10 episode 20. It just felt a lot more genuine (this is probably because the Reds and Blues had a lot more time to be developed, though) and was only given after some time passed rather than 2 seconds later. The scene and context also transitioned well into it and at first, nobody was on board with what Doc was saying, which is more realistic in my opinion. People’s minds won’t just instantly change, they’re still gonna think about it and maybe have a few doubts at first.

Phase and West: During their fight, West talked a lot about how he regrets giving Phase away to Starlight, that he won’t hurt her, and is even willing to die for her. Their scene together ends with Phase punching him in the head and then leaving to join the others and nothing else about them is mentioned. We don’t know if Phase forgave him or not, we don’t know how West feels, etc.

Tucker’s sword: Phase still has Tucker’s sword and like the scenario with West, nothing about it is mentioned. We don’t know what she’s going to do with it, if she’s going to keep it, if Tucker’s gonna do anything about it, etc.

6. Clichés

Clichés aren’t inherently bad and can be really impactful and good if done right. But when it comes to RVB0, it’s jampacked with clichés that aren’t good. Here are a few examples:

Everyone gives up until a speech is given: All of the points for this are the same as above, but I wanted to include this scene as a cliché as well.

Every female character is competitive with each other: RVB falls into this a lot, like I mentioned earlier. It happens again with East and One, although luckily they seem to resolve it, but not until literally the end of the season.

West’s fit about East: All of the lines and delivery in this scene were just atrocious and cheesy. I think West’s dialogue just could’ve been a bit more original, but instead we’re given this boring predictable “I won’t lay a hand on her. I promised her. I promised her mother. I promised she’d be safe” spiel that has no emotion to it in his voice.

The whole “I got this, you go ahead” thing: This isn’t like a super cliché thing, but I found it pretty interesting how it happens twice in the same episode.

I think this is pretty much all I can think of at the moment. If I think of anything else, I’ll add onto this. Overall, I think RVB0 would’ve done a lot better as just an RVB spinoff so that it could have more episodes and seasons dedicated to developing characters and a good plot. I’m really disappointed with this season and I hope whatever comes next is better than what RVB0 was. I hope the team that worked on it can learn a few things that come from the good and valid constructive criticism given to them. And if I had to pick, I think I’d say Raymond was my favourite out of all the new characters. He just felt the most relatable and realistic to me.

#rvb crit #rvb0 critical #rvbz critical #post #mod sol

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