#one of lindsay ellis's worst ever videos and worst ever takes | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lochtayboatsong · 3 years

Text

The Jesus Christ Superstar essay absolutely no one asked for.

Last weekend, I watched the pro-shot of the 2012 arena tour of Jesus Christ Superstar starring Ben Forster, Tim Minchin, and Melanie C, because it was Easter and it was up on YT for the weekend. I never managed to do my annual listen-through of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass this year, as is my usual Easter tradition, so I figured “Why not watch/listen to this instead?” It was my first time seeing and hearing JCS in full, and Y’ALL, it has been living rent-free in my brain ever since. I have a mighty need to get my thoughts out, so here they are, in chronological order by song.

1) Prologue: I love the way JCS 2012 makes use of the arena video screen. The production design and concept clearly took a lot of inspiration from the “Occupy ______” movement, which makes it feel a bit dated now. But every single production of JCS is a product of its time period, so this is a feature and not a bug.

2) Heaven On Their Minds: This is a straight-up rock song. It wouldn’t be out of place on any rock and roll album released between 1970 and 2021, and it boggles my mind that Webber and Rice were both in their early twenties when they wrote it. Also, the lyric “You’ve begun to matter more than the things you say” hits hard no matter the year.

3) What’s the Buzz: A+ use of the arena screens again, this time bringing in social media to set the tone. Also, this song establishes right from the outset that Jesus is burnt out and T I R E D by this point in the story. Seriously, can we just let this man have a nap?

4) Strange Thing Mystifying: Judas publicly calls out Mary and Jesus claps back. Folx, get you a partner who will defend your honor the way Jesus defends MM in this scene. Also Jesus loses his shoes and is mostly barefoot for the remainder of the show.

5) Everything’s Alright: Okay, this is one of the songs I have A LOT to say about. First, it’s important to know that I was a church musician throughout all of my adolescence and into my early adulthood. The pianist at the services I usually played at was a top-notch jazz pianist, and also my piano teacher for about six years while I as in high school and undergrad. (Incidentally, I had a HUGE crush on his son, who was/is a jazz saxophonist and clarinetist and also played in the church band, but that’s a story for another day.) One of the hymns we played a few times a year was called “Sing of the Lord’s Goodness,” which is notable for being in 5/4 time. Whenever this hymn was on the schedule, it was usually the recessional, or the last song played as the clergy processed out and the congregation got ready to leave, so we were able to have some fun with it. After a couple verses the piano player and his son would usually morph it into “Take Five,” a famous jazz standard by Dave Brubeck which is also in 5/4 time. Anyway, the first time I listened to this song in full, it got to Judas’s line “People who are hungry, people who are starving,” and I sat bolt upright and went “HOLY SHIT THIS IS ‘SING OF THE LORD’S GOODNESS/TAKE FIVE.’” And I was ricocheted back in time to being fourteen and trying to keep up with this father/son duo in a cavernous Catholic church while simultaneously making heart-eyes at the son. Final note: This is the only song in the musical to feature all three leads (Jesus, Judas, and Mary Magdalene) and is mostly Jesus and MM being soft with each other in between bouts of Jesus and Judas snarling at one another.

6) This Jesus Must Die: I LOVE that all the villains in this production are in tailored suits. LOVE IT. Also, Caiaphas and Annas are a comedy duo akin to “the thin guy and the fat guy,” except in this case it’s “the low basso profundo and the high tenor.” Excellent use of the arena video screen again, this time as CCTV.

7) Hosanna: My background as a church musician strikes back again. It honestly took me two or three listens to catch it, but then I had another moment of sitting bolt upright and going “HOLY SHIT THIS IS A PSALM.” Psalms sung in church usually take the form of call-and-response, with a cantor singing the verses and the congregation joining in for the chorus. If I close my eyes during this song, I have no trouble imagining Jesus as a church cantor singing the verses and then bringing the congregation in for the “Ho-sanna, Hey-sanna” chorus.

8) Simon Zealotes: This is part “Gloria In Excelsis” and part over-the-top Gospel song. Honestly it’s not my favorite, but it marks an important mood change in the show. The end of “Hosanna” is probably Jesus at his happiest in the entire show, and then Simon comes in and sours the mood by trying to tip the triumphant moment into a violent one. Jesus is not truly happy again from this moment on.

9) Poor Jerusalem: Also not my fave. It kinda reads like Webber and Rice realized that Jesus didn’t have a solo aria in Act I, so they came up with this. But it has the distinction of containing the lyric, “To conquer death you only have to die,” which is the biggest overarching theme of the story.

10) Pilate’s Dream: Pontius Pilate might be the most underrated role in this entire show, and I love that this production has him singing this song while being dressed in judge’s robes.

11) The Temple: The first half of this is one of the campiest numbers in Act I, at least in this production, and it’s awesome. The second half is one of the saddest, as Jesus tries to heal the sick but finds there are too many of them. Also the whole scene is almost entirely in 7/8 time, which I think is just cool.

12) I Don’t Know How To Love Him: Mary Magdalene’s big aria, and one of the songs I knew prior to seeing the full-length show. This production has MM taking off her heavy lipstick and eye makeup onstage, mid-song, which is kind of cool. Melanie C says in a BTS interview that MM’s makeup is her armor, so this is a Big Symbolic Moment.

13) Damned For All Time: The scene transition into this song is played entirely in pantomime, and I love it. The solo guitarist gets to be onstage for a bit, A+ use of the video screen again to show Judas on CCTV, etc. Love it. And then this song is Judas frantically rationalizing what he’s doing, and what he’s about to do, with Caiphas and Annas just reacting with raised eyebrows and knowing looks.

14) Blood Money: This is where the tone of the show really takes a turn for the dark. I think this might be one of Tim Minchin’s finest moments as Judas, because his facial expressions and microexpressions throughout this scene speak absolute volumes. And the offstage chorus quietly singing “Well done Judas” as he picks up the money is a positively chilling way to end Act I.

15) The Last Supper: Act II begins with major “Drink With Me” vibes. (Except JCS came WAY before Les Miz, so it’s probably more accurate to say that “Drink With Me” has major “The Last Supper” vibes.) Jesus and Judas have their knock-down, drag-out fight, and it’s honestly heartbreaking, thanks again to Tim Minchin’s facial expressions. A well-done production of JCS will really convey that Jesus and Judas were once closer than brothers, even though their relationship is at breaking point when Act I begins.

16) Gethsemane: This is Jesus’s major showpiece and one of my faves. Jesus knows he has less than 24 hours to live, he knows he’s going to suffer, and worst of all, he doesn’t know whether it’s going to be worth it. It’s an emotional rollercoaster to watch and to perform, and it goes on for ages: something like 6 or 7 minutes. Fun fact: the famous G5 is not written in the score. Ian Gillan, who played Jesus on the original concept album, just sang it that way, so most subsequent Jesuses have also done it that way. Lindsay Ellis has a great supercut of this on YT. John Legend notably sang the line as written during the 2018 concert.

17) The Arrest: Judas’s Betrayer’s Kiss is played differently across different productions. The 2012 version is pretty tame - I’ve seen clips and gifs of other productions, including the 2000 direct-to-video version, where they kiss fully on the mouth and have to be dragged apart by the guards and it is THE MOST TENDER THING. Then the 7/8 riff from “The Temple” comes back and the 2012 version lets the video screen do its thing again as Jesus is swarmed by reporters.

18) Peter’s Denial: Not much to say about this one, as it’s basically a scene transition. But it’s a significant moment in the Passion story, so I’m glad they included it.

19) Pilate and Christ: The 2012 production continues with the theme of Caiaphas, Annas, and Pilate all being bougie af, since Pilate intentionally looks like he just came from tennis practice during this scene. Also he does pilates...hehehe.

20) King Herod’s Song: Tim Minchin says in a BTS interview that JCS works best when Jesus and Judas are played seriously and the rest of the production is allowed to be completely camp and wild and bizarre all around them, and he is bloody well CORRECT about that. Case in point: King Herod. There is not a single production of JCS that I know of where Herod is played “straight.” He’s been played by everyone from Alice Cooper to Jack Black, and everyone puts a different zany spin on him. In JCS 2012 he’s a chat show host in a red crushed velvet suit, who is clearly having the time of his LIFE.

21) Could We Start Again Please: This is another of my faves. Just a quiet moment where MM, Peter, and the disciples try to grapple with the fact that Jesus is arrested and things are going very, very badly. This is also my favorite Melanie C moment of the 2012 show. Her grief is very real, and the little moment she has with Peter at the end is very real.

22) Death of Judas: This is basically Tim Minchin screaming for about five minutes, and incredibly harrowing to watch on first viewing.

23) Trial Before Pilate: Possibly my single favorite scene in the entire 2012 production. This is another harrowing watch, but there’s so much to take in. The “set” that the entire show takes place on is essentially just a massive staircase, and the people with power are almost always positioned above the people without power. In this scene, the crowd shouting “Crucify Him!” is positioned above Pilate, which is a very telling clue to Pilate’s psychology during this scene. Jesus is at the very bottom of the stairs, of course. Excellent use of the video screen once again during the 39 Lashes, to show the lash marks building and building until the entire screen is a wash of red. Pilate’s counting also gets more and more frantic, especially starting around “20.” And all the while the guitar riff from “Heaven On Their Minds” is playing. Jesus’s line “Everything is fixed and you can’t change it” is played quite differently in different productions - here it’s defiant, but elsewhere (in JCS 2000 for example) it’s almost tender, like Jesus is absolving Pilate for his part in the trial. But it always ends the same - with Pilate almost screaming as he passes the sentence and “washes his hands” of the whole sorry business.

24) Superstar: The most over-the-top number in the show. Judas, who died two scenes ago, comes back to sing this. There are soul singers. There are girls in skimpy angel costumes. The parkour guys from the prologue are back. Judas pulls a tambourine out of hammerspace midway through the song. And Jesus is silently screaming and crying as he gets hoisted onto a lighting beam while all this is going on.

25) The Crucifixion: More of a spoken-word piece than a song, it’s Jesus’s final words on the cross over eerie piano music, and another harrowing watch.

26) John 19:41: An instrumental piece in which Jesus is taken from the cross and carried, at last, to the top of the stairs, before being lowered out of sight as the video screen turns into a memorial wall and everything fades to black.

So. I know I’m anywhere from three to fifty-one years late to this particular party, but I am on the JCS bandwagon now and I’m thoroughly enjoying myself. :)

#jesus christ superstar #jcs 2012 #jcs is all i have been thinking about all week sorry not sorry #ben forster #tim minchin #melanie c #andrew lloyd webber #tim rice

90 notes · View notes

queerautism · 3 years

Note

Yeah, I actually unfollowed Lindsay Ellis over the drama recently because I found it super annoying and petty. Like, she makes one of the worst takes I've ever seen on twitter, something that as a person who's whole career is based on media criticism shouldn't be doing. You can dislike Raya all you want but calling it an avatar ripoff is so disingenuous. And then when she rightly called out for her horrible take her response is to just to just delete her entire twitter? And then make an hour long video about it apparently.

Yeah this was pretty much the whole thing... Like if you're gonna make media analysis and criticism your whole thing, and have a large following, you're gonna have to be able to be like "Yeah maybe that wasnt a great take, my bad" and move on.

It's the apparently inability (or unwillingness) to address genuine criticism without immediately covering that up with an hour long rant about how much of a victim they are actually

24 notes · View notes

dgcatanisiri · 3 years

Text

Hrmh... *sideeyes*

I try not to bring it up casually, which is why I will not be linking to the post I’m referencing, but... You remember that fuckery a little over a year ago where someone decided that me saying that ME3 gives me no reason to be sympathetic to the asari was the reason that I, personally, am the worst of the worst in the ME fandom?

Yeah, so now if I see that post get a like in my mentions, ESPECIALLY from someone I do not know, I get very skeptical about WHERE it’s being liked from. A part of me wants to delete it so that I’ll never see that shit in my mentions, but like... I did nothing wrong in that situation.

All I did was toss off a comment in the midst of liveblogging a game, and tagged it with my personal liveblogging tag, so it wasn’t even in the general tags, and some stranger, who, if they found it, MUST HAVE BEEN FOLLOWING ME IN THE FIRST PLACE, because they reblogged it from my blog, decided they would unleash this rant full of... just outright LIES, most of them in no fucking way any relation to what I have ever actually said. It was like full on “If X, then fish.”

Plus the added refrain that I’d managed to hear before of how I am, somehow, violently lesbophobic, which... I legit have NEVER gotten where that has come from. Like it’s come up before, in relation to me complaining about how hey, I’m not trying to take away anyone’s empowerment, but the jokes about male Shepard being pointless feel like they are trying to take MY empowerment away, could the fandom maybe stop them, which... I mean, doesn’t that just prove my point? That this fandom tears down male Shepard and his players, not because of people trying to impose playing male Shepard on them, but for the fact that they don’t like male Shepard?

Oh, and the death threat, too. Gotta love that logic. “Because I have decided to interpret your comments on a video game as violence against women, I wish for your inevitable death to be sped up.”

And like... this isn’t the only time someone from the Mass Effect fandom has ever pulled this shit - aside from the thing about male Shepard, a few months back, someone took my commenting about how BioWare has ignored making ANY reference to Kaidan’s bisexuality in the build to the Legendary Edition’s release or since, and turned it into me being racist against Steve Cortez, who I wasn’t even bringing up in the comment.

It’s shit like that that honestly puts me off the very idea of trying something like video essays, because good FUCKING god. I can laugh off one jackass, but the fact that they spread these lies and I saw there being reblogs OF said lies from them, so I had to make a refutation, which... That’s the frustrating thing about refuting lies, for every one line lie they spread, it takes like three paragraphs to properly refute. It’s exhausting, and I don’t have it in me to deal with this shit or the dragging of my name through the mud because SOMEONE decided that I needed to be taken down a peg for daring to disagree with them, a total stranger, on some matter.

Y’know, I’ve watched both Contrapoints and Lindsay Ellis’s videos on their own “cancellations,” and honestly, while I can agree with the people who call them out that the catalyst for those events were perhaps not the best looks... Considering this merest of GLIMPSES into the world of online shaming I have had, dogpiling on to a person because they tossed something off rather than think about EVERY POSSIBLE PERMUTATION that statement could be interpreted as saying, not to mention the caller out throwing in so many lies (or, at best, “bad faith interpretations”)... Yeah, I tend to agree with them that the response they received for their own missteps was WAY out of proportion to the actual comment. Again, I point to the death threat addition. And I know that, in particular, they had it much worse than I did - my instances have been isolated incidents of one person. They had their Twitter mentions HOUNDED because of a bunch of people who will ALWAYS take the things they say in the worst possible light, and then going “oh, but if you don’t think this is bad enough, then LOOK, look at THIS history of things!”

(Funny how the rolodex is full of fuckups and not the apologies and corrections and explanations and original context that has been conveniently left out...)

Like, I’m random nobody and I got this reaction. I mean, yeah, according to Tumblr metrics I have a whopping 1284 followers, which, y’know, is the population of like... that town you pass through that’s sandwiched between two more major cities that you never actually learn the name of. So like... Not nothing, but definitely not “influencing” anything. Now picture it with a platform, where the number of people who are following you goes up to like a major metropolitan center. It’s easy to laugh off when it’s only one person and a few of their followers who take their words as gospel instead of looking things up for themselves. It’s much harder when you’re talking about things that just ABSOLUTELY snowball out of control, which happens when you have a larger platform - you are out there for more people to know about, listen to, and judge your perceived fuckups.

In conclusion, the Mass Effect fandom is trash and I really do not want any part of it.

#dg gets personal #this has been another edition of dg venting because of fandom shit that needs to stay here

2 notes · View notes

phoenixwrites · 3 years

Text

I watched Lindsay’s video about the situation, because I badly wanted to understand her perspective (I was disappointed in her too), and I do think she was genuinely remorseful towards the tweet. She had a throwaway tweet without thinking about the insensitive ramifications towards her very large audience. I don’t think her tweet was malicious or even negative; she was pointing out a pattern in fantasy recently--which in my view, is a GOOD pattern. In her video, she pointed out that the fantasy books she’d mentioned--including Raya--the writers credited ATLA as an inspiration and influence. I don’t think that’s the same thing as homogenizing SE Asians.

As for the “crazies” thing, she said “ya crazies”, which I took as flippant and playful--like the rest of the tweet--but I recognize it may have come across badly when people were trying to give her genuine criticism.

The thing is, when you’re being dogpiled like that, it’s hard to differentiate the genuine valid criticism and the hateful bullying threatening her life and mocking her for her sexual assault. Forcing her to go into detail about something really traumatic in a damn YouTube video is out of line.

The thing is, her video, while very long, is taking accountability for a lot of the dumb shit she’s said over the years. She’s frustrated about the bullying, sure, but there is remorse and apologies there.

The interesting thing about Lindsay Ellis, is I agree with about...I dunno, maybe 2% of her media opinions? I think Phantom of the Opera is one of the worst musicals ever written. I think the fact that she hates Prince of Egypt is a crime. Her opinions are diametrically opposed from all of my tastes. But I think she’s intelligent and I like that her arguments are well-researched.

Two months ago, everyone on Tumblr was delighted with Lindsay because she had that funny legal feud with the Omega!verse.

Now, she’s a racist horrible right-wing bitch.

My point is...I feel like a lot of these situations is assuming malicious intent when there isn’t any.

#phoenix personal #Lindsay Ellis

2 notes · View notes

protectwoc · 4 years

Note

s/o to the edward cullen stans that came after me for telling people not to buy midnight sun bc it was giving money to a racist mormon who gives millions in tithing (tithing is monthly allowance mormons are forced to give to their church) to their racist and homophobic groups. twihards are the WORST. people disliked the franchise for good reason, it wasn’t all internalised misogyny.

twihards are the fucking worst and all of the “if you hate twilight its because you hate teenage girls” takes boil my blood. you didn’t ask for a rant but like:

this is one widely accepted opinion on the internet and it fills me with fury everytime i have to pretend like its a valid take. because i remember being a child (yes, not even a teenage girl yet) and the first thing that i heard abt twilight was that edward watched bella while she slept and stalked her. and so i hated it, for what i thought were valid reasons, and then then i got older and the mary sue and lindsay fucking ellis tried to convince me that that actually isn’t why i hated twilight, it was because i had iNtErNaLiZeD mIsOgYnY or whatever and i BELIEVED THEM. for like a year after that fucking video came out i tried to unlearn internalized misogyny surrounding the twilight series that i DIDN’T EVEN HAVE, and it never sat right with me but i pushed past it because when does growing as a person ever feel good, and then midnight sun came out and i heard from native people talking about how much smeyer fucked them over and from ex-teenage girls (what a weird way to write that) saying how uncomfortable the twilight series and the mania around it made them feel and i realized that I WAS RIGHT. I WAS RIGHT THE WHOLE FUCKING TIME AND I LET WHITE WOMEN CONVINCE ME TO GIVE TWIHARDS A BREAK? NEVER AGAIN.

and the worst part is that its literally NOT EVEN GOOD like i read a bit of the first book and watched a bit of the first movie and they are UNBEARABLY BAD. i didn’t even make it to the vampire reveal in the movie. i’ve literally never shifted from “lets see what all the hype is about” to “lmao so bad its funny” to lying-face-down-on-the-floor (no this isn’t an exaggeration) existential despair so fast. bella is a mary sue self insert and i don’t give a fuck if that term has misogynist beginnings because it’s the only descriptor that fits. everybody in forks falls over themselves for her and for WHAT shes so fucking boring i don’t get it. edward is a creep and i LIKE rpatz and this movie almost convinced me to hate him. taylor lautners long hair is a hate crime but i’m not exactly sure who its against.

#raetalks

4 notes · View notes

sapphic-schizo · 3 years

Note

Where’s that tweet Lindsay Ellis made about wanting fanfiction of Harriet Tubman and her slave owner I remember you reblogged and I can’t find it no one believes me when I say that happened

it did happen yes lol. unfortunately tumblr is shit so i can’t even search my own blog and i made that post ages ago but she actually addressed it in her video so it definitely did happen. basically she saw someone watching the harriet tubman movie and there’s a (completely fictional) character who’s her owner and also obsessed with her or something and the tweet was just “i wonder if there’s fanfiction about them. actually nvm i don’t wanna know.” so really just a tweet that should’ve stayed in the drafts and people taking it way too far. like 100% just not worth it to put something like that on twitter where taking things out of context and twisting them in the worst possible light is basically a competitive sport, but that’s part of why she deleted her twitter, so...

her video did make me a lot more sympathetic to her though honestly. or rather it’s given me more mixed feelings. i’ve been watching her videos since i was like 11 so i can’t help but want to like her but also super disappointed that such an intelligent woman who’s obviously capable of critical thinking buys into the whole trans bullshit.

sorry for turning this into an essay but if you’re still interested in her you should definitely watch her video it’s basically her just addressing every single problematique thing she’s ever been accused of and it’s a pretty entertaining watch although it’s pretty long. it even made me feel kind of guilty for being one of the people who was like “ah yeah she deserved it she had it coming” just because i found her kind of obnoxious.

#Anonymous

1 note · View note

vashti-lives · 4 years

Text

TL;DR: don’t be JKR say fuck you to Calvinism and hold on to the good of humanity in your heart.

As a tiny awkward queer kid who spent her adolescence in rural America Harry Potter was my first defense when it came to filtering out homophobes. Before I even had the words to understand I was queer I knew Harry Potter was a good tool to judge the safety of adults around me and a good way to say fuck you to the adults who thought it [read: me] was evil, without drawing too much attention to myself. I cannot possibly be the only queer person who did this.

In light of that JKR’s violent transmisogyny is exceptionally hurtful, but, in hindsight not surprising. People have talked a lot about various hateful things present in her books: antisemitism, fat hatred, practically every form of racism, people who like cats… etc. I actually think the most accurate thing you could argue is that these books are deeply misanthropic about nearly everyone. Yeah she hates all the obvious groups but she also hates not just cat lovers but animal lovers in general. The books are deeply contemptuous of Hagrid for example. The good loving people in Harry’s life are nearly universally inept at helping him. She seems to believe that kindness and stupidity are only ever found together.

I’m not defending her in any way— she’s an absolute shit head— but it matters because while I’m sure she was transphobic when she wrote those books I’m also sure she’s a lot more actively transphobic now. The internet has radicalized her to a pretty extreme degree. There’s a really good article about how terfs in the UK are basically a cult [HERE] and I think part of the reason she was vulnerable to this specific cult and it’s reasoning was because she fundamentally already had a really negative opinion about most people. In the end it wasn’t hard for UK terfs to laser focus her general distain for everyone into extreme hatred for one particular group.

JKR thinks she’s doing the right thing, she really thinks she’s not being transphobic. She’s protecting all the children from all those evil transfolk who wanna destroy butch lesbians, or whatever, because essentially she thinks most people are awful and therefore this is a logical thing for a person to do. Which, as Lindsay Ellis points out in her really excellent video essay [HERE], probably means she’s never going to change her mind.

And that’s why I’m writing this really fucking long post. Not just to navel gaze about why JKR is the way she is but because of the specific way her weaknesses were targeted. Right now, particularly if you live in the US you are seeing the worst of people every day. Most people in the US are trying their best, wearing masks when they have to go out and staying home otherwise, but that just means that the absolute worst 25% or so are probably the people most of us, especially in service industries and essential jobs, are interacting with right now. Its really easy when all you see everyday is the absolute buttcrack of humanity to start to think that’s what humanity is just generally like. And that’s dangerous.

Its easy to start thinking that people in red states deserve what’s happening to them because they voted in Trump. Easy to say well let all the old people die because they’re responsible for this anyway. Easy to shrug and decide that America’s coronavirus issue is just karma. But its very dangerous to start generalizing over groups of people who didn’t choose to be in the group* they’re in. I think we’re all feeling kinda pessimistic about people in general right now in general anyway which makes this all the more tempting.

Don’t fall for that temptation, its a trap. Assholes will take advantage of it in ways it’ll be hard to fight if that general hatred of humanity goes too deep. Say fuck you to Calvinism and hold on to the good of humanity in your heart so if you fall afoul of a cult it’ll just be a weird one and not an incredibly hateful and destructive one**.

And here’s a link to the UK charity Mermaids [HERE] because fuck JKR.

*IE—ACAB for life, but you shouldn’t over generalize what people in “red” states are like because people don’t choose where they’re born and moving is prohibitively expensive if you’re poor.

**look nobody is immune to cults— anybody can end up in one if they find you in the right moment.

13 notes · View notes

plays-the-thing · 4 years

Text

Netflix’s Witcher: What Makes a Good Adaptation? – A companion piece

If you’ve somehow found this without seeing the video first, here’s a link:

In this video I analyze the screen adaptations of Lord of the Rings, A Song of Ice and Fire, and the Witcher series. I use the comparisons of the three to discuss what makes adaptations in general work and to explain why I feel the Witcher is heading down the road to mediocrity.

However, this is a hugely complicated subject, and the works themselves are also complex, especially Martin’s work. I make plenty of claims in the video that a reasonable person could disagree with without any explanation for why I think they are true. Unfortunately, if I were to go down every rabbit hole that I touch on the video would be hours long, so I have to gloss over some potentially confusing or controversial statements.

Enter this post. Here I will be attempting to pre-empt any questions that I think people may have, and go through my thought process on certain claims. I don’t recommend that you read the whole thing. Each explanation will be followed by a timestamp and relevant quote from the video that I am expanding upon so that you can quickly search the page and find what you are looking for.

I’m sure there will be things I don’t think to cover, or things that are poorly reasoned both here and in the video, so feel free to ask additional questions. Just please check to make sure you aren’t asking something that I already covered here.

I will also be attempting to give as much credit as possible to all the wonderful writers and creators who have influenced my thinking with regards to these works. I’ll be linking as much as possible to my sources, as well as to additional content that expands on ideas I mention. Also I’ve included some personal tidbits and commentary, just for fun.

Under a cut for length.

INTRODUCTION:

Huge props to the people who put together the behind-the-scenes footage of LOTR. I’ve watched all the bonus footage numerous times in my life. If you have any interest in the nitty-gritty of how movies get made, I can’t recommend it enough. It really shows all the work and complexity that goes into making movies. That they even get made at all is honestly incredible, especially massive undertakings like LOTR.

[3:30] And if you've ever wondered what the hell happened to The Hobbit, to me it seemed like they were indulging all of these worst impulses instead of catching themselves and editing them out like they did in LOTR.

As soon as I saw that they were making three Hobbit movies my hopes plummeted. It just reeked of executive meddling, and of trying to make the story into something it just isn’t. Lo and behold, that’s what we got: sticking in loads of unnecessary and thematically incoherent material to stretch out the runtime and make it more “epic.” I couldn’t bring myself to watch past the first one, but Lindsay Ellis has an excellent video series exploring in detail what went wrong with the trilogy.

PART ONE: LORD OF THE RINGS

[8:40] If you followed the events and the chronology of the book they would just hang out with Faramir for a little bit and then the movie would end

Technically it’s more complicated than this because that’s already following the revised movie timeline. In reality, Frodo would have just left the Black Gate. They *are* moving the events around to some extent, usually by a few of days here and there, but they can’t move stuff together that takes place weeks apart or the whole timeline would crumble.

[9:55] You can call it the theme, the soul, the spirit, the point, or whatever else you want, but the great works of fiction have something at their core that pulls everything together and elevates it into art. It’s a difficult thing to describe, but I think this scene perfectly tapped into the soul of Tolkien’s work.

Huge shout out to Bob Case and his video “Blame of Thrones” for first introducing me to this concept and the language of the “spirit” of a work to describe this phenomenon. In many ways the first two parts of this video are merely building on the LOTR-GOT comparison that he makes in that video, digging a little deeper and looking at more specific and concrete (and spoileriffic) examples of what he’s talking about so that we can apply these ideas to the Witcher…and beyond. Like all his work, it’s excellent. His YouTube is pretty much inactive these days, but he also occasionally writes content for Shamus Young’s blog if you want more of his work.

PART TWO: GAME OF THRONES

Alright, here it is: the section that really caused me to want to make this companion piece. Earlier I mentioned that I have sympathy for the GoT showrunners, and I really do. Martin’s work is incredibly complex, and so this section dominates the blogpost because there is so much to explain and no way that I could explain it all in the video without incredible bloat.

First I should mention that I, and all the writers I am going to credit here, share a very specific interpretation of Martin’s work. This isn’t the only interpretation. I doubt it’s the interpretation of the majority of readers. Obviously, I fully believe it is the correct interpretation, but the showrunners clearly had a wildly different one.

People who have this interpretation express it in different ways. Joannalannister collects hers in her tag #the-meaning-of-asoiaf. PoorQuentyn expresses it here, and in his analysis of Davos, Quentyn, and Tyrion. Other writers express it in their own ways.

With my lit degree hanging over my head, I can’t help but see it as a problem of competing artistic movements. To me, HBO’s Game of Thrones is part of the art movement of the past few decades, namely postmodernism. Art movements are complex, but basically postmodernism is the cynical reaction to the sincerity of modernism which came before it. Cynicism is, I think, the defining trait of Game of Thrones.

But it is NOT the defining trait of the books. In my view, Martin’s ASOIAF is part of the art movement that we are moving towards, which is starting to become known as metamodernism. Metamodernism is a reaction to the nihilistic pessimism and cynicism of postmodernism, and replaces it not with the unbridled sincerity of modernism, but rather oscillation between the two modes. It can be both ironic and sincere, deconstructionist and constructionist, apathetic and affectual. Once you have peeled back all the layers however, it is ultimately hopeful and optimistic. It embraces a sense of radical optimism. In metamodernist works optimism is often radical because the world the characters live in can be so dark. But that darkness serves only to highlight those characters that can hold fast to virtue amidst such darkness.

So, be warned. If you believe that Martin’s work is all about controlling the Iron Throne, and believe that cynicism is for the wise and honor is for fools, we just aren’t going to see eye to eye.

[12:45] Ned is a competent northern politician who has some trouble adapting to southern culture. Through a combination of bad luck, some understandable mistakes, and a misconception about his position, he fails in his goals.

The show didn’t invent the idea of Stupid Honorable Ned. Plenty of people believed this, even before the show. Obviously I believe they are wrong. If you would like to read more about it I would suggest Steven Attewell’s analysis of Ned’s chapters that he does on his blog, particularly Eddard XI and Eddard XIII. Steven does a much better job of analyzing Ned as a political actor than I ever could.

[13:00] Most of these changes are subtle…the best example is the council debate about whether or not to assassinate Daenerys.

Many of the ideas in this section are pulled from two essays by turtle-paced: Poor Doomed Ned and The Argument to Assassinate Daenerys. Turtle goes deep into the details of the differences between the Ned Stark of the books and the show, and I skimmed some of their comparisons for my argument. Steven Attewell’s analysis of this chapter is also worth reading.

[14:09] It’s a good argument, and I think in the books we are expected to mostly agree with Ned, both morally and politically.

When I say “expected” I mean from the authors point of view, which of course relies on me being correct about my interpretation of Martin’s work. Obviously I think I’m right, but if you don’t agree with my interpretation you may not agree with this statement.

[14:16] Notice also that the supporters of the assassination: Littlefinger, Varys, Renly, and Pycelle are all villains (all except Pycelle are trying to destabilize the kingdom), and the people who oppose it, Ned and Barristan, are heroes.

Each of them represents a different sort of evil. Littlefinger is a scheming sociopathic villain. Varys is a well-intentioned extremist whose willingness to commit utterly heinous acts in the pursuit of his goals makes him a villain. This is because, as Huxley puts it, “The end cannot justify the means, for the simple and obvious reason that the means employed determine the nature of the ends produced.” Renly is narcissistic ambitious evil, willing to throw a realm into war to satisfy his own ego, and is totally uncaring about the lives of other people. It isn’t precisely correct to say that Pycelle is a villain because he represents the banality of evil. He thinks he’s just doing his job, but he’s morally bankrupt and politically corrupt.

[16:40] It would take too long to list all the ways that Tywin is awful, and everyone knows it.

To clarify, I mean that everyone in-universe knows it. For some god-forsaken reason, some readers seem to think that Tywin was just being effective after he unleashed the Mountain on the Riverlands and violated every military and political norm in Westeros.

If you are going to say that he is “Machiavellian” I would encourage you to actually read The Prince, where Machiavelli says “Nevertheless a prince ought to inspire fear in such a way that, if he does not win love, he avoids hatred” and goes into the reasons why.

[17:17] Tywin on the other hand accomplished a lot of short-term gains by being as treacherous and dishonorable as possible. But this has a cost: by proving themselves fair-weather allies they surround themselves with the same. Nobody trusts them, and so their allies scheme and betray them.

Oberyn and Doran are both scheming in their own way to revenge themselves on the Lannisters for the deaths of Elia and her children. The Tyrells poison Joffrey and scheme to spirit Sansa away to Highgarden.

[17:36] Ned failed due to a couple of minor mistakes, some bad luck, and treachery.

I mention a few times that Ned, and more broadly the Starks, get “unlucky.” Again, Steven Attewell does an excellent job of documenting this with his keen eye for how GRRM cheats political realities, but I’ll note a few of the many ways George has to bend over backward to screw the Starks.

In AGoT Catelyn leaves King’s Landing roughly around the same time that Tyrion leaves the wall, and both are on horseback. In order for them to meet at the Inn at the Crossroads Tyrion has to travel roughly 2,000 miles in the same time that Catelyn travels 400 miles. This is basically impossible, but necessary for the plot so that Catelyn can lose Tyrion at the Eyrie. If she had caught him somewhere further north she could have simply chucked him into her own dungeons and managed his trial herself.

Cersei has been trying to kill Robert for goodness knows how long with just as unreliable methods as “get him drunk on a hunt.” In order for Ned to get screwed she has to succeed in killing Robert at precisely that moment. If it had failed like every one of her other attempts she is most likely dead, because Ned would tell Robert the truth about her children as soon as he got back.

In order for Theon to take Winterfell, veteran military man and castellan Ser Rodrik Cassell has to stupidly empty the Winterfell garrison while he knows that Ironborn raiders are running loose in the North, not even leaving behind a mere twenty-five to fifty men that would have completely thrashed Theon’s assault. If Theon can’t take Winterfell, the Red Wedding doesn’t happen (as Martin has told us that the real inciting incident of the Red Wedding was the fall of Winterfell).

[17:41] However, killing him was a terrible idea, and backfired on the Lannisters instantly.

Continuing this theme, the Lannisters were in an absolutely horrible position at the beginning of the War of the Five Kings. They pretty much just have their bannerman in the Westerlands. Stannis seems to have the support of most of the Crownlands, and he and Renly are splitting the lords of the Reach and the Stormlands (with Renly having the larger chunk). The Starks have all the support of the North and the Riverlands combined. The Lannisters are surrounded by enemies who outnumber them on all sides. Killing Ned immediately jumpstarts a war that will almost certainly crush the Lannisters. That it didn’t took some very thin plotting and improbable developments at times, but overall George made it work. For more analysis of this, again check out Steven Attewell Blog: Race for the Iron Throne.

[17:48] Tywin was killed by both a guest whom he considered his ally, and his son.

I firmly believe Oberyn poisoned Tywin. Here’s a good rundown of the evidence. Beyond simple means, motive, and opportunity it also provides neat answers to lingering odd questions like why Tywin rotted so oddly and aggressively, why Tyrion knew he would find him in the privy, why Oberyn was willing to chuck his life away for a confession before seeming to have secured revenge against Tywin.

It’s also thematically juicy. I love the idea that Tywin, who so egregiously violated Westerosi norms culminating in the total breach of the social contract at the Red Wedding, was a victim of contrapasso. He can’t be protected by social norms, so he gets poisoned by his guest and ally. Did Tyrion know he was dying? Had he put it all together? Was that bolt really an act of mercy? Perhaps it was one final service to the Lannisters, to keep the dream of their alliance with the Martells alive. Who knows, but boy is it interesting to consider.

[18:13] his alliances fall to pieces, and his children are abandoned by even their own family.

I’m referring here to the infighting between the Tyrells and Lannisters (and Martells, though they never had any intent of staying true to the alliance) after Tywin’s death (though there was some before as well, just intensified after Cersei takes over from Tywin). Kevan forces Cersei to take the walk of shame, and Jaime and the rest of the Lannisters abandon her to that fate.

[19:41] Just like Lord of the Rings, and the Witcher, ASOIAF is clearly dedicated to anti-violence. Not pacifism: all three works have heroes dealing out retributive violence in order to try and restore justice.

I understand it might be odd to suggest that three works which feature so much violence can be dedicated to anti-violence, but depicting something is not the same as endorsing it. I would argue in the case of Martin’s work in particular that his depiction of violence, so un-romantically brutal and direct, is intentionally revolting, and therefore is designed to be anti-violence. Martin purposefully makes you want revenge on certain characters, gives it to you, and then forces you to stare at the inhumanity of this thing you thought you wanted. Yeah I wanted Theon to pay, but not like that. Yeah, I wanted Cersei to pay, but not like that. Yeah, I want the Freys to pay, but I don’t think I’m going to like what Stoneheart is going to do to them.

There is a certain amount of this in the Witcher as well. I can specifically think of one scene in The Blood of Elves, but I promised no Witcher spoilers.

The violence in LOTR is much more romanticized, but as Faramir says: “I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.” The hero is still Frodo, who doesn’t fight anyone or anything in the whole story. Frodo is a pacifist, but his pacifism is enabled by others who are willing to fight.

[20:07] In a Dance with Dragons Daenerys allows the old slave-holding class to maintain too much power and so they immediately attempt to continue the old violence of slavery. Daenerys did not commit enough violence against the slave-owners, so they were allowed to continue existing, and as long as they existed they were always going to abuse and oppress the ex-slaves.

A couple years after the release of ADWD, an obnoxiously wrong and poisonous idea began to creep into the ASOIAF fandom: Daenerys’ violence against the slaveowners in Slaver’s Bay is dangerous and immoral, and peace is the better option. This idea was most persuasively argued in the Meereenese Blot’s series of essays.

I’ll quote some of the conclusion here:

“They are supposed to feel this generic distrust for everyone, and to fail to grasp that their peaces were actually quite successful. Dany is supposed to conclude — wrongly — that her behavior through most of the book was silly and foolish. And if you came away with those impressions too, it’s perfectly understandable…The whole plotline is designed to maneuver Dany into a mental place where she’ll decide to sideline her concerns for innocent life, and take what she wants with fire and blood.”

This idea, much like the idea that Daenerys is some sort of unhinged fascist just waiting for the right trigger, makes me unbelievably angry. This idea that I am supposed to value the life of the slaveowner and the slave equally, and that maintaining a “peaceful” slave-owning society is an acceptable alternative to violent revolution is so fundamentally revolting to me, that it turns my stomach even to write that sentence.

Some fans went even as far as to suggest that Daenerys’ occupation of Meereen was a parallel to the US occupation of Iraq, and that she was engaged in erasing an authentic slave-owning culture that she despised. If you read the above series of essays, you can see that they are, at the least, enabling that kind of thinking.

To be clear, I do not consider any slave society to be worth a damn thing. Anything that continues it is evil and all that attempts to destroy it is good. That being said, once again Steven Attewell does a better job than I ever could of rebutting the ideas of the Meereneese Blot, and explaining how the correct parallel of Daenerys’ actions in Meereen is the American mistake of abandoning radical reconstruction. He describes her actions in Meereen as abandoning a revolution half complete. I highly recommend reading it, especially if you are American.

Martin is not a pacifist. He has said he would have fought in WWII. He demonstrated against Vietnam. As far as I know, the first time George ever used the words “Fire and Blood” was in a book released in 1982 called Fevre Dream:

“I never held much with slavery […]. You can’t just go… usin’ another kind of people, like they wasn’t people at all. Know what I mean? Got to end, sooner or later. Better if it ends peaceful, but it’s got to end even if it has to be with fire and blood, you see? Maybe that’s what them abolitionists been sayin’ all along. You try to be reasonable, that’s only right, but if it don’t work, you got to be ready. Some things is just wrong. They got to be ended.”

Daenerys is a slave-freeing, slave-owner-killing Hero with a capital H. She has made mistakes. I weep for the lives of the slaves that she has thrown away by abandoning her revolution, by failing to give the people of Astapor the strength to defend themselves, by maintaining a false peace that allows the Meereneese KKK to kill ex-slaves in the night. I shed no tears for the slaveowners that she has killed. When you treat other human beings as property you forfeit your right to Prosperity, Freedom, and Life. Preferably in that order—I would prefer that a slave society could peacefully transition, that those who attempted to continue it could be locked up, and that bloodshed could be avoided. But sometimes violence is necessary.

Daenerys will make more mistakes, I am sure. I believe that she will swing too far in the other direction, temporarily. But that’s a topic for another time.

[20:57] She comforts the hound even as he threatens her and helps him on his path from violence to peace.

Sandor did not die, despite what the Elder Brother told Brienne. He uses his words very carefully, to suggest that the Hound is dead, but that Sandor Clegane the man is simply “at rest.” He has become a brother of the isle.

“On the upper slopes they saw three boys driving sheep, and higher still they passed a lichyard where a brother bigger than Brienne was struggling to dig a grave. From the way he moved, it was plain to see that he was lame.” - Brienne VI, AFFC

[21:40] If they don’t understand why Tywin is a villain then of course they won’t understand why the Others are the main villains of the series, and will probably replace them with some blonde queen. And if you don’t understand that the cold of the human heart is the real enemy than of course you’ll think you can stop winter by just stabbing it. Like Tywin would.

In the books the Others are the villains. They are what the whole story is building towards, much like in LOTR the story builds towards Frodo casting the ring into the Fire. Martin has said that he thinks that the finishing chapters of LOTR, like the Scouring of the Shire, were important, so we may see something like that, but the clear emphasis will be on the existential evil, and cleaning up Cersei or Aegon “Targaryen’s” mess will be a clear step down in importance. It’s something that the heroes have grown beyond, but still need to handle, just like Saruman in the Shire.

[22:04] There’s nothing wrong with liking Game of Thrones, or disliking Lord of the Rings, or anything else.

I really do mean this. I am going to be critical of things you like, and am going to praise things you love. People are different, that’s to be expected. I am not here to pretend that people should only like the things I like. I’m interested in what makes these stories work. I said much the same thing in my last video about some of the new Star Wars properties. People tend to get really attached to the media they like (I’m no exception) and that can color our perception of criticism. Do try to keep in mind that if you like something I criticize it isn’t an attack on you. You have a sacred and personal relationship to the things you enjoy that no one can take from you. I like all kinds of stuff that other people might consider bad, and that’s okay. Actually it’s great, because it gives us something to talk about.

I may genuinely hate Game of Thrones because it butchers something I came to love, but that doesn’t mean I have anything against the people who do like it for their own reasons. We’re all just out here enjoying what we like.

PART THREE: THE WITCHER

There is less in this section for two reasons. First, I promised not to spoil anything past the material covered in the show and I’ll stick to that here. Second—full disclosure here—I haven’t read all of the books because after Blood of Elves I got pretty bored and from what I had heard they did not improve in quality, and if anything got worse. Having already felt that going from the anthologies to Blood I was happy to end my reading there.

If something I say is contradicted by a later book that I didn’t read feel free to let me know.

[23:31] First I should mention that Sapkowski’s works are not on the same level as Tolkien’s and Martin’s, who are the best and second-best fantasy authors of all time. I have enjoyed the Witcher books that I have read, but they are not anywhere near as complex or beautifully written.

This is just my opinion, see above paragraph. I really do think that it’s a pretty common opinion though. I’ve read it before, and you often see people recommend the first two Witcher anthologies in a “if you like it maybe see if you like the rest of them?” sort of way. Book sales numbers also support this, though by all accounts they are exploding in the wake of the show.

But, one potential issue is that I’m reading a translation so I have no idea how good Sapkowski’s prose actually is. You get a lot of sentences in the US edition like: “it must be both bothersome and irritating.” Translation is art, not science, and passages like these make me worry that the translator is just translating each phrase without worrying about all the subtlety that makes language beautiful. These are minor examples of course, but they worry me about what else might be changed. So take my criticism of his writing with a giant, translated, grain of salt, in that I don’t read Polish.

[23:58] Despite this, Geralt the Witcher has been worming his way into popular culture for years, interestingly on the back of a series of video games

Google trends clearly show that the video games are what primarily generated interest in the character before the show. There were no English editions until around the time the games started coming out, and the US editions all feature concept art from the games on the covers. The release of the subsequently translated books after the games received very little attention in comparison to the games.

[24:15] In my opinion, that decline of focus on Geralt was the greatest weakness in the books, and the focus on Geralt is the greatest strength of the games. Because Geralt is at the core of what made Sapkowski’s story and world engaging in the first place. He is a fascinating character in a way that Ciri, who is a fairly standard fantasy “chosen child,” could never be.

This is just my opinion, and I explain why I think Geralt is so great in the subsequent paragraphs. Reasonable people can disagree on this, but I’ve come across more than a couple fantasy characters who could be generically described as “royal orphans with special powers.” It’s not exactly novel. Geralt is pretty novel, at least in terms of what I have read.

[24:49] He suffers many of the same psychological problems that characters like Tyrion and Brienne suffer from in Martin’s work

The technical name for these kinds of issues is “internalized bigotry.” This happens when you get treated consistently horribly by the society you live in due to some fundamental fact about yourself that you didn’t choose, and eventually you begin to believe and “internalize” their opinion of you. For example, people expect Tyrion to be unlovable, conniving, lecherous, and debauched. Eventually he simply leans into these characteristics, because in a way it’s almost easier to be what people expect you to be.

[25:48] To top it off, he hides all this inside a cynical and nihilistic exterior, he pretends he doesn’t care when in fact, he cares more than anyone.

The shot that accompanies this, of Geralt looking intently at what’s happening in the room while others tend to be watching with a sort of mild curiosity like you might at an unexpected circus performance, did an awesome job of conveying this idea.

[26:36] This was kind of a cool idea, but predictably their scenes ended up being generally less interesting and engaging then Geralt’s. Yennefer’s were sometimes fantastic but Ciri’s rarely were.

This was the opinion of fans that I most commonly observed. I don’t have any empirical evidence of this. If you have any that either supports or contradicts this please let me know, I would be fascinated to see it. I could see someone really loving Yennefer’s scenes, and I personally enjoyed a lot of them, but I don’t understand how someone could walk away from the first season with Ciri as their favorite character of the three. I’ll come back to this in a later section.

[27:40] In many ways the first two books, and the games, have more in common with Sherlock Holmes than they do most other fantasy stories.

Really a more accurate comparison would be Philip Marlowe since Geralt is definitely more of an American Pulp detective than a British one. I do love the similarity between Geralt’s Witcher Senses in The Witcher 3 and Sherlock’s detective vision in Crimes and Punishment. I can’t make the same comparison to a Philip Marlowe game, because no one’s made one yet.

Actually that’s not strictly true. There was one game that came out in 1996.

[28:12] But Netflix’s Witcher has barely a whiff of detective fiction anywhere. I think this has caused a lot of fans to feel alienated by the show, even if they can’t explain exactly why.

It’s not reasonable to expect people to know why they like or don’t like something. It’s a feeling, and unless they have experience with writing, narratology, literature, film studies, or just read a lot of tvtropes.org, they are not likely to be able to put their finger on what it is. This causes people to disproportionally blame the things that are most obviously wrong. The premiere example of this is Jar Jar Binks in The Phantom Menace. Jar Jar was obviously bad, but he doesn’t even come close to the top ten biggest problems with the movie. It was much worse that there was no main character or understandable plot and drama. Check out Red Letter Media’s legendary review for more on that.

I think a similar thing happened with Ciri, in that her story was sort of obviously underwhelming and so received a lot of flak, but there are deeper problems with the show.

[32:04] The third change is more subtle, but I’m worried that this Geralt genuinely believes in neutrality.

Just like Ned, the showrunners would not be the first to espouse this view. This quote in particular about “evil is evil” is obnoxiously peddled about as a justification for fence-sitting despite the fact that Geralt’s actual behavior doesn’t support it at all.

I don’t know for sure if the showrunners genuinely think Geralt tries to be neutral. There’s some evidence for yes in the first episode, the Borch episode, the Striga episode, and a couple of others. There’s strong evidence for no in the Duny/Pavetta episode. We’ll just have to see.

To be clear, when I mean “neutral” I mean in the face of immediate violence or injustice. Geralt often doesn’t care who is king, as he explains to Ostrit. But he won’t let a Striga continue to kill people just for coin.

[37:20] When the writers took away Ned’s best arguments for his actions, when they took his story of existential triumph, of not compromising his morals, and turned it into a simple tragedy, they showed they clearly did not understand his heroism.

See PoorQuentyn’s explanation of existential heroism, and how it applies to ASOIAF.

[37:58] In the books, Ciri and Yennefer are included in the story through their connection to Geralt, because he is our hero and the foundation of our connection to the world. In the show they are included before ever having met Geralt, and they take up time that could have been spent focusing on those devilish detective details that make Geralt’s stories and character work.

Originally this video had a lot of discussion about how well these two other characters worked, but it ended up being kind of useless because it comes down to personal opinion, and the writers failure to properly use Geralt massively overshadows whether or not someone liked or didn’t like either of the other two leads. Again, I get why someone could like Yennefer’s scenes. I get why someone could maybe even like her scenes more than Geralt’s. Anya Chalotra did great. I thought the writing was a little weak at times, but on balance pretty decent. Geralt gets the benefit of all his stories being straight adaptations, and she didn’t, so it was a pretty decent job.

On the other hand, I thought Ciri’s storyline was a giant waste of space. When I think of all the best moments in the show, Ciri doesn’t show up in any of them. She spends the entire season running away from and interacting with fairly minor and forgettable characters that did not need to be introduced in this season. Calanthe, Eist, and Mousesack were great characters and the actors gave great performances, but that did not make up for the fact that her storyline went nowhere and did nothing to justify its inclusion. If someone loved Ciri’s storyline I would genuinely be interested to know why.

[39:10] I do have some sympathy for the writers of the Witcher.

Many times in this video I mention sympathy for various writers. Moviemaking is a massively complex undertaking. If you know anything about the difficulty of getting these things together you’ll know that it’s an absolute miracle any movie gets made and takes herculean effort from everyone involved. Television series are arguably even worse because they are longer, more complex, and often have a lower budget despite that. The people involved are honestly doing their best, and I recognize that, even if I criticize the product.

[39:47] They are in this unfortunate position where they can’t really pull the majority of their writing straight from the books because the material isn’t really strong enough by itself.

The books are very dialogue heavy. As I allude to, the one scene that was very close to the book is that scene with Filavandrel and it’s just obnoxious because the two characters just dialogue at each other. It goes on even longer in the book. How well that works in a book is up for debate but it wasn’t going to work on the screen, and it didn’t.

These problems are not insurmountable though. You can put other footage over these monologues. You could have included some footage of Elves fighting in their war. You could have footage of the “cursed” daughters of Lilit being locked in towers or autopsied while Stregobor explains it. I get this is more budget, but that budget went other places.

On the other hand some great scenes that I think would have translated excellently shot-for-shot from the book with little additional budget, like Renfri and Geralt in the Alderman’s attic, are entirely cut. Ah well.

[40:25] Well, I have my theories, but it in the end it doesn’t really matter.

I have a sneaking suspicion that somebody thought it needed to be more “epic” than the first two books are, so we got all this princess and political stuff in early. If there’s any merit to the idea that this series “copied” GoT, it’s somewhere in here, just like how the Hobbit got poisoned with all of the “epicness” of LOTR.

[44:54] Lastly, I’m gonna do my best to put out more regular content going forward. I’m aiming for at least one video a month.

I place no limitation on topics. It’ll probably be mostly media analysis, but if I’m honest I’m just going to write about whatever interests me. That’s the best way to keep myself interested.

That being said, if you have something you think I should analyze let me know. If I’m interested, I might do it.

#witcher #netflix witcher #lotr #asoiaf #game of thrones #anti-got #lord of the rings #adaptation #video companions

6 notes · View notes

skeilig · 5 years

Text

I’m gonna make a rec list of my favorite youtube video essays for absolutely no reason, just because I want to, on this fine saturday morning. hours and hours worth of content under the cut...

Philosophy Tube

He’s doing some really cool shit recently. Each of his videos is like a theatrical performance.

Steve Bannon: the end of this video gives me chills, and I’ve honestly watched this at least 5 times because.. the layers. the layers! the use of metaphor, the artistry, the acting. ugh.

Suicide and Mental Health: one of his most well-known videos, I believe, and it’s .. so good.

YouTube: Art or Reality?: very meta, and probably best watching after the Suicide video because it’s a commentary on that video specifically.

Jenny Nicholson

Her videos are great because they’re just about specific or obscure stuff that you may not know about but they’re presented in such a way that you can watch it for 2 hours and not even notice.

I hate the Greatest Showman more every minute: this was the first video of hers that I saw right after seeing this movie and god... yeah. I agree with everything.

The Worst Reality Show of All Time: this is just ... completely hilarious.

Well, I guess SOMEBODY had to read Trigger Warning: an hour and a half long video wherein she reads a book, makes some jokes, and there’s a stunning third act twist. A+

Folding Ideas

A Lukewarm Defense of 50 Shades of Grey (The Movie), part 1, part 2, and part 3. I’ve watched this series more times than I want to admit and it never gets old. it’s very funny, interesting, and contains one of the hottest takes I’ve ever seen.

Hbomberguy

Flat Earth: A Measured Response: ever want a deep dive into flat eartherism? what I love about this video is that it’s not particularly mean-spirited and does show some understanding, especially at the end, for why and how people fall into this kind of thing

Sherlock is Garbage, and Here’s Why: this video went a bit viral when it came out, and started a trend of copycats, but (as a former sherlock fan...) it was very cathartic. also not mean-spirited toward the fans, which is nice.

ContraPoints

Decrypting the Alt-Right: How to Recognize a Fascist: this is an older one, but I still really like how it’s put together

Gender Critical: basically I just think I needed to see this video. as with all her videos, it’s well articulated and empathetic and never straw-mans the “other side” which is why she’s so successful at changing people’s minds

Shaun

Shaun holds a special place in my heart since he was the first lefty-tube person I watched, and I miss him.. hope he’s doing well. all his videos are A+ but here’s a sampling to get you started.

Outrage News: a look specifically at Breitbart news and how right-wing news frames stories

How PragerU lies to you: got a bit of comedy in this one, but it’s his usual standard of well-researched and well-articulated.

The Fate of the Frog Men: a bit more personal and an empathetic breakdown of the psychology of white, alt-right men. I honestly think this kind of conversation is what we need to be having to move the needle, as opposed to just ... refusing to understand each other. it doesn’t always work, but sometimes it does and that’s valuable.

Big Joel

God’s Not Dead: The Rhetoric of Christian Propaganda, plus part 2 and part 3. It’s sort of the classic “I’ll watch this so I don’t have to watch the movies” thing, but it's also a real look at what the arguments are and how they work. And the third “God’s Not Dead” movie is... maybe self-aware?

Bee Movie: The End of Trash: this is the last video of Big Joel’s series on Dreamworks movies and basically this video is just really funny.

Lindsay Ellis

The Case for Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame: a really interesting deepdive into the various incarnations of Notre Dame de Paris, taking into account the historical context of each, all leading to the Disney version.

That Time Disney Remade Beauty and the Beast: more of a mean one, but listen, I didn’t like the live action beauty and the beast either lol

Strucci Movies

Fake Friends: Parasocial Relationships, part 1 and part 2. this series is like 2.5 hours long but it’s really good while also.. hard to watch.

#stuff no one asked for #but what is tumblr for?

33 notes · View notes

wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 5 years

Text

Michael After Midnight: TGWTG Anniversary Crossovers

I think enough time has passed where I can talk about these films without looking like I’m jumping on a trend.

Back when it was, you know, an actual thing, Channel Awesome would every so often gather together and make a big-as anniversary film to celebrate the site. The movies would always be these massive doorstoppers where everyone would be running around in Halloween costumes of whatever character they liked the most that fit the theme and fighting some random villain. None of this ever really tied in to their work, and none of this even remotely had anything to do with reviews. It was all just hanging around with friends and having dumb fun, and when I was younger I kind of just accepted that.

But certain revelations have made that dubious. No one was having fun making these. Everyone was miserable, except perhaps Doug Walker, who was just utterly oblivious to the plight of his coworkers. There was seedy stuff going on, people were pretty much being tortured and abused, and it’s a wonder anyone was ever able to feign enjoyment in any of their scenes. And looking back on these movies I used to remember fondly, I have to say… they kind of really, legitimately suck ass. These three films – Kickassia, Suburban Knights, and To Boldly Flee – are just legitimately painful and depressing to sit through, for reasons both meta and writing-wise.

The biggest problem with all of them is their humor, which is a pretty big problem when you’re starring a bunch of comedians, some of whom can be legitimately funny. The worst bits tend to revolve around the mind-boggling number of references they cram into each script; To Boldly Flee and Suburban Knights are much worse in this regard, as they have all of the actors literally dressed up as their favorite characters, but there are two examples of this sort of thing that shine as the worst examples of all. The first is Lindsay Ellis doing a Sarah Palin impersonation in Kickassia; Palin was such a flash-in-the-pan politician that it instantly dates the whole movie, and I don’t know if it was just bad writing, lack of direction, or what, but Ellis just fails to make this joke work at all. Like I know I can’t expect this to be as funny as Iron Sky’s Palin riffing, but still, it’s just sad.

The absolute worst, however, is JO in To Boldly Flee as Ed from Cowboy Bepob… at least that’s who I think he’s supposed to be playing. I know nothing about Cowboy Bebop and have outright refused to ever watch it because if Ed is anything like how JO played her, I’m going to fucking hate the whole show, Steve Blum and Melissa Fahn be damned. JO’s portrayal is whiny, hyper, annoying, manic, obnoxious… there’s not a single positive thing that can be said. His performance of the character is pretty much the poster child for just how absolutely awful these movies could get.

There’s also a lot of jokes where the punchline is basically just “this guy’s body/genitalia is funny, teehee.” Suburban Knights and To Boldly Flee have some truly awful examples of this, such as the numerous upskirts Doug Walker gets as Link and the infamous Spoony Dune scene. But even that isn’t the worst of it. The worst of it comes from the frequent states of near-nudity that Justin “JewWario” Carmichael would find himself in throughout these films. To Boldly Flee has him channeling George Takei and fencing without his shirt on, which is bad enough, but Suburban Knights has perhaps the worst scene of all, in any of these films, though only with hindsight.

For those of you not familiar, JewWario was outed as a creepy sexual predator during the whole #ChangeTheChannel fiasco. The guy groomed young women and did god knows what else during his time on the site, with none of his coworkers any the wiser and the management doing their best to cover it up; in fact, everyone only found out because the suits who owned CA made a huge blunder during their rebuttal of the claims of its former employees. With all of that context, please try and rewatch Suburban Knights’ climax in which JewWario helps save the day by revealing his penis to everyone. This right here is Keyser Soze levels of “uncomfortable in hindsight.”

The stories aren’t much better, and often fall into the same sort of issues that The Angry Video Game Nerd movie fell into, in that nothing in these films really showcases why we love the reviewers; Kickassia infamously has the Dr. Insano twist, as one example of how they botched this. All of these movies just feel too epic in scope and don’t really try to incorporate anything that we love about these reviewers into the films. Only To Boldly Flee really does anything right in that regard, as it throws back to everything from oneshot Nostalgia Critic villains to the Todd-Lindsay-Lupa love triangle to Phelous dying… the real problem is you have to actually sit through To Boldly Flee to see that. The movies go for these epic plots where the reviewers do cool shit like take over micronations (Kickassia), quest for powerful artifacts (Suburban Knights), or deal with extremely heavy-handed and hamfisted allegories for internet privacy bills (To Boldly Flee). You’d think maybe throwing a bunch of comedians into an epic plot like any of these could lead to some funny jokes, or maybe some sort of Monty Python-esque parody, but no, instead these comedians decide to revel in melodrama and try to genuinely act, with EXTREMELY mixed results. It doesn’t help that some of these people just aren’t even remotely funny when they’re trying to be.

Here’s the thing with The Angry Video Game Nerd’s movie, in comparison to these, though: it may have had this epic, ridiculous, goofy plot involving Area 51, kaiju, aliens, and crappy Atari games buried in a landfill, but the entire plot was building up to, and ultimately delivered on, the promise of the long-awaited review of the E.T. game. For all the film’s flaws, Rolfe knew what we loved about the Nerd, he knew what the fans wanted, and by god did he give it to them in the silliest, most epic way possible. Even if I didn’t love the film, the fact Rolfe knew why we’d want to see a feature-length Nerd film in the first place speaks volumes about how he understands that he can do what will make him happy artistically and still show the fans what they want to see.

These movies from the Channel Awesome crew don’t seem to get that at all. They don’t build up to a review. They don’t build up to them discovering the worst movie or song or whatever they review. They’re all very straightforward genre comedies where they can make a bunch of shallow, Seltzer & Friedberg-esque “Look at this thing that exists! That’s a joke right?” references. Aside from seeing your favorite reviewers in a goofy plot like this, where is there any bit of the reason you watch these people in the first place? Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if they were playing characters instead of them playing themselves, in their internet reviewer personas; at least then you wouldn’t be watching Brad Jones stumbling around in a Darth Vader helmet and think to yourself miserably “God I wish that poor guy was watching another E.T. porno.”

So there are some positives in these films, shockingly enough. Brad Jones is consistently good across the entire ‘trilogy,’ especially in Kickassia where he has the good sense to walk out on all the bullshit for a while. Maybe it’s just because these films got me interested in him, but I definitely think he does a good job. The same can be said for a lot of the actors, such as the bad guy in Suburban Knights and Ma-Ti’s actor; they manage to deliver at least solid performances in spite of the films. And then there are the James Rolfe cameos, and it’s just always good to see Rolfe in general.

To Boldly Flee, despite its reputation, actually has a lot of genuinely good bits. For instance, the distraction song is actually a really solid musical number. Linkara, Doug, and Spoony actually play really well off of each other, so when they have their three idiot villains team up they at least get some decently good moments. And other reviewers I generally like such as Phelous or Todd do a solid job, and frankly in To Boldly Flee Doug Walker does show some impressive dramatic acting… but it’s in service of a character who has previously been portrayed as a petulant, whiny, self-serving, egotistical manchild, so it almost feels like he’s playing a totally different character. Still, credit where credit is due.

None of these films succeed at what they want to. Ostensibly, they are supposed to be celebrating the site and the friendship of the reviewers, but as I mentioned, there’s no reviewing, there’s nothing that indicates what the site is about, and they all just come off as ego-stroking self-congratulatory wanking. None of these films were worth the pain and suffering that the cast and crew had to go through to produce these, and watching them at all these days is especially hard knowing that a lot of these people are smiling and joking through pain, stress, and abuse. It’s sick.

Kickassia may be the most competent, but that isn’t saying much at all. Aside from the whole Palin bit, this one has a simple, straightforward plot and is relatively down-to-earth, and it almost feels like it really was just a bunch of friends making a shitty low budget action movie in the desert… something sadly undermined by reality. Suburban Knights is probably one of the most uncomfortable to sit through due to jokes like Film Brain saying he’d eat Kinley Mochrie’s “pea-ness” (this was before she came out mind you) and the numerous jokes surrounding JewWario’s junk, but it almost works, like it nearly comes close to being a dumb epic fantasy comedy, but it just frequently shoots itself in the foot with the bad writing and acting and its overreliance on references.

To Boldly Flee is, to put it absolutely simple, a hot mess. This film is an utter trainwreck from start to finish. It is the Battlefield Earth of internet review movies, a bloated, messy, overly long dumpster fire with some of the most nightmarish behind-the-scenes stories and horrendous financial mismanagement you could ever imagine. But where Battlefield Earth is at least unintentionally funny, this film… is not. This film just makes you feel bad for everyone involved, it makes your heart ache for all the poor reviewers who had to suffer under the miserable conditions, it makes you question Doug Walker’s sanity in thinking he could turn his screeching manchild of a reviewer into some tragic martyr in a total 180 from how he had always been portrayed prior. None of these three films are worth sitting through, but I think To Boldly Flee is, with hindsight, the one least worth sitting through, which is a truly incredible accomplishment.

It’s kind of tragic. I still like a lot of the reviewers who took part in these – Todd, Linkara, Phelous, Brad Jones, and even Doug to some extent (though that’s an unpopular opinion these days) – but I just can’t muster up any forgiveness for these films anymore. And I don’t blame any of the people in it (except maybe Doug); most of them were there out of obligation or friendship or what have you. These films are just a monument to hubris, ignorance, broken friendships, horrible management, and wanton cruelty to those who called you friends.

See that picture up there at the top? With all of them gathered together like friends? God, how I wish that were the reality. How I wish that picture accurately reflected life, that they were all pals having a good time and that these films were something they were proud of. But behind that picture are stories all of them could tell of hurt, betrayal, resentment, anger, contempt, and some very unspeakable things in Carmichael’s case. I wish the sort of world a surface level glance at that picture shows you existed, where the crew of TGWTG all had a blast making these shitty movies together, because at least in that case I could find a sort of ironic enjoyment in them. But reality has gone out of its way to undermine any of that.

#Michael After Midnight #Review #Movie review #Channel Awesome #TGWTG #That Guy with the Glasses #Kickassia #Suburban Knights #To Boldly Flee #Internet reviewers

14 notes · View notes

wits-writing · 6 years

Text

Bumblebee (Movie Review)

Last night I managed to get into a preview screening for Bumblebee, a spinoff for one of the main robots from the Transformers franchise. Knowing this movie is directed by Travis Knight, who previously directed Kubo and the Two Strings, got my curiosity up despite the overall lackluster quality from the movies in the series that preceded it. Knight and screenwriter Christina Hodson deliver a soft-reboot for the live action Transformers movies more in line with the “Generation One” (or G1) aesthetic. The movie focuses on Charlie Watson (Hailee Steinfeld), a young mechanic in 1987 who gets caught up in the prelude to the Autobot and Decepticon’s conflict on Earth when she unknowingly comes in possession of the car serving as the alternate form of the Autobot soldier Bumblebee.

An important thing I want to lay down at the start of this review is that comparisons to the Michael Bay directed Transformers movies will be kept to a minimum. Everything that can be said about them has been and by smarter film analysts than me (I highly recommend Lindsay Ellis’s “The Whole Plate” video series.) It’s also important to not sell short what Knight, Hodson and the assembled cast and crew have accomplished with Bumblebee. Saying something is “better than one of the worst review film series of all time” is a low bar and this charming adventure deserves more credit than that.

[Full Review Under the Cut]

Bumblebee himself is introduced in an extended prologue sequence that’s as loving a tribute to Transformers G1 as possible. A good dozen recognizable Autobots and Decepticons cameo in a brief battle and escape sequence that gets described as the “Fall of Cybertron.” The part that takes place on Cybertron is brief but establishes a few things about who Bumblebee is before he gets launched to Earth for the remainder of the movie. While he does appear to have a rapport with Optimus Prime, voiced once again by Peter Cullen, it’s mostly as soldier and commanding officer rather than friends. At the start he doesn’t even have a proper title, as the others Cybertronians only ever call him “B127.” The movie uses his actions on Cybertron and in his arrival on Earth to establish his nobility as an Autobot soldier before a lot of who he was on Cybertron gets stripped away from him. In the first major Earth-based sequence of the movie, Bumblebee needs to fight off the Decepticon Blitzwing. While he’s able to defeat the other Transformer, it ends up damaging his memory circuits and costing him his voice putting him in the state he’ll be in for most of the movie afterwards.

It’s from that point on that the story’s focus shifts from Bumblebee to Charlie as the center of the movie. Her life and attitude get established quickly before her first encounter with Bumblebee, in his VW Beetle form. She’s kept herself at a distance from the rest of her family, particularly her mom and stepdad, since the sudden death of her father a few years ago. When she’s not working her menial job at a local pier amusement park, one of the ways she tries to keep her connection to her father alive within her is by throwing herself deeply into restoring a car they were working on together before his passing. Before any of her involvement with the Transformers story begins, Charlie’s relatable dilemmas and realistic depiction as a someone struggling to deal with trauma makes her a compelling character on her own.

The real heart of the movie finally comes in when Charlie, as an eighteenth birthday present to herself, manages to get the VW Beetle as her first car. The amnesiac, mute Bumblebee reveals himself to her quickly after she brings him home and the beginnings of their bond are immediate. Over the course of the movie, Charlie manages to give Bee his name, interest in music and the radio he ends up using to communicate as the story goes along. Most of the movie consists of Charlie and Bee hanging out, eventually alongside Charlie’s neighbor Memo (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.), and it’s some very endearing material. Bumblebee’s amnesia reflects on Charlie own loss of self in the wake of losing her dad and their shared arc shows how their friendship manages to help them both rediscover their identities. Seeing Charlie slowly come more alive as she gets out there and does more with her life after getting Bumblebee, from cruising down the highway to getting revenge on some of her bullies, adds to the overall lighthearted tone of this movie.

An overriding aspect of the aesthetics of this movie are how drenched it is in 80s nostalgia, thanks to the time period it’s set in. Musical cues, pop cultural references people make in dialogue and the band shirts Charlie wears for most of the movie are all appropriate and work to invoke the era of pop culture that gave the world Transformers in the first place. There are also points where, like other recent works banking on 80s-nostalgia, it feels like the movie almost leans a little too hard into reminding you of the time period. Even with the occasional problems involved with that aspect, it fits the kind of story Bumblebee is paying homage. It’s a movie in line with the aesthetic and tone of the family adventure movies of the 80s, the most obvious reference point being E.T. and all the movies that have tried to replicate it. Which is a strong point to hang everything else on and keeps things light.

There are two main antagonistic forces at play against Bumblebee and Charlie as the movie goes along. Introduced early on is Agent Burns (John Cena) from the top-secret agency Sector 7, one of the few explicit references to the other Transformers movies in Bumblebee. His interest in the Transformers comes from surviving after witnessing Bumblebee’s fight with a Decepticon right after Bee’s arrival on Earth. Burns’ motives are understandable in light of witnessing something he doesn’t understand and he gets to have an arc in terms of how he perceives Bumblebee as the movie goes on. On the Transformers side of the antagonists in this movie there are two main Decepticon villains, Shatter (voiced by Angela Bassett) and Dropkick (voiced by Justin Theroux). They arrive on Earth after detecting Bumblebee’s signal and hope to pry the location of Optimus Prime out of him by any means necessary. These two antagonists’ paths cross quickly as the Decepticons appeal to Sector 7 to allow them to use their technology to track the fugitive Autobot. Though Cena as Burns sees through their motive, getting to be the one in the movie to point out “They’re called Decepticons”, but his superiors end up going along with it on the assumption that eventually they’ll get the chance to destroy all the aliens.

Actions scenes in Bumblebee aren’t the focus of the movie’s priorities, but they are the one place where explicit comparisons between this movie and the Bay directed Transformers are the most unavoidable. The character designs for the Transformers present in the movie focus on communicating character, through movement, distinct silhouettes and color choice, so once the action kicks in everything’s easy to follow. The combat between the robots is mainly hand-to-hand grappling with the occasional use of a blade or blaster. Transforming mid-combat happens more often here than it ever did in the past movies and gets used in strategic ways to allow for certain movements or to build up momentum before coming in for the striking blow. Clarity of stakes and geography are kept throughout the movie, since these are close quarters combat encounters rather than massive, city wrecking shoot outs. None of these action beats outstay their welcome either, which can be a problem with modern blockbusters in general and not just the previous Transformers movies.

What mainly sells Bumblebee as a charming sci-fi blockbuster is the Charlie and Bumblebee dynamic. Running at under two hours and keenly focused about where to keep its priorities, this is a simple, fun movie for older G1 fans and potential newcomers to the franchise alike. If you were at all iffy on this one, know that it pulls off what it sets out to do in giving Bumblebee a compelling origin in the form of a soft reboot of the film series.

If you like what you’ve read here, please consider throwing some support my way at either Patreon or Ko-Fi at the extension “/witswriting”

#Bumblebee movie #Bumblebee TF #Bumblebee #Transformers #Wit's Writing #Movie Review #Travis Knight #Christina Hodson #Hailee Steinfeld #John Cena #Angela Bassett #Justin Theroux #Sci Fi Films #science fiction #Transformers G1

75 notes · View notes

a-woman-apart · 5 years

Text

Checking, Always Checking

So, I went and saw Avengers: Endgame with some friends from work the other night. I am not going to say anything about it, other than that it was great, and you should definitely go and see it. I do believe that it is important to see the other Marvel movies—including Captain Marvel—in order for you to appreciate the full scope and complexity of the story and characters. Seeing Avengers: Infinity War first is almost a must, in my opinion. I don’t think that Endgame deals as heavily with moral implications as its predecessor, but it still deals with serious themes and leaves the viewer with something to think about. I think it also really does feel “finished” even though there are still movies being made and more concepts to explore.

Some people are really tired of this “era of superhero movies�� but I kind of like it, because superhero movies have grown beyond the typical stereotypes. Using a fantastical medium to deal with serious topics such as genocide and terrorism makes those topics more accessible to people who don’t want to watch drama because it is “boring.” Superhero movies—particularly the Marvel movies-- blend the genres of romance, action, comedy, suspense, and drama almost seamlessly. Youtuber Lindsay Ellis has talked about “tone” in some of her film documentaries, and Avengers: Endgame has the exact opposite of a “tone problem”; it has almost perfect emotional balance. That may seem generous, but trust me, it isn’t.

I am very glad that I went to see the movie. I was tempted to decline, because it was a 10pm showing and I am usually getting ready for bed at that time. I kind of have an unwritten rule, though, about invitations to places; I have to go unless I have a very good excuse not to. I am well-aware that if you get invited to things, and you keep declining, the invitations stop coming. I worked late that day and I could’ve said I was tired. I could’ve been a penny-pincher and not wanted to spend the extra money. When faced with the choice between another night alone and spending time with friends, though, I chose to go out. I am a rigidly structured person, and I could stand to be more spontaneous. An impromptu theatre visit hardly seems spontaneous, but for someone with anxiety like me it takes a little extra effort.

The only reason that anxiety hasn’t totally taken over my life is that I keep challenging it at every turn. I don’t like driving at night. I don’t like driving new places. I don’t like driving on highways. I don’t like giving speeches or presentations. I didn’t want to be a part of the honor society. I was scared to go to a big college, but I have done—and continue to do—things that scare me because I don’t want to be confined by my anxiety. This is not to say that people with severe agoraphobia or social anxiety who are confined to their homes are that way because they simply gave up. I am “one of the lucky ones” in that I somehow have the strength to fight this. I am on medication and in therapy, but those haven’t particularly lessened the physical sensations of anxiety, like racing heartbeat, tense muscles, or shortness of breath. I still feel physically exhausted after a battle with anxiety.

Then there’s the checking—always checking. I check my school accounts, bank accounts, and school email more often than I should because I keep thinking there is something that I’ve missed. I try to memorize my class schedules months in advance. I set reminders in my phone for the most mundane things that I could probably remember on my own if I gave myself the chance. While people with OCD tend to check things like locks on doors, whether they unplugged or turned off appliances, or the temperature on the fridge, my obsessive checking exists mainly in the digital realm. Boredom quickly leads to another check.

The checking—before I “checked” myself (LOL)—also extended into consulting “Dr. Google” for every minute ache, pain, or physical symptom. After I watched this video from Dr. Marks about health anxiety I realized that my habits were unhealthy. I do not need to consult “Dr. Google” and drive myself mad thinking that the worst-case scenario is happening in my body, or that I have a new undiagnosed mental disorder. While I do have some symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder and obsessive compulsive personality disorder, I am not in a position to self-diagnose. All my physical and emotional concerns must first be discussed with my primary care physician (PCP), therapist, and psychiatrist. I am fortunate to have a good team of medical professionals who are willing and able to help me.

I feel like since I started this talking about the movie, I should somehow bring it back to the movie. Our heroes are faced with a myriad of impossible situations, and some of them cope with those situations in unhealthy ways. There are two things that are so important in being able to go on: perseverance and hope. The two are inextricably linked. You need hope to have the strength to persevere; you need to believe that you have something worth fighting for. Without the will to fight, however, it is difficult to have hope. Realizing that no one is going to save you and that you must fight for your own life can give you the extra push you need to move forward. It doesn’t matter if your goals are as lofty as trying to save the world or as small as trying to go to a movie at night without being scared. Perseverance and hope are crucial.

I don’t know if I’ll ever feel calmer when I do “scary” things than I do now, but maybe that isn’t the goal. Maybe the goal is to just grit my teeth and keep doing them, and to just continue to try and improve more and more.

#don't worry I didn't spoil it #avengers infinity war #avengers endgame #those are some damn good movies #hypervigilance #checking #perseverance #hope #health anxiety #anxiety #depression #struggling student #living with mental illness #the struggle is real #social anxiety #going out with friends #transfer student

2 notes · View notes

elizas-writing · 6 years

Text

When Wish Fulfillment Fantasies Meet Reality: A Re-Examination of Twilight

**CW/TW: The following piece discusses dating violence with brief mentions to sexual assault and self-harm.**

This year, the last Fifty Shades movie finally came and went, and as its popularity slowly morphs into a bad memory for pop culture, I’m thinking again about the fiction’s effect on reality, particularly wish fulfillment fantasies, self-insert stories, etc etc.

This train of thought began with the Twilight series after watching Lindsay Ellis’s video essay, “Dear Stephenie Meyer,” where she revisits the hatred surrounding said franchise. While it’s definitely not without serious flaws, Twilight was not really as bad as people made it out to be. And most of the criticism was solely about millions of young girls and their moms liking a thing because, what a shock, our society tends to hate anything feminine. I was definitely one of those teenage girls who wanted nothing to do with Twilight, surprising no one probably. Even though I had enough plot summary from friends to pick up the actual problems of the story, I just had fun hating it for the sake of hating it and disassociating with anything feminine because I was neck-deep in my weeaboo phase.

Cut to about seven years later, I took a Vampires in Pop Culture class and Twilight (the first of the series) was on the reading list. With a more mature mind, I sat down, read it, and yeah, it really was not as bad as I thought. Yes, Bella’s too one-dimensional, Edward’s still pretty creepy, and the dialogue and prose is at best, ridiculous and at worst, stale. It knows its target audience is tweens and reads as such, which unfortunately doesn’t grip me as an adult. I gave up at the baseball scene cause I was ready to gouge my eyes out if I read one more description of the weather. And give credit where it’s due, the side characters have way more fascinating stories than Bella or Edward, and it’s a shame Meyer didn’t take a chance to further expand them instead. I couldn’t find much to be angry about with the first book, and I was honestly more bored than anything. But I also cannot deny the wish fulfillment fantasy driving the narrative which drew in a large audience all those years ago.

And wish fulfillment is fine. Self-insert is fine. Teenage girls are just figuring out what confidence is, and there is some reassurance in a fantasy where the totally out-of-league man of your dreams still finds you the most fascinating human being in the world and wants to give you all his undivided attention. Not every female lead needs to be a strong independent woman who don’t need no man. I still see people write self-insert fanfictions from time to time, and they’re very sweet and tender to imagine being loved by a favorite character. We actually consume these stories more than we like to admit.

Hell, one of my favorite guilty pleasure films is The Princess Diaries. In many ways, it hits the same notes as Twilight. It’s a pure wish fulfillment fantasy where the main girl is smart, but clumsy and awkward and just wants to be invisible. Yet she finds herself on a whirlwind journey of self-discovery where others find value in her, and she even falls in love with a boy who adores her regardless of how she perceives herself. Yet The Princess Diaries is such a popular chick flick among people my age. So why is something like The Princess Diaries fondly remembered as an integral part of a millenial/Gen Z childhood while Twilight is met with disdain and disgust?

The major differences boil down to the main female protagonists: Mia and Bella. While not an overly complex character, Mia has, well, a personality. Her journey is more personal of overcoming her social anxiety and realizing how much she can contribute to the world as a public figure if she just takes the leap of faith. Getting a romance in the end is just icing on the cake when she remembers who was there for her even when she was the awkward nerd and will love her regardless of appearance or social status. It’s cheesy and hokey as chick flicks do, but it’s a satisfying wish fulfillment fantasy where the protagonist is better off than where she started and what she was looking for was right there all along.

With Bella, I barely know who she is outside of her romantic interests. Sure, the books go into more detail of her intelligence and social anxiety, but it’s never seen in film. Her life completely revolves around her relationships to the point of obsession, but we never almost see what she’s like when not caught up in the supernatural love triangle. And unfortunately, it’s a problem which worsens with each sequel. The Twilight franchise frames romance as something Bella can’t live without to the point of shutting herself in for months when the Cullens leave in New Moon, refusing to talk to her friends and family, and getting night terrors. It’s intended to make you feel sorry for Bella, but her backwards priorities make her completely pathetic on how much of her life she misses because of some boy who didn’t hesitate to cut her from his life, and she was totally fine with him leaving if he didn’t turn her into a vampire.

Prioritizing unrequited love over your own well being is such an unhealthy idea to romanticize because there is far more to life than some dumb boy who won’t return your feelings. I saw my fair share of unsatisfying romances in young adulthood hanging on by a thread for some idealized love that’s never going to happen. Even though a break up is the simplest and most effective solution for both people to take care of themselves, they continue wasting their time being unhappy with each other and latching on to the rose-tinted view of how they first fell in love. I know some people don’t like the idea that you have to love yourself before someone else, but there’s still truth to the saying where you have to understand that being in a romantic relationship will not automatically fix all your problems and guarantee a happily ever after.

Aside from getting married and having a baby which almost kills her during pregnancy, Bella doesn’t grow as a character or develop any personality, and she just gets her happy ending anyway. The Volturi hint that Bella is special because she’s unaffected by vampire powers, but that detail is shuffled to the sidelines to get more of Jacob and Edward butting heads on who she’ll choose. Most of the story’s events are outside her control and she doesn’t explore further into what they mean about her being special, and even her turning into a vampire-- not even of her own volition, but as a last ditch attempt to save her while dying in childbirth-- doesn’t change that much about her except now she’s immortal and she can bang Edward without getting knocked unconscious again.

I know Twilight is commercial romantic fiction meant to go in one ear and out the other, but it’s still such a damn waste of great lore and build up with no pay off. And Bella is such a bore of a protagonist to follow the entire time even for a blank slate who is meant to be easily identifiable for teenage readers. Again, not every female character needs to wield a sword or be flawless at everything they do, but having an engaging arc is the simplest bare minimum when writing your story’s protagonist. But that got lost in drawn out weather descriptions and, of course, the unhealthiest romances in fiction.

In a 2013 interview with TIME about her book, The Host, Meyer says she never thinks much about if her protagonists are good role models because “it’s fiction... I don’t think you should be using fictional characters as role models.” To that, I strongly disagree and am rather surprised to hear from Meyer given the great battles of Team Edward vs Team Jacob as each of the films released in theaters. Granted, this is an old interview, and I don’t know how much her opinion changed, but it still irks me.

Whether you like to admit it or not-- especially on the wonderful world of Tumblr.com--, fiction affects our reality. It alters our perception on politics, race, gender, lifestyles, and yes, even romance. Especially as kids and teenagers, we can’t help but find role models to base our ever-changing identities on and look up to so we can be better people for ourselves and society. It’s the reason why so many people define themselves on what Hogwarts house they’re in, why Disney milks Star Wars as long as they can, and why black communities arranged trips for everyone to see Black Panther. And unfortunately, I can’t bring myself to say Twilight is completely harmless in how it portrays the romances.

Just type in any search engine about abusive relationships in Twilight, and you get millions upon millions of analyses on how Edward and Jacob check off as abusers. They’re controlling, aggressive, easy to become jealous, and lacking any notion of personal boundaries. However, one abuser often forgotten in this conversation is Bella, who is such a despicable, emotional manipulator.

Remember how ridiculously depressed she gets in New Moon when Edward leaves? Well, she starts seeing visions of Edward checking in on her whenever she seems to be in danger. And she gets the bright idea to keep purposefully doing so-- including hanging out with shady gang members, crashing a motorcycle and jumping off a cliff-- just to get his attention and hopefully coax him to return to Forks. I’m surprised she didn’t just straight up say “If you leave me, I’ll kill myself” because it’s such textbook gaslighting. And when Edward is led to believe Bella died, then he attempts suicide! And she’s seriously surprised he would given how much needless self-harm she did over the months? What else did you think was going to happen?! I can’t even laugh at some of the badness of New Moon because Bella’s toxic behavior leaves such a sour taste in my mouth. Her severe romantic dependency went from being a damsel-in-distress to an abusive, emotionally manipulative screwball. And that’s just scraping the tip of the iceberg, folks.

Upon actually watching all the films for the first time, Edward’s behavior isn’t nearly as bad as my first perceptions when I was in middle school, but his possessiveness and lack of personal space are still incredibly uncomfortable. I know we all wrote that fanfiction where person A gets saved by person B from attempted gang rape, but Edward is so overbearingly and exhaustively protective, and it just gets worse in the sequels up until Bella’s finally transformed into a vampire. It is to the point where he hardly trusts Bella to do anything by herself knowing how massive of a klutz she is, and will pop into her home without permission, warning or respect of her personal space. As such, she never grows independence, much less learn how to protect herself or be prepared when supernatural forces come for her while the Cullens leave.

Edward may have good intentions to think of Bella’s safety with the context of other vampires mercilessly killing humans in Washington state, but he’s also on a slippery slope of controlling nearly every aspect of her life, especially when she might start feeling romantic for someone else, because guess what dude? You left for over half a year. This continuing behavior throughout the series heavily contributes to Bella’s unhealthy dependency on a romantic partner to the point where she feels like she can’t live without them. Granted, that doesn’t excuse her emotional manipulation, but because she never learns self-defense on the off chance no one else is there to save her, it’s no wonder why she has severe issues with separation and loneliness. Like I said before, you can’t have a healthy romantic relationship if you think it’s going to automatically fix all your problems. Your romantic partner isn’t your therapist or coping mechanism, especially if you can’t handle a simple break up or if said partner wasn’t even that great to begin with.

You’d think Jacob would be off the hook since he at least doesn’t watch Bella while she’s sleeping, but he’s not escaping unscathed. Despite how the series tries to explain what imprinting is, it’s glanced over so quickly on the now creepy relationship between Jacob and Bella’s daughter, even all things considered for a rapidly growing vampire child. He also has a ton of aggressive tendencies as part of the werewolf gene to the point where he will inevitably hurt Bella-- as illustrated with another pack member’s live-in girlfriend who has scars across her face--, and has zero respect for consent as he forcibly kisses her on multiple occasions. Yeah, cause painting your Native American characters-- and only prominent characters of color-- as inevitable, aggressive predators sure is good representation and definitely not some awful racial stereotype. Jacob embodies the most basic descriptors of toxic masculinity between his sense of entitlement that Bella should choose him over Edward and the “boys will be boys” mentality as though Jacob is completely incapable of any self-control, werewolf or not. Given the recent news surrounding Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination and his defenders claiming “what boy hasn’t done this” and that he shouldn’t be punished for his actions as a young man, Jacob’s character is one of the most dangerous aspects of the series to be romanticized as a wish fulfillment fantasy. He’s not only based on gross racial stereotypes, but also on harmful patriarchal ideas of men thinking they’re entitled to women without any consideration to their autonomy. Normalizing this behavior as attractive qualities in a partner allows men to run from their actions without consequence.

And this toxic masculinity only heightened when Fifty Shades of Grey entered the spotlight for pop culture to bash, but had much more legitimate criticisms to garner hatred.

Fifty Shades of Grey changes up the wish fulfillment fantasy where instead of a vampire, the clumsy and awkward female lead, Anastasia Steele, is swept away by billionaire, Christian Grey, who’s happy to spoil her with grand luxuries but has a troubled past which makes it difficult for him to love. Oh, and he’s into BDSM and writes up a questionable contract for Anastasia on all the kinky shit he wants to do. And Anastasia is so sweet and innocent she doesn’t even know what an anal plug is (like, it’s right there in the name, sweetheart. You can’t be this dumb). As you do, things go wrong, they take a break, Christian dumps his tragic anime backstory on Anastasia as a pathetic excuse to apologize, people from his past show up because reasons, and they eventually live happily ever after, married with a baby on the way.

Not only does Christian hit the same abuser red flags as Edward, Jacob and Bella on top of being the worst dom in history, but the series passes off that anyone can be fixed with the power of love. Once again, your romantic partner isn’t your therapist. Trauma may explain his behavior, but that doesn’t excuse what he put Anastasia through, and neither is it suddenly her job to fix him. And abusers like Christian are never reformed so easily with love; more often than not, they use it as leverage to manipulate and keep the relationship going for the sake of control. Sure, it sounds hot to be in a BDSM relationship with a billionaire ready to spoil you, but do the ends really justify the means of that sweet wish fulfillment? Is it really that great of a fantasy to play your partner’s therapist and humor their extreme control and possessiveness to the point where you’re almost not allowed to be an individual?

It’s one thing to have guilty pleasures and wish fulfillment fantasies. But after a while, you wonder what it is about a certain piece of media which makes it a guilty pleasure. It’s one thing if Twilight or Fifty Shades of Grey are guilty pleasures in some of the enjoyably bad writing, unnatural dialogue or squandered potential. But upholding these romances as ideal and disregarding all the blatant warning signs of abusive relationships? That’s where we really need to take a step back and wonder why this is remotely okay to normalize, especially for impressionable teenage girls. Even though I was mostly amused by the films’ bad writing and these poor actors pushing through for their paychecks, there was also a fair amount of content which was too uncomfortable to laugh at-- Bella’s emotional manipulation, the portrayal of werewolves, and the unsubtle anti-abortion message in Breaking Dawn: Part 1 just to name a few. It’s baffling how these properties became cultural phenomenons for their “romances of the century” when most of these character really need couples’ counseling.

Thankfully, these franchises didn’t made too lasting impressions and for the most part are forgotten. Stephenie Meyer quietly retired to continue taking care of her kids, and EL James just kinda disappeared from the media spotlight since the last film released. Maybe Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey aren’t the worst series to happen to mainstream media, but they still heavily reflect a society which to this day hesitates to call dating violence what it is. Where finding love in another takes priority over self-care. Where people still struggle to define abuse because “if that’s abuse, then everyone I know has been abused.” Where despite sexual assault survivors’ testimonies, polygraph tests, supporters, and grueling mental exhaustion to tell their stories, their abusers roam free without consequence and are still allowed power with their nasty holier-than-thou attitudes to silence anyone who dares question their character.

We’re slowly getting better in these kind of fantasies for teens with films like Love, Simon and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before with genuinely health romances where the characters have to confront their flaws and grow. We’re a lot more critical of relationship dynamics in film than we were over a decade ago, especially with #MeToo in the last year. But part of me is still worried if we’ll have another trend like Twilight or Fifty Shades of Grey where it’s blindly defended because it’s fiction and disregard when people romanticize the severely problematic elements which don’t guarantee happily-ever-afters for couples’ in reality. As the possibility of reverting to pre-Roe vs. Wade days becomes more of a likelihood, at what point do we finally acknowledge that a simple fantasy isn’t automatically above criticism?

If you enjoyed this analysis and what I do here, consider buying me a ko-fi to show your support!

#twilight #new moon #eclipse #breaking dawn #fifty shades #fifty shades of grey #wish fulfillment #self insert #editorial #opinion #my writing #stephenie meyer #el james #fantasy #fiction #reality

2 notes · View notes