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emmersreads · 9 months ago

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We Ride Upon Sticks - Quan Barry

4/5

I enjoyed 92% of We Ride Upon Sticks and that’s mostly because I approached it with the right attitude: it ain’t that deep.

This novel is best appreciated as a lighthearted and goofy romp down memory lane. The marketing blurb compares it to Stranger Things and that’s an absolutely delusional comparison; both works trade in 80s nostalgia, but that’s where the similarity ends. It’s better to think of We Ride Upon Sticks as a teen comedy with a faintly supernatural flavour, like Ouran High School Host Club, Derry Girls, or in my mind especially, British comedy St. Trinian’s. Everything, from the supernatural to the interpersonal, is to be jeered and mocked with 2 kool 4 skool teen swagger. And that’s a lot of fun.

I enjoyed the book on its own terms — it’s a genuinely heartwarming picture of teenage friendship and rebellion, and I did indeed laugh at the jokes — but I also liked it on a meta-level. It’s nice to have an unapologetically queer and feminist high school comedy without it being bogged down by mawkish emotional problems. I know I was once a teen constantly beleaguered by mawkish emotional problems (twas the era of Fall Out Boy and 21 Pilots), but as an adult that isn’t the part I look back on fondly. In other words, the art style of Heartstopper is very cute, but manzo do they have problems. We Ride Upon Sticks nails how irony-poisoned and allergic to sincerity we were as teens, and for some reason that meant a lot more to me than teenagers working through their emotions using healthy coping mechanisms and clear communication.

The only thing that really bugged me in the majority of the novel was the unceasing reoccurring jokes. Quan Barry loves a running gag. They come back so constantly and with such absurd regularity that it came back around to being funny for me (through I think a less easily entertained reader might find it simply unendurable instead). But that’s the majority of the book, and I want to move on to the 8% of We Ride Upon Sticks that I didn’t enjoy: the ending.

An unavoidably huge part of this novel is that it is socially conscious. It wants to do right by the feminist, queer, and BIPOC struggles of 80s teens and it wants you to know in the clearest most thoroughly explained language possible. Some readers might find this sanctimonious, but I thought it was fine. One weakness of this approach, however, is that it is always very obvious when the author fumbles the bag.

In this case the bag is the character Corey Young, formerly ‘boy’ Corey.

Spoilers for the ending of We Ride Upon Sticks.

The novel ends with a flash forward to our characters reuniting as middle-aged women so we can see what happened to the Danvers Falcons in adult life. I liked the idea and I liked the fact that for more of the characters their formative years continued well after high school graduation. The one I didn’t like was boy Corey. In the intervening years she has come out and fully transitioned. Now, I know a lot of trans people in real life and also I understand obvious foreshadowing, so I saw this coming a mile away. It was not a Reveal. Problem is the book so desperately wanted to treat it as one. We get this super long fake out scene before the book reveals that Corey is a woman now! Surprise! Were you expecting a man! I found that kinda tasteless.

What bothered me more is that while we hear a lot about the team’s anxiety about reuniting with Corey — will they say the wrong thing? Did they made transition harder for her? — we never hear anything from Corey herself. I’d put this down to a lack of authorial confidence. It feels like Barry is a lot more familiar with how it feels to be friends with a trans woman than how it feels to be a trans woman. That’s not a problem in and of itself, but I felt we needed to hear Corey’s side of things too. Is she excited to reunite with all her friends as her authentic gender? Is she apprehensive about spending time with people who only knew her pre-transition? This book is all about centring marginalized perspectives, that’s why it spends so much time explicitly calling out the ways the characters themselves fails at this — that it was disappointing for it to end by cantering a bunch of cis women’s anxiety about being accepting enough over a trans woman’s thoughts. Since this is what the book is All About, the comparatively small detail has an out-sized impact.

I already didn’t like the specifics of the reveal, and its general effect didn’t work either. It is one of a whole bunch of fake outs and twists in the flash forward section. There are so many that it fucks up the pacing, since the story is now being told essentially in reverse to accommodate the dramatic reveals. It ends on the note that the Danvers Falcons’ success was never the work of the devil, the idea of supernatural intervention just gave a bunch of teenagers the excuse they needed to work hard and band together. I thought that was really sweet, but it takes so long to get there that I was just ready for it to be over.

On balance, this is a recommend from me. I like that it’s fun and lighthearted, but it is also a queer novel that isn’t afraid to be ironic and crass. I enjoyed the absurd 80s references and the overplayed jokes. I liked that sports fiction can be for girls sometimes!

Let the hairspray wash over you and don’t worry about what the long term effects of all those CFCs will end up being.

#book review #bookblr #read in 2024 #books and reading #bookstagram #contemporary fiction #we ride upon sticks #quan barry #book blogging

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talesforpeopleofleisure · 2 years ago

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Independent Animation Recommendations

If you are sick of low effort entertainment from giant entertainment companies, then I recommend these independent artists.

Monkey Wrench is a fusion of Earthworm Jim and Cowboy Bebop. An anthropomorphic monkey and an alien mercenary of unknown origins team up to start a bounty hunting company. The animation is sleek and the aliens as well as the environments our protagonists encounter offer multiple opportunities for inventive action sequences. Not to mention their hints at a dark past for the main character, which I love. PS. I am picturing a space opera comedy version of Journey to the west.

Unicorn Wars may sound like a stupid title for a dark fantasy war drama movie but... you have no idea what you're walking into. Think of it as the bastard offspring of Berserk and Care Bears as well as My Little Pony. A fairy tale that is heartwarming one moment and gut wrenching the next. Give it a watch if you ever want to experience existential terror.

Nova Seed is a space opera of mythic proportions that has been animated by one person. Capturing the aesthetic of the Heavy Metal anthology movie, to tell a classic story of good and evil.

If you want to feel nostalgia for 80s animation, give this one a watch.

The Adventures of Mark Twain is a science fantasy adventure comedy biopic about Mark Twain piloting a spaceship, yes seriously; a masterclass in stop motion animation by the late great Will Vinton that also serves as a beautiful love letter to the life and work of a literary icon. This is a spectacle unlike anything you have ever seen.

Twice Upon a Time is a fantasy comedy stop motion film that takes place in the world of dreams. It follows two bizarre fantasy creatures as they rescue a man named Figment who oversees spreading pleasant dreams to the people of the world. The one problem with this movie is the copyrights. Containing both visuals for Star Wars and Looney Toons, it has been stuck in a cycle of who owns what for years. Fortunately, it has received a DVD release with all the original material intact.

Disclaimer: the reason I have failed to mention the animated series created by the Vivzie Pop YouTube channel, is because their work has been well known for a while now and I wanted to spotlight lesser-known works. Here is the link to Monkey Wrench https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6QTkft7oYc .

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thedeliverygod · 7 months ago

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Rumor has it, Kingdom Hearts 4 will be released for the ps5 next year. Do you think it's true?

I really don’t tbh. We’re almost halfway into 2024 without a single drop of news. I’m pretty sure I remember it being said that they were more careful with the announcement of KH4 being in production because they announced KH3 far too early in the process and it caused a lot of fans to be a pain in the ass.

If production were that far ahead I’d expect us to have at least another trailer by now, some world announcements etc.

There’s also rumors of a Disney + show being created and I would take that with a huge grain of salt too.

That one could be more possible given the hype and excitement around the pilot animatic released by Seth Kearsley that was quickly taken down because Disney does not play lol. Tbh I was surprised no one got on him before he actually released it. That said, I knew it was going to be taken down so I do have it saved if anyone ever wants to see it lol.

But given that I’ve followed KH news like a hawk from childhood after I beat the first game and have worked for the KH13 news team, my advice is to really put no value into leaks unless you can find an actual source (like for instance, someone put KH3 related stuff on their LinkedIn as part of their resume).

Even with the KH3 leaks of a monster inc world I was extremely hesitant to believe it until it was shown in a trailer. Even though there were pictures, some people put a lot of time and effort into headcanons so you just never know unless someone can pinpoint the artist. And of course now you’ve got all this AI bullshit that can create convincing images and even video clips.

I think it saves everyone a lot of heartbreak if you don’t put too much time and energy into things that aren’t confirmed.

The reason why I’m not involved with the KH fandom as much anymore started because of the KH premium theater event. Our news team worked really hard, staying up until ungodly hours in our time zones to get as much scraps as news as we could because it was in Japan and it was a private event with extremely strict rules regarding pictures and recording. Because this current society is so used to instant gratification, everyone was pissed off that there was no footage or pics and only translated reactions to the things revealed at the event. It got so bad that even the official social media pages released a statement asking for people to please wait patiently for more news. And yeah I was annoyed we put so much time and effort into giving people what we could (and same for the KHinsider team) and hardly anyone gave a fuck.

My other problem with the fandom as a whole is the people who didn’t keep up with the series and then complained saying KH3 was bad. Also often put KH2 on some weird pedestal because of nostalgia or whatever but that’s a whole different thing that I’ve complained about in detail in other posts lmao✌🏻

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lilydalexf · 4 years ago

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

Interview with RivkaT

RivkaT has 28 stories at Gossamer and 270 stories at AO3, so she knows her way around fanfic and fandom. She's also a co-author of one of the most well-known X-Files fics of all time, Iolokus. I've recced that here before, along with some of my other favorites of her stories, including And Dance by the Light of the Moon and Into the Woods. Big thanks to RivkaT for doing this interview.

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

I think it's amazing! Writing styles have changed so much, along with everything else, that it's really nice to know they're still being visited. I tried to show my son the pilot episode, and it didn't move him at all, but it's good to know it's not forgotten.

What do you think of when you think about your X-Files fandom experience? What did you take away from it?

I made a number of good friends, and had my first taste of bitter fandom battles. I made dumb mistakes and, I hope, learned a bit about navigating fandom spaces. My long-time writing partner MustangSally taught me that it was always worth blowing the budget in writing--go over the top if you want. I put that to good use in my next big fandom (Smallville).

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

I started on Usenet! Then mailing lists, and webrings, but mainly the Gossamer list.

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

(1) Serials are different than works posted all at once, and have different strengths and weaknesses. (2) There are many ways to write a good fic, and somewhat fewer (but still a large number of) ways to write a bad one. (3) Most good fics are bad to some readers, and many bad fics are good to some readers, and that's okay. (4) Summaries can often instruct many readers how a work is meant to be perceived, especially if they already know you as a writer--the importance of authorial intent is clearly not dead and may be unkillable! (5) Fandom has awfulness and greatness in it because fans are people.

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

Dana Scully. Enough said! (Ok, it was Jose Chung's From Outer Space specifically, but Scully generally.)

What got you involved with X-Files fanfic?

I mentioned to a friend that I was really into the show and she said that if I went online there were people writing stories about the characters. I knew about fanfic from childhood fannishness (Star Trek etc.) and so I went looking on this vaguely-understood thing, the internet. At the time I didn't have a computer that ran Windows so I logged onto Usenet at home and used Pine and Mosaic (an early search engine). When I wanted to see pictures I had to go to the computer lab at school.

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

An ex where I don't have too much memory of the bitter and drawn-out breakup and just have vague nostalgia for the good times. Of course all that was about the show, not the fandom!

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

A bunch, including BTVS, Smallville, and Supernatural. I loved them all--my relationships with those fandoms were equally intense, but associated with different times in my life and therefore different availability of time and other resources. I wish I had that new-fandom love again, but right now it's just not happening for me, even though I've experimented.

Who are some of your favorite fictional characters? Why?

Dana Scully, because she is Dana Scully: smart, driven, and good at her job, with occasional daddy issues. Subsequently, Lex Luthor, Olivia Dunham, Dean Winchester. I like characters who are driven by a sense of mission and who are really good at their jobs: competence porn!

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

Not very often; I last did a rewatch about thirteen years ago.

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

I rarely revisit the XF, but I could definitely be persuaded. I read a fair amount across various fandoms now, but mostly it's dabbling.

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

Waaaay too many to mention. But if I had to choose: Jane Mortimer's The Sin Eater. Totally blew my mind about what fic could do. [Lilydale note: it really is a great fic!]

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

I go through patches of love and hate for my own work. Right now I might pick my SPN/Smallville crossover Under Darkening Skies because I had fun with the character voices and I got at least one great set piece out of it (mannequins in a hell dimension).

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

It seems unlikely but I have learned never to say never.

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

For the past few years it's mostly been Yuletide, but I'd love to get back into it more if I can be inspired.

Where do you get ideas for stories?

I have no idea! Usually it was something that bugged me about an episode, or a chance to play with a classic trope, or a random news story that would spark an idea.

What's the story behind your pen name?

Not much of one--it's a variant of my nickname that was available on AOL and I managed to snag it on most platforms fans use, which has been lucky!

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

Most of my friends are fannish and know everything; my family knows generally but basically doesn't want to know specifics, which is fine with me.

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

Archive of Our Own.

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

Dana Scully Forever!

(Posted by Lilydale on August 18, 2020)

#new post #old school x #xfiles fanfic #xf fanfic #rivkat #xf fanfic author interviews

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duhragonball · 4 years ago

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I think I’m just gonna ramble a bit-- nothing earthshaking-- so here’s a nice, unrelated picture of Cooler to set that up.

I managed to get through Camp Nano in April with about an hour to spare. I’m still frustrated with my pacing, because I’ve gotten pretty good at finishing the November writing goals with time to spare, but I always end up falling behind on the shorter goals I try to do during the rest of the year. July is up next, so I’m kind of hoping I can turn this around by then.

April was difficult all over, so I’m trying to use May to chill the fuck out. Somehow I find that hard to do. Like if I’m relaxing, I just get bored or feel unproductive. That’s one reason I’m writing this post. I just want to get some thoughts out of my head so I can move on.

For whatever reason, I got sucked into watching YouTube videos about the Nostalgia Critic and his various blunders from 2012 to present. That sounds pretty sad now that I write it out, because I never followed the guy that closely, so I keep forgetting the hellacious filming schedule discussed in the Change the Channel movement happened years earlier, and the movies themselves were ridiculed as debacles, so it’s not just one bad year, more like nine or ten. Anyway, watching all of this has given me some stuff to think about.

I think I first heard about the NC when he started doing that “feud” with the Angry Video Game Nerd. They did some videos together teasing a crossover, and then they finally went through with it, and it wasn’t terrible, but I had no idea who the other guy was. It was like Batman teaming up with some indie comics character you never heard of. Batman doesn’t need the rub. From the beginning, I got the sense that Nostalgia Critic was the one driving this concept. Once I heard about Channel Awesome and all these YouTube reviewers crossing over with each other, I was sure of it.

Looking back on it all, I get the sense that NC has never really had much of a creative agenda. His early work involved “reviewing” movies by playing long clips of them to recap the plot, and then making some snarky commentary. Not the worst format, except he kept getting copyright strikes from YouTube, which was why he started his own website to host his videos. Over the years, it feels like people have begun to recognize the flaw in that format. Past a point, you’re not really “reviewing” anything. It’s more like an MST3K style thing, only shorter and less authorized.

Years ago, I used to read this site called “The Agony Booth”, which sort of did the same thing but in text. Before YouTube really got going, the only way to lambast a movie or TV episode properly was to meticulously describe it in prose, with the occasional screenshot here and there. Nostalgia Critic probably represents a point where people realized they could do the same thing in video form, except it starts to cross the line from commentary to something else. Siskel and Ebert never did a blow-by-blow synopsis of a movie. Reviewers like the Agony Booth crew did, because they were often discussing old material, and couldn’t show it to you or assume that you had seen it yourself. A lot of NC’s early stuff was the same deal, where he’d recall something from his childhood and rewatch it to see how it holds up in the present. So I’m sure a lot of his content covered old, out-of-circulation things. But he’d do more recent stuff too, and the attitude surrounding YouTube at the time was that you could pretty much do whatever you wanted as long as you kept it under ten minutes.

Anyway, the Channel Awesome thing looked like an alliance of similar YouTube reviewers, and they kept appearing in each other’s stuff, and then they did the anniversary movies, which were basically “mega crossovers” with all of them appearing together in the same... story, I guess? At the time, I wrote the whole thing of as a masturbatory power fantasy. Comic books did crossovers like these all the time, and YouTube seemed to have hundreds of “reviewers” and “personalities” who would put on silly costumes and carry toy weapons like they were about to fight Thanos instead of discussing the ALF cartoon. The second Channel Awesome movie was about high fantasy tropes, and the third one was a space opera, so that seemed to support my assumption.

From watching all these videos about the movies, though, it looks more like each one was mostly about the Nostalgia Critic talking all his “friends” into another one of his kooky schemes, and they all just sort of go along with it, even though they know him to be a self-centered jerk. Then the third one ends with NC quantum-leaping out of the story itself and meeting Doug Walker, the guy who writes and plays the character. They try to sell the audience on the idea that NC had some sort of character development across the three movies, and he decides to sacrifice himself to save the day or something. This was touted as the finale for the character. Except it turned out later that Doug Walker wasn’t just playing a self-centered jerk, he really was a self-centered jerk, because he treated the others like crap during the filming and didn’t tell any of them that he was killing off their website’s top draw.

That leads into Demo Reel, the series Doug Walker introduced to fill the void. From what I’ve seen, it sure looked like he wanted/expected this to be a big hit, and he killed off his biggest meal ticket to make this happen. But everyone hated it. I think the pilot episode asks the question “What is Demo Reel?” about three times. Each time, the answer makes less and less sense. “Demo Reel” the show is about a studio named “Demo Reel”, run by Donnie DuPre, a self-centered jerk who seems to think there’s big money to be made in plagiarizing movies. The whole thing is just a flimsy plot device to explain why Doug Walker and two other actors would bother making a no-budget parody/re-telling of three Batman movies smooshed together. There’s no real-world or fictional reason for three people to do this, it’s just that Doug Walker wanted to make a YouTube video about Batman, but he didn’t want to use the NC format, and he couldn’t just talk over a Batman movie without getting in trouble with Warner Bros. And I guess just... dressing up like Batman and making jokes needs some sort of context, so that’s where the Demo Reel concept comes in.

What really annoys me is that Demo Reel has this “mockumentary” thing going on at the same time, so you end up watching their parody movie and the scenes where they make the parody movie, and you get these interview segments where they talk about talking about making the parody movie. It’s like “The Office” except every character is completely delusional. They’ve all convinced themselves that this is a really good idea, and I guess the joke is that this is a really stupid job and they must be pretty stupid to work at it.

No one knows where Demo Reel was originally headed, because it was so reviled by the audience that it got cancelled in five episodes, ending with the revelation that Donnie DuPre was the Nostalgia Critic all along, in some sort of amnesiac state. Or maybe that was the plan all along, I’m not sure which scenario would be dumber, honestly. New Coke was a sincere effort to phase out the original Coca-Cola formula, but it was such a failure that everyone thinks it was a brilliant ploy to make consumers appreciate the original. So who knows?

Anyway, this started the next phase of NC, where he would just remake scenes of whatever movie he’s covering that week, a la Demo Reel. I don’t know if that’s just a strategy to avoid YouTube copyright strikes, or a stubborn refusal to give up the core concept of Demo Reel, or what. Then he got around to Pink Floyd’s “The Wall”, and everyone crapped on that, big time. I haven’t seen the original movie or his “review”, but from what I gathered, Doug

a) basically did a shot-for-shot remake of the movie, only shorter and cheaper.

b) spent the whole video lambasting the movie and the band for making it.

c) offered his parody songs for sale on iTunes, calling them a “love letter to Pink Floyd.”

The big question is: Why did he put so much work into making the thing when he had so little to actually say about it? There’s no clear opinion expressed about the movie, even though the video is supposed to be a “review”. He kind of acts like he thought “The Wall” was okay, but the parody lyrics read like the awkward part of a celebrity roast. Why go to all this trouble unless you really love or absolutely despise “The Wall”?

Eventually, I started to figure out that this guy really just doesn’t have much to say. He wants to make videos, make movies, make reviews, but it doesn’t seem like there’s any real opinion or thought that he wants to express. I was watching him freak out over the credit card scene from “Batman and Robin” and thought “Are you that upset over Batman having a credit card?” That’s not even in the top twenty dumbest things in that movie. Sure, it’s worth a snide remark, but not much more than that. But he’s “doing a character”, and the NC’s whole schtick is to flip out over stuff like that.

Except it’s not a character, because NC is just Doug Walker wearing a stupid hat, right? In the movies, NC’s whole persona is that he’s a self-centered jerk who treats his friends like a personal army, and the real Doug Walker was doing the exact same thing off-camera. Donnie DuPre was another “character”, wearing a different hat, only whoops, he’s the Nostalgia Critic too. And even if he wasn’t the same guy, his persona was... you guessed it, a self-centered jerk who treats his friends like a personal army.

There was this whole era on YouTube where it seemed like all these “content creators” were trying to adopt silly gimmicks. I’m guessing the Angry Video Game Nerd started the trend, because he dressed up in a white button-down shirt with a pocket protector and glasses. He looked like a stereotypical nerd, you see. And he’d drink a particular kind of beer, and lose his temper and set Nintendo cartridges on fire, because AVGN was a character. You watch James Rolfe being himself and he’s a whole other person, always smiling and talking about horror movies and filmmaking, because that’s what the real guy is about. There’s a separation there.

I think that was the disconnect. A lot of these YouTubers saw James Rolfe playing the Nerd and just assumed the secret was to rant and rave about some topic, and he used a Nintendo Zapper to shoot a pickle monster once, so dressing up like a Power Ranger in a trenchcoat didn’t seem like a bridge too far. Well, no not if you’re trying to make a movie or tell a story. If all you want to do is talk about Star Wars, you should probably keep it simple. I think one of the consequences of Nostalgia Critic’s fall from grace is that modern YouTubers are more grounded. I’ve watched a lot of Jenny Nicholson videos and she’s pretty funny and animated, but she’s not trying to be a charicture of herself. She’s just this lady sitting on her bed surrounded by porg dolls. It works a lot better.

I used to watch the Game Overthinker unironically. Does anyone remember Moviebob? Well once upon a time he wasn’t completely bonkers. The GO series was reasonably well done and uncomplicated... until the dude started appearing on camera and introducing “characters” and storylines that killed whatever point he was trying to make in his video essays. Then I started watching him ironically, and then I sort of stopped caring about him altogether, and then he pissed away whatever goodwill he had. I can’t help but feel like he might have been better off just staying behind the camera, or if he had to be on-screen, just sit on a bed with a bunch of Mario dolls or whatever.

The fad of YouTube personality as wannabe superhero got me thinking of the whole “Mary Sue” and “self-insert” thing. They’re really poorly defined terms, and they’ve been overused in so many unfair criticisms that I don’t think they make much sense anymore. When I first got into fanfic, I saw a lot of people simply writing themselves into their stories. That’s what a self-insert was. You literally inserted yourself in the story so you could tell Wolverine to his face that his haircut looks stupid, or whatever you wanted to say to him. I always found this idea infuriating, because I know who Wolverine is, but this other guy telling him off is a complete stranger, and why should I care about him? Why should Wolverine care?

One response to that problem would be to present your self-insert like a bigger deal than you are. You could put yourself in this story and not only talk to Wolverine, but give yourself an elaborate backstory, where you’re a high-ranking S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, and you and Logan go way back, etc., etc. But that’s a tricky proposition, because if you’re doing it right, you’re just inventing a new character with the same name as you. Or you can overdo it and make the character too big a deal, at the risk of outshining the other characters. The Mary Sue concept originated from this, with Star Trek fanzines getting all these story submissions about young, super-talented ensigns who join the crew and immediately win over Kirk, Spock, and McCoy.

The dirty little secret of character creation is that every character you write is a self-insert or an author surrogate, to some degree. You can have one that’s meant to be your alter ego, the one who’s based on you and tends to react the way you would in a similar situation. But you’re writing all the other characters too, and deciding what they think and say and do, so to a certain point they also think a lot like you do, whether you meant for them to or not. The trick is not to be super-blatant about it, or to revel in the creative freedom to break the fourth wall. Readers hate that stuff, because they don’t know you well enough to get the joke.

That’s the advice I’ve always had at the ready in case anyone ever asked me. But, watching all this stuff about the Nostalgia Critic has made me realize that it applies from the other direction. It’s very easy to say you’ve created a character, distinct from yourself, only for it to turn out to be more of a reflection of you than you intended. I can’t tell if Doug Walker is self-aware or not, but it seems like the joke with all his “characters” is that they’re extremely selfish and shallow, and yet he seems to also be selfish and shallow. So is he aware of this, and he’s trying to exaggerate his flaws for his characters? Or does he just not realize that he’s telling on himself every time he plays these roles? Or does he think everyone is selfish and shallow, and that this is just boilerplate information, like blinking and wearing shoes?

I’ll pick on myself, because it’s handier to do so. I’ve made a bunch of original characters over the years, some that were supporting players, and others who were designed to be big deals. One of my villains was this bitter misanthrope, and eventually I realized that I was a lot more like him than the outgoing group of buddies that he was trying to oppose. That hit me and I’ve been trying to figure out what to do with that ever since.

I wrote a butler in my Hellsing fic, basically an anti-Walter based on Marcus Brody from the Indiana Jones movies. He was clueless and couldn’t stand the sight of blood, and he was really old, so he told the vampires that if he ever had a heart attack and dropped dead on the job that they shouldn’t pass up the free meal. Is that me in there? I tend to think a lot about the world moving on without me, and my own obsolescence. I just didn’t think I was tapping into that when I wrote the character. I wouldn’t even bring it up, except I liked writing the guy so much, and that’s the main thing I remember about him.

A lot of my villains in Luffa are representations of things that I’d like to see punched, because Luffa is an unapologetic Mary Sue Self Insert. I made her all these other things that I’m not: brave, a woman of color, a good cook, a charismatic lover. But fuck that, this was all just a ploy to keep people from noticing any resemblance to me and my imaginary punching agenda. But the villains hold all these shitty attitudes and shitty behaviors, things which I consider to be wrong but sometimes catch myself turning a blind eye to. Jealousy, greed, fear, resentment, and so on.

You end up putting a lot of yourself into your writing, there’s really no way to avoid it. The only real trick is to disguise it a bit so it looks like a story instead of just an essay or an autobiography. I think that’s where some of the YouTube personalities got it wrong, because they would try to tell a story AND write an essay at the the same time, and that’s tough to pull off. One of the big things that came out of that whole Channel Awesome document was this problematic scene in “To Boldly Flee” where Linkara has been replaced by a cyborg duplicate, and he converts Lindsey Ellis into a cyborg, and someone hears all these suggestive noises and thinks they’re having rough sex. It’s awkward anyway you slice it, but it gets even worse because it’s basically the real Linkara and Lindsey Ellis. Their “characters” are so poorly distinguished from the real people that there’s no other way to describe it.

Also, one of the most salient points I picked up from watching all these commentary videos is that real people can’t have character arcs. You can’t just stick Filmdude and Captain Snark and Filmdudette and Movie Sniffer and The Comics Complainer all into the same scene and expect anything important to happen to any of them. They can’t learn anything or grow in any appreciable way during the story, because they’re real and the story is fictional. The only “character” to their roles are the bit where they review pop culture stuff, which might as well be non-fictional, so why bother? Even if I’m wrong, and there really is a more complete fictionalized version of everybody in the Channel Awesome Trilogy, the waters are so muddied that you can’t make sense of it.

And that’s the real danger of leaning too hard into putting a 1:1 replica of yourself into your stories. Stephen King can be a bus driver in one of his movies, and Stan Lee can be a bus driver in Avengers 3, but if Stan Lee just started kicking the shit out of Ultron it’d be confusing, especially for people who didn’t know who he was. And if Joss Whedon started kicking the shit out of Ultron, it’d be even worse, because he’s not as well-known as Stan Lee. You’re better off making up a guy like Thor or the Hulk who can do it for you, and then putting just enough of yourself into those characters that you won’t get caught.

At least, that’s how I see it.

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astrochiron · 5 years ago

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The Signs :: Channel Orange // Frank Ocean

Aries- Sweet Life

“You've had a landscaper and a house keeper since you were born The starshine always kept you warm”

This line refers to an easy life, one of luxury and means. What’s more, this person has had these things since birth, not even earning these things themselves. An Aries rising chart is called natural, as their houses are led by their associated signs, their life tends flows easily and this person has had a similar life.

“So why see the world, when you got the beach? Don't know why see the world, when you got the beach”

Aries is the sign of self and your own experiences that you don't have to reach out for. This person has trouble seeing outside of their world and, in fact, refuses to branch out. They have the “beach” in their own mind allowing them to ignore the things going on around them.

Overall

This song is a challenge to look outside of oneself and your own comforts to empathize and experience the ways of others. Frank wants her to step outside of her privilege and her pretty surroundings to maybe experience something else, something less curated for them. The lyrics imply a sense of immaturity exhibited by the subject, not fueled by the search of fun but by circumstance.

Taurus- Pink Matter

“That soft pink matter Cotton candy, Majin Buu, oh, oh, ohh Close my eyes and fall into you, you, you My God, she's giving me pleasure” close my eyes and fall into you”

This line provides sensory imagery of softness and pleasure, two things Taurus is associated with. Cotton candy and Majin Buu (a DBZ character) conjuring up safe and comfortable imagery of childhood and happiness. Frank’s moved on to another source of pleasure though, as this line alludes to sex and the pleasure of it. Taurus is associated with the physical pleasure of sex.

“Pleasure over matter”

Both pleasure and physical mater are associated with Taurus. Taurus is an Earth sign, associated with physical matters like money, possessions, and even your relationship with your physical body. Pleasure is the ultimate goal and that is bolstered by the maintenance of physical means.

Overall

This song’s focus on the body, especially the feminine one, links it to the feminine sign of Taurus. While Virgo is linked with physical health and routine, Taurus shows how we view and worship the body. This song also focuses on desire, another Taurean trope.

Gemini- Thinkin’ Bout You

“A tornado flew around my room before you came Excuse the mess it made, it usually doesn't rain in”

The chaos and air-related tornado is a perfect symbol for Gemini, a restless and powerful force made of fluent thought and free-ranging speech (Air related things). Frank is also lying to this guy, saying his room is messy because of a tornado. I’m not implying Gemini’s lie, but they certainly have fun with the truth more than most signs.

“Since you think I don't love you, I just thought you were cute That's why I kissed you”

This song displays the inquisitive and impulsive nature of Gemini. Frank kissed the guy because he thought he was cute, plain and simple, almost like school kids on the playground. This also displays the dismissal of romantic disinterest (common in the manner of most air signs) for inquisitiveness.

Overall

The title literally has “thinking” in it, which is Gemini’s superpower as the mutable air sign. The whole song is something of a train of thought ramble that Frank is well known for, honestly. The whole song has a childhood vibe, even supported by Frank saying this is about a time when he was 17 or so. Gemini is linked with our formative years and though, 17 is a bit old for Gemini’s range, it’s still cerebrally nostalgic and witty.

Cancer- Forest Gump

“Forrest Gump You run my mind, boy Running on my mind, boy Forrest Gump”

Cancers have a tendency to linger on thoughts, especially the emotional nature of them. I don't think Cancers are crybabies (I'd give that more to Pisces who cry from happiness, frustration and sadness all in the same hour), but they are very emotionally strong and emotionally stubborn. Their emotions are forefront in memory and so is the way Forest made Frank feel.

“Forrest green, Forrest blues I'm remembering you If this is love, I know it's true I won't forget you”

The “Forest blues” points toward Frank being in feelings over a past situation. Whether over something that happened when they were together or over the break-up itself, Frank is sad and a cancer will never forget how someone made them feel.

Overall

This song has a focus on past feelings for someone, not specific memories. Cancers are very subjective and, instead of remembering facts about a memory, they'd be remembering how they were feeling during the time. As a bonus, the song is named after an older movie which was itself based in nostalgia.

Leo- Super Rich Kids

“Real love, I'm searching for a real love”

Leos are associated with romance and unconditional love. Their search for joy and the uninhibited feeling of childhood makes them crave and seek true love, sometimes at the detriment of their well being, but aways for the better in the end. No matter how unhealthy, these two searching for genuine love from one another, though finding temporary joy in drugs.

“Caddy-smashing, bratty ass He mad, he snatched his daddy's Jag And used that shit for batting practice”

Earl’s whole rap discusses the more self-destructive traits of Leo. This line in particular shows the sometimes self-centered nature, expressing their anger by inflicting pain on others. Leos are very expressive and, despite their genial nature, are still passionate fire signs. This also a very childish expression of emotion, and our inner-child is linked with this sign.

Overall

Immaturity is often a negative trait associated with fire signs. Leo’s exhibit this immaturity when they may make bad decisions trying to seek love and acceptance, as well as looking for fun and enjoyment in the wrong places. And while not outright said, the subjects of this song seem to blessed (or cursed) with the fame and fortune associated with Leo.

Virgo- Lost

“And I just wanna know Why you ain't been going to work Boss ain't working you like this He can't take care of you like this”

This line display’s Virgo’s focus on work and duty. It also exhibits their often gently direct nature. This is very much a line a Virgo would say to their out-of-work partner, “This place is a mess! And I just wanna know; why you ain’t been going to work?” Virgos also take great care of their partner, even to the extent of being servile at times. He’s taking care of her and giving her a job.

“Hand me my triple weight So I can weigh the work I got on your girl”

Frank’s weighing out his product, showing the minutiae of his drug life. The song could focus on all the stuff he could buy for her, selling all these drugs, or even getting high on them himself, but instead he discusses weighing it up and strapping it to her. Frank employs this girl as a drug mule, being her boss and her lover; providing her employment and care (6th house).

Overall

Frank shows Virgo’s tendency to get caught up in work and the money coming in as opposed to the things that can be done with the money. Frank is always selling to give himself and the girl a better life, every drug run aways being the last one, but never really being the last one. The woman shows Virgo’s dedication to their partner, disregarding their own safety or comfort for their love.

Libra- Pilot Jones

“You're the dealer and the stoner With the sweetest kiss I've ever known”

This line represents the dichotomy of the user and the supplier. She’s both the source of his addiction and she enjoys the outcome of the addiction herself. This shows’s Libras’s tendency to be all things to all people. The last part also points toward Libra’s geniality and tendency to cover up ills and pains with kisses and sweet words.

“But if I got a condo on a cloud Then I guess you can stay at my place”

Despite all the bad decisions and toxicity, Frank is sayin that if he’s in a good place, she will be too. If he gets a raise, she benefits; if he buys a cheesecake, she gets a slice, if not half. When Libra’s are happiest, they want their partner there too, even if their partner was the reason for their unhappiness sometimes.

Overall

This song equates drugs with love, a metaphor I'd definitely associate with Libra. They don't need to be in a relationship, don't get me wrong; but it feels good. Librans lacking in self-expression or happiness or even stimulation, may turn to relationships just out of habit, even if they’re not with a “good” partner or one that is ultimately good for them. Frank is laid back in this song, allowing her to guide his high and really the whole relationship, taking Libra’s laid back and often lax attitude.

Scorpio- Sierra Leone

Spendin' too much time alone (And I just ran outta Trojans) Horses gallop to her throne

We all know about Scorpio’s focus on sex and the intimate connection formed behind it. This includes the first part of this line, as Scorpios tend to have intense relationships, often most intense in solitude with partner. This obviously doesn't involve only sex, but the intimate moments shared between two lovers when by themselves.

“And a new day will bring about the dawn And a new day will bring another crying babe into the world”

Scorpio is linked with self-transformation, and the imagery of the new day bringing the dawn paints the picture of the whole world being renewed, as well as specifically the characters of this song and their evolutions. The last part of this line points to the birth of the characters’ child. The ultimate rebirth and the ultimate result of Scorpio’s sex and alone time, is a birth itself.

Overall

This song discusses an alternate Frank that got a girl pregnant young. It focuses on how different he’d be and how his life would be. This hypothetical thought experiment is very a very Scorpio thing to me, analyzing “what ifs” and “might be’s”. This song also focuses on the transformation of the characters, especially Frank, from stupid teenaged lovers to responsible parents by the end.

Sagittarius- Monks

“Mosh pits and bare chest Stage diving sky diver Spray the crowd with cold water Now it's mosh pits and wet tits I think I need a cold shower”

This whole verse gives Sagittarian vibes. Sag is ruled by jovial and beneficially social Jupiter. Each line exudes freedom, fun and physical exploration. The parties, lewd behavior, and stimulating music would all be perfect for Sags huge energy and need for experiences.

“African girl speaks in English accent Likes to fuck boys in bands Likes to watch Westerns And ride me without the hands”

This song represents the foreign interests of Sagtttarius. They love accents and different cultures and foreign people (romantically as well as platonically). There’s actually a hodgepodge of cultures represented with the African girl and her English accent with an interest in rock or grunge bands who watches American western movies and an... expansive physical repertoire.

Overall

This song chronicles a meeting with a groupie, which gives to Sag’s rockstar vibe. Traveling countries, writing songs, and positively affecting masses are all things that Sagittarius is interested in. The groupies, they also probably wouldn't mind. As for the title, a monk, as defined by Oxford is “a member of a religious community of men typically living under vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.” While the latter art of this definition sounds more like a Capricorn, evolved Sag’s are very monk-like once they’ve found their cause and their moral path.

Capricorn- Pyramids

“We'll run to the future, shining like diamonds In a rocky world, rocky-rocky world Our skin like bronze and our hair like cashmere As we march to the rhythm on the palace floor”

This line represents Capricorns focus on the future. Frank aims to be decked in gems, sun kissed and confidently walking even in a rocky world. Like Capricorn, he aims to dominate his environment and get the best out of it to his own benefit. He’s focused on improving themself and being presented as prestigious and as a king.

“The way you say my name makes me feel like I'm that nigga but I'm still unemployed You say it's big but you take it, ride cowgirl”

Capricorn’s get off on respect. Capricorn is one of those signs that has a link to sex, but primarily because of the power of it. She says his name like he’s the best, she compliment’s his assets, even if they’re still not too big for her. Even though he’s unemployed, he's still the head of household while they’re having sex. This points toward Capricorn’s sense of joy coming from others’ good perceptions of them, even if it’s not the right one. He’s broke, he may not have the biggest penis, and he may not even be the only one, but she makes him feel like all of those things aren't true.

Overall

Though metaphorical, this song focuses on history and royalty. Cleopatra may have been a Capricorn by some calculations and her outright rule of an empire as woman would support that. She was intelligent and business-minded and well-known. This song also shows a shift in status typically associated with Saturn and Capricorn. Though Saturn typically brings slow-but-sure progression, if the lessons it presents us aren't learned from and taken into account, it can take us down as high as it would drive us up. The character in this song goes from queen Cleopatra to Cleopatra working weekends at the Pyramid. Both demand attention, beseech respect, and accumulate wealth, though society sees them so differently.

Aquarius- Bad Religion

“And you say "Allahu akbar" I told him, "Don't curse me" "Bo Bo, you need prayer" I guess it couldn't hurt me “If it brings me to my knees, it's a bad religion, ooh’

The “bad religion” here shows the Aquarian distrust of religion. The driver tries to bless him, but he isn't interested in spiritual intervention, even though he did mention demons earlier in the song. Aquarians aren’t necessarily interested in or focused on religion because of the typical outright devotion involved in it. It’s a turn off for Aquarians and Frank is associating this with the unrequited love he's experiences with his crush.

‘This unrequited love To me, it's nothin' but a one-man cult”

I have a long analysis behind this next statement that I’m willing to back up one day but: Aquarians are attracted to odd social constructs especially things like cults. Every Aquarian I know has expressed interest in cults, dictatorships, or supreme leadership in the New World Order. That being oddly said, this line points toward Frank seeing himself as a worshiper in one of those cults and he wants the hell out.

Overall

In this song we see how Frank made his love for this person his God and having it unrequited either caused or further proved his own negative feelings toward the whole idea of devotion and love. Aquarians also aren’t known for expressing their feelings in a conventional sense. Instead of going to a therapist and having to discuss feeling or going to a confidant and having to burden a friend or expose yourself to them, Frank chose to make his taxi driver his shrink, since he’s paying him anyway.

Pisces- Crack Rock

“You don't know how little you matter until you're all alone In the middle of Arkansas with a little rock left in that glass dick”

I’ve noticed that Pisceans have a bit of an inferiority-complex. This is typically portrayed a martyrdom but can even be expressed as. complete feeling of inadequacy and ineffectuality. This is due to their more tendency to outwardly exude peace even if they are in distress. This line also explicitly mentions crack, an extremely addictive substance. Pisces does have a link to addictions, though crack is bit extreme. We could replace crack with any momentarily-good but terminally-bad thing like constant sex, alcohol, less deleterious drugs, or even sleep and food.

“Don't no one hear a sound Don't no one disturb the peace for riot Don't no one disrupt nirvana Don't no one wanna blow the high”

This line points out how Pisces tends to zone out and escape, especially when the world is a bit too much. Sleep is a common one, as Pisceans tend to have amazing dreams that likely beat a shitty or stressful life/situation. Nirvana, the ultimate escape, is associated with Pisces. They’re constantly trying (whether purposefully or subconsciously) to connect with the Great Other or the Universe or God. Anything blowing their high or disturbing their nirvana is cut off.

Overall

Frank said that he sung this song so it would sound like a smoker singing it. He wanted the fractured breath to show a long past and pain, as well as the self-abuse often an unintentional result of substance abuse. “Crack Rock” could also speak of a physical crack in a rock, separating from himself from the ones he loves due to the addiction. Isolation is common theme for Pisces.

check your moon sign (for the song that makes you comfortable and puts you in your emotions), sun sign (the song that makes you happy and the one you ride around to) and venus sign (the one that speaks to your inner artist).

#music #astrology #channel orange #frank ocean #aries #taurus #gemini #cancer #leo #virgo #libra #scorpio #sagittarius #capricorn #aquairus #pisces #mine

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bebekyoda · 5 years ago

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Ragnarok (Netflix) : A Summary/Review of season 1

Okay so 5th season of Skam looks pretty dope, its Magnus Fossbakken y'all

they have THREE Skam actors and im here for it

PROTECT MAGNE SEIER AT ALL COSTS

apparently Vidar is a psychopath who has serious anger issues and can NOT keep his damn clothes on

what the fuck was that first episode eye--

Isolde didn't deserve this mistreatment

Fjor is hot.. until he wears that ugly ass jumpsuit

also he peed on Isolde's memorial so he can fuck off

he starts to grow in me like "oh so he's a good boi" but then i have flashbacks to the pee pee thing

i can only forgive him if he betrays that creep and psychos of a fAMiLy

at first i disliked Laurits but what he did at the 6th episode... we stan

im pretty sure he's Loki lmao

he's gonna be an emo icon i can feel it

also when he wore his mother's shirt.. y e s

i HATE Saxa oh my god that bitch needs to go

she's just like Vidar but has more sense

I'd like it if Fjor killed her.. please..

i don't like Turid she never listens to her children and is always thinking about herself

i don't support Gry being in a relationship with Fjor he deadass tried to kill her lmao GO KILL SAXA INSTEAD YOU DUMB FUCK

also even Fjor and Laurtis have more attraction to each other lol

honestly Ran could cut me with her cheekbones and jawline

there's no sexual or emotional tension between Isolde's dad and Turid whatsoever wtf Laurits

the dance scene.. was kinda wtf but also.. hot?? idk the way Laurits just joined Fjor and Saxa and danced like he's been practicing a choreo with them made me come up with some theories

and this theory definitely has a thing with Turid and Vidar's past

also that theory is one of the reasons why i think Laurits is probably Loki

THE VIEWS OMG

I WANT TO LIVE IN NORWAY

THE SCENERY IS JUST FUCKING BEAUTIFUL

i love the atmosphere very much it's dark and rainy

also the soundtrack.. they have M83 which is awesome

i love how it started out with Magne being dyslexic like how Rick Riordan wrote in his series, i loved reading Percy Jackson and the Olympians so i had a little nostalgia lol

the way they are defending the environment, trying to get attention to that subject is just beautiful, it's not all about the Norse mythology

also why tf they keep calling Magne fat, he's not fat

MAGNE IS FUCKING GORGEOUS

i saw someone saying "so this is the Thor we get ew" FUCK OFF

im sorry Chris Hemsworth is not here

idc what y'all say mister David Alexander Sjøholt Stakston is beautiful --talented, brilliant, incredible, amazing, show stopping, spectacular, never the same, totally unique, completely not ever been done before, unafraid to reference or not reference, put it in a blender, shit on it, vomit on it, eat it, give birth to it.

but his reflection on the mirror as Thor.. couldn't they at least find a wig???

he deserves better treatment i hate that the other kids are excluding him

i also hope Gry and him will be just friends i just can't picture them in a romantic relationship

omg i really like Iman bc she's befriending Magne uwu

i kinda feel like she knows.. you know?

THAT OLD LADY

i gotta admit the first scene was kinda cringy but okay lol

but that old lady.. damn.. creepy af

6 episodes was too short for me i need more

and i have some theories soo

thank god there's gonna be a season two

not gonna lie the whole thing feels like it's low budget but they did good on using their budget

and the whole season felt like a REALLY long pilot episode

but yea i love it i highly recommend it

btw it is slightly violent

also it's aesthetically pleasing like even if you don't like the plot you could just watch for that

k that's it i guess

bye

#ragnarok netflix #netflix #ragnarök #herman tommeraas #david stakston #norse mythology #skam #skam norway #skam og #skam original #ragnarok 2020 #magne seier #laurits seier #fjor jutul

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passionate-reply · 4 years ago

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Do you “fucking love” science? Have you ever been blinded by it? Well, it doesn’t really matter, because that goofy little number isn’t really supposed to be on Thomas Dolby’s debut album in the first place. Find out about all the awesome OTHER stuff that’s actually meant to be here, in this new installment of Great Albums! Transcript below the break.

Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums! Today, I’ll be talking about a stellar album by one of those artists who have gone down in history as “one hit wonders,” despite producing a deep catalogue that’s often more impressive than that one song they end up known for: it’s The Golden Age of Wireless, the debut LP of Thomas Dolby. Chances are pretty good you’ve heard his big hit, “She Blinded Me With Science,” before...at least, if you’re American.

Music: “She Blinded Me With Science”

Like I said, if you’re American, you’ve heard this one before. If anything, it’s oversaturated! But if you’re from elsewhere in the world, you might not know it. Growing up in the US, I went through the whole gauntlet of alleged “one hit wonders” of 80s synth-pop, and a great many of them turned out to be British artists who had perfectly respectable careers in their native UK: Gary Numan, Soft Cell, and OMD, for example. Thomas Dolby is also British, but he’s apparently more famous here than he is across the pond--which is still not that famous.

He really ought to be, though, because The Golden Age of Wireless is a true masterpiece. Or, at least it WAS, in its original form. It’s actually a tough album to talk about, insofar as it’s hard to pin down what exactly constitutes “The Golden Age of Wireless.” It’s had quite a few different pressings, and a variety of different track listings. And the original version of it does NOT include “She Blinded Me With Science.” While I’d never argue that it’s a bad song, since it is insanely fun, and catchy to the point of being irresistible, it really does not belong on this album. I’m sure it helped them move copies of it, but its inclusion kind of ruins the vibe, to be honest. Its in-your-face and flamboyant hooks make it feel like a very unwarranted intrusion on an otherwise fairly serious and contemplative LP, which seems to have been intended as a fairly tight and thoughtful concept album.

Aside from that glaring issue, there are a few other tracks that have appeared on later versions of the album that weren’t there from the start, namely, the two tracks from Dolby’s first ever-release, a double A-side of “Urges” and “Leipzig,” as well as “One of Our Submarines,” the B-side of some versions of “She Blinded Me With Science.” All of these tracks are excellent, and mesh with the thematic and sonic character of the album quite well. “One of Our Submarines” in particular is often considered one of the best tracks of Dolby’s career--melancholy, claustrophobic, and stinging in its poignant sense of tragedy. It captures the misery and futility of modern war, as well as the sunset of the British Empire after the Second World War...and there’s a sample of a dolphin, too. It’s easily the track that I most wish had been included from the very start.

Music: “One of Our Submarines”

But now that that’s over with, I’d like to drill down and talk about how the album operates in its original form, as the artist intended. Like I said earlier, The Golden Age of Wireless is best understood as a concept album, and I think of it in a similar league as classics like the Buggles’ The Age of Plastic, OMD’s Dazzle Ships, or even Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love. The original track listing opens with “Flying North,” a stellar introduction to one of the most prominent themes of the album: freedom!

Music: “Flying North”

“Flying North” is an exultant anthem of self-determination, and one clearly mediated by “metal birds”--aeroplanes, that is. It’s a celebration of the independence allowed by technology, and a rather winsome one, in which this almost macho image of a heroic pilot takes center stage. The final track of the album, “Cloudburst At Shingle Street,” is a bit more esoteric, but seems to be aiming for a pretty similar idea overall, and I’d argue that the two of them form thematic “bookends.”

Music: “Cloudburst At Shingle Street”

“Cloudburst At Shingle Street” leads us through the technological evolution of mankind, from swinging from trees to paving concrete beaches--but the spacey synth warbles beneath those lines give them an ominous bent. The assertion that we might be heading into a cloudburst “mindless,” “naked,” or “blindly” is unnervingly cynical, but, we’re told, “there’s no escaping it.” Despite all of these signs that our better judgment should be resisting the temptation of this miraculous cloudburst...this triumphant, rising coda, with its powerful choir encouraging us onwards, seems to muddle the whole thing. The untethered, free-roaming nature of modern life isn’t always this sexy and exuberant, though--consider the track “Weightless,” as a counterpoint.

Music: “Weightless”

“Weightless” certainly seems to be about modern transients of some sort--in this case, traveling by car--but never lionizes them or makes them too terribly enviable. Instead, the focus is on the image of the draining fuel tank: the constant emptiness and craving for meaning, validation, and genuine love. No matter the allure of this very American, Route 66-like setting, the gas stations, cinemas, and decadent diner meals along the way are never any real substitute for an emotionally authentic life. That setting is, of course, a wistfully backward-looking Midcentury one. Nostalgia and childhood naivete are also among the album’s major themes, and are expressed the most clearly on “Europa and the Pirate Twins.”

Music: “Europa and the Pirate Twins”

Narratively, “Europa and the Pirate Twins” is a bittersweet story of childhood playmates who never quite re-unite, despite promising to be together again someday. The really interesting wrinkle is the fact that the narrator’s beloved Europa has become a famous celebrity as an adult, and the narrator is essentially a fan of her despite their real-world relationship. It’s an uncanny, confused parasocial relationship dynamic that feels extremely contemporary, despite the fact that it’s ultimately more of a commentary on the rise of teenager-oriented marketing during the Midcentury than anything else. The strange, often unhealthy relationships between young people and mass media, particularly radio, are another one of the major sources of tension on The Golden Age of Wireless. “Europa and the Pirate Twins” is also one of the more interesting tracks, instrumentally, featuring a prominent harmonica part, performed by Andy Partridge of XTC. Given how much the album strives to be about the future and past simultaneously, steeped in nostalgia and utopian visions alike, it makes sense to hear Dolby blend elements of traditional folk or popular music with forward-thinking synth-pop sensibilities. Listen also for a flute on “Windpower,” and a substantial amount of guitar on “Commercial Breakup,” a song that proves Dolby certainly can rock, if he feels like it.

Music: “Commercial Breakup”

The cover art for The Golden Age of Wireless isn’t exactly the most iconic, but I’ve always thought it was very beautiful. You’ve got this very eye-catching, lurid, pulp magazine style illustration of Dolby as a diligent, yet glamourous engineer, radiating with the complementary colour palette of orange and blue, the perfect picture of retro cool. But it’s framed and inset, to give us a conscious sense of observing something that’s coming to us from another time, an artifact preserved. That patina and sense of the antique is amplified by this dull-coloured background, which actually shows a marble sculpture gallery in a museum, though that’s tough to make out unless you have it right in front of you. The numerous shades of irony operating here are another thing that make the album feel strikingly contemporary.

I’m also a huge fan of the album’s title. “Wireless,” if you weren’t aware, is an old-fashioned term for radio. Radio itself is a strong theme on the album, most obviously on the track “Radio Silence,” but the use of the term “wireless” isn’t just another piece of retro nostalgia--I think it’s also evocative of that sense of free-flying, untethered independence I talked about earlier. The first half, i.e., “golden age,” is perhaps even more important. “Golden age” is an extremely loaded term that brings a number of rich associations to the table. “Golden ages” are simultaneously longed for, but not fully believed in. They’re bygone eras that usually felt like nothing special to the people who actually lived through them, despite their greatness being palpable to anyone reflecting on them in hindsight. In every golden age, there’s a poetic tragedy.

I think that even if someone did buy this record just to get their hands on “She Blinded Me With Science,” they’d probably be at least a little bit disappointed in what they got. The album does have some decent pop singles, chiefly “Radio Silence” and “Europa and the Pirate Twins,” but they’re still humming with nostalgia and unease, and not without some substantial experimental DNA.

Music: “Radio Silence”

While they cut the single weirdest track on the album, “The Wreck of the Fairchild,” they still retained some fairly ambitious tracks, such as “Windpower”--clearly an ode to Kraftwerk’s “Radioactivity.” It’s hard to be angry with an electronic musician for trying to rip off Kraftwerk, since they all do it one way or another, and in this case it invites a natural comparison between two great concept albums focused on the theme of radio.

Music: “Windpower”

Overall, though, The Golden Age of Wireless is still a reasonably accessible album on the whole. Possibly not what you expected, and certainly, a work that’s more sentimental and affecting than good for the dance floor, but as far as poignant, ballady, diesel-punk odes to the tragic techno-optimism of the Midcentury go, I’d say it’s not all that hard to get into! Dolby does have a pop core, as an artist, that he’s quite capable of selling to us if he chooses to. For proof of that point, look no further than the single “Hyperactive!” which he followed this up with a few years later:

Music: “Hyperactive!”

When discussing an ostensible one-hit wonder, there’s a distinct temptation to resort to “they deserved better” style rhetoric. On one hand, yes, I do think more people should hear Thomas Dolby’s music, and that it has a lot to say to us. I’m all about obscure music finding new life and being appreciated. That said, in the case of Dolby, I think he basically got what he wanted, in the end. He’s always been more keenly interested in music’s many behind-the-scenes roles than he has in chasing pop stardom himself--he’s produced music, and scored a number of films and video games over the decades. It feels kind of wrong to tell someone who’s successful at one thing that they “deserve” to be successful at something different, just because we may want to hear him do it, or because we esteem one skillset more highly than the other. Ultimately, The Golden Age of Wireless is a Great Album on its own terms, whether Dolby ever decides to grace us with another synth-pop release under his own name again--which he did in 2011, with A Map of the Floating City. But it’s his decision, as an artist, and the fact that he can choose to or not is a luxury that allows him integrity. I think that’s the way it ought to be.

My overall top track on this album has got to be “Airwaves,” a song in which the narrator dies, tragically and suddenly, in an automobile accident. It’s not the sexy, “Warm Leatherette” sort of car accident, but rather a dismally realistic one, that shows quite frankly how undignified death can be. Sometimes, we aren’t so much doomed heroes as we are frightened, sickly children, defeated by our own fickle bodies. The last thought our narrator gets is “I itch all over, let me sleep”; their honour perishes just moments before they do. Meanwhile, the radio is a constant presence throughout, and serves as both something to anchor the scene in the droll and quotidian, as well as ultimately becoming something transcendent. The promise of “airwaves” is not only the human interconnectedness made possible by technology, but also a hint at the ultimate destiny of human souls, a kind of ethereal afterlife in the sky. The meandering lulls of the verses contrast sharply with the song’s eerily soaring refrain, which enhances that feeling that those “airwaves” occupy some sort of higher plane. On that surprisingly heavy note, that’s all I’ve got for today, so thanks for listening!

Music: “Airwaves”

#music #album review #album reviews #thomas dolby #one hit wonder #one hit wonders

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whateverthedragonswant · 4 years ago

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More proof in the pudding for 15x20 breaking the fourth wall theory

I kind of already discussed this theory on this post here but in going over the last two seasons of GoT to add to this dark!Dany meta I’ve got going, I noticed something that I think is worth taking a look at.

GoT 8x06:

We all remember what happens after this weighted ominous walk of Jon’s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XhfGY5pIPg&t=254s

“When I was a girl, my brother told me it was made from a thousand swords of Aegon’s fallen enemies. What do a thousand swords look like in the mind of a little girl who can’t count twenty? I imagined a mountain of swords too high to climb. So many fallen enemies, you could only see the soles of Aegon’s feet.” “This is our reason. It has been from the beginning since you were a little boy with a bastard’s name and I was a little girl who couldn’t count to twenty.” “You are my queen, now and always.” -- this is dialogue meant to call back to the Dany the audience has known since season 1 - this was done in an effort to keep her character sympathetic to the end but it’s problematic since she just torched an entire city that held a million innocent people, and it completely negates the true moral of her story - her brother is mentioned who we haven’t seen since season 1, who by all means is not a good influence or a hero in this story but in this last season, she has started to embrace the Targaryen side of things (that we’ve seen reflected in her wardrobe, I see you Michele Clapton, you brilliant woman, you) - the dialogue even invokes season 1 Jon in that one line, though obviously the focus is not on Jon but Dany herself - Jon who had just been acting as the audience mouthpiece in the jail scene with Tyrion (acting as the writers’ mouthpiece - again breaking the 4th wall), saying “You are my queen, now and always”, something the split audience (the ones who felt betrayed by Dany’s dark turn and still stan her to this day) keep saying - yes “now and always” was a common saying in the North, but this wording is purposeful as is this piece of dialogue for essentially what is Dany’s death scene, the most controversial death to come out of this episode, the end of this series I would even argue

15x20:

We all remember Dean’s monologue that took close to 10 mins to happen as he was “fading pretty quick”, so much so that Sam couldn’t call for help

youtube

“There’s a few things that I need you to hear. Come here. Let me look at you. There he is. I am so proud of you, Sam. Do you know that? I’ve always looked up to you. Remember when we were kids, you were so damn smart, you never took any of Dad’s crap. I never knew how you did that. And you’re stronger than me. You always have been. Hey, did I ever tell you that night that, uh, that I came for you when you were at school? You know when Dad hadn’t come back from his hunting trip? The woman in white, that’s right. I must’ve stood outside your dorm for hours because I didn’t know what you would say. I thought you’d tell me to get lost or get dead and I didn’t know what I would’ve done if I didn’t have you. ‘Cause I was so scared. I was scared. ‘Cause when it all came down to it, it was always you and me. It’s always been you and me.” “I can’t do this alone.” “Yes, you can.” “Well, I don’t want to.” “I love you so much. My baby brother.” -- notice anything...familiar? -- this is dialogue meant to call back to season 1, to the original audience that started out with the brothers in season 1, that may not have stuck with the show for all 15 seasons but maybe ducked back in for the finale just to see how the show chose to end the boys’ stories - John is mentioned who is not a good influence nor a hero in the story which the show has gone out of their way to show time and time again, despite 14x13 - this is the result of one of their dad’s old unfinished hunts from season 1 including the “villain” - Dean mentions events of the first episode when John hasn’t come back from an old hunt, when he goes to get Sam from school, the woman in white being their very first MOTW of the show, even the dialogue from that first episode where the lines are reversed and Dean tells Sam he doesn’t want to do it alone - the dialogue is meant to invoke nostalgia of that pilot and that time, that version of the boys’ stories, where it was Winchester only - Dean’s death (outside of Cas’) is one of the most controversial deaths to happen this episode, even this series (though it has a lot of problematic deaths, i.e. Charlie but I mean in the main character arena) - this was done to keep season 1, specifically the pilot, in the viewers’ minds and as a callback to the beginning of the show, the dialogue was very purposeful, it’s also no coincidence that Sam is the focus here and once Dean is finished telling him goodbye essentially, he looks away behind the camera and talks about how he didn’t think today was going to be the day but it is (which adds to the pudding even more, because this is later season Dean talking who did not want to die on a hunt and wanted something different for himself, season 1 Dean always knew he would die young on a hunt)

And let us not forget this:

Andrew Dabb: “If you thought Game of Thrones was bad, just wait” (x) - this is said in a joking manner but where is it said? Comic Con 2019, the same Comic Con D&D canceled their appearances at & left the cast who did appear to deal with the fallout. This isn’t a man flipping off people and being like “Ha! Crybabies, we’re doing what we want to do and that’s that! Ha!” He said it in a joking manner when he talked about how only 30% of people would be pleased after seeing the finale and Jared joined the conversation. This is the same man who pushed hard along with Bobo Berens for a spinoff that featured women and women of color as well as having proper queer representation but got shut down by the network in the end. The same guy who worked to separate Dean and Sam from their toxic co-dependency and bolstered the found family theme in the narrative, while also taking the baton that Carver started with of Dean and Sam thinking of what they would actually want for their endings, and running with it, developing that even further.

What did GoT have? 2 final seasons as it were. To be fair, season 7 cannot be considered an alternate ending, it had way too many open endings but here (x) it’s stated that D&D did want to end GoT with season 7 initially before being convinced by the network to go to 8. They wanted to move onto other projects (that never happened because they’re egotistical greedy idiots, but I digress) and their rush to end the series showed. HBO wanted 10 seasons but they didn’t want to move forward without D&D. GRRM thought at least 13 seasons would be appropriate.

What did SPN have? 2 finales. 15x19 is not only the finale that closes up the mytharc but also the found family finale. I’m not sure if they knew this ahead of time or found out last second (Misha’s line of “Cas’ ending was supposed to be different but I don’t think we’re supposed to talk about that” still haunts me), but ultimately, that’s how it worked out. 15x19 was for the later season fans, the found family, the mythology fans (meaning Heaven, Hell, angels, nephilim, Lucifer, Jack, etc). That’s why we get the huge montage of characters at the end of the episode, the initials on the table, Dean demanding Cas be brought back in the beginning of the episode and Lucifer’s phone call, Dean and Sam wanting Jack to come back to the bunker but he can’t, Dean and Sam driving off in Baby together with “Running On Empty” playing. 15x20 was the series finale for early season fans, Kripke fans, Winchester-only fans. That’s why there’s no big montage in the beginning of the SERIES FINALE that they had done every season premiere, every season finale, and every mid-season premiere. They didn’t want the found family (yes, including Cas and Jack) in the viewers’ minds. But they couldn’t remove those two characters from the narrative completely (they were too integral later on in the series plus later season fans are watching this too) so they get mentions. This is why the Carry On My Wayward Son twice, Sam married to Blurry Wife and having Dean Jr., the Winchester-only mantle, the MOTW that calls back to one of their big bads (vampires) in season 1 (outside of YED & any demonic forces), why the brothers-only ending. This is why Dean is all ‘Cas who?’, why Eileen disappeared, and why Jack is off shooting a new spot for Architectural Digest. They only wanted Sam and Dean on your minds in 15x20 with the extension of John, Mary, Rufus, Bobby, and Baby with a touch of the Roadhouse in the background. This is also why no pictures of Blurry Wife on the Winchester-only mantle either. This is why Sam’s son was named Dean. This is why after putting on the Party City wig, Sam goes to sit in Baby and cries, thinking of Dean.

I’ve said it before and I will say it again: 15x20.👏 Was.👏 A.👏 Vehicle. It’s no coincidence that W*lker was more heavily promoted during 15x20 than any other time before. That what happens in 15x20 for Sam and Dean (and that Sam is once again the focus after having the story split between the brothers for years before) parallels somewhat to what happens in Jared’s new show and his character. This is the same network that uses its shows to backdoor pilots of spinoffs and other shows time and time again (think Green Arrow and The Canaries, Legacies, etc). It’s also no coincidence that W*lker is in the same time slot as SPN had been in, that they intersperse the use of #SPNFamily and #W*lkerFamily on Twitter, that the C*W SPN twitter account is used to steer followers to their other content, that the C*W YouTube account for SPN no longer has any clips or promos available for that show, almost as if it doesn’t exist. You know why? Simple, they don’t want SPN on your minds anymore. They want you watching W*lker and any other new content they are cooking up and throwing at you. Don’t be surprised if they start heavily promoting another new show (besides their returning ones) during W*lker episodes now. That’s just the name of the game, how it works. They already pushed the audience they wanted from 15x20 to W*lker and now SPN is an officially closed chapter for them. Dabb and the actors had other projects to move onto. In their minds, it’s done...until they try to reboot it in some way in a couple of years. And it will not only feature a younger generation of actors but will have what they consider to be appropriate queer representation as well as POC representation in the new cast. It may be the same Winchester story though changed or a whole new story in that universe. You laugh but watch. It’ll happen. This network is not known for its quality or originality, only for their brand. There’s a reason they keep on showrunners to head up new content if their original source of content works and they become “favorites” (i.e Julie Plec).

Ultimately, GoT was referenced many times on SPN, in dialogue between characters whether it applied or not. GoT was mentioned by the actors when discussing watching it, at cons and in interviews. SPN (and Dabb) was very well aware of GoT and what happened with that show. Not only because it was all over the media everywhere, being a pop culture phenomenon that had HUGE backlash, but also because they were there at the Comic Con where the backlash was felt strongest. To the point where even other people mentioned it in their panels (i.e. Seth Rogen). I’m obviously not in Dabb’s head nor was I on set when they filmed the finale or in the writers’ room with J2 and the writers when they pitched the ending so I don’t know. But isn’t it odd that 8x06 of GoT features a scene that has been confirmed by Kit Harington as breaking the 4th wall to speak to/get the viewers’ attention, make them think, and SPN is a show that has featured that same concept (usually in a comedic fashion) time and time again? And in 15x20 they have Robert Singer make an appearance? And the infamous bridge crew shot, J2 talking to you while still in costume as Sam and Dean from that same shot, and the voiceover “And cut” before it cuts to black?

I don’t think we’ll ever really get answers. I think any we get will always be complimentary to the network, or “we can’t talk about it”, or “it was always planned that way”. I’m not saying those people are being less than truthful (and seriously, I don’t blame any of them, it’s PR and they need to protect their careers, feed their families, if you speak out on anything in this universe, something really serious or the tiniest thing, you risk ever getting hired again, you will be blacklisted, it’s not right and it’s certainly not fair, but this is the way this particular business works) but something is not adding up (a lot of somethings actually). I think there was definitely a different ending for Cas, possibly even Jack (meaning he might have made at least one appearance). I do think there may have been a different resolution to Destiel and Saileen (unless they truly planned to keep it ambiguous all along). I don’t know if Dean would have had a different ending, I think he might have at one point as suggested by the narrative during Carver’s and Dabb’s eras, but I’m not sure what their “true ending” was going to be regarding him or Sam. To have Sam be the one that died would have been redundant from Swan Song (5x22) so I doubt they would have gone in that direction. I hate to think it but I don’t think we’ll ever really know. As far as death scenes go, Dean’s death in 9x23 was way more meaningful and impactful for me when he tells Sam that he’s proud of them, than what we got in 15x20. No offense to the guys’ acting or to the boys themselves, but the 9x23 scene was more appropriate imho. And that also leads me to believe that Dean’s manner of death may not have been what they planned all along. But until we get answers (which again I don’t think we will), we’ll never truly know for sure.

As for me, this is just more proof in the pudding. I’m not saying Dabb & Co purposely sabotaged 15x20 at all but I wouldn’t be surprised if they kept the reaction to GoT’s finale in mind at a couple of key points while getting these last two episodes shot. 15x19 was our finale, sad to say. 15x20 was the network’s finale, meant to induce nostalgia and callbacks, bringing the boys’ original fans over to Texas to watch a certain ranger do roundhouse kicks. Sad but true.

#The15YearShow #spn #spn posts #got mention #got and spn parallels #spn 15x20 #who's she #the rancid nutwork #daenerys' death #dean's death #season 1 callbacks parallels #for each

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ivy-miranda-2390 · 4 years ago

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In Defense of Anakin Skywalker (and Hayden Christensen)

I grew up with Star Wars, my whole family loves Star Wars. I was 8 when I saw Episode I and afterwards, I was completely immersed in the Star Wars universe. Ewan McGregor's Obi-Wan Kenobi was probably my first fictional boyfriend and I'm unashamedly still in love with him too.

Episode II: The Attack of the Clones came out when I was 11 and so naturally I was excited to see the continuation of the Star Wars prequel universe. However, nothing could have prepared me for the absolute utter gorgeousness of Canadian actor, Hayden Christensen who was cast to play the adolescent Anakin Skywalker.

My memories of first seeing Episode II are fond because I got to see the movies with my older siblings while on vacation in Myrtle Beach. It was probably my first experience of being accepted among my older adult brothers and sisters or the feeling of 'grownupness' as I like to call it.

So Attack of the Clones has always been an special film to me because I saw it at a time when I was no longer being viewed as a child, but as a growing teenager.

It's also why I've always been rather defensive of the film too. While the film was titled Attack of the Clones, it may as well have been re-titled, "Attack of Anakin Skywalker (and subsequently, Hayden Christensen)". For over 20 years, there has been an absolute and indescribable hatred of Anakin Skywalker and many people blamed both Jake Lloyd and Hayden Christensen's supposed poor acting as the result of a badly done Anakin.

And to be honest even though I had a massive crush on Hayden Christensen and was hardly a movie critic at the time, I felt that at times that Anakin could have been better acted. However, I was young and didn't care about the script or the acting. Yet, for years I constantly defended, Attack of the Clones, Anakin Skywalker and Hayden Christensen. Partly due to nostalgia, partly to being a teenage girl and most of all partly to do with understanding the character of Anakin as being misunderstood, misinterpreted and not being treated as an adult by the elders in his life.

Did Anakin have problems? Yes.

Were most of these problems his fault? No.

Did Anakin ever try to fix these problems and better himself? Everyday of his life.

He had nothing, but he gave everything

The prequels were written as a timeline of a boy's journey from goodness into darkness. Anakin's life is a story arch of sacrifice and redemption. Life has not always been good to Anakin. He was born a slave with no father. He was raised in the strong love of wonderful mother Shmi Skywalker. While Shmi may have been scared and confused as to how she conceived a child without a man, she raised her son in love and simple contentment.

Chances are Anakin and his mother probably faced terrible abuse in their time as slaves and more than once, Anakin may have been separated from Shmi as leverage for greedy slave owners. Although a slave, Anakin was never a victim. He may have been physically owned, but his heart and mind were free. He was his own person, always thinking outside of the box, building, creating, questioning everything and everyone. Not to mention a little wild and rather reckless.

Even as a child Anakin was a little strange to people. For a slave to have such a hopeful and positive attitude may have seemed bizarre to outsiders, but that was just the norm for him. Shmi once remarked that her son knew nothing of greed. For a boy raised with nothing, all he had were his talents as an inventor and growing pilot. And he used his talents for other people. He built C-3PO to help his mom, he entered the podrace to help Qui-Gon Jinn, he always gave without any expectation of being thanked.

A spirit that refused to surrender

After Anakin is freed and sent to train as a Jedi, that wild spirit was still intact. Much to his by-the-book master's dismay. Anakin didn't have the opportunity to grow up in the strict Jedi Temple that was built on order, rules and tradition. As a child, Anakin was use to being himself and not fitting into anyone's mold. His original dream was to be a pilot, not a Jedi. No one asked him if he wanted to be a Jedi, no one asked him if he wanted to be trained by Obi-Wan Kenobi.

While Anakin may have been grateful for both opportunities presented to him, overtime he may have seen this new life as not to different from the one he left. A life run by others. Telling him what to do, where to go, how to dress, how to behave. He survived as a slave because he dared to dream and imagine and refused to be defined by others.

Now he's thrown into a culture where individuality is looked down upon. He lived through the stifling Jedi order because he still held onto those qualities. He was going to be himself on his terms. He would nod his head and say yes when he needed to, but off the clock he would live by his own rules. Something that Obi-Wan and the Jedi order could not understand. And Anakin is getting frustrated by this.

So now we get to Attack of the Clones (and the Attack of Hayden Christensen). Critics came down hard on both Anakin and Hayden. Constantly complaining about Anakin's constant complaining, his tantrums, broodiness and being a crybaby about everything. Critics blamed the disaster of Anakin Skywalker on the terrible miscasting of Hayden Christensen. The only redeeming quality Hayden Christensen had that saved him was the fact he was so easy to look at.

For years, fans were desperate to know who Anakin Skywalker was. And so the pressure to deliver a good character that could measure up to the icon of Darth Vader may have seemed insurmountable. And so when people got this confused, overemotional 19 year old, who has no experience in love or sex, but is madly in love with a beautiful young women; and who wants to be respected in a highly established culture, without losing himself or conforming, well people were just disappointed. The disappointment can be explained in one of Anakin's most famous lines.

"HE'S HOLDING ME BACK!"

He, being George Lucas who was holding back Hayden's actual talent to create a good three dimensional character. Plus his bad script writing. Poor Hayden was just made to read lines on a page and somehow make this sad character somebody that people can root for. Unfortunately fans and critics ate him alive. It's only in recent years that people have begun to realize that they were blaming the wrong person. And by blaming Hayden, they were completely misunderstanding Anakin as a character.

His most beautiful gift, his most fatal flaw

Of all of Anakin's gifts, his ability to love deeply was probably his most profound and his most dangerous. The Jedi Temple forbade romantic attachments to others and for good reason. When you become attached to or love someone beyond the boundaries of platonic friendship you become afraid of losing them. The end of my review for the Star Wars prequels sums it up the best:

In The Phantom Menace, Yoda warns Anakin about the dangers of being afraid. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering. Anakin's most beautiful attribute is also his most fatal flaw. His ability to love deeply. Yet, if you love someone you will always live in fear of losing them. Anakin was created by darkness, but raised in the light of his mother's love. His own love was made manifest by Padme and then by their unborn child/children. However, Love no matter how strong can be weakened and even be destroyed by the evil of fear. If the prequels taught anything about life, it taught how fear (even in its smallest form) can be be our most detrimental enemy. Living alone in fear and not seeking help is a signing of our own death warrants. What might have happened if Anakin had gone to Obi-Wan and seek his help? Would things have been different? The prequels were not meant to tell a happy story. They were written as a timeline of a boy's journey from goodness into darkness. No, they don't have the silliness or humor of the Originals, because there is nothing humorous about someone's self-destruction. Yet, the story of Anakin Skywalker's transformation had to be told in a way that was real and heartbreaking. To take Darth Vader and make him a human who could feel and understand and love could be an insurmountable task. Yet, you only need to watch his death scene at the end of Return of The Jedi to see that the humane part of Anakin Skywalker had always been there. The prequels were made to be built on that final scene of redemption and human love. A husband's love to save his wife became a father's love that could overcome darkness and hate. An extreme love that defied fear and held on to hope. That was the love of Anakin Skywalker.

Anakin could be a bratty and immature young adult. However, to only base a character by his few annoying flaws is overlooking the bigger and better picture. Anakin was an outsider his whole life and yet that never seemed to bother him. He never cared about fitting in. He was content being himself and he refused to let Obi-Wan or the Jedi Order or even Padme change him. He held onto who he was for as long as he was able to. Then the tragedy of losing his wife changed that. The indomitable spirit wasn't broken, it was destroyed. Anakin re-entered a life of slavery for over 20 years.

And he was ultimately freed by one person. An orphan who once had nothing but a talent as an inventor and dreams of being a pilot. A young Jedi with an unbreakable spirit that refused to surrender to evil or fear or pain or loss. A son who loved his father so deeply that he would fight to the death to free Anakin Skywalker forever.

#star wars #anakin skywalker #hayden christensen

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timeagainreviews · 5 years ago

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The surprising similarities of Doctor Who and Twin Peaks

Earlier today, a friend of mine asked me why I chose to do a blog about both Doctor Who and Twin Peaks. He thought it was a very odd pairing. While explaining to him some of my various reasons, I realised that it would actually make a rather interesting article to talk about the similarities between both shows. Believe it or not, there are several. My hope is to possibly garner new interest in either show for Whovians and Peakies alike.

I know a lot of you are here for the Doctor Who content, but I would like to think that a sliver of you are also interested in the Twin Peaks content. That being said, this article will contain some minor spoilers for both Twin Peaks and Doctor Who. Though I will try and maintain the central mystery without giving too much away. I’ve toyed with the idea of writing articles about Twin Peaks outside of episode recaps, but I’ve always shied away for fear of spoilers. Consider yourself warned!

A tale of two pilots

I’ve gone over this in previous blogs that both Twin Peaks and Doctor Who have two separate pilot episodes, albeit for totally different reasons. In the case of Doctor Who, the second pilot was filmed after it was decided that the first one failed to capture the correct tone for the Doctor. Because of this, a reshoot was done, softening the First Doctor’s irascible temper to something more relatable. His cantankerousness was dialled back to rebelliousness, and our protagonist began to feel less like the villain.

In the case of Twin Peaks, the second version of its pilot episode was filmed for the sake of European markets. Having had a rather profitable year, the network ABC was willing to take a gamble on a dark horse in the form of a little project from Mark Frost and David Lynch. However, they only ordered the one episode upfront. Figuring it may never see more than a pilot, an extended version of the episode was filmed to include a conclusion of the story for European markets. While this version of the pilot was not aired in the states, it is widely available on DVD release.

This may seem like a tenuous connection at best. But both of the unused pilots can be viewed as a means to further understand their respective shows. Seeing the Doctor act like a jerk gives a bit of insight into just how far is too far. People may complain that the First Doctor is a cranky old man, but seeing the original pilot of "An Unearthly Child," really illustrates the delicate nature of that balance. Similarly, watching the masterful work of David Lynch’s perfect introduction of Twin Peaks wrap itself up in a clunky, tacked on extra thirty minutes feels just as hollow. People may complain that Twin Peaks leaves too much to mystery, but seeing it end in a shootout makes you appreciate the ambiguity of later episodes. Both pilots prove that sometimes less is more.

Time Off

Both TV shows were cancelled and subsequently brought back to air years later. After 26 seasons of travelling in time and space, Doctor Who had been booted by the head of BBC. After only two seasons Twin Peaks was cancelled by ABC, far before its time. Later, both series attempted a sort of reboot, or revival in the form of movies, both of which were panned by critics. At this point, the only places either show really existed were within the hearts of fans. You may have seen the occasional convention, magazine, or book, but it would appear that both beloved series were dead in the water.

However, it is that very flame kept lit by the fans that gave each series its respective cult status. After years of fans wondering if their favourite shows would get the revivals they so deserved, it would seem their prayers were finally answered. Oddly enough, neither show was a complete reboot, with each acting as a continuation of their original storylines. While each revival has its share of detractors, purists who prefer the original show, overall they were both considered very successful. Much of this is owed to the fact that the creators opted not to be slavishly devoted to the source material, but to instead make something new that still managed to respect the past. Instead of purely playing into nostalgia, they make a case for their own existence by being something new.

Some not so familiar faces

One of Doctor Who’s greatest strengths is that it was able to inject longevity into the show by introducing the concept of regeneration. While most shows die when their actors leave the show, Doctor Who was able to write replacing the actors into the narrative by making it a biological function of the main character. Like Mary’s claim of a virgin birth, its an idea so unique that you can only get away with it the one time. Anyone who replaces their actors in such a way would just be copying Doctor Who, right?

Enter Twin Peaks. Aside from outright replacing actors, as in the case of Donna Hayward in “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me,” David Lynch has taken a rather novel approach to replace actors who have either died or refused to return. Take, for instance, the actor Michael J. Anderson who played “The Man from Another Place,” (or the Arm) in both the series and the movie. After a payment dispute, Anderson claimed that he was “irreplaceable.” And when you consider just how deep his character goes into the mythos of Twin Peaks, it’s hard to disagree. That is, unless you’re David Lynch.

Lynch’s solution to losing Anderson was to simply replace him with a central nervous system/tree with a brain like a wadded piece of chewing gum for a head. And you know what? It actually worked. Referring to it as a sort of “evolution,” the audience needed only to take a moment to bask in the brilliance, and then move on. The same method was used to replace David Bowie with a machine that resembled a tea kettle, or the villainous Bob with a floating black orb containing his face. No actor? No problem.

The surprising fact is that the mythology of both shows was able to sustain what would normally be considered insane narrative choices. As opposed to jumping the shark, these changes actually deepened the mythos of either show. From their conception, both Doctor Who and Twin Peaks are so unique that they have been able to write, and rewrite their own rules.

Relative dimensions in space

Whether it’s a blue police box that is bigger on the inside or a convenience store that disappears like a TARDIS, neither show seems all that interested in obeying the laws of physics. Physical space is a minor obstacle to be manoeuvred around with an almost godlike technology bordering on magic. We see creatures using otherwise mundane objects to completely sidestep reality. Pictures hanging on walls are portals into entire worlds. Stuccoed buildings act as gateways opening up to boxes floating in space. Portals open deep in the woods to take us into terrifying dimensions that boggle the mind.

Interestingly enough, both shows approach these elements seemingly from opposite ends of the spectrum. With Twin Peaks, what has been hinted at possibly being aliens, may actually be something more spiritual. With Doctor Who, something that is hinted at as spiritual is usually aliens. Regardless, in both instances, matter is simply a plaything of beings far more advanced than we mere mortals.

Time and time again

Wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff isn’t just a thing that affects the Doctor. The heroes of Twin Peaks also experience their fair share of time displacement. Whether it’s a hole punched into the universe by an atomic bomb that imprints the 1940′s onto a dimension visited by Lewis and Clark, or a trip in the TARDIS to the time of Lewis and Clark, both storylines are tangled in a web of timelines threatening the fate of everyone involved.

As we learn with the Doctor, so too do we learn in the case of Dale Cooper that toying with timelines is not an exact science. Distortions happen. Things change. People tend to disappear. Once you cross that threshold, it could all be different. Even with the greatest of plans, our heroes in the fight between good and evil may find themselves in a never-ending battle. At the end of the day, even the best of intentions can be undone by a simple time loop.

They both changed television forever

From their very first episodes, both Twin Peaks and Doctor Who aimed to be something different. I’ve said in the past that Doctor Who operates on a level of surrealism rarely seen in science fiction. In a similar manner, Twin Peaks injects a heaping dose of the surreal into both the soap opera and police procedural genres. Because of this, they each come off as incredibly unique stories that stand apart from everything else. Many imitators have come and gone in the years since, but very few have achieved the same degree of success.

These aren’t just lighting in a bottle moments either. The unique nature of either show acts as a response to what came before it. These are deliberate choices to make something different. Sydney Newman’s edict of “no bug-eyed monsters,” while widely ignored, actually speaks to a greater desire to make something of substance. Much in the same way, Twin Peaks exists as a comment on the shallow nature of murder mysteries of the day. Instead of focusing on the murderer, it focused on the victim and how such a crime can destroy a small town.

In their own ways, Twin Peaks and Doctor Who aimed for something deeper. Audiences weren’t just asked to experience terror. Violence was not just a thing to ramp up the tension. Along with the darkness, came a lot of light. The relationships between people were just as important as those between good and evil. Pure joy is a thing to be celebrated, and not scoffed at through pessimistic edgelording. The full spectrum of human emotion is not ignored to service a “clever,” plotline. Even though both shows occasionally lost sight of this principle, they were always at their best when, at their cores, they celebrated life. It is as the Second Doctor said- "There are some corners of the universe which have bred the most terrible things. Things that act against everything we believe in. They must be fought.”

#doctor who #twin peaks #bbc #abc #twin peaks fire walk with me #david lynch #mark frost #thirteenth doctor #an unearthly child #dale cooper #laura palmer #time travel #Time and Time Again #TARDIS #Regeneration #first doctor #sydney newman #verity lambert

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ober-affen-geil · 6 years ago

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Back again guys because guess what. I cannot get enough of the tension in this show. I have already done a post on the build in the scene between Michael and Alex in the junkyard in 1x09 but I’m about to pull a George Lucas and bring you the thrilling sequel from none other than: the pilot. Buckle up. x

The thing is, 1x09 had a lot of impact because of what’s being spoken. Alex is actually making an effort to talk to Michael. At that point the only other time he had tried was in 1x02, which he had to abort halfway through because Michael hit him with a ton of feelings bricks and they ended up banging it out. In between the two scenes is a whole lot of body language and distance from each other. The junkyard is the first time Alex is able to say what he needs to; it’s the dialog that gives it so much tension.

But in the pilot we are still getting a feel for these characters. All we’ve seen between them so far is angry, bitter jibes. The last interaction Alex and Michael have before this has both of them absolutely bristling at each other (”You’re wasting your life, Guerin.” “Did it get old for you?”).

The scene in 1x01 has a lot of impact precisely because so few words are used.

We begin in this semi-private back area, and Alex is in a vulnerable position both physically and emotionally. He’s adjusting his prosthetic (probably the reason he’s alone in the first place) and looks up just in time to see a picture of his younger self skateboarding. Ouch. This is the point where Michael announces his presence. Immediately the energy between them is jarringly different from the rest of the episode.

This is the first time we’ve seen these two characters actually alone together; we can finally watch them express themselves as they would with no one else watching. And holy St. Francis, what a change is here.

Michael is in the doorway, a good distance from Alex. (Giving him space, not being aggressive.) He’s positioned so he can easily leave if he’s not welcome, but he’s also leaning on the door frame in a very casual, non-threatening way that indicates he’s ready to stay a while. x

His opening line (Nostalgia’s a bitch, huh) is for the first time commiserating with Alex rather than jabbing at him. In a scene with so little dialog, the words that are spoken carry a lot of meaning. This is a peace offering.

Alex’s line (I thought for sure when I got back from Iraq you’d be long gone) is not so much a response to Michael’s remark as an olive branch in return; a kind of apology for the “wasting your life” comment from earlier.

This is where body language really starts coming into play. (It’s always in play with Michael and Alex though, let’s be real.) Because now it’s Michael’s turn to be vulnerable. He takes Alex’s statement (which, ostensibly, is just a throwaway comment) and asks a question that cuts right to the heart of why he’s there and not picking up a random person on a nostalgia trip.

“Is that what you want?”

There it is, on a platter. “Do you want me gone?” And he can’t even look at Alex when he asks, you can see him force himself to meet Alex’s eyes for an answer, but he’s still being magnetically pulled towards Alex because Michael just can’t help himself. x

And it throws Alex. He wasn’t expecting this, not after ten years. Not after what happened the last time they were together. He knows that he carries a torch for Michael. It’s buried deep inside himself and barely allowed to give off light, but it’s still there. Michael should have moved on, he’s better than this. (He deserves better than Alex.) Yet here Michael is, pacing towards him with a steady gaze and a light that Alex knows intimately blazing in his eyes. x

All at once Alex can feel the answering glow within flare bright and hot. He didn’t anticipate this and he needs to get a handle on it; tamp it down before it gets out of control and consumes him in a way that he knows he won’t recover from. But what a lovely way to burn it would be. His answer (We’re not kids anymore) is a desperate attempt to stop this madness from going too far. Alex pauses for the next line, trying to build up enough resolve to mean what he’s saying. Everything about him is skittery and on edge. His conflict between head and heart is in his eyes; they can’t settle on a single place to look. He swallows as though his mouth is suddenly dry with all the words that he is fighting to keep in. x

Finally he forces the reasonable response out (What I want doesn’t matter).

This is the most telling and impactful line of the entire scene.

Because the thing is, Alex can’t say no to Michael. Literally he cannot keep himself away from him; Alex is moving inextricably towards Michael as though mesmerized (just as Michael is gravitating towards him) for the entire scene. He is trying, so hard, to control this before it gets out of hand because he knows, he remembers what it was to be 17 and in love with Michael Guerin, to feel his body sing with the knowledge that Michael Guerin loved him back and he cannot do that right now. It’s too much, it won’t last. And it will destroy Alex to have it taken from him again.

But he can’t look Michael in the face and lie. He can’t say he doesn’t want Michael, not when *want* is pouring out of both of them so strongly it’s almost tangible. So he tries to invoke reality as a last ditch effort.

But Michael doesn’t bend to Alex’s reality. Alex doesn’t know it now, but Michael’s very existence defies reality.

Michael has only ever had one purpose when it comes to Alex, one goal, and right now it aligns exactly with what Alex is claiming doesn’t matter. The thing is, he can see, very clearly, what it is Alex wants. He needs to be sure though, so he stops and looks one last time. x

(The fact that his eye movement was edited to perfectly line up with a musical beat in the background is a detail that is scorched into my brain.)

This is the point of no return. Michael is giving Alex a final chance to back down, to match his actions to his words. He is giving Alex room to run.

Alex doesn’t run though. He steps forward. x

And Michael breaks. The whole scene has been building to this point, Michael has been reigning himself in as much as he could since he announced his presence in the doorway. He was gauging Alex’s reactions, watching his every move for a sign that he was not wanted. All the while barely holding on to his own need to be with Alex. Any separation when they are this close is painful. He gave Alex every chance to turn him down and he can’t take it any more. x

(That cut, moving us out so we can suddenly see how close they’ve gotten to each other, took my breath away.)

Look at Michael just before he moves, that is the face of a desperate man. Alex is the closest thing Michael has ever had to a home and he has been without him, adrift, for ten years. And it shows.

He doesn’t just reach for Alex, he lunges at him and crowds into his space, trying to press as close as possible. This has all the force of a dam giving way.

This scene left me absolutely wrecked, and continues to do so every time I watch it. It has so much raw emotion in it, and to have a scene convey this much depth of character with only four lines of dialog defies credibility. Michael Vlamis and Tyler Blackburn came for us personally here and I will stop being floored by it when I am dead.

#my roswell meta #roswell new mexico #rnm #malex #michael guerin #alex manes #list #a riley special

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nettlestonenell · 6 years ago

Photo

You can come out from hiding under your desks, now.

Three Reasons You Can Stop Fretting About Peggy Carter in Endgame

It is Nell, Gentle Readers, here to settle your uncertainties and qualm your queasies in the wake of Avengers: Endgame, in particular its finale.

Tumblr (and I) are well-aware at this point (and even, it seems, some covering the fandom-at-large) that Steve’s dance with Peggy in the penultimate moments of Endgame has more than one Peggy and Steggy fan on the edge of their seat—and not always in a good way.

This emotion needs it’s own verb.

Here are the three reasons you’ve got absolutely no excuse to be worried.

But What Happened to Peggy’s Character Development in Agent Carter? Didn’t Steve Just Steal All That from Her? And Her Family? (And US?!?) Did Steve Rogers Just Sort of Murder Peggy’s Children and Grandchildren? In the Name of Love? Did I Just Watch That?

Take a breath, Peggy fan. Thank you for your support of TV-Peggy, but according to Avengers: Endgame’s in-film explanation [and multiple post-opening Russo interviews, if you accept those into canon], nothing done in the past/time heist portion in the film negates what we’ve already seen and know to have happened IN THE MAIN MCU TIMELINE (which I’ll now call ‘ours’). So Peggy DID all the things we saw her do, including become a wife and mom and grandmom and co-create and run SHIELD…and die. That can’t be unwritten or taken away from her. From “Our” Timeline Peggy.

Please put down the gun, Agent. We’ll handle it from here.

Something to notice is that the two guys who wrote Endgame, Markus and McFeely? Well, they’re actually the two guys who are credited as “Created by” for Marvel’s Agent Carter. They served as Executive Producers on the show. They wrote The First Avenger. The Peggy Carter we know (“Our” Peggy) is courtesy them directly building on the comics, for Cap’s first film, AND for the TV show. [We also cannot forget Kevin Feige, who produced The First Avenger and the TV show, AND the 2013 One-shot. Peggy is part of his hard work, too.] These are the guys who cared about and remembered James D’Arcy’s top-shelf performance as TV Jarvis, who said, of all the people they could have picked to include in the biggest movie ever to be released on this planet: yes, we want to put him in our film, most people won’t get it at all, some will get the Jarvis comics reference, and a few—we happy few—will know exactly what is going on and our hearts will grow three sizes in three seconds. This is a choice we make, because we love that show and that story, and those characters.

We as fans love Peggy Carter, yes. But these guys? These guys LOVE Peggy Carter. They’ve placed her centrally into the MCU, they’ve thought about and developed and worked on her and her journey for a decade (even before 2011 when TFA was released) . Is it logical they’d then turn around and just…set fire to the thing? Over-writing and backspacing their story and that character’s development?

And so do McFeely and Markus and Feige, Peg. So do they.

Speaking of that 2013 One-Shot, Have You Seen It?

It was attached to the DVD release of Iron Man 3, and it became a backdoor pilot to the TV series. So? Well, if you’ve watched it, Gentle Readers, you will know that it…cannot be canon if we are meant to accept ONLY Marvel’s Agent Carter TV Series and “Our” Peggy. It’s contradictory, Peggy is not entirely as we’ve come to know her. It’s a different Peggy.

Two interchangeable white men in suits and positions of power? Who ever heard of such trickery!

See, with the time travel rules and notions set up in Endgame, the multiple tellings of Peggy Carter’s story actually…work in greater harmony than ever before. Think about it:

The Peggy Carter in TFA doesn’t have the shaky standing among co-workers and on-going struggle to accept her own worth over how others treat her that is given to/developed for her in Marvel’s Agent Carter TV Show. That new (but necessary to dramatic progress) character beat was created and introduced in the TV show.

The Agent Carter One-Shot Peggy is NEITHER the Peggy nor the SSR agents that we meet and watch in the TV Show.

And the Peggy dancing with Steve in Endgame is NOT “our” Peggy. She’s Peggy at a different point than when we knew her—or, Peggy at the LAST point we knew her, about to change and grow beyond our understanding of her with Steve re-arrival.

She is Peggy (just like the One-Shot is Peggy), same skill-set—but different life experiences.

You Can Choose to Believe What You Like About that Dance.

It’s not going to be elaborated on any more than it has been on film. And here, ultimately, is your saving grace. Here, is the possibility of harmonizing Our Peggy with Branch Reality Peggy. Please thank Kevin Feige and McFeely and Markus for this. For leaving that shot unexplained, inexplicit, but open to eternal speculation.

It is never good to die without finishing a poem. Just ask Coleridge.

And here is what Nell is going to believe about that dance, and why.

Number One: The song choice, yes, it’s a WWII tune, but it could be playing at any time. Nostalgia is strong in all generations, but of course Peggy and Steve might dance to a song from that time—they could dance to that record in 1947 or 1957 or 1967. It’s about memories. So, the song being used as they dance is no real year-locative indicator. It’s timeless.

Number Two: The house. And here’s what I know. The house shown is a California bungalow, built predominately in warm US climates from 1910-1939. It’s a very particular style of house—not one you’d find in New York City (or Brooklyn). We are shown that house, and a small yard—and no other houses or buildings in-shot. So, clearly not in the city. [see Number Three]

Picture for architectural reference only.

The house has a yellow exterior. Is there, um, anybody from the TV Series we associate with the color yellow? Who ALSO had a California bungalow-style house—in California? Whose interior was painted yellow? Could it be this person’s house? And maybe they’re…gone?

You gotta love a man w/ a consistent aesthetic.

Number Three: Keen-eyed viewers of both seasons of the TV Show will recall both a shift in fictional and actual location from Season One being in NYC to Season Two moving to California. With this came a significant shift in cinematography. Suddenly, Agent Carter was sun-infused, the camera leaving things so sun-dappled it sometimes bordered on being out-of-focus.

Above, Season One Agent Carter. An homage to noir.

Above, Season Two Agent Carter. Let the sun shine in.

That’s exactly how the dancing scene was shot.

Conclusion: This scene is set in California, therefore, after Peggy moved there from NYC, as she stated she was about to do in the series finale.

Number Four: Steve Rogers knows the details of “our” Peggy’s life. He would know when she married, to whom, all about her children. He would know her timeline. We can’t know what became of her husband (whom we generally assume to be Daniel Sousa), only that he is absent from photos at her aged bedside. It would be no huge stretch to wonder if he hadn’t been killed working for the SSR. If this were true, Cap would know that as well. Being a widow would not negate Peggy’s children, nor prevent Cap from coming on-board and helping raise them. Or the two of them having children of their own.

No doubt, this photo was on the other side of Peggy’s bed when she was in care.

It’s no great stretch at all to go forward understanding that Cap’s arrival could show up the day after Agent Carter’s series finale episode set around 1947—or even fifteen years later.

Bottom Line? Cap knows more about “our” Peggy’s life than we do, and whenever he chose to stop in and stay [and maybe he co-ordinated it with returning one of the stones, such as in 1970—the dancing clip is rendered timelessly, and will take closer scrutiny to try and date it through Peggy’s dress, hair, and possible wrinkles-given] he would do so in a way so that he (and the writers) would rob Peggy and her family of nothing.*

Because that’s who Steve Rogers (and the screenwriters that created the film version of him and Peggy) is.

Peggy’s known. Peggy’s always known.

*Right after he managed to rescue Branch-Bucky.** **After stealing more Pym Particles as he replaced the Tesseract in 1970.

Sleep tight, Gentle Readers, Cap hasn’t disappointed you—or Peggy. He (and Feige, and McFeely and Markus) have just made it so you can

#peggy carter #avengers endgame #endgame spoilers #captain america #steggy #cap won't mind #is my marvel superhero #marvel's agent carter #avengers: endgame #time branches #steve rogers #mcu #agent carter

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hannah-writes · 6 years ago

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Malex Kiss (Pilot) - A Cinematographic Breakdown - Part of The Semiotics of Roswell Meta

So first things first, we see the camera slowly pan up to reveal Alex's prosthetic. He's had to step away to adjust it which gives us an insight into his character; private, may be concerned about appearances. Knowing what we know now, with the benefit of hindsight, there's an even more striking comparison at this moment. As the camera pans up and we see Alex looking at a picture of himself, the music played over this section says "you can run but you won't make it far / you can't hide from who you are". He's looking up at a younger, skateboarding image of himself that we know from episode six with the flashbacks was someone who was Out in every sense other than screaming that he was gay to the world. Every beating from his father made him dig his heels in; another piercing, more eyeliner, another way of shouting fuck you to the world. The line "you can't hide" is repeated again as there's an over-the-shoulder shot of Alex's photo on the wall and we're sharing in Alex's pain and nostalgia here.

What's telling in the next cut though is it moves to a wide shot, when "from who you are" is played over the image as Michael's standing in the doorway. They're sharing the middle of the screen here, true, but they're still each on a defined side; Alex on the right and Michael on the left.

When Michael says "nostalgia's a bitch, huh?" the camera cuts to Michael, a soft-focus mid-shot (soft focus images are typically romantic in nature, which is in sharp contrast to how they were shot earlier - close up almost claustrophobic shots during the 'did it get old for you?'). Michael's on the left-hand side of the screen.

We intersect to shots of people dancing, having fun, Isobel and Max etc. This is in sharp focus again which offers another direct contrast when we return to the blue swamped (because outside the lighting is more neutral with hints of blue, but it's nothing like the blue swamped scene of Male here).

When we return to Malex, Alex is on the left, we're back in soft focus (which means that all those ribbons are blurred). It's a mid-shot, focused on Alex's face which gives us a visual insight into the fact that these two are closer than we anticipated, closer than we might have thought at first. Suddenly, the angles are mirroring the ones used for Liz and Max, though Malex has already claimed their sides of the screen: whatever page they're on, it's closer to being the same one than the ones Liz and Max are operating on.

When we cut to Michael, with the "is that what you want?" the camera's pulled back. We can see the macho cowboy swagger dropping, he's unsure and uncertain and the camera's angled in a way that makes him look small. He shrugs, his hands look like they're in his pockets and it's the textbook body language of someone who's expecting a 'yes' to a question that they really want the answer to be 'no' to.

Though Alex doesn't say no, and the camera stays close again on the two of them, cutting right back into Michael and Alex as they both move towards each other, towards the centre of the frame (where they'll meet each other). The camera is still, and steady, it doesn't wobble or swing, it's focused solely on tracking their movements, keeping close-cropped to their faces which allows us to see and feel how they're feeling in the moment.

(Can I just take a moment to talk about how Tyler swallows RIGHT before he says 'what I want doesn't matter'? Because the answer to Michael's question is 'No', it's always been no. Alex wants Michael, he always has done and he confirms it in that moment.)

ANYWAY. With Alex saying 'what I want doesn't matter' which is a screaming way of Alex saying that he still wants Michael, that he's glad Michael hadn't left (something that's mirrored and repeated when Michael talks about moving to Tennessee and Alex is like wait what you're leaving?!) and it sets up a paradigm of the two of them almost saying what they mean but never actually saying the words. "What I want doesn't matter" - I want you. "I never look away, not really" - I love you. "It was late, I was tired" - I stayed because this is safe for me, you are home. That kind of thing, you know?

The way they keep the tight angles in the shots (the Michael looking Alex up and down like he's a snack, and Alex's expression - ten years of longing all cultivated in a single look), helps increase the tension. The switching of POVs is actually quite slow; we get a good three seconds on Michael's face, then Alex's as they wind up getting close to kissing. And then. Then it happens (1:07 in the video).

As their lips collide (and god, Michael surges into Alex like he's the oxygen needed to breathe, the way he clings to him and their bodies just crash together (A CRASH LANDING)... find yourself someone who kisses you like Michael kisses Alex after ten years, you deserve it), you'll notice that the camera swings to the side slightly, the shot stays the same, mid/close as we're not meant to be looking at anything else but their faces (and Alex is still on the right and Michael is on the left, we're slightly closer to Alex's side than we are in the middle) before it stabilises and that's something that happens with most of Malex's kisses. That first contact the camera swings to chase them and I read that like Michael and Alex's worlds rock each time, the turbulence of their minds and their lives culminating and then... the camera goes still and the only movement is them, with each other. The camera's still because they're at peace.

The audio over this section is "you can't run from a smoking gun", which narratively tells us that whatever this is, since we've not been introduced to their epicness fully yet, is hot, it's fresh, it's burning and alive and it's inescapable. Alex can't hide from who he is - though it's obvious now that he's been trying - and Michael can't escape how he feels from Alex. They can't run from each other. It sets up a fantastic overall narrative that we don't even see for Echo, yet.

We cut from an almost side on shot to an almost over-the-shoulder, which brings another element into the Malex kisses which I haven't seen many people talk about and that's the way that the camera is almost voyeuristic at points with them. We're experiencing the kiss, sure, but we're also watching it as a third party (the angles are never immediately side on they're always slightly off, and the museum kiss is shot from a distance, like someone's hidden and the toolshed reflection in the mirror, it's all done to amp up the tension, of course, because we know Alex is afraid of being seen, of being caught (again), of something happening because they weren't careful enough).

This is then interspersed with Jesse Manes telling Kyle that the aliens are incapable of compassion and love.

THIS IS SUPER IMPORTANT.

"They despise freedom, love"

This line is said DIRECTLY OVER A MALEX SCENE. I cannot stress this enough. We were all hurt by the finale, and so many of us feel betrayed but from the very beginning, they have been set up as equal, if not more solidly signposted, to the primary romantic storyline (Echo). The image of Michael and Alex with their foreheads touching is iconic, not just because of the fact that it's Malex and you can see their Peace here, you can see the line of Michael's shoulders drop, the way that he just breathes Alex in, how Alex's hands have slid down his chest (probably to hook around his lower back the same way it did when they were kids, he kisses like he's a teenager again because that's how Michael makes him feel). The fact that we can't see Alex's hands here is also probably telling; Michael grips him like he's afraid he'll disappear, like he's the port in Michael's storm. And they're still slightly further to the right than they are in the middle: Michael's all in, he's crowding Alex into his side of the screen, they're almost on the same page but not quite and Michael is moving *to Alex*. Alex isn't giving ground here but Michael's conceding and stepping into Alex's space.

They stand together, and you can see them swaying a little, the camera rocks with them: what we've just witnessed is the reconnection of something epic. Dare I say cosmic?

The other thing I touched on briefly was the colour blue. This is used to signify a lot of things, but primarily blue is a soothing colour. It's comforting, calming. It's used to signify contentment, loyalty, fulfilment, peace, security and tranquillity. It's a colour that washes the screen when Malex has their reunion and it emphasises how Michael is seeking something to change his entropy, something to shift him back to calm and order and it's Alex he finds that in. The way this scene is washed out blue compared to the other parts of the party - which presumably have the same kind of lighting as Isobel is half-cast in blue - which are more neutrally lit is a directorial choice to highlight the moment. It's also one of the Colours Of Outer Space. Malex's love story, as we know, is cosmic and honestly, the colour choice helps solidify that. Nothing else in the pilot is colour-washed quite so much as Malex is and that's been done for a reason.

Male is set up here, just from this kiss alone, as being something that is literally out of this world. The way they're framed and shot, the way the camera focuses on their kiss after rocking and stilling (which, if you compare to the M&M kiss in the final episode the camera's at a lower angle and swings wildly from left to right like it can't work out where to go, Michael can't find his stillness and his calm, it's not the same and there's no stability though he's trying) all signify that we're watching an epic, long-term love story continue to unfold. We're introduced to it for the first time here, for sure, but this is not a new story and the shooting confirms that.

#hannah uses her degree #semiotics of roswell #roswell new mexico #roswell new mexico cw #rnw cw #malex #echo #michael guerin #alex manes #max evans #liz ortecho #hannah writes #hannah is spending too much damn time on this show #meta #visual meta #my meta

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