#keeping these succinct to contrast the actual stories i have planned for him

[prettyiwa]

Miyuki Kazuya x Reader content tags: meet-ugly, mentions of alcohol use, post-canon word count: 500 prequel to His Name

The first time you say his name, he likes it a little too much. His full name, following a lousy introduction, and the way you speak it gives the impression that you’re testing it for future use, deciding whether it’s something you wish to remember. Kazuya surprises himself when he catches himself hoping that you do—a small, fleeting thing that interrupts the regular beating of his heart.

It starts with a spilled drink and a bad joke.

Reluctant to attend yet another one of Sawamura’s “small get-together between old friends” has him meeting you. It’s nothing spectacular and he doesn’t give you a second thought when you join his group with Ryousuke by your side, laughing at something he said. The moment you reach for a glass is the moment someone pushes Sawamura into you, leaving Kazuya wearing your drink.

The next minute or so hosts a flurry of apologies and the laughing of Kuramochi and Ryousuke and an exchange of words he can’t remember because your drink is cold and his pants are wet. You’re the only one who follows him into the kitchen, the only one offering to help remedy Sawamura’s mistake, ultimately unaware of the irritation itching beneath the surface. With just enough alcohol in his bloodstream, he makes a bold joke, realizing too late that it’s with someone unfamiliar.

Your question dies on your tongue and you shift your gaze so you’re no longer looking at the towel in your hand or the stain on his pants but at him. Your disbelief quickly melts away and he kicks himself for reverting to old habits before you hit him with it.

“What’s your name?”

“Miyuki Kazuya.” You repeat it, turning it over in your mouth as he waits, ready to use this incident as yet another reason why he shouldn’t be forced to attend these things.

“Well, Miyuki Kazuya, you should probably ask a person out on a date before saying something like that.”

He’s never particularly cared about the sound of his name, not the way it’s angrily shouted by Sawamura, not the way it’s tauntingly used by Mei, and certainly not the way it’s chanted by fans, but he likes the way you say it. Challenging with a hint of playfulness, almost like you can’t help yourself.

Interest piqued, he asks for your number. Instead of answering, you ask whether he’s the same “Miyuki” notorious for riling up Sawamura, as per “Ryou.” He answers your question, and there it is again—that tiny little hiccup, a tiny half-flutter in his chest. A smile blooms on your lips and that feeling stays in his chest, though you don’t indicate what that answer means to you.

So he asks again, irritation abandoned in favor of stoking his curiosity, encouraging you to say yes with the promise to properly apologize for his inane comment well away from tonight.

It starts with a spilled drink and a bad joke and ends with a text from you.

Fond of You | Daiya no Ace Masterlist

A/N: This is still not the Kazuya story I want to write. We'll see if I end up keeping it limited to 6 total entries or if I end up expanding it to 11. @tyga-lily, I welcome any and all teasing you have to offer. The bastard won't leave me alone again.

[leiakenobi]

6 and 20 for the 👀 writer asks 👀

(Fun meta asks for writers)

6. What character do you have the most fun writing?

I feel like more and more, I just find myself thinking that I have the most fun with the characters I'm writing/have most recently written? Because my gut reaction was Nathan and I don't think I would've said that if it weren't for the fact that I just finished a fic about him. But I've been dabbling in a lot of things -- and a lot of new things -- as of late and I think right now I'm in a place where I'm just having fun getting into any characters' heads for a lil bit.

(But also.......... Poe. For the foreseeable future the answer will probably always be Poe a little bit.)

20. Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about (symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?)

(Me after looking over fics for 10 minutes) Well, I think I should talk about "clipped wings."

So uh peek under the read more for that because I don't know how to be succinct about that damn fic.

Because I'm a big sucker for parallels and even just small echoes of lines and themes, there are a lot here, some of them more obvious than others. The one I cherish the most is the parallel between Rey teaching Poe to meditate in ch. 1 and then him connecting with the Force to find her in ch. 14—I actually had the first scene open while writing the second and reused some lines verbatim and tried to keep the pacing the same. I'm really into the idea that even while they're not together, Rey is integral to how Poe experiences the Force, which I also kinda lean into later in ch. 14 when he tells Kes that "she showed [him] the galaxy." How could he not connect to her through the Force in the same way that she taught him to connect to the Force in the first place?

Then there are also two parallels of Rey & Luke scenes that I love? First, I def wanted her conversation with Luke's Force ghost in ch. 13 to feel like an echo of their talk in ch. 6 to show just how far their relationship has come. In both scenes, Rey's very unsettled because of Kylo, but she responds to Luke so differently when he appears to her in ch. 13.

And then second, a kinda funny one because of earlier versions of this fic—ch. 8 and ch. 10 are (I think pretty clearly?) meant to be parallels. In an early plan (when it was still the dark Rey concept), the trip to Yavin would've actually been when the First Order showed up. (There was also a possibility of Poe and maybe Finn going with them.) I nixed that for a few reasons, not least of which because I couldn't see a way for that to happen with Yavin and Kes coming out unscathed and I really wanted Yavin to come back around as a safe harbor for Poe and Rey. But as far as the parallel—I felt like her relationship with Luke and Leia needed to be stronger, and I also felt like she (and the readers) needed to know more about the curse, before we heard Snoke and Kylo's version of the story. It's funny because I was still thinking of it as a dark Rey fic as I was picking up on those problems, but I think that my seeing them as problems is actually an indication that my muse wanted to go in the direction I ended up following instead, because tbh those are precisely the things she needed in order to reject the dark side. The parallels between the two chapters, then, are pointing out that contrast. She does have a better understanding of the trauma of her past and the impact of her curse, even if she's still lacking the specific Sith element.

Then there are just a lot of lines that I repeat and small details that I kinda lean into frequently; the big one that comes to mind rn is Rey's relationship with crying. It says a lot when and where she resists crying versus giving into it. (Surprise, the first time she cries in the fic is when she opens up to Poe about her relationship with Luke and Leia in ch. 4.)

[emiguess]

How I would have changed Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Before I begin this I want it on the record that I very much enjoyed The Last Jedi. It’s far from perfect but where TFA was a lot of fun but fairly uninspired, a new hope for a new generation, TLJ for all its flaws tried new things and dug in deep to big themes and a dissection of the franchise as a whole. I loved it. There’s no denying the film was far too long and the subplots were a mixed bag.  The Rey/Kylo/Luke stuff on a thematic level worked for me. Some minor details near the end perhaps could have been done differently but all in all I think it’s fairly  rock solid. Some rocks can be moved around though as the film very much confirms. I do this not to tell anyone how it should be done but just to give my two cents. I enjoy script writing and would love to be a script doctor/ consultant so I write this in that spirit.. I will try to keep it succinct.

Canto Bight

My brother made the canny suggestion that the Canto Bight story line should have been at the beginning of the film. Imagine panning over the crazy tables, spying all those diverse aliens, we reach a big table, where some ostentatious high roller is wowing a crowd but we can’t see his face. He turns around and it’s Finn! It would be a great surprise since  the last time we saw him was in a bio bed unconscious and now here he is in a totally different milieu and having fun. We could even throw in a shameless piece of exposition where Rose tells him to calm down since it’s not that long since he got the all clear. Finn could say how he’s still feeling a bit raw but that his luck is changing... That should be when he comes across someone from his past in the Casino...Phasma. But in a twist Phasma is sans mask and Finn doesn’t know who this is. This would give Gwendoline Christie an actual character to play. If the audience knows she’s Phasma then the tension comes from not knowing when Finn will figure it out. If you don’t know the actress is Phasma it would be a nice reveal. So Finn believe he has a rapport with this new person and finally feels like he is escaping his past (the film’s central theme) but  the reveal of her true identity would shatter that illusion and the ensuing battle would allow him to put the past to bed once and for all. I also think Phasma should have been evolved beyond the Boba Fett clone (not an actual in story clone!) she ended up being.

Poe is also on Canto Bight with Rose and Finn because they have discovered that the Casino is a front for a weapons facility in which the Empire are stocking up brand new ships such as Dreadnoughts. Their plans is to infiltrate and destroy this place before they can be added to the First Order’s fleet. They need to find a code breaker in the Casino who can be turned to their side. I would have just gone with Justin Theroux’s character here but it still could have been Benecio Del Toro’s DJ either way. Poe is not himself after a botched operation in which he got a number of the fleet killed, including someone important to Rose. I would have made this her lover instead of her sister, explicitly putting in more LGBTQ representation, (having a gay character be killed could be problematic, I admit, but when watching the film the first time and seeing the shared necklace, I honestly assumed this was Rose’s girlfriend/wife and found the sister thing a little meh).  There is understandable tension between Rose and Poe. These story points could be alluded to in PTSD type flashbacks that are interspersed and while Poe is to blame, which has shaken the character from the cocky pilot of the first film, we could see the operation from different Rashomon type flashbacks which would be a nice narrative parallel to the Luke/ Kylo Ren flashbacks.

Leia’s choice to allow Poe on this mission has not been popular and we see a holographic message from Admiral Holdo criticising the decision while still greatly respecting Leia (this is important to establish as their genuine friendship was great and a fantastic rebuke to the two strong women being at odds trope you find in a lot of fiction). Leia says she has faith in Poe and Holdo is forced to see if that faith is justified. Poe himself is conflicted about his future in the Resistance but helping Rose and Finn free those animals that cut a swath through Canto Bight is the metaphor for the Resistance Poe needs to reawaken his faith. He sees that the downtrodden must be free to make a difference.

Leia

The Leia force scene has been a big controversial moment for a lot of people and I would suggest a minor tweak of this could have been more effective. Leia is blasted out into space. We still have the same shots of her floating but we hear her breathing, her heart beating. But suddenly a calm falls over her. She is using the Force to slow down everything to give her a few more precious moments of life when suddenly a fighter appears and picks her up, being flown by Holdo. It would have been a great physical introduction for the character having previously been shown as just a hologram. You’d still have Leia saving herself with the Force but just not in so a cartoony or pronounced way. There could be some fun banter about how Holdo wasn’t meant to be there but she was just passing by the star system and knew Leia would be out for a walk, or something to that effect.

Here is where I will give an odd suggestion for how to deal with Leia in Episode 9. This could be controversial but I’d have it that the General gets sick or is injured and they know they can’t save her so she asks to be frozen in Carbonite but kept alive. She could be the leader who never died and is a living monument to how the Resistance should never die. It’s not perfect but its as elegant a solution to what cruel fate has provided us.

So a single Dreadnought survives the destruction of the weapons facility and this could give us the Holdo sacrifice (clearly Leia could have been the one to do this too, but I digress). Holdo contacts Poe and congratulates him on his successful mission, welcoming him back into the fold but says “As cocky as you are Poe...you missed one.”  And she hyperspaces into the Dreadnought to prevent it from destroying the fleet.

As you can see most of the film would be unaffected and I do believe the subplots would tie in more organically.  Throwing in a Casino jaunt into a ticking clock plot remains my biggest problem with the film and I think structuring it like this would solve a lot of problems.

Snoke

A brief final note on another issue fandom has with the film, the identity of Snoke. The decision to make Rey’s parents nobodies was inspired and I hope they don’t reverse that in future installments. As for Snoke, I have a theory that won’t satisfy everyone but is my take on the character. Although to be honest I don’t think we need to know where he came from. His dispatching was fantastic and allows the series to focus on the more nuanced and interesting antagonist in Kylo Ren but if people were so desperate for an answer here is one.

There should be a scene with Luke in the dark pit with the Infinite Recursion that we see Rey in half way through the film. This can be from a long time ago. Luke has gone their to face his demons. We see him force jump out of the pit and the delayed reflections all follow suit...except one. An obscured reflection in the distance remains down that pit. This is Snoke. He is a manifestation of Luke’s anger and bitterness and the darker thoughts inside of him. (It’s a bit Onslaught with Professor Xavier if I’m to be honest). Snoke didn’t want anyone to find Skywalker because he needs him alive to continue existing and Luke remaining in exile suited his plans perfectly. It even adds an irony to Kylo Ren who unknowingly is still an apprentice to a version of Luke Skywalker. In fact this revelation would have been a nice extra motivation for Kylo killing Snoke.  Fandom could have called this character Snoke Starkiller as a nod to the original name of Luke Skywalker! I very much believe in drawing thematic parallels and contrasts across different narrative threads. For example Kylo sheds his armour to move on but Phasma re-embraces her armour as a symbol of the past.  Both Finn and Rey do not know their parents and are in situations due to this abandonment. There’s definitely more of this stuff that could be teased out over the whole story. So there you go, suggestions for something that has already been made and for adventures that have already happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

[kirstengeigernnd1-blog]

assignment #5

“It is not enough to get the news. We must be able to put it across. Meaning must be unmistakable, and it must also be succinct.” Harold Evans

Stop, think of a plan, read through your notes, mark most important information and quotes (establish a hierarchy) based on audience

Consider the publication and its intentions

Don’t talk down to the audience with vocabulary

Best journalism: readily understandable, instantly readable, and makes you want to read more

Space is important, don’t overuse it

Intro engages the reader instantly & summarises the story, demanding reader to read on

why it is being published, what is the newest, most interesting, most important, most significant, most attention-grabbing aspect of the story

inverted pyramid

Rest of the story amplify by adding new information with detail, explanation, and quotes that answer all the 5Ws

Active not passive tense is faster, immediate, and more engaging as it describes what is happening

Quotes short, incisive, and direct which add colour, illustrate facts, and introduce personal experience to provide actuality. Always use “said”.

Officialese specific language used by professionals that should be avoided as it isolates audiences

Adjectives should not raise questions, only answer them

Jargon, abbreviations, acronyms and know-all foreign phrases excludes people not in the know. Explain medical, scientific, and economic terms if unavoidable.

Puns and cliches should have restrained usage.

Apostrophes so few errors in spelling or punctuation appear in print

Exercise: 

"Joseph Foster and his sibling Kate were advancing cheerfully along Wesley Street when they were in minor collision with an HGV which unexpectedly mounted the pavement. It transpired later, when the multi-coloured Volvo truck driver who was transporting a container containing motor parts to Oxford was being interviewed by a local radio reporter, that the lorry veered to avoid a police car speeding towards him on the wrong side of the road. The spokesman at police headquarters told a different story.

But it was the children's lucky day as they escaped shocked but unscathed. A hospital spokesman at nearby Eddington hospital, run by the Barton NHS Foundation Trust, said the two children were lucky not to have been seriously injured. 'As it was,' declared Andrew Brown, 'they were examined in A and E and allowed to go home. Unfortunately Kate's buggy was beyond repair.'"

Edit: Joseph Foster and his sister Kate were walking on Wesley Street when a truck containing motor parts on the way to Oxford unexpectedly hit the pavement. The driver was interviewed stating that he skidded to avoid a speeding police car on the wrong side of the road. A police headquarters spokesperson gave a contrasting statement.  

A hospital spokesman at Eddington hospital stated the two children were unharmed. “As it was, they were examined in the emergency room and sent home.” said Andrew Brown. 

Reflection:

I believe the article is stating that the best journalism is informational and accessible to people of all different ways of life as news is integral for everybody. There is no need to try and flourish the story by tacking on unnecessary details, adjectives, or information. Just keep it straight forward and succinct. 

reading on the guardian

[briangroth27]

Blade Runner 2049 Review

Blade Runner 2049 definitely feels like a cerebral extension of the 1982 original. However, I don't think it successfully melds its characters with the overall narrative, leaving it feeling less than the sum of its parts. On a routine mission to "retire" rogue Replicant Sapper Morton (Dave Bautista), Blade Runner K (Ryan Gosling) uncovers a mystery involving a breakthrough in Replicant biology that threatens to destroy the "wall" preserving humanity as the unquestioned master of the planet and Replicants as their inhuman slaves. At the same time, this discovery will allow corporate titan Niander Wallace (Jared Leto) to exponentially expand his Replicant production, fulfilling his dream of expanding that slave race to the point where it can finally achieve man's "destiny" of stretching throughout space.

The cinematography is beautiful and the world feels very well-constructed, but ultimately empty. Most of the settings (and sets) are barren wastelands; it feels like you could count the number of scenes showing the general population on one hand. It made me wonder who the Blade Runners are protecting anymore. I've noticed similar shifts from 80s movie grime to post-90s sheen as movies get decades-later sequels or reboots even in grim locations like Gotham City, but this looked especially uninhabited and sterile; a stark contrast to the teeming, overcrowded masses in the original. That said, the locations and sets are distinct, certainly born of the Blade Runner world, and very cool. Even if this desolation is supposed to represent characters questioning their identity—perhaps the empty world is a canvas that allows them to project their chosen meanings and definitions onto the events of their lives—I would've liked to see the world itself and the people who inhabit it, not just the main characters acting on empty sets, protecting and imperiling people we never see. Perhaps the blackout of 2022 and other tragedies of the intervening 30 years are to blame for the underpopulation, but if so, the lack of millions of Replicant slave laborers is lamented more onscreen than the loss of human life. No one voices a concern that there are so few humans left that extinction could be around any corner. It's also curious where the multi-ethnic civilization from the original went; as I've heard commented elsewhere, this future LA is exceptionally white.

The movie's pacing was very slow, making this nearly three hour movie feel even longer. Slow, long pans over settings are in line with the original movie, but I didn't like them there either: they slowed down the story too much and that film was 50 minutes shorter as it is. Here, they exaggerated the length even more without adding anything. I wouldn’t say I was bored, but I did feel like the movie could get on with things at several points. For instance, K's journey of discovery about his identity felt very slow and seemed like it could've been edited down to get to his answers (and Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford)) faster. As it is, the pacing made me leave the theater with a "that's it?" sense that not much happened. The score's sound mix was far too loud; so loud the volume was uncomfortable and the chairs in my standard showing were shaking. That said, I liked the return to the distorted electronic score of the original film. It felt very much of the world, except one chase scene where the music was far faster than anything before or after, making it feel out of place.

As empty as the world was, the special effects were fantastic! While flying cars were impressive in the original and seamless here, the true standout effect was K's holographic girlfriend, Joi (Ana de Armas). They found a perfect balance between giving her enough solidity to believe she was really interacting with her surroundings and showing us the imperfections in the holographic projection to remind us that she's not. One of the film's rare moments of humor was a perfectly executed joke where, just after a clever and touching moment of Joi feeling rain—holographic, to match the real rain—on her "skin," a romantic embrace with K was interrupted by her data stream pausing as he got an incoming call. The standout moment for the CGI surrounding Joi was a moment where she synced her movements with Mariette (Mackenzie Davis)--a physical woman--to give herself a solid presence. The filmmakers created an outstanding—and slightly unnerving; given how well they were visually mixed—blend of the two women. The CGI in that scene was seamless (except where intentional, when the sync didn't hold) and absolutely deserves an Oscar nomination.

Ultimately I think the original film has a better, more succinct story with enough discussion on the subject of what constitutes humanity—and the tragedy of the brevity of life—to be satisfying. There's also more action in the original if that's what you're looking for. However, 2049 has a much more conflicted main character (though young Deckard was far more emotive and Ford gave a livelier performance than Gosling does) and a stronger central relationship/love story than we saw between Deckard and Rachael (Sean Young). That's partially because we join 2049's lovers after they've been together for a while, but also because there's no scene between them as uncomfortable as the night Deckard and Rachael first sleep together (which absolutely seems like he rapes her). The original's villains (if they are the villains) are also much better-crafted: the struggle to live a normal lifespan is far more engaging and relatable than Niander's explicit plans to breed a slave race, even though the latter is more socially relevant. The oppression theme is far timelier, but Niander is so one-dimensional in his villainy that he isn’t engaging as an enemy; he just serves to speak for society. I also think there's a problem with the vast majority of Replicant slaves being white people, which sort of seems like saying the only way to get white people to empathize with the oppressed's strife is by making the oppressed white people rather than people of color (the actual oppressed in our society).

 Full Spoilers...

Gosling—whose K is almost immediately revealed as a Replicant—was very good at crafting a robotic manner enhanced with enough emotion to convey his feelings and sentience (though whether those emotions are programmed to give him the impression of personality may be up for debate, at least initially). This gave his robotic demeanor the gravity of someone who doesn't like their role in society or the mistreatment they receive every day because of who they are. He had a solid arc beginning as a Replicant used to hunt his own and I liked that he saw himself differently from the Replicants who ran: he was programmed to obey, after all. That was a clever parallel to "model" minorities whose good behavior is used to “prove” there’s no need for the system to change how it deals with various minority groups because some of them are doing well socioeconomically or are “behaving,” and those who aren’t are “bringing it on themselves” (and there’s no question he was constantly on thin ice as well). I also liked K's distaste for hunting down his own; there's a definite feeling that even if he tells himself he's different from the runners, he knows there's not really a difference between them and him. That emotion is the first indication he thinks for himself, because there's no reason to program it into a Replicant designed to hunt and kill other Replicants. I liked seeing his daily routine before his world spirals out of control; that was a good way to bring us into his life, show how the world works, and get a glimpse of the mistreatment and scrutiny he experiences from his neighbors and even his colleagues in the police department. The reconditioning he goes through each day was the perfect demonstration of how humans keep Replicants under control and how tenuous even well-behaved Replicant freedom is. 

I loved that K turned out not to be the Replicant miracle baby. I totally fell for the expectation that yet another white guy would be the Chosen One, so to reveal it was actually Dr. Stelline (Carla Juri) was a great twist I didn't see coming, but made total sense in hindsight. It's also cool that K faced not being special, not belonging in the traditional sense, possibly not knowing real love, losing the individual name Joi gave him, and not having the soul he believed came with natural birth, but chose to do the right thing and make a difference anyway. If we're to look at the Replicant revolutionaries as a religious order, then their call to murder Deckard to protect the miracle baby makes the argument that K is purer morally than they are without the benefit of religion. Everything he believed in is stripped away, yet he's still a hero: he purposefully walks into the nothingness Roy Batty raged against to save the day. Batty believed what he'd seen made him special and made his death a tragedy; K loses all that traditionally makes a movie hero special and does the right thing anyway, even willingly sacrificing himself. Then again, protecting people and retiring rogue Replicants—Luv (Sylvia Hoeks) in this case—is what he's been programmed to do all along, so how much of this is his choice to begin with? I don’t think that’s a narrative rabbit hole that needs to be explored; it’s a stronger story if he made the choice rather than blundered into stopping Niander because he was programmed too well.

Joi was my favorite character in the movie and I'm glad she got the exploration she did. Ironically, she felt the most human out of everyone, despite being the least "evolved" form of intelligence in the film. Her excited reaction to being able to leave the apartment (with a portable holographic projector) was a nice nod to the fact that Replicants aren't the "lowest" form of life anymore; if K were less humane, she might be used just as he is rather than given relative freedom. Another character says there "isn't much" to Joi's mind, giving the impression that Replicants have at least learned an air of superiority from their human creators if not inherited a full-on racist viewpoint. You could argue that’s a hint Joi’s humanity is all a program, but I believe the Replicants were just as wrong about her as humans were about Replicants. She seemed concerned she could die and knowledge of her existence indicates to me that she’s sentient. At one point she "pounds" on K's car and yells to wake him up as danger approaches; why would she mimic emotions that he's not conscious to experience? I believed Joi when she said she loved K, despite whatever programming may've been installed in her (after all, he’s programmed too and we’re supposed to take his emotions at face value). Just like he does, I bought into their relationship completely and really enjoyed it. I was surprised how invested I was and I liked how believable their chemistry was. Whether or not their love was just a program didn't matter to me: if a computer can perfectly emulate both humanity and love, who's to say that "emotion" isn't real? On the other hand, like K, perhaps I just don't want to believe their love was a lie.

It's interesting we didn't see Joi sexualized or exploited as K's holographic girlfriend (even during a sex scene), but the fully naked billboard version at the end absolutely was. The Joi K loves has agency, but the billboard is for sale. This may've been a play on virgin/whore classifications placed on women: the loving, humanized Joi is an idealized, loyal, movie-friendly picture of a wife, while the billboard version is the exact opposite. Though the movie wants us to believe her love was fake by repurposing her lines and the name she gives K, I don't believe it. Or don't want to. I can see the argument that she was never real: shouting to wake K up could be a safety feature or something akin to an alarm clock, which also activates whether you’re awake or not. Willing to have herself taken off the home network and put in danger could be a step to "prove" how much she loves him. Hiring a prostitute to act as her physical proxy could be part of her programming rather than a choice…but if so, why was she so possessive and curt about kicking Mariette out of the apartment instead of acting like it was a normal function? There was emotion behind her dismissal of Mariette after “they’d” slept with K and in her reaction to Mariette saying there wasn’t much in her head. If she's not real, it's a subversion of both the expectation that the hero should get the girl and the trope of a hero avenging a dead lover. On the other hand, I wonder if saying Joi isn’t who K thought she was is not only a way to subvert multiple cinematic tropes at once, but a way of saying she’s more complex than anyone thought. Why should she choose between solely being the loyal housewife or the “whore?” Who’s to say her love—even if programmed—for K/Joe isn’t every bit as genuine as the love she has for anyone else who uses her program? Perhaps the real-life parallel is not that Joi dies only for K to find out she wasn’t who he thought she was afterward, but that she breaks up with him and moves on, which would recast his reaction to the billboard as a selfish ex calling his former partner a whore for dating someone else. Are we sure no data from his household computer was sent back to the central network through the antenna he breaks, so any Joi could recognize him (perhaps something like a backup feature in the event of damage to the household mainframe)? If not—and if we’re to read the scene as though nothing his version said mattered—her depiction (and borderline vilification) as a giant naked advertisement for companionship to anyone and everyone is fairly sexist. Her love isn’t real if he’s not special? She isn’t a real person if she’s not for him alone? 

While it ultimately doesn't matter if Deckard is a Replicant or not, I absolutely would've liked to see more of Harrison Ford in the film. It takes a long time to get to Deckard and while he does get several strong moments—including a very touching moment that’s perhaps the only time I've seen Ford cry onscreen—I wanted more. At the very least, Deckard should've had a discussion with K about the legitimacy of seeing Replicants as equal to humans. No one is in a better position to answer that question than a man who either believed he was human and found out he wasn’t or who was a human and fell in love with an artificial intelligence. Couldn't they bond over their love for an "artificial" woman? Leaving their conversation at "strangers is best sometimes" felt like a massive missed opportunity. Deckard is also the best link to the way things used to be the film offers; he has nothing to say about the new state of society? About Replicants, even though he fell in love with one after killing their kind, was saved by a supposedly evil one, and he's been on the run/in hiding as one (or for abetting a runner) for 30 years?  About Replicants doing the job he used to (which could make him a foil for Gaff (Edward James Olmos))? About the similarities between Tyrell and Niander, and Niander's much more blatant slave race plan?

I think there are enough hints to say that not only is Deckard a Replicant, but that this theory is correct and he's designed with Gaff's memories. Not only do the very significant animal sculptures reference Gaff's origami, but Gaff commenting "I wanted to be alone, Deckard wanted to be alone; so we were partners and we were [alone]" strongly implies they were alone together because they're the same person. The horse sculpture Deckard carved that connects to K’s implanted memory and triggers his rebellion is similar to Deckard's unicorn dream, which proves he's a Replicant because there’s no way for Gaff to know about it unless it was implanted from either a devised memory or Gaff’s own recurring dream. When he finds the origami unicorn, Deckard realizes what he is…so he goes rogue with Rachael, just like K does when he realizes the significance of the horse. Sure, Deckard doesn’t burst through walls and couldn't break the handcuffs K easily does, but Deckard was never shown to be super-strong in the original movie (and he does punch K several times without being hurt himself). If Tyrell really did engineer Deckard and Rachael to produce a child as Niander teases, that makes their rapid love story in the original film more than a movie trope: their attraction is predetermined and planned. Perhaps their rapey love scene was programming activating within both of them instead of a moment where Deckard chooses to force Rachael to stay with him; maybe Rachael was able to fight her programming due to her existential crisis (having just learned she was a Replicant), so she didn’t know what was her thought/desire and what wasn’t, while Deckard didn’t realize what he was, so he didn’t know to fight. That’s not a happier reading of that scene, though, as she’s still forced to sleep with him against her will and he’s also forced to do what he does. Additionally, while a human/Replicant hybrid would break down the wall between the two species, a fully Replicant child would obliterate it. The ability to produce a child without any human intervention would make them a species unto themselves. I think that's the greater breakthrough, as well as a reason making Deckard a Replicant makes more sense and matters more to the “what is humanity?” question than if he's just a human.

I liked that they took the "some Replicants have open-ended lifespans" idea from the theatrical version and kept the ambiguity of whether or not Deckard is a Replicant from the Final Cut. That was a smart way to honor what most audiences have seen while continuing on from the "true" vision of the movie. That said, I really would've liked a solid answer one way or another on whether Deckard is human or not. A major theme is "is there really a difference between humans and Replicants (and holograms)?" so it doesn’t really matter, but I think they should’ve pulled the trigger on that answer. Why keep stringing us along? Why would Niander introduce that ambiguity to Deckard when interrogating him; wouldn’t that confuse the situation for Deckard instead of helping Niander get the answers he wants? The “what is humanity?” question would be much stronger given a human-seeming hero like Deckard who isn’t human. Furthermore, while the "what makes reality/humanity real" theme is interesting upon reflection, I think there's a line where ambiguity stops being clever and conversation-provoking. Instead, it becomes a tedious exercise in contorting yourself to avoid making choices. If everything is ambiguous and nothing is certain, at some point why should we care about any of it? Why tell a story that has no answers, and therefore makes no statement? How do you leave the audience with any message if you have to rely on everyone to come to the same conclusion (a near impossibility)? I want to know what the filmmakers are saying, not question whether I’m guessing their intentions correctly or not.

Jared Leto's Niander certainly had a memorable, distinct presence, but he was too obviously evil and one-dimensional. At least Tyrell, as self-important and manipulative as he was, seemed to genuinely be sorry he couldn't help Roy Batty (even if he were equally sorry that meant he wasn't God and couldn't save himself). With Niander, my first and only impression was that he was evil and needed to be stopped; with so much ambiguity in this film and world, it's odd they didn't try to make him more complex (though if you’re going to make just one thing unquestionable, it absolutely should be that slavery and oppression are evil). I would’ve liked to know why he thinks humans shouldn’t rise to the occasion and do the hard work he expects his slaves to. Just saying “all civilization is built on slavery” wasn’t enough of a reason for me. I don't think the film even needed a personification of evil; their society's disdain and lack of concern about how they use Replicants would've been enough to form an enemy bigger than anyone could fight on their own (not to mention a better representation of our real-life systemic problems). I think it would've been stronger to remove Niander, leaving K a slave to the faceless government and its systemic hatred of Replicants while simultaneously exploiting him to further their goals. That way, even well-meaning and friendly officials are implicated to a greater degree. I don't think the story needed to give evil a face which will, I assume, be ultimately and probably relatively easily overthrown in a potential sequel. As memorable as it was, at first I couldn't tell if Niander's cadence was due to him being a Replicant himself, which raised a confusing question that didn't need to happen. I did like his floating devices that acted as his eyes to counteract his blindness, though; they were cool touches of futuristic technology. 

Robin Wright was solid as K's trusting police Lieutenant Joshi. She walked the line between wanting to believe K—and maybe even liking him—and having next to no qualms about having him retired if he went too far off his baseline. She does give him two days' head start when it's apparent he'll be retired, but that's at least partially because she believes he's maintained the "wall" between humans and Replicants' social standing and feels indebted to him. That this wall is meant to keep Replicants in their place, coupled with the not at all veiled threat of a slaughter (of the Replicants, no doubt) if the wall falls, reinforces her position as an agent of the systemic oppression the Replicants find themselves manufactured into. She also continues tracking his location, so I’m not sure how long her courtesy head start would’ve extended. Even if I misread her and she is fully on his side, it’s likely the government would eventually force her into choosing to side with him or them, and I have no doubt she’d choose to maintain the order she’s so dedicated to by turning on K. Her wall would crumble if a Replicant who needed to be retired was proven innocent too, I’d imagine. I would've loved to see the complexity of their relationship—and her position as an agent of society—explored further.

Niander's right-hand-Replicant Luv was an effectively cold, intimidating enforcer.  However, she didn't get a chance to show many sides of her character and I felt there was a lot more to explore with her. Did she work for a slaver for preferential treatment or just because she was programmed to obey? It’s likely the latter, but was there a moment when she chose to continue working for him? Did she see other Replicants as lower than her or different in some way, like K did? Did she hope Niander would be successful at creating natural Replicant birth so she could play a role in leading the Replicants out of servitude? Was she shamed by her inability to give birth (a suggestion I’ve seen elsewhere interpreted Niander’s murder of a newly “born” Replicant in front of her as a shaming tactic)? I would've liked to see what her goals were—if any—beyond carrying out his interests. She certainly had an air of superiority, both making a point to tell K that she’s “the best” and boasting that she’ll lie to Niander about her reason for killing Joshi and he’ll believe her, which could’ve been capitalized on more. How long has she been lying to him, and has it just been to further his plans no matter what it takes or is it because she wants to go beyond his parameters to accomplish her own ends?

Doctor Ana Stelline, a memory maker for the Replicants, brought a warm human touch to the rest of the world. I loved that she had such an almost whimsical outlook on life, contrasting sharply with the bleakness in the rest of the world. For all the films' monolithic structures and vast open spaces, it's a woman in a glass box that cares to consider the little, personal things to perfectly craft life-defining (and altering) memories. It's fitting she had such warmth, given she created it for the Replicants. Her immune deficiency was a smart reference back to the world of the original, where humanity has not eradicated disease despite other accomplishments. Her illness also felt like a callback to JF Sebastian, one of the original film's Replicant designers who suffered from “Methuselah Syndrome,” causing him to age more rapidly than normal. It's interesting that the ill are used to create slaves with physically perfect bodies in this world. I would’ve liked to know more about what she thought of the world and Replicants’ place in it. My friend wondered if Doctor Stelline is even sick; it's plausible her records were faked and no one knows for sure. I wondered if she's building her own rebel army by seeding the horse memory into every rebellious Replicant's mind (their leader Freysa (Hiam Abbass) tells K they all wanted to be the savior). That could be a cool way of starting a rebellion, though we see next to nothing of Ana’s views of the outside world so who knows what she thinks (I would guess she’s sympathetic to Replicants since they’ve been protecting her).

Dave Bautista was great in a serene, reserved role as Sapper. This was a nice departure for him and it's good to see him flex his acting muscles in such a growing variety of roles. It would've been interesting to watch K viewing a file on Morton to let us know who he was before he witnessed a miracle. I wanted to see the impact of a miracle on someone who didn't feel personally connected to it; was Sapper a different man before he knew the greatest Replicant secret of all time? Edward James Olmos was also good in his brief cameo. Bringing Gaff back was a smart, logical nod to the original and I liked the hint he gave to whether or not Deckard is a Replicant. Likewise, Sean Young's cameo—both in clips of the original film and with a new Replicant copy (provided by CGI and performance double Loren Peta)—was well-used! It was great to see they didn't decide to only bring Harrison Ford back from the original. I also liked how they employed scenes from the first movie to manipulate Rick (and set K's investigation off).

While most of 2049's characters raise intriguing questions (even if I wanted more from many of them), the overarching plot fell short for me. The search for a Replicant savior was mildly interesting—mostly in terms of discussing whether or not K had a purpose—but neither the revolutionaries nor Niander advanced that plot at all. The Chosen One does not add to either side’s cause and we never really learn what the rebels plan to do with Ana beyond holding her up as a symbol of their species-hood. It’s not like they can breed amongst themselves anyway—Tyrell made it clear in the original that once the Replicant DNA is developed and grown, it can’t be changed—and we’re given no indication that they have access to the technology to make fertile Replicants even if they could figure out what was special about Ana, Rachael, and potentially Deckard (though they’re more than willing to sacrifice him, which I would say is the one strong hint that he’s human). It felt like that plot was a stalemate (if that, considering the two sides don't really come into conflict except through K) left hanging in hopes for a sequel. I would've preferred the Replicant rebels begin their uprising in this movie rather than remaining in a holding pattern. Either way, I didn't leave the movie stoked for a rebellion or with the feeling one was even necessarily coming (since Niander can’t create his slave race and even Deckard was no help, the rebels could conceivably just let Ana stay hidden forever). If Ana gets more to do and Deckard plays a major role I might be interested, but this movie didn't hype me up for a sequel. Perhaps it's because the rebellion felt so extraneous to any of the main characters' stories, their much more interesting personal questions, and even to finding the miracle baby that I'm not invested. I feel like HBO’s Westworld did a better job of covering an artificial intelligence’s burgeoning rebellion if not the dawn of consciousness as well. Perhaps like the memories Ana creates, the point of the movie was not to spark a full-on rebellion, but to rebel against an oppressive society by preserving the little moments; to give meaning to small connections (such as between a parent and child or a pair of lovers) that help preserve (or create) humanity in desolate loneliness.