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popculturebuffet · 4 years ago

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Sparkshortstravaganza! (Commissioned by WeirdKev27)

Well this was a needed kick in the pants. When I first heard of the Sparkshorts program I was excited. As a kid I loved PIxar, as an adult I love pixar and as an old man dealing with the loss of his partner floating away in my balloon house, i’ll still love pixar. So the idea of a program focused on giving new fresh talent the room to do whatever they wanted and make content that would be on Disney Plus, a platform BADLY bereft of original animation? It was a dream come true and the first one I saw Kitbull is easily a masterpiece and something that I can vividly recall every part of to this day, which for my terrible short term memory recalling EVERYTHING is a rare feat few works have achived. But given I have a REALLY bad habit of letting things I want to watch sit there if I don’t jump on them immediately.. I let it sit there and didn’t touch any of the shorts and mostly forgot about the program until now. Until Kev, my patron and the only person paying for reviews at the moment, though others are more than welcome wink wonk, just decided what the heck and to test out comissioning shorts picked these ones because why not. And given I had been dragging my feet and reading the descriptions found creative and suprisingly heavy premises... I was fully on board And better late than never because along with Soul this program has EASILY restored my faith in the company after Onward really disapointed. Granted they’ve done worse, while there are pixar films I haven’t seen I need to like Coco or Cars 3, I’ve vowed NEVER to watch Cars 2 unless I have to and that vow has served me well so far. The shorts here are as a whole beautifully animated, have a ton of wonderful concepts and even the two weaker ones are still gorgeous to look at and a decent watch regardless and both come from a very well meaning place with a very well meant message. So yeah i’m thankful for this comission and to show you why let’s go through every Sparkshorts so far and see why their so awesome.. after some background of course.

Sparkshorts, for the uniniated, is a program by pixar where animators are given six months and a limited budget to create a film based on personal experince. The program was designed to test out new ways of animating, directing and creating and to find a creative “spark” in it’s employees. Thus each film feels unique, has it’s own style.. and is utterly charming. I’ll be looking at them chronologically as while this wasn’t my watch order, I feel it’s a bit neater that way. I’ve already taken long enough to get to watching these, let’s open these films up and see what makes them tick shall we?

Purl: An Adorable Yarn Ball Vs Toxic Masculinity Purl.. was better the more I thought about it. The first short released, it DOES have a good message and killer animation. The film takes place at B.R.O., a dude broey brockerage firm that’s painfully relasitic both in how broey it is and in how it looks. That’s to contrast our heroine: Purl, an adorable ball of yarn who just wants to be accepted but is instead ignored by the rest of the company till she changes herself up, donning a suit like her co workers she badly wants to fit in with and adopting their wolf of wallstreet esque douchebaggery. She finally gets accepted.. but ends up shedding her new self to help another Yarn Ball starting up. Director Kristen Lester drew from personal experince, starting work at animation in a mostly male dominated workplace and thus having to adapt and only letting the femine side she’d repressed out when she moved to working at pixar, which had more female employees. The film DOES have a good message about toxic workplaces and toxic masulinty and learning the personal story did raise it a few notches as it made it clear to me that what SEEMED like an over exageration.. was probably just a light exageration given the kind of bro antics we’ve heard about at companies like Ubisoft. So while I didn’t like the film much at first honestly.. it’s over the top because it NEEDS to be because even though it’s 2021.. some idiots STILL don’t get it and kids are better off learning it now so it’ll hopefully stick when their entering the workforce. So we’ll get more people like perl willing to make a change and stick up for those like her and less dude bros. Still a decent and clever short with Perl’s bro form looking really neat and the animation on her in general is really fucking gorgeous. All in all not the best of these but still pretty good and while a bit thick on the message.. it kinda has to be.

Smash And Grab: A Jaunty Ride to Freedom

This was a really fun one. Directed by Brian Larson and inspried by his need for a break from routine this follows two robots, the titular smash and grab who are designed to well.. smash and grab coal-like energy things for a train and have for years and years. The two long to high five, but can’t because their hooked to tubes so they can’t escape. But one day Smash looks out the window and not only sees fellow robots living a better life.. but a way to power him and his buddy/love intrest? I mean bromance or romance, either way it works. Point is our heroes escape, and have to fight security. It’s just a really damn fun and creative movie. While robots wanting a better life isn’t new, the crisp art deco animation, breakneck pace, fun gags and heartwearming relationship between the two bots is just charming as hell. It’s just a fun ride the whole way through with a lot of heart and creativity with the two’s way they throw coal to one another used to take out the guards, and all together just some really good set pieces. Easily one of my faviorites here and that’s a high water mark to pass.

Kitbull: Tiny Orphan Kitty + Big Abused Doggo = Best Friends

As I said this is the only one of these I saw before today and as I said it’s stuck with me. I love dogs. I have one of my own named Yoshi whose just a sweet boy. So i’ve always loved ALL DOGS.. and was thus horrified years ago when I learned about the stigma Bulldogs get. Seen as “agressive’ and “Mean’ and victious.. when really a lot of them, including my grandpa’s own pitbull when I was little, are just loveable as any other dogs. And having also known a former fighting dog my friend owned, if a much smaller min pin rather than a pitbull, who by the time I met him had become the sweetest dog you’d ever meet.. yeah.. don’t mistreat a dog just because some assholes force it to fight to the death because their sick, horrible, ghastly human beings.. if they can even be CALLED human beings after doing that to these poor animals. My point is it’s nice to have a short about such a needed subject. Director Rosana Sullivan actually had the idea for the short for years and intended to do it as a side project, but when the program cropped up she moved it to pixar and the result is one of the most popular and easily one of the best of an already bright bunch, brought on by her love of animals and working in a shelter. It’s also one of Pixar’s first 2d animated projects and proves their just as good at that as cgi. It’s the touching story of a kitty whose alone in the world and initally mistrustful and hissy at a big dog she finds and is naturally scared of.. until she grows to bond with the dog, realizing much like a LOT of fucking people need to that pitbulls.. are just dogs and often victims of circumstance and the poor, sweet pooch who just wants his owner to love him.. is instead thrown into a fighting pit, nearly killed and forced to make a daring escape with their new forever friends help. It’s through this wonderful, heartrending friendship that the dog finds freedom and the cat.. finds them both a home, no longer running from people but instead making sure they both get a person. It’s often brutal at times, with the scene of the dog being forced to fight being one of the most striking: while we thankfully don’t see the action, we HEAR IT, as does the poor kitty, and we see the aftermath: a friendly harmless dog thrown out into the cold just because it dosen’t WANT to fight. It’s just really heartrending stuff that makes the happy ending all the better. It’s also gorgeiously animated which I mentioned but i’ll say it again; the animation here is GOREGOUS, unqiue and stunning. Go watch this if you haven’t.

Float: This is Why Krakoa Exists

This.. has easily been the hardest to review of the bunch. While ALL of these stories are very personal, very inclusive and very intresting, this one.. is a bit rougher than most of them and hits REALLY close to home. See this one was built out of director Bobby Rubio’s experinces raising his son who has autisim.

It’s about a dad who discovers his infant son can float... and thus gets stares of fear or judgment from eveyrone around him slowly getting broken down by this. So he makes a HORRIBLE judgment call and rather than just accept some people are assholes, weighs his son’s backpack down with stones despite him hating it then drags him away when he ends up floating off, before screaming at the poor kid WHY CAN’T YOU BE DIFFRENT.. He DOES instantly regret this and the ending is genuinely touching as the father finally accepts his son is different and throws him into the air while on a swing, letting his son soar as he always should’ve. It is a beautifully animated and well meant film and the filipino representation is truly great: Rubio originally was going to have the characters as white but his fellow animators convinced him to go for represntation and be true to himself and honestly in a time when disney itself has had to be fought to get queer representation most of the time, it’s nice that pixar at least is a part of it that throughly encourages representation and will gladly put diversity and representation over any bullshit “risk factors”. That being said.. while this was a decent short with a very well intentioned message and it clearly connected with a lot of people.. it wasn’t for me and I say this as someone who has autisim. As someone who has worn down people’s patince and been starred at by a freak for something I was way too young to properly deal with. I’ve been in this Kid’s shoes.

And that’s the problem: The metaphor dosen’t really work for me. While auitism CAN have some benifits and I wouldn’t be any other way i’d be lying if I said it was easy having trouble commuincating, constnatly misreading people, constnatly worrying if someone’s going to like you, and hyperfocusing on a problem instead of being able to set it and forget it for a bit to my own detriment. There’s other problems and not ALL of my issues come from anxiety disorder: I also have anxiety and depression. They just bleed badly INTO said autisim sometimes, as it’s hard to effectively combat anxiety sometimes when your mind won’t let you.

What i’m saying is... there aren’t any FAULTS in his powers. See i’m a fan of x-men, so I can only see this boy as a mutant, and yes I know they usually manfifest at puberty but there have been exceptions so don’t at me.. and one of them who has no real downsides other than the unfair stigma of being a mutant. He’s more like storm, who can control the elements and whose power only enhances her life nad lesss like say Rogue, who looks normal.. but can’t touch anyone without knocking them out at best or horribly abosrbing them into her head at worst. There’s no downside other than the fact people judge him and his dad is a dick about it. And the dad part is hard because I get what Rubio is going for: parents make mistakes, parents mess up and their only human even if they should embrace their kids anyway. That’s a good message and one I support.. I just think Rubio was way TOO hard on himself and thus made his stand in into an unlikeable asshole, one whose more concerned with how everyone ELSE thinks and does the horribly abusive action of basically tying his son’s wings down so he can’t fly. He mans well, it’s so his son dosen’t float off.. but instead of finding a way to help him and work with him on it.. he just stuffs rocks in his back and forces the kid to be miserable so other people can be happy. It just goes way too far in the other direction to work. As I said I think it’s the guy being too hard on himself, manifesting his worst moments with his kids and his biggest regrets and making himself into a very hard to like character because he has trouble forgviing himself for how he acted. So I want to say if you ever read this bobby while I wasn’t hte biggest fan of your film.. I do wholly support you and your son.. and the fact you made an entire FILM just to show your sturggle and show people there not alone was a beautiful act. You are not a bad person , we all make mistakes and we’re all just human. You are a good man Bobby Rubio. I may of not liked your metaphor... but your message is beautiful.

Wind: Immigration by Way of Rocket Science

Thankfully moving on.. this one is tied with Kitbull for my faviorite. It has a truly intriguing premise, a great metaphor, stunning animation, and is just really moving, gripping and fun to watch. This one was by Edwin Chang, and as is usualy by now, it was built on personal experince.. but not his. It was built on the fact his father was an immigrant who had to leave his mother, Chang’s grandmother, behind to a better life. She rejoined them eventually but it left an impact on his father and thus serves as the core of this story. And honestly knowing that only STRENGTHENS an already impresssive sci fi short. It’s the story of a boy, apparently named Ellis so i’ll use that, and his grandmother who live in a bizzare, hauntingly beautifuly stygian sinkhole that has floating rocks and debris. The two spend their day farming potatoes and grabbing whatever they can to hopefully make their way out. But it becomes clear to young Ellis after they find a plane his grandmother wants HIM to go alone and escape and is willing to sacrifice herself.. and ends up having to trick the boy into thinking sh’es going along in order to get him to do what he needs to surivive and thrive. It’s a truly gut wrenching story as even when she seems to have found a way for them both to leave.. it’s very clear she’s simply training him with all the welding tools and what not so he has skills to make it out there on his own in the unknown. So he can live without her.. but more importantly.. so he CAN LIVE. Away from the darkness, not having to scrape and to surivive and hopefully find something better out there. While the old parental figure sacrifciing thsmelves so the youngun can start hteir journey isn’t new.. it’s the unique, beautiful and haunting setting and the emotoin, conveyed only through the utterly beautiful animation that make this story feel fresh, along with it’s great metaphor. This short is just haunting, beauitful and really damn sad, and I only dont’ have all that much to say because it’s all in the visuals. The only thing I have left is like all of these really, watch it. But especailly this one.

Loop: Enough Said

This is part of the reason I didn’t like Float all that much. Loop is just.. way better at conveying the experinces of having auitism. While Renee is a more severe case than me I can relate to what kicks off the film: Renee, usually paired with an adult at the camp she at, is forcibley paired with a chatty boy named Marcus. While Marcus is eager to go home and has no idea how to interact with the two the two genuinely bond, with Marcus slowly getting into Renee’s world. The key scene for this and the one that clinches the film is Renee waving her hands over the reeeds in the water, throughly enjoying it with marcus not getting it.. till he tries himself. Director Erica Milsom, whose worked with autistic children and picked this medium entriely because i’ts perfect for a non verbal character and is one that can tackle heavy issues like this in a way to help people understan, really wanted to counter most depections of severe autisim, paticuarlly sensory issues. While we see the good in them instead of JUST her freaking out or being overwhelemed: how her sounds and the things she feels truly relax her and how she really DOES enjoy nature and is perfectly at home there. It’s just a beautiful way to show this disablility is not ALL bad, as many works tend to focus soley on the drawbacks. While I had my issues with Float part of it was it had too much good.. but Loop is superior at this simply because it shows both with unflinching honesty: The beauty of something that calms and relaxes your brain or a touch or sensation that just FEEELS really good, things that while again i’m not on the same level as Renee.. I can still fully relate to. But what puts it over float besides not having a messy metaphor is it DOES show the issues that come with it.. but does so WELL and with nuance. It shows how isolating autisim can be, especially for someone like Renee who can’t talk, how people are sometimes freaked out by you and don’t know how to interact with you and how adults can MEAN WELL, and the counsler setting them off was a good idea in the end... but can also be misguided and not fully know how to handle you without overwhelming you. It shows just how bad a panic attack can be, how you can just.. shut down and drive away. It was easily the sequence that hit the hartest and resonated the most as I’ve had those, and i’ve just shut down with no one able to reach me.. and it makes it all the more touching as Marcus eventually realizes how to handle things, and gives her space despite the setting son and the peril of being stranded.. because he realizes she needs it and offers to simply be there when she’s ready. It’s a touching, wonderful gesture, capped by him giving her a reed.. and the two heading home finally udnerstanding one another.This one is very close to wind in my heart and I think I found even more love for it writing this review and realizing just how much it hit me. And that ain’t bad.

Out: Be Proud of Who You Are.. with the help of a gay cosmic space cat

Speaking of hitting close to home and really resonating with me, we have Pixar’s first short with a gay main character, with his sexuality being the center of this. And as a bi person who had struggle accepting his sexuality let alone telling anyone, even when you know someoen will likely accept you.. this naturally hit hard. I took some time to realize I was bi, and when I did I was terrified of telling my mom, despite her being loving, supportive and just wonderful, same with my brother. Both fully accepted me as I figured and had no issue with it, esepcially sine my romantic history is nearly non existant anyways, but I related to our hero Greg’s fears of coming out to his parents despite them being utterly wonderful, well meaning people. It’s hard to come out, it’s hard to admit that about yourself, and it’s hard knowing you may not be accepted or things may change. I had an even harder time coming out to my dad, who I fully expected being a trump supporter and having said “if gay marriage is leagal I should be able to marry my cat”, to not support me and to loose him.. and was proud and suprised when nope, he was utterly supportive and happy for me.. if a bit awkward with the “be careful with sex” advice.. to someone whose had none and may never will due to being awkward as shit. But he meant well and the point is I really related to this, and it’s easily one of the best coming out stories of this kind, tied handily with Schitt’s Creek’s episode about Patrick coming out to his parents that dealt with the same theme. And naturally given the nature of these shorts it was a story close to Stephen Clay Hunter’s heart, as he group up a gay nerd in the 80′s a time when homophobia was even worse and representation was near non-existent. So when given the shot he wanted to make something for a young him, something they can look at and point to and tha’ts me. And the behind the scenes short for this one sold just how... big this felt for him. To draw two men in love and embrcing, to see guys mo capping that. To see someone LIKE him on screen. It shows just how important representation is and how dumb it is it took 20 goddamn years at pixar for them to get gay.

The short itsel is delightful as we open with a gay space cat and dog appearing in a rainbow. The Cat and Dog are watching Greg, a nice young man whose moving out of his small town with his boyfriend Manuel.. only to panic when his parents who he hasn’t come out to show up to help move and try and hide the one photo he has of them. And despite Manuel seeing it as a very easy thing to do to come out.. it’s not for Greg. He knows it’s hard and a scene of him practicing shows the poor guy breaking down at the thought of telling them despite getting every indicatio their nice people. It’s then the whole Space Cat thing comes in as the cat enchanted Greg’s dog’s collar, so when greg puts it on as a jest, it’s a body swap! So naturally we get tons of REALLY well animated shenanigans as Greg has to get his body back. Seriously the animation here is gorgeous with director Hunter choosing the painted on , impercet style to give it a storybook feel which fits the story perfectly.. seriously if Disney hasn’t made a story book of this do so.. and if they won’t someone on etsy do it because Etsy is apparently where the merch companies should be making happens.

The point is it’s fun, furious and leads to some great gags.. and then we get the emotional punch to the godnand as Greg bites his mom’s hand in order to prevent her finding a photo of him and his boyfriend. He instnatly regrets it, and breaking the photo in the process and goes to comfort her.. and we get easily the most emotinal, most beautiful part of it as Greg finds out his mom is hurt as she can clearly tell he’s keeping her at arms length and dosen’t want to loose him.. and she’s known all along he was gay.. just like the Schitts Creek example it’s clear she’s hurt a bit her son is scared to tell her but just wants him to be happy. So with a brilliant use of a squeaky toy greg switches back.. and comes out, with his dad warmly hugging miguel when he introduces himn and the space dog crying. Just a beautiful, charming, fun, and gorgeously animated short with some badly needed representation.

Also... one last note. This isn’t related to the short.. but Disney, who once again proves they can’t be progressive without stabbing themselves in the foot and no I will not stop giving out about this. This time’s especailly bad as while Out was heavily promoted.. the descripton DOSEN’T mention it having Pixar’s first gay lead and goes out of it’s way to hide Greg being gay despite the fact the short dosen’t and his being in the closet is the whole conflict of the short. And the not mnentiong the first gay lead thing is noticable because Loop DID rightly point out it was their first non verbal proganist. You can’t.. brag about being progressive about one thing and then try to hide your being progressive about another you idiots. Plus the “pleasing the bible belt” ship has sailed and left port. Ducktales is gay as hell with Penny being gay, even if Disney won’t let her just come out and say it, the crew still had her say it as much as they could, Violet’s dad’s being gay, Della being bi and Webby and Lena being as close to a couple you can get without disney screaming at them no. Andi Mack is fully avaliable on D+ as well.. well okay not fully because the dad turned out to be a pedophile, but still a series with a fully gay character is out there. And finally Owl House got TONS of press for having a bi progatanist and having her love intrest be a girl. Even if Dana Terrance had to FIGHT for that, and rightly so good on her, the point is you have queer characters already. The groups that hate you for that aren’t going to magically stop hating you because you hide the fact a short anyone can see from minute one is very , beautifully gay, I mean it starts with a very swishy space cat emerging from a rainbow atop a pink dog. COME ON. I only have a few words left for disney..

Okay whew, one more and we’re out of here.

Burrow: It’s Okay to Ask for Help and To Bang a Willing Salamander This was the first one I watched today. In hindsight had I properly researched the shorts and realized how heavy they were I probably would’ve saved this one for later to help balance out the deep feels of some of these. While Burrow is VERY VERY good, as all these shorts have been even Float, it’s subject matter is a lot lighter. I mean so far we’ve had stories about toxic masculinity, animal abuse, issues accepting your child is diffrent, sacrficing yourself so your loved one can have a better life, autisim and coming out of the closet. Even Smash and Grab which is light and breezy.. still has a disney death, and is still about a heroic rush to freedom from slavery whenyou think about it. This one.. is about an insecure bunny whose afraid to ask for help and ends up learning to get it while ending up plumiting through a bunch of comedic set pieces. It’s basically if Winnie the Pooh and Bugs Bunny had a baby comedy wise, it has the warm feeling of pooh art wise, a storybook quality tha’ts utterly adoring.. but director Madeline Sharafan specifccally wanted the animators to take after chuck jones, using lots of great expressions and reactions. It has a real classic theatrical screwball comedy vibe and given The Looney Tunes, Droopy, and Tom and Jerry mean the world to me and i’m glad nto reocnnect with 2/3 thanks to HBO Max.. I fucking loved it.

Burrow is still a personal story and is based on Sharifan’s experinces having trouble colaberating, wanting something to be fully baked before showing it off, something I agian relate to. She often hid from the others and refused to show her work until it was done while everyone else was happy to help. And as the previously used to slam disney hard with something they own Hickman Era of X-men has shown.. colaboration is just better and more freeing. By having friends and colleuge s to bounce off of you refine ideas, see how people react to them and grow a bit and that’s what the shorts about.

The plot is easily the simpliest of these: A young bunny wants to build her dream burrow but gets self concious when she runs into a friendly mole and rat living next door to where she wants to build and keeps digging to find both privacy and her own place.. and instead ends up digging into various shenangians and other burrows from frogs, to hedgehogs to most memorably some Salmanders taking a sauna.. and in the best and most ‘how the fuck did they get away with this bit of it”, one of the salamanders ends up .. gladly removing his town and being liike “You wanna do this? I mean I got an hour free” And i’m just saying while now wasn’t the time and the offer was a little awkward i’d go for it if I was her. I mean at least ask him out for coffee later. He seems nice enough if low on boundries. Then ride him until the morning light girl, ride it. She also finds the Demon Bear from New Mutants at one point.. so that’s where he retried to after danny kicked his ass again. Neat.

But eventually our heroione digs herself too deep and ends up hitting water before finding a

Who sees her crumpled plans and then does the stygian call of the badger to call all the other animals to help and after they escape the flood, the bunny finally realizes their good people and lets them see the plans. So we end on our heroine and her new friends and possible salamander lover helping her settle in as she finallyg ets the home she wanted, complete with disco. I mean every home should have a disco. If I didn’t have a ceeling fan i’d have a disco ball.. and I still want one just to set somewhere or hang away from the fan . Let me dream dammit. Overally a fun, hilarious, mad dash short with a good message and a good note to go out on.

Final Thoughts: Overall.. the Sparkshorts program is fucking spectacular, a great way to let some of Pixar’s staff get into the directors chair and really shine, and a way to tackle issues that they may not be able to get greenlit into a full film. Lushily animated, well produced, Pixar has announced MORE are coming and I cannot wait. Thank you kev for comissioning this, and thank you all for reading. If your new and liked this review, follow this blog as I talk disney all the time: when they come back i’ll be doing regular coverage of Amphibia, Ducktales and the Owl House as new episodes come out every week, and i’m currently doing a retropsective on the three cablleros kev also paid for, with the finale of it, an episode by episode look at the legend of the three cablleros, starting this week. I’m also covering LIfe and times of scrooge mcduck (though infrequently for a bit), and finishing up a look at darkwing duck’s just us justice ducks, started with looks at all the players involved and finshing next week with the episode itself. So if any of that sounds good to you, check out the archives, but goodbye, goodbye, goodbye for now.

#sparkshorts #pixar #disney #disney plus #disney+#purl #kitbull #out #wind #loop #burrow #LBGTQ+#lbgt #lbgtq #float #smash and grab #robots

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the-final-sif · 5 years ago

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interview about writing processes

Hey Lady Sif,

thank you for taking time for us and agreeing to answer our interview questions.

Since this was of short notice we decided to change the deadline to June 19.

We hope the time frame suits you.

Here are our questions:

Can you shortly describe us your writing history? How did you start off? How did you come across fanfiction?

Do you have a writing philosophy that helps you overcome challenges in writing?

Could you describe your writing environment? (workplace, prefered writing tools, fandom discourse, discourse with friends)

What inspires you to write and post in and for a fandom? What triggers your headcanons? Does your educational background influence your writing?

In how far does your fandom experience influence your writing?

In how far do you work with others to create fan content? And what ideas do you integrate in your writing?

Are there certain steps you take/decisions you make when/before responding to a post/prompt?

When and why did you decide to host writing events like your fake fics event? What was the purpose and how did you approach the title prompts?

How would you describe the difference between writing alone and writing spontaneously with others (first in creating fan theories and headcanons and second in creating fanfiction)?

Do you think knowing that others read and can comment on your texts subconsciously influences your writing?

What motivated you to create a story where your readers can decide for an ending (name)?

Is there anything else you consider important in your writing process that you would like to tell us?

Thanks again for your time and effort, we are very much looking forward to your answers!

If you’re interested we’ll keep you updated on our findings.

Kind regards, Dana and Helena

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Can you shortly describe us your writing history? How did you start off? How did you come across fanfiction?

I started writing when I was very young! I was a huge reader, and even before I was writing stuff down I was a storyteller. It’s a really important part of my family & how we communicate with each others and others.

My first experience with fanfiction was when I was,, 7 or 8? That sounds about right. I hand wrote a fanfiction called “ShoppingCats” which something between warrior cats and Cats vs Dogs, but also made primarily of my OCs (+ a handful of warriors characters I liked). I still have most of it, it’s sitting in my desk drawer in it’s original binder, since my mother saved it.

I came across fandom spaces / online fanfiction in 2012 with fanfiction.net, and published my first fanfiction in 2013 (under Rosae-Sif on fanfiction.net). I’ve taken breaks as my interests changed & life got chaotic, but I’ve always enjoyed retelling stories that I hear and changing them to suit me more / explore new themes, so I’ve stuck with it after all this time.

Do you have a writing philosophy that helps you overcome challenges in writing?

Yes! I write for myself above all else. It’s fun to write stuff for other people sometimes, and I like getting feedback and what not, but I never let that be the focus of my writing. I always try to write what I want to be reading, so when I go back and reread what I’ve written, more often than not I find I’ve produced something that makes me happy, and that helps keep me going when a lot of other things couldn’t.

Could you describe your writing environment? (workplace, prefered writing tools, fandom discourse, discourse with friends)

Uhhh, I don’t really have any one set thing. I mostly write on my laptop, sometimes I use a notebook + pen. I have 5$ fountain pen that I got that I really love when I have writer’s block.

I think the most consistent “workplace” for me is actually discord/my friends. Almost all of my AUs/fics/ideas start as me storytelling (either typing things out or out loud) to someone else. That’s where the spark comes from, and then that slowly is refined through several iterations until I have something I like.

I really like taking long walks with headphones & nobody else around. That’s when a lot of the very early forms of my favorite ideas come to me. It’s a key part of my writing process the few times I get stuck on stuff too. I just go walk till I figure it out.

I don’t really get involved in discourse much. I like debating people, but I try to stay away from destructive stuff and just have my own fun corner where I create things. I’m in fandom for fun, and I refuse to let me experience be tainted by people who try to turn it into Discourse Central.

What inspires you to write and post in and for a fandom? What triggers your headcanons? Does your educational background influence your writing?

As I mentioned before, I write and post primarily for myself! I have a lot of ideas in my head all the time, and things I want to see, so I create those things and then put them here. It’s fun when other people interact with me + add onto my ideas + create things in response!

My headcanons are usually just kinda,,,, coming out of my brain. I think it’s just how I am. I have a question or a thought and I start looking into it and before I know it, a whole new thing has come out of it.

I think my family actually influenced a lot of my writing style more than anything else. I mean, I was homeschooled for a long time, and my parents were very encouraging of whatever weird projects I was creating (my dad once even let me cut down and drag actual brambles into the basement to create a warriors style fort). I was allowed to dress however I wanted (during high school I worn nothing but PJ pants b/c they were most comfy for me, and also I had/have several capes that I would rotate through), I was allowed to dye my hair (still do! it’s current a side shave in red + purple + blue!), and I was encouraged to just,,, be weird and happy. I think that shows in how I write. I pursue the ideas I want to go after, I indulge myself, I commit to thinks and I focus more on what I want to write rather than what I feel I should write.

That being said, a lot of science nerding that comes out in my writing is def from my educational background. I’ve got a bachelors and stuff. I did take some writing classes, but to be honest, I think my fanfiction experience influenced those a lot more than they influenced my fanfiction (years and years of writing constantly and quickly paid off in college where I would BS papers the night before and get top marks on it).

In how far does your fandom experience influence your writing?

Hmm, I don’t think it does that much? I mean, for the BNHA fandom in particular, I think that seeing all the cool content + ideas other people create really keeps my brain chugging along and creating new things, and god, having seen people make fanart and fanfiction for my stories has been one of the best feelings I’ve ever experienced, but I don’t think that’s really changed how I’m writing.

At my core, I’m still doing the same thing my 8 year old self was doing with her pencil and that binder full of paper. I take the strange thoughts out of my head, and I follow them onto the paper until I create something that makes me happy.

I’ve had some negative experiences of course. I mean, everyone does. They’ve all been fairly minor, mostly just people trying to tell me I’m wrong about stuff that’s either in an AU that’s already not supposed to be canon, or stuff I’m right about. Most of the time it’s just annoying. Sometimes it’s concerning. I ignore or delete the annoying stuff, I don’t want to give it any of my time or attention.

The concerning stuff I try to reply to. It’s been rare, but sometimes I get comments on certain fics trying to tell me what’s being depicted in my fic isn’t abusive when it absolutely is. I try to correct that and link to resources when I do get that. I usually don’t get a reply, but a few times I’ve had people realize that what they thought was normal was actually abusive behavior. I’m happy that I’m able to help people come to that realization.

In how far do you work with others to create fan content? And what ideas do you integrate in your writing?

Hmmm, I’ll be honest, I’m not quite sure how to answer this one. I don’t exactly work with others when creating my fan content? All of my writing (save one RP collab homestuck fic from ages ago) is done by me exclusively, and most my ideas are also mostly from my own brain. Although I will say one exception to that is @windschildfanfictionwriter whose an amazing bnha writer I chat with fairly frequently when I need help figuring something out.

It’s less of “working” with people, and more discussing things/ideas, and being excited about stuff. Sometimes literally all I need is someone to be my rubber duck while I talk about an idea for 2-3 hours to get it solidified. People in my discord server often help me by betaing (editing/reviewing) my wips. My adhd means I often make weird mistakes, and they’re wonderful at helping me catch that.

As for ideas I pull into my writing, it’s hard to pick out specific ones. I think I kinda create + absorb + integrate lots of stuff at once. A lot of the times my ideas don’t come from things other authors write, but instead come from things other authors didn’t write. When I see an thought/idea/thread in a story that isn’t followed up on, or isn’t handled how I think it should be handled, that often inspires me to either use a similar base concept or similar thought but in the way I wish it had been done.

Are there certain steps you take/decisions you make when/before responding to a post/prompt?

Not really? I tend to just go with whatever comes to me or what I already had prepared. I’m rather impulsive, so unless it’s a delicate subject matter, I roll with whatever’s going on.

I do always make myself take a step back before responding to stuff that annoys me/any sort of anon hate. I have to remind myself it’s not worth the effort and I should focus on positive/fun stuff. I’ll admit though, I have a very combative nature that can get the better of me sometimes. I’ve gotten better at that though! Hooray for proper adhd medication to help prevent destructive stimulus seeking behavior and therapy! Although I do still like to debate stuff for fun, I just don’t let myself get hostile about it.

When and why did you decide to host writing events like your fake fics event? What was the purpose and how did you approach the title prompts?

Oh, I just saw the post and thought it looked fun so I reblogged it. Stuff like that is mostly an impulse more than anything else.

I just kinda went with the flow for the titles. God, I got so many of those, I still have a lot of them sitting in my inbox, most of which I probably won’t ever post. For the ones I did do though, I picked ones that sounded like fic titles I would actually use, and then asked myself what sort of story I would use that title for. Then I just kinda wrote whatever came to me.

How would you describe the difference between writing alone and writing spontaneously with others (first in creating fan theories and headcanons and second in creating fanfiction)?

Hmmm. This one is also a bit hard. It’s rare I truly “write alone”, most of my stories start as a form of oral storytelling and then are adapted to “proper” writing. Most of my theories/headcanons start the same way.

You’ll notice a lot of my posts start with “Also” “Okay” or “I’ve been thinking” or “You know”. When I’m writing my headcanon/theory posts, it’s all written very conversationally because I’m still following my family’s storytelling in a way. It’s a public post, but I’m not just making statements to a void. I’m still talking to people, addressing them, leading them through stuff. It’s just how I communicate on a very fundamental leave.

I’m still writing for myself, I’m creating for myself, but I’m doing it with others. I’m telling a story constantly, and sometimes I’m telling that story to myself, but I’m still telling it to someone.

I think you can read that in my fics, with the perspective I tend to use. I use limited third person POV, but when I’m writing, I try to write it how the character I’m writing from the POV of would tell their own story. I’m not just describing what’s happening, I’m letting this character tell their story through their own voice, to others, to me. It’s a core part of my writing, and that makes it hard to say that it was ever really written alone.

Do you think knowing that others read and can comment on your texts subconsciously influences your writing?

I mean, it’d be impossible for it not to. But I don’t think it influences me that much. I’m still writing for myself most of the time, and I hold onto my bullshit tightly. I don’t change my writing based on what I think other people want to see from me.

That being said, it’s still something I think about. It’s more of a conscious choice, but specifically regarding my stories that have abuse in them, I try to connect in elements of realism and common underrepresented traits/habits of abuse (which I do try to check via research when I can) and ensure that they are then called out as what they are. I’ve gotten a number of comments/asks/discord messages from people telling me that my works helped them realize they were in a crappy situation / understand what they were going through, and that’s something that’s important for me.

I think The Green Eyed Monster is an example of that, where I explore platonic stalking/obsession/pressuring. It’s something I don’t see taken seriously often enough, so I wanted to frame it in a serious but realistic light and make it clear that what was happening was wrong and harmful. I wanted to explore this concept, but I purposefully did it in a way that I hoped would help others who might’ve dealt with it on some level understand it for what it was, and I think it really shows. In the comments of that fic, there’s a lot of very personal responses/stories from people who went through similar experiences. I think that’s important, so it’s something I try to do when I can.

The other thing is I do 100% put references/lines in certain stories with an evil grin on my face knowing that a certain handful of my commenters are going to rip their hair out over it, either because they have no idea what I mean by it, or they know exactly what I mean by it. But hey, I’m a hurt/comfort writer at heart, so you can hardly blame me.

What motivated you to create a story where your readers can decide for an ending (name)?

Oh, uh, “Seven Year Old Katsuki Has The Ability To Kill A Grown Man And No Concept Of Legality”.

I actually can’t remember the exact inspiration for this one? I think I saw uhhh, Markiplier, playing a text adventure game, and I got curious about creating something similar.

I considered using a platform meant for text based games, but true to my family’s long history of needlessly complicating things and creating things where they aren’t meant to be created out of some mix of spite and creative hubris, I decided I wanted to make it on A03 instead. I looked up a style formatting guide, and went to work.

That whole project took like 1-2 months, around school work and everything else. It was created entirely using links that sent you to the next page. That’s it. That’s the only ‘code’ functionality I had to work with. So I made a whole paper map of the routes, separating them out into “steps” and then created unique text blocks for each step based on prior choices. I used a secret point system for one of the main routes, and ended up with 97 unique steps, and 155 different text blocks/variations.

Fun project. A03 was having some trouble/going down right after I released it, and to this day, certain members of the discord server still blame me for that as I was forcing the website into bullshit it was not meant to contain.

Is there anything else you consider important in your writing process that you would like to tell us?

Nothing I can think of off the top of my head. Other than maybe I have an African Gray named Cecil, and sometimes when I’m not ready to share an idea with humans, I’ll talk it out with him first. He’s an excellent listener sometimes, and by that I mean he’s usually ignoring me or I’m giving him scratches and he’s not paying my rambling any mind.

Though sometimes I get lucky and when I finish up a point and ask for his opinion, he’ll just look at me for a moment and say “I love you.” He does it because I’ll always cave and give him treats since I’m weak for him, but it still makes me smile.

#sif speaks #sif answers #my writing #long post #if there's anything else #just let me know!#submission

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autumn-foxfire · 5 years ago

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There's something tragic in Hawks dying a hero. Just another famous pro ended up a statistic of fatalities, with his own version of a wikipedia article written in past tense about his career and nothing more. The country would grieve, and then its over. 'Thank you for your service.' At least with All Might, he had people to know him as Toshinori Yagi. You know how a lot of war veterans have ptsd? I doubt he'll forget with Twice. With anything. The way he grew up and what he trained for. (1)

It does have a long lasting effect. A lot of the instincts Hawks has will alway stick with him. So can't not be Keigo without being a little bit of Hawks. There's not much separation of hero and self. Call me biased, but Twice got to live a good life. Yeah he had a lot of sad and difficult moments. But in the end, Twice got to live with his family for some time. He found friends to trust and that trusted him. The League knows Twice and will fight to hell and back for him. (2)

You can safely say, Jin Bubaigawara got to live and be heard. Others and himself felt that he was alive. Hawks doesn't really have that. Tokoyami knows, a little bit. He genuinely cares, and that's nice. I'm sad anyways bc even Toko knows only Hawks the mentor, but it's closer than the rest. Knowing about little speech and gesturing quirks he had. He's the only one to keep the memory of Hawks alive, but to what degree, what kind? :( Kinda sad to think one of Hawks' closest connections is a teenager he couldn't let himself be completely open with. Hawks is always hiding himself, hoarding all the pieces never leaving them behind for someone to look too close at him. And that's literal, in the exposition of Toko and Hawks interacting in the Light Novel. I just wish he had other kinds of relationships too beyond the mentor-student one. I wish he wouldn't have to die without anyone knowing his real name, with having to die and not knowing what Toko thinks of him. (3)

Without having ever gotten to feel real love or care. What's the point of people realizing and sharing their thoughts on you when your already six feet under. Fatgum + protective instincts for our two bird bros soon? He's chasing after Toko, whose carrying Hawks. Pls he's a mentally exhausted and severely injured 23 year old whose been through seven months of stressful situations. Maybe some pros should reconsider their impression on the 'naive upstart who goes way too fast' (especially Rocklock, fight me for calling him an arrogant jerk.) I'm sorry I just really don't like how there's nothing outside workplace relationships. The villains are closer to each other than the heroes are. Gotta give points to Endeavor for worrying about Hawks and getting huffy at Tsukauchi over 'classified info.' (4)

I’m assuming this was all one ask, I’m hoping I’m right! XD

Hawks, or Takami Keigo, is a tragic character really. He was a child saved from an abusive situation (and potentially a son of a ‘villain’ if the theif!Takami theory is right) only to be placed in another abusive situation that disguised itself as a ‘training’ regimen for young new heroes. The fact that they told him to throw away his old name to become Hawks is telling of what exactly the HPSC expected of him. If he died, the only people who know his actual name are the HPSC and a villain. That’s it. And the only reaction you’ll get from the public if an official statement was released that gave his full name would probably be ‘huh, I never realised I didn’t know his name,’ because he’s not just Hawks to himself and the HPSC, he’s only Hawks to the public too.

Hawks mastered the persona of being a sociable person without actually forming proper social bonds until recently. The closest people to him are probably Endeavor, who Hawks has heroworship for and Tokoyami who he originally took on to learn about the league of villains and ended up getting attatched when he thought the boy wasn’t living to his full potential. And you can still argue those were work relationships at best (though his relationship with Tokoyami does seem to be evolving into a little bro/big bro thing and I really hope it does). So, you’re right, Twice did eventually have healthier connections then Hawks, or at least closer connections who he knows he could rely on in a pinch and not just because they’re fellow ‘heroes’ like Hawks would.

(Though I’m not sure if the league is aware of Twice’s story, I hope they are because I don’t want his struggles and hardships he faced before being associated with the league to disappear without anyone knowing why he reached this point in the first place. If there’s one thing I believe, it’s that the leagues stories need to be heard)

I hope Hawks doesn’t die here. I don’t think he will as there would be no point Dabi revealing his name to him then (especially as it looks like the recorder has become molten plastic as this point). I want Hawks to have the chance to live as Takami Keigo again and make connections with people. I want him to see Tokoyami become a hero and cheer him one and support him. I want his dream to come true.

Also to be fair to rocklock, he comes across as dickish but he was just worried about the kids during the overhaul arc because he’s a father himself and Hawks did kinda present himself as an arrogant person during the billboard awards. He’s a softy at heart and if he learned Hawks situation I think his fatherly instincts would come out too

#bnha #bnha hawks #thanks for the ask!!#long post #sorry I didn't add more I wasn't sure what to say #I spent so long just writing this reply that my slushie melted #Anonymous #also I'm sorry if this wasn't all the same ask #I couldn't tell and just thought I connected the pieces where I could

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havebell71-blog · 6 years ago

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Manager With Perks By Lelani Black-- Evaluations, Conversation, Bookclubs, Lists.

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canmom · 4 years ago

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to play the role of "i can't not fuck him", this is right on, and here's some more details in an excellent sakugablog article.

2nd key as a distinct role was apparently popularised by RahXephon (2002), a post-eva mecha show which essentially wanted to pump out as many Yutapon cuts as possible so got him to only do layouts and assigned other, less experienced people to die down those shots as 2nd key animators (daini genga). 2nd key was originally just a stage in the key animation process rather than a separate job altogether, but now it's almost universally a credited position done by someone other than the original key animator.

anime production is really weird in a lot of ways. despite all the profits flowing in the pay is shit compared to animation jobs in other countries, and has been shit for decades - a legacy that goes all the way back to tezuka, and which has to do with the production committee revenue sharing system, and also an industry that is very resistant to unionisation despite rampant workplace abuses.

inbetweeners (dougaman) and production assistants have it especially bad. a slipped schedule will usually lead to a cascade of crunch for the whole production, which is very common to the point of being almost routine. the poverty wages paid to inbetweeners, and general petty abuses and disdain, mean most of them burn out of the industry rather than moving up the 'ladder' to become key animators or staying long enough to become really good at the nuances of drawing douga, so there is a severe shortage of good key animators for one thing, and meanwhile a lot of the time the inbetweens are completed in a rush to make ends meet resulting in very variable drawing quality, with key animators complaining that their work has been butchered.

the industry's current answer to this key animator shortage is to start increasingly employing foreign animators who have grown up watching anime - but here too the pay still sucks and it's common to wait months to even see it. so why do people do it anyway? because despite it all, anime just has, a lot of the time, more interesting work: more compelling stories, better cinematography, better character designs to animate... and it allows room for kinds of individual expression just impossible in Western animation. if they could be assured a living, people would surely make anime just because we want anime to exist. so it grinds on: for each person who gets ground up by the wheels and quits for a less punishing industry, there's a starry eyed young person eager to get their name in the credits of an anime they love. (there's also outsourcing, though foreign inbetweeners are often seen with even more disdain - a derogatory phrase refers to them as animals).

there's some efforts to address this, and certainly exceptions to this rule such as Kyoto Animation which has a fantastic, experienced team of in-house inbetweeners because they had the sense to value them instead of treating it as a hazing ritual for future key animators, and that's great in itself but also helped establish them as one of the best studios. (I've also heard good things about Kinema Citrus - one animator who worked on RevStar said they were very well organised, and paid well and promptly using paypal, and overall sounds like it was a very good experience. which is reassuring - after the shit I've heard about 4⁰C and Trigger, it's reassuring to know at least one other studio whose work I like is treating their artists right).

it doesn't have to be this way, even under capitalism. but despite it all, once I'm good enough I'll probably take anime work. i hear all about the catastrophic conditions behind the scenes for wonder egg priority, and how they saved an episode when a well connected fan helped them recruit a few dozen foreign animators to draw second key... and yet! i still have this feeling like i wish i could be in that clique, and create animation that inspires the same awe and admiration i feel towards "good sakuga" in people. so... i get it. i get why you'd do it. but this situation sucks, and i don't see how a few stopgap measures like the animator dormitory will change it.

the american animation industry won major victories through efforts to unionise the disney animators' strike. this was effective, and they won the right to be credited, and American or European animators still get paid reasonably well. but in the longer term, capital routed around those gains by shifting as much work as possible to cheaper Korean animators; if you want to actually draw animation rather than just storyboards in America, it seems almost impossible. (in France you might have a better time!) anime did not take this route - there was labour unrest at toei in the 70s iirc, which huge names like miyazaki and takahata were involved in organising... but those two went to become bosses themselves, infamously demanding ones to boot. now it seems like there is an attitude of despondence about the prospect of ever demanding more from this industry. there have been individual cases, mainly lawsuits, but if the animator dormitory people are to be believed, there is such fear of blacklisting in the very closely knit industry that animators are very reluctant to take such risks. i don't know how it's likely to change in the foreseeable future... but it's gotta, this industry is running out of ways to route around its problems.

anyway prince what's his name is right, seven vagianias, etc etc

#animation

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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Netflix’s Never Have I Ever: Great TV Comedies to Watch Next

https://ift.tt/3klRNa5

If there’s justice in this world, high school comedy Never Have I Ever will return for at least a third season. The story of 15-year-old Devi Vishwakumar, a Los Angeles teen reeling from her beloved father’s sudden death while trying to navigate all the usual boys/school/friendship mess of adolescence, deserves to continue long into the future. (Here’s our spoiler-free season two review.)

While fans wait for news on a third season commission, the 10 great shows below are well worth discovering or (re)discovering. They’re not all teen shows, nor are they all strictly comedies, but somewhere along the line, they share some DNA with Mindy Kaling and Lang Fisher’s Never Have I Ever. Add your own additional recommendations below.

Fresh Off the Boat

Six seasons (2015 – 2020)

Since the cruel early cancellation of her show Don’t Trust the B**** in Apt. 23 (Krysten Ritter’s funniest performance to date) it’s pretty much mandatory to watch anything Nahnatchka Khan makes. Fresh Off the Boat was her follow-up comedy for ABC, based on the early life of celebrity chef Eddie Huang as his family moved from Washington DC to Orlando. It’s set in the 90s and concluded last year after six seasons. The cast is great, in particular Randall Park (WandaVision, Always Be My Maybe) and Constance Wu (Crazy Rich Asians) as young Eddie’s Taiwanese immigrant parents, each of whom has very different mileage on adjusting to life in the US.

The Mindy Project

Six seasons (2012 – 2017)

This romantic comedy was Mindy Kaling’s post-The Office project – the story of self-absorbed, pop-culture obsessed, lovable OB/GYN Dr Mindy Lahiri (Kaling) and her search for love in Manhattan. After some cast changes in its first season, it really found its feet and settled into a sharp workplace comedy with a great ensemble. It survived a post-season three cancellation by FOX thanks to being picked up by Hulu for a further three seasons, and ended in 2017. US comedy fans can enjoy playing actor bingo too, thanks to appearances from many of Kaling’s The Office co-stars, including writer-producer B.J. Novak, Ellie Kemper, Ed Helms and more.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

Four seasons (2015 – 2019)

Rachel Bloom and Aline Brosh McKenna’s comedy-musical series is inventive, boundary-breaking and packed to the rafters with talent. Like a few of the shows in this list, it’s distinctly adult in theme and not a high school comedy but still shares the wit, high-key colour and bold approach to life’s harder moments as Never Have I Ever. It’s the story of high-flying NYC lawyer Rebecca Bunch, who gives up everything to move to a backwater Californian town to pursue her summer camp first love Josh (Vincent Rodriguez III). Rebecca’s love of musical theatre bleeds into the show, turning it into a mental health musical complete with funny, original, sharply written song-and-dance routines.

Popular

Two seasons (1999 – 2001)

The debut series from super-producer Ryan Murphy (American Horror Story, Pose, Glee, Nip/Tuck) co-created by Gina Matthews, Popular is the story of Brooke and Sam, two high school sophomores from opposite ends of the popularity spectrum who are forced together when their single parents become a couple. It ran for two seasons on The WB before being cancelled, and has since attracted a cult following for Murphy’s characteristically sharp blend of comedy, romance and serious themes. It landed in the 90s, so yes, the teens are played by 25 year olds, the unpopular nerd (Carly Pope) has model good looks, it’s not exactly diverse (though there is LGBTQ representation) but it’s seminal in Never Have I Ever’s genre.

Sex Education

Three seasons so far (2019 – )

Laurie Nunn’s charming British comedy-drama is a frank and funny look at sexual hang-ups and teen relationships. It has a great ensemble cast led by Otis (Asa Butterfield), a shy teen embarrassed by his sex therapist mother’s forthright attitude to all things physical. When Otis teams up with ‘bad girl’ Maeve to offer anonymised sex therapy to their schoolmates, he discovers that he’s not the only one with issues. It’s a bright and funny high school series with characters to invest in, a stand-out performance by Ncuti Gatwa as Eric, and oh, the sex therapist mother is played by Gillian Anderson. Season three arrives on Netflix this September.

Never Have I Ever Season 2 Review: This Netflix Teen Comedy Deserves to Run and Run

By Louisa Mellor

Never Have I Ever Season 2: Episode 3’s Last-Minute Celebrity Narrator Change

By Louisa Mellor

Freaks & Geeks

One season (1999 – 2000)

A must-see high school comedy. Paul Feig and Judd Apatow’s 1980s-set series is most discussed these days for the outstanding cast of unknowns gathered by Allison Jones (who went on to cast The Office, Parks and Recreation, The Good Place, Arrested Development, Veep and basically every US sitcom worth watching). The prematurely cancelled NBC series kick-started the careers of Seth Rogen, Jason Segel, Martin Starr, Busy Phillips, Linda Cardellini, James Franco and more. It’s the story of Cardellini’s Lindsay Weir, a maths star who crosses social boundaries from ‘geek’ to slacker ‘freak’ after the death of her grandmother. It’s brilliant, weird, funny and painful, and a total antidote to mainstream, slick, rich-kid Beverley Hills 90210 high school glamour, so of course, hardly anybody watched it, the network didn’t get it, and it was cancelled well before its time.

The Wonder Years

Six seasons (1988 – 1993)

Husband and wife team Neal Marlens and Carol Black created a classic in The Wonder Years, a coming-of-age story about Kevin, the youngest son of a suburban American family, growing up against the backdrop of the Vietnam War and the hippie movement. It’s fuelled by nostalgia and the sweet romantic yearnings of its young lead Kevin Arnold (played by Fred Savage, now a top comedy director-producer), but doesn’t gloss over life’s more serious moments. Never Have I Ever’s choice of John McEnroe as its wry adult narrator may well have been influenced by Daniel Stern’s role on The Wonder Years. It’s available to stream now on Hulu in the US.

Skins

7 seasons (2007 – 2013)

Not strictly a comedy, but with plenty of comedic moments, Skins has to be in the running for the best British teen show ever made. The first four seasons especially are filled with great writing, strong performances, and characters whose lives – and complicated love lives – are easy to invest in. It followed the students of a Bristol sixth form college through their A levels, giving it the chance to renew the cast every two years as the previous generation graduated/dropped out/ran away/were murdered. Like Freaks and Geeks, its cast of young actors, from Nicholas Hoult to Dev Patel, Joe Dempsie, Daniel Kaluuya, Jack O’Connell, Kaya Scodelario and more went on to very big things. Much more layered and satisfyingly weird than the reputation it was given by the British press as an orgy of sex, drugs and bad behaviour, it’s another must-watch.

Daria

Five seasons (1997 – 2001)

Developed from a character created for Mike Judge’s animated MTV comedy Beavis & Butthead, Daria Morgendorffer is a cynical 16-year-old with a gimlet eyed take on suburban US life. She’s a 90s icon with a monotone voice (provided by Tracy Grandstaff) and a wry take on her schoolmates, parents, and cheerleader sister Quinn. Her witty, dry animated series aired for five seasons plus feature-length TV specials, and is soon to have a new spin-off coming to Comedy Central, focused on Daria’s classmate Jodie’s travails in the modern workplace.

My So-Called Life

One season (1994 – 1995)

When My So-Called Life aired its only season on ABC in 1994, it was the anti-teen TV show. Muted and realist rather than upbeat and aspirational, it cast actual teenagers, not models, and ventured into areas avoided by many other teen dramas of the time: alcoholism, sex, domestic abuse… Its first-person narration from Claire Danes’ lead character gave it a distinctive voice, and influenced many shows to follow. It’s worth saying that My So-Called Life is a drama, not a comedy, and paints teenage life with a totally different colour palette to bright, satirical Never Have I Ever. Acknowledging that, it’s a cult favourite, and possible to trace a line from Devi’s love triangle with nerdy academic Ben and hot, popular Paxton, and MSCL’s Angela Chase’s love triangle with nerdy academic Brian and hot, popular Jordan (would that line continue all the way back to Pretty in Pink? Probably).

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Never Have I Ever season 2 is available to stream on Netflix now.

The post Netflix’s Never Have I Ever: Great TV Comedies to Watch Next appeared first on Den of Geek.

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balarouge · 5 years ago

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Russia supplying state of mind music for Property impeachment dramatization|CTV Information

WASHINGTON-- For all the speak about Ukraine in your home impeachment questions, there is actually a character standing merely off-stage with a dominant role in this particular story of worldwide case: Russia.

As has actually thus commonly been the case since U.S> > President Donald Trump took workplace, Moscow supplies the state of mind songs for the unfurling political dramatization.

"Along with you, Mr. Head of state, all streets result in Putin," Residence Audio speaker Nancy Pelosi announced recently, as well as except the very first opportunity.

The impeachment examination is actually centred on charges that Trump attempted to push Ukraine's new forerunner over the summer months to uncover dust on Trump political rival Joe Biden, standing up USA army help to the Far eastern European nation as take advantage of.

In her testimony just before the Property impeachment panel last week, mediator Marie Yovanovitch suggested that the head of state's activities played in to the hands of Vladimir Putin, whose federal government has backed separatists in a five-year-old battle in asian Ukraine.

Yovanovitch, a 33-year professional of the State Division understood for fighting nepotism in Ukraine and in other places, was actually ousted from her setting as ambassador to Ukraine after Trump and also his allies began attacking her as well as claimed she was bad-mouthing the head of state.

Her ouster, she and numerous Autonomous lawmakers claimed, essentially gained Putin.

"How is it that foreign shady rate of interests can control our government?" Yovanovitch talked to Property private investigators. "Which nation's interests are provided when the really shady practices we've been actually criticizing is made it possible for to prevail? Such perform undermines the USA, exposes our good friends and expands the field for caesars like President Putin."

After pair of days of public statement as well as the launch of 1000s of webpages of records from witnesses who've consulted with private detectives responsible for shut doors, Democratic and also Republican legislators seem to be even further entrenched in their partial corners concerning whether the president abused his electrical powers.

Trump inquired Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to accomplish him a "a favour" and check out Biden as well as his child Hunter's company dealings in Ukraine. All at once, Ukraine was actually waiting for virtually $400 million in U.S. military help.

While Democrats point out the demand to explore the Bidens embodied a quid expert quo, Trump urges he was actually within his liberties to ask the nation to explore shadiness. Democrats, making an effort to make their accusations a lot more easy to understand, have now chosen preparing the president's actions as an issue of bribery, which, as Pelosi took note, is actually discussed in the Constitution.

Seeker Biden offered on the panel of a Ukrainian gas provider concurrently his papa was leading the Obama administration's polite transactions with Kyiv. Though the timing elevated issues among anti-corruption advocates, there has been no documentation of misdeed by either the former vice-president or even his child.

Trump has dismissed the impeachment proceedings as a "joke" that refuse him and Republican legislators justice.

A crucial ally on Capitol Hill, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., directs the impeachment questions as a continuation of the Democrats' "amazing failure of their Russia scam."

"In the blink of an eye, our experts're inquired to merely fail to remember Democrats on this board wrongly professing they had much more than inconclusive evidence of collusion in between Head of state Trump and also Russians," Nunes claimed.

Democrats, for their component, are trying to lighten the limelight on their concept that Trump is carrying out the bidding process of Putin.

Russia, a historic enemy of the United States, possesses regularly became a philanthropist of Trump's activities, states Rep. Ted Stead, a The Golden State Democrat.

In his July telephone call with Zelenskiy, Trump drove discredited details that hackers in Ukraine-- rather than Russia-- meddled in the 2016 vote-castings.

Last month, Trump abruptly relocated UNITED STATE Exclusive Powers coming from north Syria at Chicken's prompting and also as result produced a protection vacuum for Russia to fill up.

Trump possesses also frequently disparaged and also recommended taking out coming from NATO, the military collaboration that has actually worked as a defense to Soviet as well as Russia aggression due to the fact that it was created after Planet Battle II.

"It's crystal clear that the Trump administration diplomacy is disorderly and also incoherent along with one exception: A number of his actions benefit Russia," Lieu mentioned.

Both in open hearings and also closed-door testament, Democrats have actually sought to highlight issues that Trump's foreign plan often helps Russia.

The issues about Moscow hang around even after unique attorney Robert Mueller's almost two-year examination in to Russian obstruction in the 2016 election dogged Trump for much of his 1st phrase and also brought about the conviction of five campaign agents or even close associates of the president.

Mueller, a previous FBI director, performed certainly not crystal clear Trump of misdeed when he ended the probing neither did he declare the head of state dedicated misdoing.

"If Putin doesn't possess something on him, he is actually performing all this for some bizarre reason," pointed out Rep. Mike Quigley, an Illinois Democrat that sits on your house Intellect Committee.

In her testimony before impeachment investigators last month, Fiona Hill, till July the Russia analyst on the National Safety Council, supplied a zealous precaution that the United States' failing protection to conspiracy theory concepts as well as nepotism exemplifies a self-inflicted situation and also provides the country prone to its opponents.

"The Russians, you know, can not generally make use of bosoms if there are actually certainly not bosoms," she claimed. "The Russians can't manipulate shadiness if there is actually not shadiness. They can not capitalize on alternative narratives if those different narratives are actually certainly not on the market and acquiring credence. What the Russians do is they exploit factors that already exist."

Various other witnesses, featuring Representant Assistant of Condition George Kent and also Emissary William Taylor, the behaving main Ukraine agent, additionally proved that Russia was actually the chief recipient of Trump's decision to stand up army aid to Ukraine.

"Our holding up of safety and security devices that would certainly visit a nation that is fighting hostility from Russia for no good policy cause, no great substantive main reason, no great nationwide protection cause is inappropriate," said Taylor.

U.S. diplomats likewise stressed that the grip on the security help will diminish Zelenskiy, whom they saw as an agitator in a nation that has frequently withstood tumult propelled through native corruption.

"I assume the signal that there is dispute as well as concern concerning the U.S. assistance of Ukraine delivers the sign to Vladimir Putin that he may make use of that as he seeks to work out with certainly not merely Ukraine but other nations," Kent mentioned.

This content was originally published here.

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usnewsaggregator-blog · 7 years ago

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Roy Price canceled ‘Good Girls Revolt.’ For the show’s stars, it’s ‘horribly meta.’

New Post has been published on http://usnewsaggregator.com/roy-price-canceled-good-girls-revolt-for-the-shows-stars-its-horribly-meta/

Roy Price canceled ‘Good Girls Revolt.’ For the show’s stars, it’s ‘horribly meta.’

Inspired by true events in 1969, this series followed a group of young female researchers at “News of the Week,” as they fight for equality in the workplace. Amazon did not renew the show for a second season. (Amazon)

After a wave of sexual harassment accusations in Hollywood, chatter in the industry isn’t just about how sexism infects offices — it’s also about how it infects what you watch.

Roy Price’s resignation last week from Amazon Studios amid sexual harassment allegations has been especially resonant for cast members of “Good Girls Revolt,” the series about discrimination in the workplace that Amazon didn’t renew after one season.

The streaming service has maintained that its decision was solely because of the show’s under-performance. But for many of those who worked on the show, its end was baffling and deeply personal. Since the allegations against Price have become public, several of the stars have been openly tweeting about the show, and privately texting each other about the new revelations in a group chat.

“The show getting canceled in that way felt so horribly meta,” said Erin Darke, who played Cindy Reston, a magazine researcher with grand career plans, in a recent interview. “And such a horrific reminder of how far we haven’t come when one guy who seems didn’t even watch it just had the power himself to say no, no one gets to watch it.”

Based on Lynn Povich’s memoir about female journalists’ 1970 discrimination lawsuit against Newsweek magazine, “Good Girls Revolt” earned rave reviews, a 96 percent Rotten Tomatoes audience score and plenty of media buzz. Amazon’s decision, which came just weeks after its October 2016 release, prompted the show’s creator to make the rare move of calling out Price specifically.

“What we hadn’t factored in is that Roy Price just doesn’t care for the show,” Dana Calvo told the Hollywood Reporter in December. The outlet, citing insiders, reported Price didn’t think the show was an awards-season contender and questioned whether he watched the series. Calvo added: “All I know is that in the [season two] pitch, he asked us to refer to the characters by the actors’ names because he didn’t know the characters’ names.”

Genevieve Angelson, who played the hard-working researcher Patti Robinson, said she “doubled over and sobbed” on her bedroom floor when she found out Amazon wasn’t renewing the series. The excitement over show had been palpable to her; for weeks, she had been getting recognized and flooded with deeply personal fan messages.

“It was just so shocking. It was so the opposite of everything the evidence had told us,” Angelson said. “I’ve been the lead on other TV shows before, and that visceral response in my day-to-day life hadn’t happened before.”

[Roy Price resigns from Amazon Studios amid sexual harassment allegations]

Like competitors Netflix and Hulu, Amazon doesn’release its viewership data. An outside firm that compiled audience estimates for Sony said the show was a hit, especially with women. Amazon’s now-former head of comedy and drama development, Joe Lewis, said that those figures “are wrong and that the show wasn’t performing at the levels we had hoped for.”

Amazon and Sony, which produced the show, both declined to comment for this story. (Amazon founder and chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

Various subscription-based platforms have ended shows after one season. Amazon Studios didn’t renew shows such as “Betas” and “Mad Dogs.” After the cancellation, Sony shopped “Good Girls Revolt” elsewhere. No other company took it on.

[Review: ‘Good Girls Revolt’ is a much-needed dose of forthright feminism on TV]

But, for the past week, fans have seized on the news about Price’s departure to call for the show’s revival. The former executive reportedly passed on “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “Big Little Lies,” both of which won major Emmys, and, according to the Hollywood Reporter, he mused openly at a company party about whether the stars in the latter series would show their breasts.

Darke said the cancellation and Price controversy underscores the need for more female entertainment executives.

“The feeling of not having an equal seat at the table, not only economically and politically, but also creatively, even just in the conversation — it feels like being choked,” Angelson added.

[Harvey Weinstein embodies a culture whose power is on the wane]

Long before she learned about the project, Angelson had already read Povich’s book and knew some of the real-life women involved. “It was the role I was born to play,” she said. When she went to the audition, Angelson told the pilot’s director: “Cast me or don’t cast me, but please take this pilot to full series because I need this show. I think we all need this show. I don’t care if I’m a part of it, I just want you to make it.”

Povich, who released her memoir in 2012, said she heard from young women who watched the TV adaptation and previously didn’t have a clue that the women of Newsweek united in the landmark lawsuit.

“I wrote the book because I believe in people knowing the history of their lives, and young women knew nothing about the lives of their mothers and grandmothers, didn’t know there had been years and years of women laying the foundation by fighting for their rights,” Povich said.

[How a fed-up group of ‘Good Girls’ beat the ‘Mad Men’-era sexists]

And her book — about how a group of young, anonymous women banded together confront their employers despite the career risks — sheds some light on why sexual harassment may be so rampant in Hollywood.

“If someone is sexually harassing you, someone else is getting harassed, too,” Povich said. “I was thinking about this in the Harvey Weinstein case — they had a different situation. They were actresses, freelancers, each coming in one by one, and didn’t necessarily know each other. I could understand why they felt so vulnerable and had no one to talk to.”

[Violence. Threats. Begging. Harvey Weinstein’s 30-year pattern of abuse in Hollywood.]

The process of making “Good Girls Revolt” was also life-altering for some of those involved. The combination of the 2016 presidential election results (which came about a week after the show’s release) and playing Cindy “definitely lit a fire in me,” Darke said. “My generation hadn’t been doing enough. We had gotten complacent.”

Darke began hosting her version of “consciousness raising” meetings (inspired by those in the show), fundraising for various causes and volunteering at an abortion clinic, where she met a young woman who decided to volunteer because of “Good Girls Revolt” and Darke’s portrayal of Cindy.

“Good Girls Revolt” was “a dream job,” Darke said. “Both to work on a show that had something to say about feminism and equality, and also to work on a show that had three female leads, who are all different people, not perfect people, but multidimensional.”

Plus, working alongside a female director, show creator and producers was a new experience. “It felt so safe and lovely,” she said. “I miss Cindy like I miss a friend. All of us were not done telling that story.”

[‘Good Girls Revolt’ star on the series’s cancellation: ‘More than ever, we need stories like this’]

Angelson said she wanted the second season to tackle the ways in which women could perpetuate misogyny. Instead, its sudden ending thrust her back into network TV pilot season. And while she had a blast shooting such a pilot, “the types of stories that are told in that field are just very different.”

After dozens of women accused Harvey Weinstein of sexual harassment, several male celebrities professed ignorance of such misconduct, or regret for not having done more to stop the culture of enabling it.

Similarly, some men who watched “Good Girls Revolt” were shocked by some of the story lines.

For instance, Cindy’s husband, eager to get his wife to quit her career aspirations and start a family, secretly pricked a hole in her diaphragm. A male friend of Darke’s told her it never occurred to him that a man could get a woman pregnant to trap her.

“Even the most well-intentioned men in our lives actually don’t realize the full experience of women,” Darke said. “Entertainment can help open them to that.”

Original Article:

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#canceled #girls #horribly #price #revolt #stars

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marcjampole · 7 years ago

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If you want mainstream media to like your book on American decline, blame the 60’s. Fantasyland latest to do so

It seems as if no social critic can get a fair hearing in the mass media unless she-he blames it on the sixties. If you Google the expression “blame it on the sixties,” you summon up references to a wide range of articles and books in which experts and pundits blame a variety of current social and economic problems on changes in the attitudes, customs and mores of the 1960’s. My perusal of the first three pages of search results found the 1960’s and early 1970’s faulted for the rise in child abuse, our economic decline, political correctness, the vote in the Electoral College for Donald Trump, the increase in obesity, crime and growing drug abuse.

You’d think that most of the sixties-haters would be religious and social conservatives, because, say what you will about that decade, it did witness the sexual revolution that led to more open attitudes and greater social acceptance of sexual rights for women and all kinds of sexual experiences between all kinds of people. But as it turns out, a substantial number of sixties critics are self-flagellating liberals, you know, pundits who claim to be liberal but butter their bread by always blaming liberals for their own predicament. For example, after the election, a slew of Democrats blamed Clinton’s loss on the Democrats depending too much on “identity politics,” i.e., caring about civil rights. With friends like that…

The latest liberal self-flagellator to blame the sixties for the deplorable state of the world is novelist and journalist Kurt Andersen, in his glib and often superficial Fantasyland. Anderson’s description of today’s American Fantasyland is attractive and largely accurate. The insidious spread of fake news; the new level of lying by politicians; the basing of social and economic policy on disproven or bad science; the great numbers of Americans who believe in demons, the absolute existence of a god with male features and/or a literal interpretation of the Judeo-Christian genesis myth; the large number of adults whose lives revolve around electronic games, comic book superheroes, cosplay and other escapist fare; the climate change deniers, the evolution deniers, the birthers—these snapshots of the irrational are but a sampling of the evidence that Andersen musters to show that current American society is based on lies and myths, that we surround ourselves with fantasy.

Andersen is also right when he asserts that fantasy has played a major role in American society since the search for the Northwest Passage and the Salem witch trials. His history of irrational thought in America reads like an outline or a greatest hits list: each major figure in an irrational movement or trend gets a paragraph or so. For readers who want to delve into the long history of irrational thought in America, Fantasyland can serve as a syllabus that sends you to the right people and primary sources to read.

But the third part of Andersen’s thesis—that the sixties marked a turning point, after which instead of being a peripheral trend, irrationality took center stage—is dead wrong.

In sixties terminology, Andersen’s mistake is to conflate “do your own thing” with “believe your own thing.” Yes, a lot of people believed in some pretty weird stuff in the 1960’s. Like the First (1730-1740) and Second (1800-1860) Great Awakenings and the Roaring Twenties, the sixties saw an uptick in interest in the occult and the irrational. But lots of the doing of your own thing in the sixties and early seventies involved overthrowing old myths and lies and asserting the truth of empirical science, such as the anti-Vietnam War, Civil Rights, Women’s Rights, Gay Rights, environmental, anti-nuclear, organic gardening and sustainable living movements. All products of a very rational sixties. And in every case, it was the government or the majority of those with influence who were living in a fantasy.

Andersen takes particular note of the rise of the Pentecostal movement and televangelism in the 1960’s. True enough, but morality is not inherently contra-factual. Morality motivated a lot of the antiwar activists and poverty workers. Remember, too, that a Christian left and right wing have existed in this country since at least the abolitionist movement got its start. Even if we accept the core beliefs of the Christian right wing that have persisted for at least 140 years, a rise in a concern for moral issues doesn’t in and of itself suggest the society is entering a fantasyland. I can be against a woman’s right to control her body for moral reasons and still be living in the real world. I enter Fantasyland only when I believe that an abortion causes future health problems, that life begins at conception or that vaccines cause autism.

All of society bases part of its existence on fantastic notions, typically related to ethnic superiority, national character, religion and the convenience of rich folk. Certainly since Columbus made his voyages, religious and irrational beliefs have harmed the United States. Our economy before the 1860’s was largely based on the myth that Africans were inferior people who needed the white man’s guidance and therefore benefited from slavery. What about the medical, economic and social impact of the myths that led to the anti-marijuana laws of the 1930’s? TR, Henry Cabot Lodge and William Randolph Hearst shoveled a lot of bull hockey at Americans to build support for the Spanish-American War and our later atrocities in the Philippines. I would like to prove that the inflection point at which belief overran rationality was during the Reagan era, when so many edifices of lies were built and then used to justify horrific policies; lies and myths such as welfare queens, supply side economics, the failure of government, the failure of public schools and the benefits of the unimpeded free market. But reading history books like Stephen Kinzer’s The True Flag about the Spanish-American War epoch and Matthew Karp’s This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy about pre-Civil War U.S. foreign policy demonstrates that the Bush II and the current administrations aren’t the first times the United States has been run by a band of reality-denying ignoramuses guided by myths with no basis in reality and representing a sizable minority but not all the people.

If we, as I do, place primary blame for the growth of the American Fantasyland on the increase of lies and myths knowingly perpetrated by the news media, we can’t really locate in the 1960’s the inflection point after which fantasies begin to dominate the media and, by inference, American society. Since the original scandal sheets and yellow journalism of the Gilded Age, mass media has been growing inexorably, and as it does, so has the ubiquity of advertising, the focus on celebrity and the increase in myths being presented as truth—in commercials, by televangelists, well-funded rightwing think tanks and rightwing television and radio, on alt-right and UFO websites, in social media and fake news. Let’s look at some of major events in the history of media’s creation of Fantasyland: yellow journalism emerged at the end of 19th century, free market commercial radio developed in the 1920’s, the first radio evangelists started broadcasting in the 1930’s and 1940’s, the rise of commercial television and the beginning of the right wing creating alternative distribution channels for their myths occurred in the 1950’s, the federal law that allowed companies to own more TV and radio stations passed in the 1980’s, rightwing radio was born in the 1990’s, the Internet was the 2000’s, the Citizens United decision in 2010. You get the idea.

Why then blame the 1960’s? We would have to read into Kurt Andersen’s heart to know the answer as it pertains toFantasyland. I am, however, quite confident that the larger phenomenon of blaming the 1960’s (and early 1970’s) for every social and economic ill since then results from the mass media applying a screen: Blame the sixties—we like it; blame another decade—reject the article! For the most part rich folk who like the status quo own the mass media and the companies which support media outlets with advertising. While rich folk include a spectrum of beliefs from left-leaning to ultra-right (there are very few socialists of any ilk among this group), they mostly lean right and mostly want to protect the prerogatives of the wealthy.

And they don’t like the true story of what happened in the sixties: It was the absolute high point for equality of wealth and income in U. S. history and the high point of union power (if not of union membership, which occurred in the 1950’s). While not the inflection point for American irrationality, it certainly was for the movement to provide equal rights in courts, the marketplace and workplace to all Americans—plenty happened afterwards, but the turning point certainly came in the 1960’s with the maturing of the Civil Rights movement and the start of other inclusion movements. The 1960’s thus represent the start of the threat to the special position of white males.

In other words, the real “evil” of the 1960’s is not that it created an American Fantasyland, or that it led to a decline in morals or educational standards or the work ethic. No, what the mass media hates about the 1960’s is that for a few brief years we saw a way to institute a true social democracy in a fairly equitable society with a fairly level playing field, kind of like the model developed in Europe after World War II. The Reaganites saw another way, but to make it work, they had to denigrate the real ideals of the sixties—government spending to solve social problems, a level playing field that did not favor individuals of any group, the importance of ending poverty and giving people a hand up, enlightened stewardship of natural resources, a foreign policy not dependent on America bullying other nations. These core beliefs—all based on facts and science—contradict everything the right stands for. Thus the desire, even today, to blame everything on the 1960’s.

I stopped reading novels about writers or university teachers about 30 years ago. I think it might be time to stop reading books that blame the 60’s.

#mainstreammedia #60s #american decline

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feigned-ambivalence · 6 years ago

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In Youth: Episode 29 Recap

I decided to recap this episode because of the major payoffs we have. This drama is very meaty in content. So much so that it actually takes time for me to watch this. I can’t just be trigger happy on the fast forward 5 seconds button. I even have to repeat certain portions. And I love how the payoffs we have is not how the character develops as a person but how we are led to and finally understand each character and love them for all their flaws.

Ge Yihan and Xuanli

Xuanli receives a pair of heels from Ge Yihan. The ones she couldn’t bear to purchase because it was too expensive. She screams with joy because she thought he finally released his anger.

However, Ge Yihan breaks up with her saying he doesn’t want them to keep hurting each other and that he is becoming more afraid because of how she is able to laugh off pictures of him being with other women. He doesn’t dare to be with a woman like that. She embarrassedly clarifies that she wasn’t angry because it was her all this time. Whenever he got drunk, she was the one who picked him up, not another woman.

In a flashback, we see her berating him jokingly while he was drunk and asleep, “You feel the need to see me fret over you so that you feel like you exist. (Scoffs) And to think, you said previously that relationships will eventually return to peace and normality. But in the end, the moment I start getting busy (with work) you start the sufferings again. Ge Yihan, I think this is just the way we work. It’s not anything bad.”

I love how the scriptwriter led us to this realisation. In a previous episode, we saw her friends taking a bat, wanting to take a swing at someone for her justice. She played along and told them it was fine, she can handle it. Ziyu was puzzled but they jokingly explained to Ziyu that she trained them to be dramatic. She replied that she was happy with the performance and promptly got over her anger.

Obviously, he did not hear or understand that fact so he proceeds to berate her asking her if she’s crazy. What if every time he was drunk she didn’t catch him in time? She says she always does. He replies, “Not this time.”

Enter the front desk girl, whose name I don’t bother remembering.

The new couple proceeds to drop by a store selling cameras. He decides on a camera but says he will get his friend to bring it over from Hong Kong because it’s too expensive in Beijing.

They then go to a cafe. She excuses herself to buy ice cream but went to buy him that camera instead. He tears because no one has given him such an expensive gift before, he was always buying things for Xuanli. She has never even gone shopping with him for the things he is interested in.

Cut to: Yangyang finding Xuanli on the floor in the dark, crying.

She cries telling Yangyang that the new expensive shoes Ge Yihan bought tears her ankles so she has bought a bunch of shoes to replace it. But she only likes the shoes he bought. She cries saying she doesn’t know what to do.

Yangyang knows it’s not about the shoes but doesn’t ask her further. She hugs Xuanli, and tells her that it’s okay, tells her not to cry. The next morning she calls Weicong and tells him that the situation is really bad. Xuanli is not fighting back, she’s just keeps crying in bed. Weicong knows the gravity of this and Yangyang manages to convince him to put aside his grievances with Shucheng to work on getting to Ge Yihan together.

Adorably, she does a subdued little pat on her own back “Xuanli gets back with Ge Yihan and Weicong with Shucheng.“ (Snaps fingers) “Perfect.”

The asshole sends his new girlfriend to work and Xuanli (wearing the shoes Ge Yihan gave her) witnesses this. Xuanli can’t say anything because in real life, the girl can’t just stop working, she has a notice to serve before resigning.

Even Xuanli’s boss and the CEO is on her side. Director Guan thanks her for the work she has done to keep the existing customer base and proceeds to tell her to teach the front desk girl a lesson saying that the bosses will close an eye on this. Even tells her to leave it up to her imagination. She waves it off saying the girl is already leaving. Just as he was suggesting for Xuanli to make something up, trouble ensues. The subject of the complaint; the front desk girl.

Long story short, Xuanli throws a bunch of gifts at the customer and goes on her knees to apologise on the girl’s behalf. Ge Yihan sees them walking out with the girl in tears but does not notice Xuanli’s scabbed knees. He immediately jumps to the conclusion that Xuanli abused her position to punish the girl.

She slaps him. The front desk girl cries telling Ge Yihan that Xuanli actually helped her. Her girls arrive and Yangyang gets angry seeing Xuanli’s scabbed knees. Not wanting to make a scene at her workplace, she gets them to go into her office to wait for her.

She fixes her uniform and tells the girl. “I’m not helping you. This is my responsibility and what I have to do. You are my subordinate. I earn more than you and receive more respect than you. So naturally, I would step forth when a problem arises. Please get this clear, I’m not doing this for you. Put away your face full of self pity.” She lets Ge Yihan know that she slapped him to give herself justice. She may like to play but she has never thought of doing anything the wrong way. After he destroyed the love of her life, she only has this (sense of self) left. He insists that it is not his fault. He would not have misunderstood her if she wasn’t manipulative in the first place. Point blank, he says she asked for it.

She admits she is manipulative. But she points out that he is no less so. He manipulated her too, by creating a fake car accident. She says they are the same type of people, neither beyond reproach. (She uses 高贵 here which means precious and above the other or classier than the other)

Is it too hopeful to think this is a moment of almost realisation?

After 10 years, it’s amazing that he still doesn’t realise that what he views as the destructive parts of their relationship is what she has come to accept and love. She loves to go all out for the people around her at a snap of a finger and wants to be treated the same. She wants people willing to go to dramatic lengths for her so that she knows she matters but she will stop them from doing so because she cares about them. The ironic thing is that her friends are nothing like that but they understand this. Whereas he is exactly the same but can’t deal with it lightly.

Adorably, the guys get each other ready to march in only to find Xuanli crying as the girls remove the shards of glass on her knees and puts on medication.

Xuanli is usually strong but as her facade breaks, years of subdued pain hits her all at once. The time she kneeled on the floor as her father’s lover kicked her once. The time she kneeled for Ge Yihan when he left for another woman. She admits she did everything to prove she deserves to be loved. To prove her father wrong. Through the manipulation she has never let go of Ge Yihan. But in the end she only proved that she does not deserve to be loved. Just now, he questioned her morals just because of a girl he met a few months ago. This upsets her more than him letting go of her.

Ziyu cries and says “(That’s enough) Say no more. We are all here. We all love you.”

Yangyang’s office

Yang Yang is warned of the fact that Xixi is trying to get Gong Xiao Liang on her new media team. Yang Yang puts her mind on working on her articles saying that only good content is tangible, all else are peripheral.

Sure enough, Xixi makes him an offer which he promptly rejects with his usual proud attitude. I really want to like that he did this for Yang Yang, but 他嚣张的态度我真想拽了他.

Gong Xiaoliang: What do you think is the most basic element of interviewing a sports player?

Xixi: The news angle.

Gong Xiaoliang: It is respecting your subject athlete. What do you think is the most important factor that helped Mode Sport survive to today?

Xixi: You don’t mean Li Yangyang, right?

Gong Xiaoliang: It is their articles. Li Yangyang knows what is good and how to write top quality articles. To me, (compared to others) this is the platform that enables me to develop myself.

Xixi: Are you refusing me?

Gong Xiaoliang: Isn’t it obvious enough?

Xixi: Refusing the mainstream media of tomorrow for paper media that is limping on it’s last leg. You are such a fool. You can leave now. You really are not like a person born after 1995.

Gong Xiaoliang: Birds of a feather aren’t set apart by age. (Cut to him looking at Yang Yang working.) Yang Yang. You and I are of the same.

Okay, that last part was cute.

But his arrogance and disregard for proper procedure led him to submit a draft on an article with the same topic that the fashion department has been developing on. And their editor confronts Yangyang on it. Yangyang swears she told him to take it down.

When he found out that she took it down, he confronts her about it too. And tells her that he is disappointed that she sided with another department after all he did for her, including rejecting Xixi.

Their exchange was so good I translated the entire thing in a previous post cus the original translations on Youtube are terrible.

She basically lectures him about respecting his colleague’s work even if he thinks his work is better. She also points out that he only works when he likes and expects others to make way for him when he does. Whereas she works doubly hard when she knows nothing about fashion.

So much feels but I already took 4 hours to recap this. I’m exhausted. Will come back to edit this post again.

#in youth #趁我们还年轻 #cdrama

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rtf393q-latina · 5 years ago

Text

Journal 6

I continued to play Mystic Messenger this week because it is an 11-day length game (unless you dish out the cash) and I wanted to see what happens. I’ve gotten to day 9 and things are certainly reaching a climax.

When relating my play to the readings this week, I cannot speak to some of what I found the most interesting in Gray, the designation of various terms for antisocial behaviors in game like griefing and flaming, the breakdown of factors that might form toxic disinhibition, and the description of the progression of an aggressive encounter from questioning through diffusion/war. However, Gray’s very narrative-based approach to discussing hegemonic constructions of race and gender have a lot of resonance to my narrative-based game.

In class we wondered if the extremely one-sided, flat representations of the “Monstrous Other” had a correlation to particular game genres like fighting games. We also thought about the international constructions of hegemonic identity, where the hegemonic construct might be different. I think Mystic Messenger has a lot of bearing on those discussions. In my visual novel game, one of the key interactions is with various potential guests. Through sending the responses to their emails that these characters would like to hear, I can convince them to come to the party. The design choice with these party guest personas is exaggeration for comedic effect. The personas are heightened stereotypes of certain interests and profession. A lot of these seem relatively harmless (though there are definitely traces of harmful stereotypes). The winery owner writes with egregious typos and inserted *hiccups,* as if he is drunk no matter what time of day he writes back. He is concerned about who he will drink with at the party. Interestingly, one thing that gets made fun of is Korean national pride and traditionalism: the taekwondo dobok-wearing security guard is obsessed with how cool and important the Korean-originating sport is, whereas a producer of music videos with traditional Korean music speak almost entirely in humming sounds.

An email persona playing with the kooky doctor/mad scientist type? A bit silly and weird, but overall, a fun character I think.

However, one depiction that really alarmed me was of a Middle Eastern oil tycoon. Much like the Street Fighter characters, this oil guy was stereotyped to death: spoke English very poorly, insisted on rolling in with a tank limo, and tried to get me to marry his son. I think rather than these outrageous national/ethnic stereotypes being tied to genres without as much narrative, they might be a function of needing to create lots of characters. The main six characters in the game are much more complex than simple stereotypes, but with this email invitation part of the game, there was no space for much characterization, and a need for lots and lots of characters (there might be 40 or so potential guests based on how many I’ve managed to encounter); also there was an attempt at humor and levity; these combined factors I think resulted in some lazy, terrible stereotypes. While not a central concept for Gray or Paul, joking and laughter was a noticeable throughline in video game harassment, a means to exclude and bond over that exclusion, and to dismiss any criticism as well as anyone who isn’t laughing. I don’t think the impulse to joke in Mystic Messenger comes from a bad place, but the way lazy humor and innocent(ish) laughter can become weaponized is noticeable.

An email that gave me immense pause.

Picking up on the nationally contextualized hegemony topic—I don’t quite know how to contextualize this depiction of a Middle Eastern man within the Korean cultural context; I don’t know how he fits in discursively, so it is hard to fully analyze him. More pertinently, the same can be said about depictions of gender in the game. I am superficially aware of gender roles being more strict in Korea as compared to the US, based on Korean dramas I have watched and things I’ve heard about beauty standards in the workplace (you would be looked down on a lot if you did not wear makeup as a woman, if you wear glasses instead of contacts, stuff like that). Therefore, some of the romance storylines with the male characters wanting to act as protectors and saviors, wanting to be a man for you, makes sense, even if tiresome.

The character’s whose story route I ended up on* is obsessed with being my manly protector.

* (accidentally: I didn’t know that I wouldn’t get to choose and it was based on who favored me the most at a certain point of the game; I was always nice to this guy cause everyone picked on him...and then I ended up stuck with him. I had wanted to go on the route of the girl character, who I heard you help quit her overworked job and find happiness--as a grad student, I felt I could really relate to her storyline.)

What’s interesting to me, is that US game critics have really picked up on the gendered emotional labor implications of the game, where your character is listening to these male characters, helping them deal with their emotions and grow. Additionally, US critics express disappointment that the one female character who has a story route has an ending where she’s best friends instead of lovers with the main character; meanwhile, one of the other story routes requires, in order to earn his affection, supporting a character playing a joke that would be considered tastelessly homophobic to us (outing a non-gay character as gay). Critics have also worried about representations of abusive relationships and mental illness and femininity. I wonder what the reception is like in Korea. Does the game reinforce hegemonic heteronormativity or does it challenge standards of masculinity, femininity, and sexuality that are imperceptible to us? Are US critiques entirely fair or are we reading things in based on our own context that don’t actually apply?

The characters in Mystic Messenger have serious issues and US critics argue that as the player, you take on the emotional, gendered burden of fixing them one by one.

Seen from a different angle, this phenomenon of how the game makes the player take up a certain hegemonic position is not fully addressed with Gray’s representation-focused approach. It’s not just who you choose to play and which characters have what storylines. Through playing a game like Mystic Messenger you end up role playing certain norms.

I did not get to discuss the Paul piece, but what I appreciated about it was the theoretical framing, following Shaw, of game culture needing to be studied not just on the level of the game itself, but within broader social practices, for instance at gaming conventions, in game journalism, through the activities of media outlets and legal developments. To tackle my question of reception of Mystic Messenger in the US versus Korean context, I would choose an approach more like Paul’s.

(Screenshots are my own.)

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how2to18 · 7 years ago

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OFFICIALLY, AIMEE MOLLOY’S debut novel, The Perfect Mother, is a thriller. You might call it “grip-lit,” a new term for an old thing: a good suspense novel by a woman. More accurately, by a woman and for women, which The Perfect Mother certainly is. We’ll come back to that part, but first, I don’t think this novel is a thriller at all. To me, it’s a horror story.

First, there’s the visceral horror of the plot. A group of Brooklyn parents who call themselves the May Mothers (there’s one dad; the moms nickname him Token) go out for a drink one hot July night, most leaving their babies for the first time. They’re two drinks in, just starting to relax, when one gets a frantic call. She’s asked Alma, her nanny, to babysit for the group’s one single mother that night. Alma put the baby, Midas, to sleep, and all seemed well — until she went to check on him and he was gone.

Soon, Baby Midas is a cause célèbre in New York. There are prayer vigils, press conferences, and magazine covers about Midas and his mother, Winnie. A cable host named Patricia Faith begins a round-the-clock campaign against Winnie, her friends, and any other mother who has the gall to leave the house before her child turns five. There are prayer vigils in Prospect Park, middle-aged women waving flyers that announce, “Child neglect is a crime,” then cite Isaiah: “Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb?”

Meanwhile, the rest of the May Mothers are frantic with guilt and fear. Guilt because they lured Winnie out for a drink and persuaded her to stop looking at the baby-monitor video on her phone — or, as Patricia Faith would have it, to “forget her nursing child.” Fear because they all went out, too. They all left their babies. Who knows why this happened to Winnie, not to one of them?

That’s the first horror: the it-could-happen-to-anyone kidnapping, the baby there one second and gone the next. The second horror is sneakier, and more interesting. Every woman in The Perfect Mother is haunted, and hunted, by the pressure to be exactly what the title suggests. The protagonists, Nell, Colette, and Francie, can’t go outside without strangers weighing in on their bodies, careers, and lives.

The opinions about what a mother should be come first and foremost from the media. There’s Patricia Faith and her prayer ladies, a smarmy New York Post reporter named Elliott Falk, and Nell’s boss at a thinly veiled Condé Nast. In one brilliant scene, Nell suggests that the company’s flagship magazine, Gossip!, “rise above” the Baby Midas scandal, and her boss snaps back, “Rise above it? That’s not our job, Nell. Our job is to create it.”

There are plenty of opinions closer to home, too. Each chapter opens with an email from a Brooklyn parenting network called The Village, which sends perky little reminders to hire a lactation consultant, walk off your baby weight, and start having sex with your partner again. The protagonists’ mothers tell them what to do: Baptize your baby! Go back to work! The May Mothers compete overtly with each other, exchanging homeopathic tips and displays of vulnerability like currency. Even Nell’s piggish boss has ideas about how a mother should be: he makes her return early from maternity leave, then shames her for gaining weight and missing her child.

It’s not news that when women become mothers, a whole new world of judgment snaps open. On a recent post on the fashion blog Man Repeller, the site’s founder, Leandra Medine, writes that after the recent birth of her twins, “I’ve noticed an uptick in the number of negative comments that populate my pictures. ‘Put your phone down and be with your babies,’ they will say.” You don’t need to look far — or try to look at all — to hear and read about experiences like this.

Of course, the idea of motherhood is always waiting for me. I’m 26, straight, Jewish. Every person in my life expects me to have children; I expect it of myself. And I want to, which is different, and less explored. The Perfect Mother doesn’t explore it at all. This is fundamentally a novel of expectations. In its characters’ world, wanting children — having always wanted children — is assumed. Colette, the only May Mother who didn’t get pregnant on purpose, admits to Winnie, “I called the whole thing a mistake for months. I’m excited now, but it’s been a process. I was not ready for her.” As she says this, she thinks of “the other women [in the group], who all seemed as if they’d spent their whole lives just waiting to become moms.”

This is true of the kidnapper, too. She’s a woman driven insane by expectations — her own and everyone else’s. She’s so desperate to be a perfect mother that she ends up possessed by perfection. She hallucinates, dissociates, commits terrible crimes in its service. And for a long time, no one can tell. Her friends find her performance of motherhood intimidating, and to the rest of the world, she’s just another Brooklyn mom with her stroller, going to baby yoga, popping probiotics, doing it right.

Horror stories rely on this dynamic. There has to be a character who’s haunted, or possessed, or stalked by some evil force, and the world around that person has to be unaware. The whole genre would be ruined if everybody believed in demons and ghosts. If Jack and Wendy in The Shining trusted their son’s premonitions, they wouldn’t stay a single night in the Overlook Hotel. In Jac Jemc’s recent novel The Grip of It, a couple moves into a haunted house, then lets their marriage dissolve rather than acknowledge the haunting. Carmen Maria Machado’s gorgeous “Horror Story” has the same premise, but in her version, the couple stays — the most relatable reason — because “the landlord had rented us a haunted house for above market rent and we didn’t have the money to move.”

In the Biblical story of Legion, which I’ve always considered the original horror story, Jesus encounters a man who’s possessed by a violent legion of demons, or else by a violent demon named Legion. He drives the demon(s) from the man into a herd of pigs, which immediately runs off a cliff. Afterward, the people in the town where the man lives aren’t grateful. They “plead with Jesus to leave their region.” He’s just saved them from a threat both spiritual and physical, and they can’t stand to face him — or face what he saw.

The demons in The Perfect Mother are not literal. But a demon is always a metaphor — those suicidal pigs in the Gospel of Mark aren’t important as pigs. The ghosts in the Overlook Hotel matter less than Jack Nicholson chasing his wife with an ax. It’s enough for the woman who kidnaps Midas to be driven by the pernicious ideal of perfection, something that came from outside her but to which she gave a home.

The Perfect Mother is a novel about internalized sexism, specifically as it relates to motherhood. And I do mean motherhood, not just privileged, gentrified Brooklyn motherhood, though I wish that weren’t the book’s context. The Perfect Mother could have been set nearly anywhere else in the United States, and should have been. Still, I hope its message will resonate as far past Park Slope as Molloy clearly intends it to. She seamlessly integrates commentary on the wage gap, on unpaid maternity leave, on male abuse of power in the workplace. Each protagonist has a demon of her own to fight, and with it, a new angle on the fundamental question of how a woman can reject the world’s beliefs about who she should be.

My favorite version of this is Colette, a ghostwriter married to a rising literary star. When the novel starts, she’s unhappily behind on a project her husband, Charlie, won’t take seriously. A few years ago, she ghostwrote a memoir for a charismatic young teacher who is now mayor, and he wants a follow-up. It’s going to be targeted at book clubs and at the “middle-aged women standing in line [at the mayor’s favorite diner], hoping to spot him at a table in the back,” and of course, it’s going to be a best seller. Charlie, though, couldn’t care less. Colette mentions that her deadline is a month closer than his, and he responds, “I know, baby. But you know what’s riding on mine.” To me, that would be grounds for a shrieking fight, but Colette just nods and agrees. Skip forward 100 pages, and she’s selling a novel to Charlie’s publisher.

I’m not going to give away everyone’s story line. Suffice it to say there’s a good Monica Lewinsky parallel, some enjoyable commentary on celebrity, and a few stories of heartbreaking sexual exploitation. There’s an underdeveloped but crucial arc for Alma, the nanny who was there when Midas vanished, whose immigration status and ability to raise her own child are threatened by the media frenzy around the case. And there’s Francie, who only needs to learn to speak up for herself. When the novel begins, she doesn’t even know that could be her goal. By the end, she’s the hero.

Francie shouldn’t need Midas’s disappearance to teach her how to speak up. Colette shouldn’t need it to understand the scope of her ambitions, nor Nell to argue with her sexist boss. This, I suspect, is Aimee Molloy��s agenda. She uses the drama of a kidnapping plot to shake readers awake. Her real goal is to show us the demons of motherhood in broad daylight, to make us admit the house is haunted. In Machado’s “Horror Story,” she’d be the psychic who comes over and opens the dryer, “which caused her to snap into the air like she was hanging from an invisible crucifix and recite something in a language we didn’t recognize, but which sounded unfathomably ancient.” After that, you can’t pretend there’s nothing going on.

I promised I’d return to the claim that The Perfect Mother is for women. I meant that. What I did not mean was that this is a novel for only women to read. It’s a novel written to champion women. It’s a powerful reminder that the consequences of telling a person who she is can be deadly. The Perfect Mother is set to be one of the year’s biggest crime novels, as well as a film starring Kerry Washington. I hope it keeps a whole nation of advice-givers awake all night.

Lily Meyer is a writer and translator living in Washington, DC.

The post Aimee Molloy’s Maternal Horror appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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