#substituting 'the script' for 'money'

[sunshine-and-christmas-caryls]

My thoughts on The Umbrella Academy’s season 4 Love Triangle. Spoilers below!

Please Note:

This is ridiculously long and consists of my thoughts and interpretations of the characters and their motivations/ feelings based on what we got to see from the show. They aren’t necessarily right or wrong for the characters- they are literally just my interpretations and likes and dislikes with how they handled the love triangle in this season of the Umbrella Academy.

I do not want to get in debates or arguments about the merits of either couple, if the storyline should have been included in the first place, of what is in or out of character, or about who is endgame, or anything else. If you agree with my opinions cool; if you disagree with them cool; if you want to share those thoughts or have a conversation about it, also cool.

But please skip this post if you’re just looking for a fight. This was more for me to organize my thoughts on them, and share for others who found Five and Lila as a couple unexpectedly (for me at least) engaging.

Other Things to Note that I don’t really get into in the main body of this:

-I think there are a hell of a lot of plot holes and inconsistencies, and some poor dialogue scripting in season 4. Some of which really, really bother me. But I think the storylines and plots had potential as concepts and could have been done so much better had there been more money & care to make more episodes. (Some of the concepts would probably have needed much more time than a full season to really be done well though...)

Overall, I didn’t hate season 4 so much as I was kind of underwhelmed and a little disappointed by it. [But if we’re being honest, while I like TUA overall, I do think each season was at least a little bit worse as a whole than the previous one anyway, despite there being good and/or great parts to every season too…]

-I did feel like most of the characters were a little off compared to how they acted in previous seasons. However I don’t know if that had more to do with:

a) lazy and/ or rushed writing, or

b) the plot/ time skip

I am one of those who thinks Five actually is a little calmer in nature, but a lot more manic the more stressful and pressing the situation gets. However he doesn’t have a lot of the same smugness and sarcasm that I was expecting either. Diego doesn’t have the same kind of determined motivation he shows in previous seasons, and Lila is a little less chaotic even if there are still a few hints at it.

Now part of that, I think, is due to the 6 years time difference and the characters growth that we missed during that. Especially considering their new circumstances: Diego and Lila being parents and Five, for the first time since he first time traveled to the future, was not in the middle of (nor actively trying to stop) an apocalypse. Plus ALL the characters had adjustments to make in being without their powers.

Part of it, I’m assuming, is also because of the shortened episode count leading to a poorer script overall. And I’m hoping that had we got a full season we would have been able to see a little more of their previous characterization come through too.

-My opinion about Five’s sexuality since that seems to be a topic of conversation for some who felt he was OOC in that regards:

To be honest I don’t really have a clear idea of it, other than he is absolutely not aromantic, in my opinion. I can respect your opinion if you do/did and were disappointed, but he thought up a wife for himself when he was alone- not friends or a substitute of his family. To me that just means he’s a big romantic at heart.

Whether he’s asexual, Demi-sexual, bi/pan or straight otherwise, I honestly have no clue. I think I gravitate towards him needing an emotional connection for him to have a fulfilling relationship in the show. But I think I saw somewhere that he got around a lot in the comics, and I could see that too if that’s the unspoken assumption they were using.

Side note on Dolores: I thought 5’s romance with her was a great addition to 5’s personal story and as a way to show the basic human nature of needing others, but I’m also kind of glad that she didn’t actually become real, because at the end of the day, she was a delusion of his, and I don’t really want to see that story. (Just my opinion; no harm meant to others who would have liked that plot.)

-Sometime around the middle of season 3, I actually remember thinking that if Aiden/ 5 had been older or Ritu/ Lila younger, I would have shipped the shit out of the characters because of their symmetry and contrasts. However, I also immediately dismissed the thought because the physical age gap IS a little weird for me. I didn’t read their scenes as necessarily romantic or sexual, so much so as they could have been if they were of the same age (at least for me).

In universe, I took it as the characters being kind of fascinated by each other, both getting enjoyment out of goading and poking at one another, but there wasn’t really genuine interest in pursuing each other either. (In hindsight of season 4, though I suppose it was really laying the groundwork for what would eventually turn romantic.)

I thought the writers were going to make Five and Lila the “platonic besties who, to a stranger, looked like they were a couple but really weren’t” and Diego and Lila were going to be the “contentious and passionate couple who argued as much as they loved”.

After season 4 though, I adjusted my thinking, and that’s kind of the basis around my opinions in the main body below.

****************

By the end of season 3, I thought Diego and Lila might have been the best relationship that was still on going. Despite that, I couldn’t bring myself to ship it either. They were never True Love/ OTP material for my tastes, because while they certainly had passion, they lacked the kind of emotional connection that would draw me in. (Don’t ask me what that is specifically because most of the time I have no idea what makes me ship one couple over another…) So, even though I think it had the most development, I also was just not attached to them as a couple.

And maybe my apathy towards them as a couple is making me biased, but Diego and Lila being unhappy with each other and their domestic life made sense to me. It was surprising, because I thought they were going to make them a “happy violent” couple, (or at least something more along the lines of what the rest of the fandom had expected) but not truly shocking either.

Diego and Lila had only known each other for about four months by the time season 3 ended. And again their actual romantic scenes mostly take place during the few days we see on screen in season 2. It might not have been as quick as a “love at first sight” arc, but it was definitely a whirlwind romance.

Also, Lila grew up under the Handler and was primed from the start to be her weapon. So, I think Lila being around Diego for months (I’m working with the assumption that she was in the institute nearly as long, if not longer than Diego) would naturally lead to her becoming infatuated with him.

After all, Diego is a handsome, good, & maybe a little bit goofy man who cares about people and justice, and loves his family; and they had a lot of passion/ sexual connotations to their scenes. I feel like he was everything she thought she ever wanted.

And it was much the same for Diego. She was the wild, manic pixie girl of his dreams whose personal brand of crazy drove him mad as well. He’s got childhood trauma, too, which he relates to with her, and I think in the beginning he kind of viewed her as both damsel in distress and partner in crime, which would appeal to his need to be a hero and his desire to not be alone.

(I’ve always thought of Diego as the most insecure of the siblings, and his need to be THE hero- not just any hero but the main star of the show kind of hero- was the way he hid from his inner insecurities and desire to fit in and be noticed.)

Season 2 was essentially Diego and Lila falling for each other despite being on opposing sides; and it’s clear that both had strong feelings for each other. Season 3 picks up immediately after and is also only a few days long. The main plot point for Diego and Lila’s relationship in this season, was essentially them deciding to give their relationship a go and establishing them as soon to be parents.

Season 3 also continues some precedents that were set in season 2, and continue in season 4. (Lila lying, Diego not noticing or misunderstanding a part of her character, Five and Lila having a side adventure/ arc on their own, and Diego noticing Lila was around Five.)

Now there are obviously more details and nuances to both seasons- showing Diego and Lila both feeling like they can open up to each other a bit more than they felt they could with others, showing their desire for a family, and to be better than their parents, establishing the fear of failure in that regards (at least for Lila) etc.

And while It might not have been my ship, I don’t want to diminish their bond either. Diego and Lila obviously had a connection and cared a great deal about each other, and were probably happy and in love for a while too. But none of that changes that fact that Diego and Lila had a whirlwind romance built amidst lies and high stakes, end-of-the-world stress, on top of an unplanned pregnancy, all within only knowing each other for 4 months at most.

And in light of that, it’s not actually surprising that when the dust settled and things were calmer, the cracks in their foundation were visible. I think they were both swept up in their connection to each other and their dreams of having a family and life better than what they had, that they never saw that maybe they weren’t quite right for each other, maybe they each needed something a little different than what the other could offer.

It’s clear in the first episode that they are not in the best of places as individuals nor as a couple. Diego hates his job and is constantly complaining about his life. He’s a bit suspicious of Lila and her whereabouts but also seems to miss, or at least underestimate, how hard things are on Lila.

Lila is visibly and verbally struggling with her role as a mother, as being too tied to that identity, and is sneaking out of the house to do undercover work and lying about it to her husband. She’s constantly badgered with Diego complaining, but also kind of fails to acknowledge that his motivation for doing a job he hates is to provide for their family.

Neither of them are truly happy with the way their lives turned out. And I think a large part of that was because they tried to change themselves to fit the mold of what they thought they should be in their dreams of a family, rather than finding a balance of being themselves with and as a family.

But there’s a disconnect between them as a couple too. From their scenes in episode 1-4, I got the impression that Diego, while clueless to Lila’s unhappiness/ struggles, nonetheless still had feelings for her because he was still trying to show off to her (the chef had the wrong technique, throwing the axes blind, holding her whilst convincing her to go on the road trip, etc.).

I got the impression that for Lila it was the opposite. She still loved him as a person and a father to her children, but she couldn’t bring herself to feel the same way she did in the previous seasons either. Every overture he made, even if it wasn’t exactly the most romantic, she met with annoyance or disdain. And while she might have laughed at him previously, she also defended him too. This season she was the one poking at him the most without defending him really at all.

Had she never got lost on that subway with Five, maybe they would have been able to work it out and it really was just a slump for them, one of the lower points in the ups and downs that every couple experiences. But (in my opinion at least) her annoyance in Diego’s attempts at reaching out and the fact that after six years she still felt the need to lie to him rather than talk about her unhappiness were more a sign that the romantic love was gone for Lila. That after the initial whirlwind romance and honeymoon period, she wasn’t quite in love with him anymore; at least, not in the “you’re my forever person” kind of way.

But I think she’s stubborn, and she so wanted a family with him, that it kept her from saying anything about what she was going through for so long. And I think Diego was totally oblivious to this in the face of his own struggles with domesticity, but I also think that maybe he was a little less in love than he thought too?

I’m of mixed opinions on this, but it felt a little weird to me that he was more upset- at least in the moment- that she went undercover than that she had potentially cheated. It could just be that in the moment he was so upset to be left out of the action that he wasn’t really thinking about how much bigger of an issue it would be had she cheated. (Or maybe cheating just isn’t as big a deal to him as it would be to me? Like I said I don’t have a good read on this…)

But I could also see it as potentially showing him having settled into his choice in loving her forever rather than truly feeling- without falter- like she was his forever person. Either way he definitely still has feelings for her, and that’s what made me so much more sad for Diego.

Especially because, in the end, it was his brother that it happened with. I feel like her choosing to save Five at the Mexican Consulate in season 2 instead of him has always sat in the back of his mind, and that’s why he’s always noticed when they are together. Of course he went through the realization that she had first used him to get close to/ watch Five, but when she came back to bring him into the Commission he knew she had genuine feelings for him too, and I don’t really think he questioned it much after that.

But it’s something that I think stayed with him, lurking in his subconscious. Knowing that when he was on a metaphorical ledge and first reached out to her for help, she chose Five instead. And that’s why he always noticed when Lila and Five were together.

Also, I think the first two greenhouse scenes spoke volumes about both (though indirectly for Diego & Lila’s) relationships. It was mentioned at least twice in season 3 that Lila’s worried about not being cut out for a maternal, domestic role, and her struggles in the beginning of season 4 probably felt like confirmation of that to her. But then we see in episode 5 that she can be happy in a softer domestic role, when she’s with the right person.

I’m 100% aware that it’s different for Lila and Diego with the kids and real world things like mortgage, school, taxes, etc. than it is for Five and Lila who only had each other & whose sole focus is on surviving and getting back to their home. I understand the nuances make a HUGE difference. But at the end of the day, for Lila they are two sucky -albeit very different kinds of sucky- situations with two different men. And she’s happier making do with one than the other.

Which brings me to the Five/ Lila portion of things. I was VERY caught off guard by the fact that the writers/ producers actually went there. As in all the way up to episode 5, I thought the writers were just making hints of Lila/ Five as a red herring, or to highlight Diego’s insecurities. But then I saw the intro to episode 5, and thought oh, they were actually building them up as a potential couple. And the greenhouse scenes sealed it for me- whatever they might say, the writers really went there and let Five and Lila fall in love.

It was both a slightly uncomfortable and a very pleasant surprise. I’m not a big fan of big age gaps, they tend to leave me feeling a little icky, but there have been several ships of mine that it happens with because I feel like it makes sense with their characters and how deep or strong their emotional connection and history is. I don’t really enjoy that aspect, but I won’t deny that there are some stories that I just accept it & move on (notably book canon Braime for me).

Five and Lila is worse simply because Five is in the body of a 13 year old in the first three seasons, and that’s just a firm no all around for me. But his mind was that of a 58 year old and just because he’s had a weird thing happen to him, doesn’t mean that he suddenly can’t think or feel like any other adult does (I’m honestly kind of thankful they did at least wait, because it would have felt wrong to me when he was physically 13, despite knowing he was much older mentally).

It also helps that that kind of mentally older, physically younger character at some point take on “vampire rules” for me (as in the contrast between mental and physical age of some vampire/ immortal/ supernatural character and their human love interest is so absurd and abstract that it somehow cancels out for me).

And by the time there’s any kind of romantically intimate scenes between the two, Five is 25/26. And even though it’s heavily implied they slept together, all that’s actually shown are a couple of fairly tame kisses.

Furthermore, they’re both mentally adults, and had it ever reset to a timeline without any time travel involved, Lila and Five would probably be the same age (all the super power kids were born on the same day after all). So it’s really not that big of an issue when they actually do get together.

The other aspect that makes me a little uncomfortable about Five and Lila is of course, Diego and Lila’s relationship. I already mentioned that it wasn’t necessarily something I personally shipped, but it was the relationship I think the audience members were most familiar with, and them having a family and still technically being together, made it a little sad to see Five and Lila happy with each other.

I would have personally preferred the writers completely dissolve the Diego/ Lila relationship before actually having Five/ Lila get together, because I’m not a huge fan of cheating storylines, especially when there’s kids involved.

I also feel like they could have hit most of the same emotional beats even if they had let Diego and Lila divorce first? Like it still would have been an emotionally charged reveal scene at the house if Diego had something along the lines of “that was my wife, we only divorced a week ago” or “you’re my brother and she was my wife, what the hell!?”. But I actually think the writers were trying to leave the “end game” couple up to interpretation, which felt too much like a cop out to me.

I think most audience members just needed more screen time of all three & that would have helped quell some of the hate Five & Lila get. We needed more time to see how Diego and Lila’s romance fizzled and died out, and more time to feel the weight of the 6.5 years on the subway building to Five and Lila’s romance.

I think it would have been better received if they had a fourth, fifth, and side season, or made this fourth season extra long (like 12-16 episodes) with a split release (first in August, and the latter half of the episodes during Christmas time) with a mini or side season (or even a movie) of just Five and Lila’s subway adventures. Kind of like how they did a Queen Charlotte story between seasons of Bridgerton.

There would always be some who refused to like it because of the age gap, or because they just prefer Diego/Lila or Five & Lila as purely platonic; but I think more time would have helped shorten the list of haters at least a little (and given the writers an opportunity to work the kinks out of more of the storylines in general).

Like I said earlier I’m not a big fan of the cheating aspect of their relationship, but I also don’t entirely think it’s fair the way so many people seem to view it as Five “letting Lila betray his brother with him” or “Five not caring about his brother is so OOC. He’d never betray Diego just to fuck”.. Because from what I watched, that’s not what happened at all??

Putting aside the “letting her cheat” (because they’re all grown ass adults and no one is responsible for someone else’s actions) I don’t get how people don’t see the love that grew between Five and Lila. Lila might be saying verbally that it was “only survival” and that “it’s over”, but her actions, expressions, and tones all scream love and care and affection.

I think Lila was a little confused when she gets back, but it’s also very obvious that she loves Five in the same way it was obvious in season 2 that Lila was downplaying her interest and affection/ love for Diego when she said “nah” to killing him like the Handler suggested.

And it’s the same for Five. If it had only been a physical or lonely thing, I don’t really think it would have happened. It’s because it was Lila, who is so similar and so opposite him in equal measure that he fell in love with her. And it’s because he loves her that he would want to pursue a full relationship with her. The fact that they’re human and gave into their feelings rather than uphold moral standards wasn’t that crazy of an idea, especially given the somewhat murky circumstances. It was never about purposefully hurting Diego or not caring about him.

Them getting together was two damaged people put in extraordinary circumstances with only each other to rely on for years, without any knowledge of how long they would be alone, surviving through hardships and growing in love. Or at least, that’s how I interpreted their relationship from what we got to see.

None of that felt out of character for either of them to me. Everything through the first two greenhouse scenes (minus a few dialogue/ scripting issues) felt pretty in character to me, all things considered. What did feel wrong and out of character for me was Five hiding the journal for months and him saying he wants to kill Diego and physically fighting him, while the rest of their family fought the Bennifer Blob monster.

I get wanting to show Five struggling with the decision to prioritize the world because for the first time he’s actually experienced love and happiness with a real person; plus they already started him on the do “not save the world” mindset last season. But they could have executed that in a much better way than having him find and hide a cypher book that would take them back home.

[Hell, even within the scene, he could have found it sometime that same morning or within the past couple of days and it would change literally nothing about their argument except the length of time he’s had the journal- because his actions are literally never addressed!]

But while it could just be an expansion of him not wanting to lose the happiness he found, and faltering in his steadfast determinedness to do right by the world and be with his family, it still feels off to his character for me. (Obviously the writers disagree with my interpretation of his character though.)

For me, even though he would grapple with the decision, Five would, in the end at least, still have chosen to go back to save his family & the world because that is so central to him as character. What I think they should have done was have him find it right after or before her gifting him the instant coffee. Have him open the conversation that he found it and Lila being so excited that she initially missed his internal conflict.

It could pan to her realizing what it means to go back, and them having a short talk about it. Lila could say they have to go back because of her kids, they have to go back to save their family. And Five could say he knows but he was happy there with her, and a part of him didn’t want to leave. She could have said she was happy too, but flinched when he went to hold her hand and that could have prompted the start of the argument.

The argument itself could still keep to the core of what it was in the show with only a few dialogue changes, and it would hit all the same emotional tones of the scene but without feeling like Five’s core motivations as a character were totally flipped on its head. Again, that’s just my opinion on it.

I do feel like Five being jealous and lashing out at Diego a bit during the Christmas reveal was in line with how Five might react in that situation. After all, he gets more sarcastic, testy, and even manic with the more stress he’s under. The bracelet line from Diego should have been reworded though. I’m not sure if it was lazy writing, or if they were rushed and/or overlooking things because of the episode cut, but that felt off.

They could have just as easily had him say, “you hate bracelets now” or “you never wear bracelets anymore” before mentioning the traded Valentine’s bracelet, and it still would have shown the disconnect between Diego and Lila in their relationship. A blanket “you hate bracelets” after we had- for two seasons- seen her wear the one he made that she nabbed in season 2 just felt like poor script writing.

And I would be 100% down for the first initial shoves of their fight had that been as far as it went before Five or Diego said they bigger things to worry about and the other passive-aggressively agreed.

Or better yet, if their confrontation happened after the family escaped to Luthor’s, so that the writers could still have Five run off to the subway without having him & Diego, in a sense and literally by Five, abandoning their family & acting stupid in the midst of battle. Because that felt weird and out of character for both of them to me.

I also very much needed a scene where Five apologizes to Diego at least that he hurt him (but not necessarily for loving Lila) and Diego not necessarily forgiving Five, but at least acknowledging him before they died. Because letting things be so unresolved between them and then erasing them from existence was cruel.

All that being said, I very much loved Five and Lila’s relationship with each other. Their dynamic outside of the actual storyline is the perfect mix of enemies to lovers and two broken souls finding solace in each other. And while I do wish they had changed or tweaked a few things, their story was still rather tragically beautiful.

I also firmly believe that had they all survived, Five & Lila probably would have been end game. I think the set up for them was too deep (even if a little too rushed with the episode limit/ being the final season) for Lila to truly be able to go back to Diego. If pushed too much too soon, I think she’d probably try for the sake of the kids. But the unhappiness with each other/ their life together even before the subway time-skip, coupled with the distrust and hurt that comes when a partner cheats, isn’t something I really think Diego and Lila are strong enough as a couple to overcome. And that could have led to even more bitterness and resentment before they finally called it quits.

However, if given enough time, I think Lila would have pulled back from both of them for a bit to figure out what she wanted and focus on her kids, herself, and any ongoing apocalypse situation if there were still one. I think she would have come to the realization that she loves Diego and would always care for him, but that she was no longer in love with him. That when she pictures the rest of her life, it’s Five she wants beside her.

Maybe she procrastinates a bit on talking about it, because she hates the situation and doesn’t want to hurt either one of them, but eventually they’d sort themselves out. But I also think she and Five would have to have a long conversation about taking her choices from her, especially if it involves her kids, because hiding the book was a fairly big betrayal and not something I think she could totally ignore, like they did in the show. (I personally hated that it was even a part of the story to begin with, but Five hiding the journal really needed to be addressed. I hope it would have been if the had more time.)

& If this was along the lines of what they were going to do with the plot if they were to get another season or two, I hope the writers would have used this to let Diego spiral a bit, before confronting his underlying insecurities and moving past it all. Hopefully with a new love interest at some point that is as perfect as can be for him, because I don’t like him sad and he deserves love and a happily ever after too.

On a side note, one thing that I thought was cute & slightly amusing out of context, but firmly believe should have been left on the cutting room floor was the entirety of the van/ “You’re family needs you; I need you” scene. And I know they kept it in to push the uncertainty of the Five/ Lila and Diego/ Lila relationships, but this was too obviously a plot device for the love triangle that just wasn’t believable for me narratively speaking.

Because with Allison’s new powers, Klaus’ ability to raise ghosts that were corporeal, & Diego’s telekinesis with redirecting multiple bullets, what do you mean there were too many enemies for them to handle? And how am I supposed to believe that in the past seven years, Five, who was canonically shot at and chased, never took the time to practice and remaster his blinking abilities?

Especially since they established in episode 4, and earlier in episode 6 when he and Lila returned to the house, that he could apparently- and accurately- time travel over large stretches of time without any issues/ struggles. Not to mention that mere minutes later inside the department store, he’s able blink to the second floor without any problem?

Whatever issues or enjoyment I had with the way they had Five and Lila and Diego’s story unfold, most of it just came down to personal preference, tweaking the script, and needing more episodes. But this scene in particular just felt silly and pointless to me. They could have had Lila say “I need you” in a show of concern, or physically reaching out to Five instead of Diego; only to say the “it’s over” line a few scenes later and it still would have pushed the “who does she choose” narrative. But the fact that the love triangle never gets truly resolved either, makes all of it fall flat, in my opinion. (I thought on first watch that the “it’s over” line was just about the fight and misunderstood by Five, but it could have been about their relationship too. And now we’ll probably never know for sure because they didn’t resolve anything in any of their relationships to each other 😢)

All that being said though, this is a slightly whacky show about very messed up people, who do very messy things all the time- I shouldn’t be surprised they went for the messiest option for how to handle this love triangle…

[sciderman]

You said you get more asks here instead of Ask-Spiderpool

Does that mean there's presently no asks? Or you have an Itty bitty backlog,,

honestly the amount of asks I get on ask-spiderpool is so, so paltry and sad at the moment that i can barely scrape together any motivation for it because there’s No inspiration coming in. which is kind of the point of an ask blog lads. conversation. it is Not a one-sided thing !!

sure, there’s a backlog but those are like, pantry items. I need fresh fruit and vegetables or I’ll die of scurvy

anyone who tells me “I want to start an ask blog” I immediately say “in this economy? don’t bother. you won’t even last a day.” I’m hanging on for grim death here .

it’s not about numbers. you’re more than numbers. you should be more than numbers, so please. act like more than numbers. please. don’t you want to be more than numbers? every time someone talks to me and I respond back they seem Shocked to find out I’m actually a human or whatever. why are you guys like that. of course I want to be talked to. any human wants to be talked to. so talk to me!! I’m as lonely and nerdy and pitiful as the rest of you. I’m here because I want friends. so please, be friends. I don’t need numbers. I need friends.

it’s so not about numbers. I still get thousands of notes or whatever,, more notes than before, even, but you’re all so passive now that it’s depressing. I miss when ask-blogging felt like a community,, and that’s Why I did started, and why I kept on for so long… sighs. I feel like everything’s been reduced to numbers. I don’t know how anyone can be happy with just numbers. numbers are so cold and unsexy. numbers do not tickle my pickle at all. (no sir)

I feel like the human element of everything I do is kind of slowly diminishing and I’m looking around at the wasteland like,, where did all the people go. not just here. everywhere. so I’ve been diving into career things again and having success with it, but I don’t want that to be my lifeline. it was my lifeline pre-covid and I don’t want it to be my lifeline again. I’m good at it, but I miss real people with real gratitude and excitement. not just people paying a pay check for my services. I never, never want what I do to just feel like an exchange of goods for like, money. or numbers. those things have No Soul. They’re not a substitute for what I actually look for when I create anything. and what I actually look for is Conversation. (which doesn’t cost you much, can you believe!)

it’s so funny how when I said I’m planning on quitting (which I don’t want to do, but I’m kind of being forced to do because I mean. how can one keep on running an ask-blog with no asks) I got a very big response here saying “noooo don’t do it” and it's sweet - it's really sweet, and appreciated, and warmed the heart but - again. no asks on the actual blog. so.

if you want ask-spiderpool to actually live on, there’s something so very simple and free (does not cost you money) that you can do! three guesses as to what that might be

I have so, so many plans and posts and scripts but I’m not writing into thin air,, man. why should I keep doing a stupid thing like that. what happened to us, that we’ve stopped communicating with creators because we’ve forgotten that wait a second ,, they share things on the internet because they want other people to interact with them. artists are the neediest guys on the internet. they need people to survive. I’m not going to keep on pretending I’m above it all and I’m cooler than that. I’m not cool, and an ask blog needs asks. you can’t expect it to keep going on without them.

so freaking . leave a kiss. leave a comment. stop just leaving a like and disappearing into that goodnight . I hate you all.

anyway. love you. kisses.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Saving the news from Big Tech with end-to-end social media

Big Tech steals from the news, but it doesn’t steal *content* — it steals *money*. In “Saving the News From Big Tech,” a series for EFF, I’ve documented how tech monopolies in ad-tech and app stores result in vast cash transfers from the news to tech, starving newsrooms and gutting reporting:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech

Now we’ve published the final part, describing how social media platforms hold audiences hostage, charging media companies to reach the subscribers who asked to see what they have to say. And, as with the previous installments, we set out a proposal for forcing tech companies to end this practice, putting more money in the pockets of news producers:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/save-news-we-need-end-end-web

The issue here is final stage of the enshittification cycle: first, platforms offer good deals and even subsidies to lure in end users. Then, once the users are locked in, platforms offer similarly good deals to business users (in this case, publishers, but see also Uber drivers, Amazon sellers, YouTube performers, etc) to lure them in. Once *they’re* locked in, the platform flips the script: it withdraws subsidies from both end users and business customers (e.g. news readers and news publishers) and forces both groups to pay to continue to transact with each other.

In the case of the news and Big Tech, that process goes like this. First a platform like Facebook offers users a surveillance-free alternative to MySpace, where the deal is simple: tell us who matters to you on this site, and we’ll show you what they post:

https://lawcat.berkeley.edu/record/1128876?ln=en

Users pile in and lock themselves in, through the “collective action problem” — the difficulty of convincing all your friends to leave, and to agree on where to go:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

Then Facebook turns on the surveillance they promised they’d never engage in, and also begins to promise media companies that it will nonsensually cram their posts down readers’ eyeballs, luring in both advertisers and publishers. Users don’t like their diluted feeds, or the surveillance, or the ads, but they like each other, and the collective action problem keeps them from leaving.

As publishers and advertisers grow increasingly dependent on Facebook, Facebook makes the deal worse for both. Ad prices go up, as does ad-fraud, meaning advertisers pay ever more for ads that are ever less likely to be shown to a user.

Publishers’ “reach” is curtailed unless they put ever-larger excerpts onto Facebook, until they eventually must publish whole articles verbatim on the platform, making it a substitute for their web presence, rather than a funnel to drive traffic to their own sites. Facebook caps this off by downranking any post that includes a link to the public web, forcing publishers into the conspiracy to make “Facebook” synonymous with “the internet.”

Then, in end-stage enshittification, publishers’ reach is curtailed altogether. They are told — either explicitly or implicitly — that they have to pay to “boost” their material to reach the subscribers who asked to see it.

With social media ransom, tech finds a way to steal money from publishers no matter how they make that money. Tech monopolists command 51% of ever ad dollar. Tech monopolists rake off 30% of every in-app subscription dollar. And social media companies demand danegeld (“verification,” “boosting,” etc) from publishers who want to reach the audiences that asked to see their materials.

This isn’t just bad for publishers, it’s also bad for audiences. You joined the platform to see the feeds you subscribed to, but the platform gradually replaces more and more of your feed with ads and content from randos who pay to “boost” into your field of vision, at the expense of the friends, communities and publishers you asked to see:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen

What can we do about this? The answer lies in the founding ethic of the internet itself: the end-to-end principle.

Before the internet, telecommunications were controlled by centralized phone companies. If you wanted to reach someone else, you needed to connect to a centralized switching center, which decided whether to connect you, and if so, what to charge you.

The internet, by contrast, operates on the “end-to-end principle”: the job of the network is to transmit data from willing senders to willing receivers, as efficiently and reliably as possible. One expression of end-to-end is Network Neutrality, the idea that carriers shouldn’t be allowed to slow down the data you request unless the service you’re trying to use pays for “premium carriage.”

Social media has run the internet transitions in reverse. They started off as end-to-end, neutral platforms. You created an account, told them which data you wanted, and they put it in a feed for you. Then, as they enshittified, they turned into miniature Ma Bells. You don’t get the data you requested, you get the data that someone is willing to pay to show you.

This means that publishers — including news publisher — have to pay ever-larger shares of their revenues to reach the people who asked to hear from them, and those people see an ever smaller proportion of the things they asked to see in their feeds.

The solution to this is to enshrine “end-to-end” delivery for social media: to make social media platforms’ first duty to deliver data from willing senders to willing recipients, as efficiently and reliably as possible:

https://locusmag.com/2023/03/commentary-cory-doctorow-end-to-end/

As a policy, end-to-end has a lot going for it. First, it is easy to administer. If you want to find out if a company is reliably delivering posts from willing senders to willing receivers, you can easily verify it by creating accounts and performing experiments. Compare this to more complicated policies, like “platforms must not permit harassment on their services.” To administer that policy, you need to agree on a definition of harassment, agree on whether a specific user’s conduct rises to the level of harassment, then investigate whether the platform took reasonable steps to prevent it.

These fact-intensive questions are the enemy of effective enforcement. Bad actors can (and do) exploit definitional ambiguity to engage in conduct that *almost* rises to the level of harassment, and which is *experienced* as harassment, but which doesn’t qualify as harassment:

https://doctorow.medium.com/como-is-infosec-307f87004563

Then there’s the problem of figuring out whether platforms’ failures to block harassment are reasonable or negligent, a question that can literally take *years* to resolve, and then only by deposing the engineers who build and maintain the systems involved.

By contrast, detecting end-to-end violations is simple and clean, and has an easy remedy in the event that violations are detected: if a company doesn’t deliver the messages it is supposed to deliver, a regulator or court can order it to do so.

Another important advantage of end-to-end: it is a *cheap* policy to comply with. Complicated platform regulations can have the perverse effect of being so expensive to comply with that only the largest — and worst, and most harmful — platforms can afford to follow the rule. That means that smaller platforms — including nonprofits, co-ops, and small businesses — are snuffed out by compliance costs, trapping users and business customers in giant, abusive walled gardens, forever:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/platforms-decay-lets-put-users-first

Imposing an end-to-end requirement on platforms would kill the practice of holding news publishers’ audiences for ransom. What’s more, it’s a policy that would benefit both large and small publishers — unlike, say, a profit-sharing arrangement between Big Tech and the news, which delivers disproportionate benefits to the largest publishers, whose owners are typically either billionaire dilettantes or private equity looters. And, unlike profit-sharing arrangements, end-to-end continues to provide value for publishers even if the tech companies crash and burn, or get broken up by regulators. We want our news to be adversaries and watchdogs for Big Tech, not its partners, with a shared stake in Big Tech’s growth and profits.

Now that the EFF “Saving the News” series is done, we’re rounding up the whole thing into a PDF “white paper,” suitable for emailing to your friends, elected representatives, and fellow news junkies. That’ll be up in a day or two, and I’ll post here when it is. In the meantime, here are the five parts:

Saving the News From Big Tech https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech

To Save the News, We Must Shatter Ad-Tech https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-shatter-ad-tech

To Save the News, We Must Ban Surveillance Advertising https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-ban-surveillance-advertising

To Save the News, We Must Open Up App Store https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/save-news-we-must-open-app-stores

To Save the News, We Need an End-to-End Web https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/save-news-we-need-end-end-web

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/13/certified-organic-reach/#e2e

[Image ID: EFF's banner for the save news series; the word 'NEWS' appears in pixelated, gothic script in the style of a newspaper masthead. Beneath it in four entwined circles are logos for breaking up ad-tech, ending surveillance ads, opening app stores, and end-to-end delivery. All the icons except for 'end-to-end delivery' are greyed out.]

Image: EFF https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/save-news-we-need-end-end-web

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[mathoinyanarts]

Beetlejuice 2 actually just bummed me out

Man, I was so hyped for this film, and in the end I was just kinda...eh.

There were moments that made me laugh, but like in the end it was an all around let down. It felt like a series of events just happening until it all collided into...nothing really

Spoilers from here on out

Biggest problem. The trailers made it seem Delores was gonna have a bigger role, but looking back, other than the plotline where Beetlejuice wants to marry Lydia so he won't have to get back with Delores, they could've gotten rid of her and come up with a new motivation.

But I'm not saying get rid of her tho, I wish she could've had a bigger role. While we saw her in small chunks throughout the film, I think having it crescendo at the end to her being the main threat would've been much more satisfying, instead of her just getting fucking sandwormed along with the loser fiance dude, who honestly got way too many lines for how purposefully annoying as hell they made him.

I get that was the point with his character, he's this movie's version of Otho, same snootiness and all, but even the first movie used Otho sparingly...

At least this guy was more deserving of being sandwormed lol

Willem Dafoe character was also one I wish had a bigger role, literally didn't do anything in the end either. His job was to tell Beetle about Delores, and then get frozen at the climax to achieve nothing ultimately, which is part of the joke I guess.

The beginning of the movie focuses on setting up a lot, but then the writers clearly realized how bloated their script, was at the end, cause then they just started doing stuff like, getting rid of one of the antagonists, sidelining one of the antagonists, and then sidelining another antagonist, and then introducing Astrid's father, which, I have like a theory that was made as a substitute for an Adam and Barbara reunion, cause like, it really just felt super tacked on.

If anything a Barbara and Adam reunion would've made more sense, but I get that Alec Baldwin is kinda... in trouble, and Geena Davis is...Actually I dunno what she's doing :v

And I know I'm complaining a lot for something that's like a solid 6, but like, I can't stop thinking that like, did this have to be made? Did this specific sequence of events have to be made? I'm not asking for hype bait, I'm not asking for like a big crossover, I'm asking for the writers to have looked at their script one more time lol

Cause like this bloated sequence of events just kind of led to something that made me go... ok😐

The biggest red flag when I first saw the trailer was seeing that at least 2 of the main writers were writers for Wednesday, like, I cannot with that show😔

There were in fact positives that I might illustrate in a future post, but that was my first impression. I just left the theater feeling like I wanted my money back;-;

[morlock-holmes]

Against AGI

I don't like the term "AGI" (Short for "Artificial General Intelligence").

Essentially, I think it functions to obscure the meaning of "intelligence", and that arguments about AGIs, alignment, and AI risk involve using several subtly different definitions of the term "intelligence" depending on which part of the argument we're talking about.

I'm going to use this explanation by @fipindustries as my example, and I am going to argue with it vigorously, because I think it is an extremely typical example of the way AI risk is discussed:

In that essay (originally a script for a YouTube Video) @fipindustries (Who in turn was quoting a discord(?) user named Julia) defines intelligence as "The ability to take directed actions in response to stimulus, or to solve problems, in pursuit of an end goal"

Now, already that is two definitions. The ability to solve problems in pursuit of an end goal almost certainly requires the ability to take directed actions in response to stimulus, but something can also take directed actions in response to stimulus without an end goal and without solving problems.

So, let's take that quote to be saying that intelligence can be defined as "The ability to solve problems in pursuit of an end goal"

Later, @fipindustries says, "The way Im going to be using intelligence in this video is basically 'how capable you are to do many different things successfully'"

In other words, as I understand it, the more separate domains in which you are capable of solving problems successfully in pursuit of an end goal, the more intelligent you are.

Therefore Donald Trump and Elon Musk are two of the most intelligent entities currently known to exist. After all, throwing money and subordinates at a problem allows you to solve almost any problem; therefore, in the current context the richer you are the more intelligent you are, because intelligence is simply a measure of your ability to successfully pursue goals in numerous domains.

This should have a radical impact on our pedagogical techniques.

This is already where the slipperiness starts to slide in. @fipindustries also often talks as though intelligence has some *other* meaning:

"we have established how having more intelligence increases your agency."

Let us substitute the definition of "intelligence" given above:

"we have established how the ability to solve problems in pursuit of an end goal increases your agency"

Or perhaps,

"We have established how being capable of doing many different things successfully increases your agency"

Does that need to be established? It seems like "Doing things successfully" might literally be the definition of "agency", and if it isn't, it doesn't seem like many people would say, "agency has nothing to do with successfully solving problems, that's ridiculous!"

Much later:

''And you may say well now, intelligence is fine and all but there are limits to what you can accomplish with raw intelligence, even if you are supposedly smarter than a human surely you wouldn’t be capable of just taking over the world uninmpeeded, intelligence is not this end all be all superpower."

Again, let us substitute the given definition of intelligence;

"And you may say well now, being capable of doing many things successfully is fine and all but there are limits to what you can accomplish with the ability to do things successfully, even if you are supposedly much more capable of doing things successfully than a human surely you wouldn’t be capable of just taking over the world uninmpeeded, the ability to do many things successfully is not this end all be all superpower."

This is... a very strange argument, presented as though it were an obvious objection. If we use the explicitly given definition of intelligence the whole paragraph boils down to,

"Come on, you need more than just the ability to succeed at tasks if you want to succeed at tasks!"

Yet @fipindustries takes it as not just a serious argument, but an obvious one that sensible people would tend to gravitate towards.

What this reveals, I think, is that "intelligence" here has an *implicit* definition which is not given directly anywhere in that post, but a number of the arguments in that post rely on said implicit definition.

Here's an analogy; it's as though I said that "having strong muscles" is "the ability to lift heavy weights off the ground"; this would mean that, say, a 98lb weakling operating a crane has, by definition, stronger muscles than any weightlifter.

Strong muscles are not *defined* as the ability to lift heavy objects off the ground; they are a quality which allow you to be more efficient at lifting heavy objects off the ground with your body.

Intelligence is used the same way at several points in that talk; it is discussed not as "the ability to successfully solve tasks" but as a quality which increases your ability to solve tasks.

This I think is the only way to make sense of the paragraph, that intelligence is one of many qualities, all of which can be used to accomplish tasks.

Speaking colloquially, you know what I mean if I say, "Having more money doesn't make you more intelligent" but this is an oxymoron if we define intelligence as the ability to successfully accomplish tasks.

Rather, colloquially speaking we understand "intelligence" as a specific *quality* which can increase your ability to accomplish tasks, one of *many* such qualities.

Say we want to solve a math problem; we could reason about it ourselves, or pay a better mathematician to solve it, or perhaps we are very charismatic and we convince a mathematician to solve it.

If intelligence is defined as the ability to successfully solve the problem, then all of those strategies are examples of intelligence, but colloquially, we would really only refer to the first as demonstrating "intelligence".

So what is this mysterious quality that we call "intelligence"?

Well...

This is my thesis, I don't think people who talk about AI risk really define it rigorously at all.

For one thing, to go way back to the title of this monograph, I am not totally convinced that a "General Intelligence" exists at all in the known world.

Look at, say, Michael Jordan. Everybody agrees that he is an unmatched basketball player. His ability to successfully solve the problems of basketball, even in the face of extreme resistance from other intelligent beings is very well known.

Could he apply that exact same genius to, say, advancing set theory?

I would argue that the answer is no, because he couldn't even transfer that genius to baseball, which seems on the surface like a very closely related field!

It's not at all clear to me that living beings have some generalized capacity to solve tasks; instead, they seem to excel at some and struggle heavily with others.

What conclusions am I drawing?

Don't get me wrong, this is *not* an argument that AI risk cannot exist, or an argument that nobody should think about it.

If anything, it's a plea to start thinking more carefully about this stuff precisely because it is important.

So, my first conclusion is that, lacking a model for a "General Intelligence" any theorizing about an "Artificial General Intelligence" is necessarily incredibly speculative.

Second, the current state of pop theory on AI risks is essentially tautology. A dangerous AGI is defined as, essentially, "An AI which is capable of doing harmful things regardless of human interference." And the AI safety rhetoric is "In order to be safe, we should avoid giving a computer too much of whatever quality would render it unsafe."

This is essentially useless, the equivalent of saying, "We need to be careful not to build something that would create a black hole and crush all matter on Earth into a microscopic point."

I certainly agree with the sentiment! But in order for that to be useful you would have to have some idea of what kind of thing might create a black hole.

This is how I feel about AI risk. In order to talk about what it might take to have a safe AI, we need a far more concrete definition than "Some sort of machine with whatever quality renders a machine uncontrollable".

[horse-girl-anthy]

Hyperreality and Ikuhara: Art for the Postmodern Age

hyperreality, a term coined by Jean Baudrillard, describes the state of people living in postmodernity, where we are so inundated by signs, symbols, and representations that we have lost touch with the real. I was born in 1997. since I was a baby, I have seen advertisements every day of my life. I was watching TV before I understood what TV was. under these conditions, simulations begin to feel more real than reality.

for those trying to make art, hyperreality has been a challenge. this video uses the American cartoon The Simpsons as an example; the show had a subversive edge when it was first created, but capitalist forces pulled it away from that direction. there is the contradiction that any TV show must face: it needs to be produced and then be aired by a TV station, and it has to make a profit. the more money The Simpsons made, the less meaning there was to the story.

the video discusses how under hyperreality, the "code" is substituted for the "reference." in the case of Homer Simpson, his characterization originally had ties to reality. his character was a subversion of the typical sitcom father, and he was portrayed as lazy, ignorant, and incompetent to make a point about American culture. however, as the show became iconic, it was increasingly self-referential, and thus Homer's traits grew to be mere symptoms of who he was rather than satire.

this kind of referentiality was the death knell of parody. as the video discusses, the media landscape of the 21st century has collapsed in on itself. when The Simpsons began, there was a clear cultural script it was parodying, as well as a sociopolitical hegemony it was subverting. the world of today is too confused for that; there is no norm to imitate, as everything is already an imitation. thus, there is an infinite regress of self-referential media, a black hole of meaning.

perhaps this is why Ikuhara was so worried about RGU being seen as parody. he didn't want it to be written off, easily categorized, meaningless and part of the status quo. at first, he tried to make the work "like nothing you've ever seen." this, however, wasn't easy, nor was it what he actually wanted. he decided instead to try to "round up all the animated stories made with girls as the main characters up till then into one story." This meant that the visuals of RGU "must be parodies."

to keep his story from being subsumed into the hyperreal, Ikuhara created his own style, one which turns referentiality against itself. all Ikuhara works are metatextual and heightened. rather than portraying a "reality" to the viewer, they communicate directly by playing on recognizable scripts, symbols, and signs. consider this brief exerpt from a Be-Papas interview:

Interviewer: Are you being playful with the visuals using Chu Chu? He seems like a relaxing distraction. Ikuhara: I didn't put much thought into it. I figured it's an anime so there'd be a mascot.

Chu-Chu has no explanation in the "reality" of the story, no origin. he is there because of the medium of anime. as in, Chu-Chu exists because he is the kind of character that appears in these kinds of stories.

that artificiality is absolutely everywhere in Ikuhara works. many events are conveyed through canned representations, signifiers which communicate by rote. for instance, in Yurikuma, domination is expressed by a girl putting her leg in between the legs of another girl. this is a recognizable action which communicates both the plot and affect of the scene. however, the action itself is determined by the work's genre. in Utena, the scene would look more like Touga pushing Utena up against a tree and getting into her personal space, which is what would happen in a shoujo. the act itself has no meaning outside of being a referential symbol.

without this style, I don't think Ikuhara works would be as subversive. firstly, by making a point of their own artificiality, they can break through hyperreality. secondly, there are moments when the artificiality shatters. even in those moments, his style is still there. for instance, in Penguindrum, the "child broiler" scenes are communicating to the audience through recognizable signs; there is no diegetic level. but the most pivotal, emotional moments in Ikuhara works do not follow cultural scripts. the "it's that way because it is that way" mentality falls away.

Ikuhara characters follow the opposite tragectory of hyperreal characters. they start out as floating signifiers, characters who are parodies of themselves. Anthy is the shy, quirky girl who must be protected. Himari is the cute, innocent little sister. the fact that his characters are meant to be walking tropes is self-evident--it's blatant, a constant in-joke. but then, the stories broaden, developing the characters and complicating their narratives. this cuts against the grain of hyperreality, forcing the audience to consider how they may have let their lives be scripted for them, how they may be living in artificiality, "dying without ever being born."

[controllo-totale]

The embrace

(I wanted to start writing some sort of thinspo moments for motivation so here it goes, let me know what you think pretty please)

The alarm clock rings, and as I crawl out of my warm bed, I immediately get filled with worry: I need to go to the bathroom, right now. In over two years of relapse I can't never time my laxatives correctly, and I end up not even seeing relief, or much worse, waking up with immense pain. But beauty is pain, right?

My apartment is so small that going to the bathroom is a 3 steps' journey, without the complications of having to run through a huge or even normal house. I once dreamt of money and house on two stories, but my appetite gave advice to my wallet, and so it shut close.

I undress myself in the fastest way I know, which is literally undressing on the toilet, while using the toilet.

My scale shines in a way it hasn't in a while, I cleaned the puke stains from it yesterday and it's beautiful now; my feet activate the engine, that provides me with a good amount of motivation for the day. Finally 65kg, a weight so good and that I hadn't seen reflected from a scale in so long. I dance, cold and barefoot, and take a picture, I need to save this moment, to have and savour it forever.

I go to the kitchen, my espresso machine ready from the night before, I just turn the stove on and let it it's magic. Breakfast starts with a huge glass of cold sparkling water, and usually the same boring meals in rotation: yogurt, or fruit, or oatmeal. Once every blue moon I allow myself a couple scrambled eggs, but this ought to change from now: to keep the motivation up, a new rule takes place, and knowing that all my limits are like bible script to me, I write it in my mind: no more eggs, no more dairy.

I already cut out all pastries and breads, all meat, fish, and substitutes, the last thing is now eggs and dairy. I love my greek yogurt, but soy is just as good.

I pick up a pear and start peeling it, making sure it's very messy, and the pulp is mostly on the peel rather that on the plate - « I've never been any good peeling fruits » - and after that, my coffee is done brewing. I love coffee, being Italian has been good a gift and a curse. Why couldn't I have celiac's disease, or something of that nature? Why must I enjoy all foods alike, I ponder, drinking my coffee and cleansing my palate with a morsel of pear.

The morning ends with me getting ready for work, while incredibly early for it: I know I'll be going to the library to read and study, and after work I'll head to the gym, and workout, as always. I apply one last coat of mascara and get dressed with my new coat, and put on my shoes. After that just ran out the door, so that I can be the first to be at the library and take my favourite spot.

The mist is so dense this morning that catching the tram was all thanks to fortune, not being able to see a thing, despite my new glasses. I put on my headphones and immerge myself in the novel I've been enjoying, about history and Christianity and all things adventure. After my latest read of over 600 pages I need something light to chill and let my mind wander. I usually read in all the languages I know, favouring the language the book has been originally written in, but now all I need is to read and have fun, so these few minutes of commute pass happily.

My stop comes too soon, and I angrily stop my reading on the most exciting part as of now.

Walking with this weather has always made me feel like I belong, the sky still dark blue, the mist, the cold sharpness of the wind, trying to slice the delicate skin of my cheeks in minuscule pieces. I feel like I want to be here. I walk and I feel good, life is good, my body one step closer to perfection: my uniform pants fall loose on my legs, my coat at first too tigh is now the right size, my beanie is fitting better, everything is better.

I am better now.

Still not good enough, but better.

60kg here I come.

(let me know what you think, hope you enjoyed)

[nope-nora]

finally watched rwrb. i liked it and understand the choices, but it def has problems. for positives, taylor and nick had great performances, especially taylor. he is really the star of the show and alex as a character shines on screen. zahra had the best lines. in general the best/funniest dialogue was when they stuck closest to the script (although I might be biased on this point). for negatives, there’s clearly not a lot of money in this movie. a lot looks cheap and the music is general noncopyright music when they paid for lil nas x in the trailer. they also removed so much to the point of it potentially becoming nonsensical to someone who hasn’t read the book. they made everything much flatter (e.g. replacing rafael luna with miguel and cutting june), but without explaining the rest of it well enough to substitute for it. the emails are so important and yet they don’t show a ton of them and kinda gloss over it once they’re made public. they have rachel maddow calling them the waterloo letters but don’t include the email where henry references the waterloo vase. little gaps in writing like that make the whole thing less clear. as someone who relates deeply to alex and loves the book dearly, it’s easy to focus on the negatives, but I did enjoy watching it. there were just a lot of changes.

[whartonists]

Flowers and Fake Marble: How TV Production Designers Create the Past (The New York Times)

“I always say that if there were a marble Olympics, our team would definitely take the gold,” Bob Shaw bragged.

Shaw, the Emmy-winning production designer of the HBO drama “The Gilded Age,” was discussing the painstaking effort and maddening attention to detail that goes into painting a wooden column so that the camera can’t help but read it as stone. The scenic artists of “The Gilded Age” can paint a half-dozen distinct marble varieties. To pause at nearly any frame of the show is to marvel at the meticulous mix of authentic materials and brilliant fakes. Look closely at the candelabras, for example: They are fitted with fire-safe LEDs hooked to wavering filaments that substitute for open flame.

Though production design is often seen as a mere backdrop to the action, the scenery, furnishings, finishes and props have their own stories to tell. And these stories are often especially intricate in period dramas, in which a need for accuracy must accommodate narrative demands and the constraints of a show’s budget.

[...]

Flowers were not enough.

In the first season of “The Gilded Age,” the home of Bertha Russell (Carrie Coon), the wife of a railroad magnate (Morgan Spector), was garlanded with fields of flowers for each social event. So even though the script for the first episode of Season 2, which premieres on HBO on Oct. 29, described the Russell home as resplendent with flowers, Shaw knew he had to do more.

In a scene at the close of the episode, Bertha, a patron of the nascent Metropolitan Opera, arranges a surprise performance of a song from Gounod’s “Faust” by the Swedish soprano Christine Nilsson. While her guests are dining, her sumptuous staircase is transformed into Marguerite’s garden. There are flowers, yes, a mix of real and artificial ones, garlanding the railings. But above the staircase are several panels of hand-painted Italian scenery, as would have been seen in the opera houses of the day.

“It was a challenge to have it be beautiful and evocative and tasteful and not be cute,” Shaw said. “It conveys that Bertha goes to extremes beyond what anyone could imagine to get what she wants.”

The result is ostentatious but still gorgeous. This is a line that Shaw and his team often walk, on lush carpeting. “The Gilded Age” dramatizes the conflict between new money, like the Russells, and old money, like their near neighbors, Agnes van Rhijn (Christine Baranski) and Ada Brook (Cynthia Nixon). The excesses of the new money crowd gave the Gilded Age its name, but whether in the studio or filming on location in various historic homes, Shaw balances lavishness with restraint.

“In all of the houses that we did, we had to back off a little bit from the 100 percent period look,” Shaw said. “Because it’s too much visual information for modern eyes.” He is careful to avoid using the set decoration, a combination of period furniture and scenic art, to judge or insult the characters.

“They’re more complex,” he said. “They’re not simply out to say, ‘Anything you can have I can have bigger.’”

[3cheers4evil]

mbav (season 1) hungarian dub notes

‎i know that translational changes are necessary for things to make sense in another language, but i'll take minor tweaks as something worth sharing. this is just for fun !!

the title is translated to our vampire, the babysitter <3

three cheers for evil

erica: “these girls have been telling me to bite them for years" → "these girls have been telling me to suck it for years" like the vulgar expression to suck a dick. ok

ethan straight up refers to his underwear in cheer uniform as thongs. off to a strong start

blood drive

ethan (to sarah): “take two [cookies]” → “you can take mine too” its so cute. however he grumbles instead of saying “come on” when leading her out of the room

b: “to bore them to death?” → “to make them laugh at us [in a ridiculing way]?” honestly makes sense idk why a vampire nurse story would bore anyone to death

guys and dolls

when ethan’s parents go upstairs u can overhear rory talking to debbie dazzle and originally u can’t hear much of what he’s saying just giggling & something about making out. you hear this clear dialogue in hungarian: “so when i eat like a pig, i gag this much while brushing my teeth. so i prefer chewing gum instead. if you want to make out, i can chew one right now” right before they show him saying he knows where the best gum in town is

at the disco beach party for jane when debbie winks, originally there’s no more dialogue, but in hungarian ethan says “this is so cool!” :)))))))))))

double negative

in the og evil!hannah says “how about i say this? you’re a pathetic little weasel!” in the translation she says something non-hungarian??? like it’s not in my language idk wth it means i posted the audio when i tried figuring it out with scripts and numerous google searches but couldn't detect it

instead of evil benny they keep saying bitchy benny dshdfgsdhfwehsdjf

friday night frights

coach ed calls benny a truncate dwarf instead of sugar mcversey

smells like trouble

after ross catches bethan roleplaying as etharah instead of saying they should come along to the hockey game he says the two should go in a pair

b (about the concept of sarah rejecting ethan): “gives u one less thing to worry about” to “gives u one more fear” help

ethan says “i chickened out” (about asking sarah out) in a high-pitched voice like he’s making fun of himself ?????

originally benny says nothing after his grandma leaves and bids them good night but they add him saying “that’s tough” cuz he opens his mouth slightly so they felt the need to add something? lol

die pod

e: “i wonder if my allergies will kill me before the sun stroke does” b: “my money’s on the sun, you burn like a marshmallow” → “my money’s on the sun, you’re burning already” as in to be very embarrassing

b (after telling pod girl his bowling story): “you know, i think you’re really interesting” → “you know, i personally think this was a very exciting story” girl…

b (ethan tells him to shut up with his stupid gardening motto): “that’s all i got” → “i’ll shut the hell up”

doug the vamp hunter

(about erica making fun of evelyn’s blood substitute) sarah: “i guess she’s used to packing nerd lunches” → “i guess she’s used to packing lunches for babies/diaper wearers”

erica: “serious mullet fail” → “seriously sprained/damned taste”

r: “good thing you’re bad at magic” → “good thing you’re a lame witch [very feminine term]” 

the brewed

instead of teethan they called him tetün which is basically louse + ethan�� and yea he says it sounds cute coming from sarah 😭

this just made me giggle but since they have to lower original sounds when dubbing something, they sometimes add their own effects. the only added sound i detected was them adding a loud door handle sound when a zombie opens a door with a knob. and the sound is late

revamped

jesse: "my favorite fledgling" → "my dearest little rookie" there's a translation for fledgling throughout the show so idk why he'd say this

[patwrites]

That was BAD!!! Glad I didn’t spend any money on that, thank you AMC Guest Pass. Can someone tell Roth that characters swearing every five seconds is not a substitute for compelling dialogue?

It could not decide if it wanted to be campy or play itself straight. Beyond that, the script was predictable and mediocre. Patrick Dempsey did not maintain that Massachusetts accent well at all. Also hard to root for the final girl when she’s about as bland and dry as poorly-prepped turkey.

One point in favor? I feel validated in my refusal to go outside on Black Friday. Jeez!

I give it a 5.

[explorationsoftheid]

Just When I Think it’s OK…

When I was a kid I had a very noticeable stutter, at least that’s what I called it. There were many times when I couldn’t talk at all, even to family. The words would just not come. Over the years by practicing, and scripting, and developing a large vocabulary of words to substitute I got it to subside to the point where I thought it was gone. I started telling myself it was gone.

Just now a kid came to the front door. They were selling candy bars to raise money to buy a flute for band. Great, glad to help them. So I got two. As the kid departed they said, “Thank you for helping out.”

I was going to reply, “Good luck, hope you get your flute.”

I was going to, but the words just wouldn’t, my tongue refused to respond, my voice wouldn’t obey orders, my jaw just froze. I just locked up and couldn’t say it or anything else, not even “You’re welcome”. All I could do was smile and wave and close the door. GDit just when I think I got it beat, the demon grabs my throat again.

[sakis-sweets]

Just a thought of mine for the drama club, you may dislike/like this and I will fully understand you're opinions about it.

I feel like Kizana is very rude and harsh to her club members, from Kokona to Shozo. But Ig for Tsuruzo isn't that much rude nor harsh to him since he his the one substituting for her when she's gone and she does admire his acting skills than the rest.

On how she treats them is different from each one of them.

For Shozo, whenever he's done with writing the scripts she would immediately look at it for 5-10 seconds, throws it at his face and says "go do it again! This is the worst script I have ever read!" Then Shozo proceeds to redo it again for at least 3 times for her to accept it. Kizana compares Shozo to Tsuruzo within their acting skills, the reason why is because Shozo is going to be a 3-2 student, meaning that Shozo needs to also have the same acting skill level as Tsuruzo even as a background character he still needs to have a perfect acting skills to be considered as a "good enough actor" for Kizana's standards.

For Riku, Kizana treats him with bias just like Tsuruzo but different, she only says rude and harsh things to him when no one's around but acts nice to him out public since Riku does come from a wealthy family, she at least wants to make herself look good infrot of others when talking to Riku. (Not sure if this is the best one I can think of-)

For Tokuko, Kizana criticize Tokuko a lot, even when it's offstage. Kizana manages to find something that she can criticize Tokuko, like on how Tokuko wears makeup, how she walks and most importantly on how's her acting skills are. Kizana is very harsh on her criticism towards Tokuko and would immediately blast out insults on her.

Well for Kokona of course, Kizana hates her the most, for copying her hairstyle. She despise Kokona her hairstyle and the lack of her acting skills (since Kokona is a new member). She would either put her as a background character or has no role, she doesn't see Kokona improving but only sees her getting weak and left behind with from the rest.

And that's it! My apologies for any grammatically errors, my apologies for anything wrong with these hcs/thoughts of mine. And if you dislike some of them then it is perfectly fine with me. I will fully understand you're opinions about it!

You definitely make some good points; I think your interpretation of Kizana's relationship is spot on. And I can definitely see Kizana pulling some true Mean Girls shit on Tokuko and will probably find ways to subtly sabotage her while pretending to care. Etc: "omg that color will look so good on you!!" (It super won't). And I agree completely with your take on Tsuzuro, I think he's the only one who looks past (ignores? enables?) her stank-ass attitude and sees her talent, which is why she respects him.

I don't think being kind to Riku only in public would help; he can just tell his parents not to support her and they'd probably believe him. So she'd have to be nice to him all the time. But I think Kizana only cares about money as far as play production, and her own money might be enough depending on her background. If she wants to produce an excessively expensive play, she'll probably butter up Riku then.

I don't think Kizana has a specific vendetta against Shozo, she doesn't have a reason to just disregard what he's written and make him do it again for no reason. Remember, despite being an arrogant bitch, she did earn her presidential position with her skill. So she would read through the whole play and give him some constructive feedback, and then demand that he specifically fix HER lines over and over again. Only to just ad lib on stage anyway.

[byneddiedingo]

Bette Davis in The Letter (William Wyler, 1940)

Cast: Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall, James Stephenson, Frieda Inescort, Gale Sondergaard, Bruce Lester, Elizabeth Inglis, Cecil Kellaway, Victor Sen Yung, Doris Lloyd, Willie Fung, Tetsu Komai. Screenplay: Howard Koch, based on a play by W. Somerset Maugham. Cinematography: Tony Gaudio. Art direction: Carl Jules Weyl. Film editing: George Amy, Warren Low. Music: Max Steiner.

As Tony Gaudio's camera travels across the Malayan rubber plantation we hear shots being fired, and as we track closer we see Leslie Crosbie (Bette Davis), coming down her front steps with a grimly determined look on her face, firing the remaining bullets from her revolver into a man on the ground. And we sit back and relax and think, "Oh, yeah, Bette's here. This is gonna be good." Davis is one of the few stars who can almost always make us feel this way -- maybe Cary Grant or Barbara Stanwyck for me -- who else for you? And it is good, perhaps the best of the three films Davis made with William Wyler. For me, Jezebel (1938) is too steeped in the Hollywood Old South myth, and The Little Foxes (1941) too hamstrung by Lillian Hellman's dramaturgy. This one has a very fine screenplay by Howard Koch that deftly steps on and around the restrictions placed on it by the Production Code. For one thing, Leslie has to be punished for her crime, which involves not only murder but also, with the help of her lawyer, Howard Joyce (James Stephenson), suborning justice. (Joyce somehow gets off scot-free, though with an embittered conscience.) Wyler got a bad rap from the auteur critics like Andrew Sarris, who found his technical skills insufficiently personal. But we see something of Wyler's daring early in the film as Leslie is recounting her version of why she shot Geoffrey Hammond to her lawyer, her husband (Herbert Marshall), and a government official (Bruce Lester) who has been called to the scene. Wyler chooses to shoot a long segment of Leslie's story with the backs of Leslie and the three men to the camera: We don't see their faces, but only the room where the initial shooting took place. The effect, relying heavily on Davis's voice acting and Koch's script, is to place Leslie's narrative -- which as others comment rarely varies by a word -- in our minds instead of the truth. It is, for Davis, a splendidly icy and controlled performance. The major fault in the film today is in the condescension toward Asian characters typical of Hollywood in the era, though it's not as bad perhaps in 1940 as it would be after Pearl Harbor a year later. We learn that Hammond had a Eurasian wife (the Code-enforced substitute for the Chinese mistress of W. Somerset Maugham's 1927 play), and in 1940s Hollywood "Eurasian" invariable meant "sinister," especially when she's played by Gale Sondergaard. The other Asians in the film are treated as subordinates, including Joyce's Chinese law clerk, Ong Chi Seng (Victor Sen Yung), who is all smiles and passive aggressiveness. That we are expected to share in this colonialist order of things is especially apparent when Leslie is forced to deliver the payment for the incriminating letter to Mrs. Hammond, who lords it over Leslie, making her remove her shawl to bare her head and to place the money in her hands; then Mrs. Hammond drops the letter on the floor, making Leslie pick it up. If today we cheer at Mrs. Hammond's abasement of Leslie, who after all killed her husband, you can bet that 1940s audiences, or at least the white ones, didn't.

[troughtonmedia]

Script #68

Brutus knew going back to school would be good for the world and him. Not as a student tho, we are talking about as a teacher. It turned out the world is really short on substitute teachers and the money pays for their freedom. You don't have to work everyday. You don't have to work two or three days of the week. You can choose to work all five. You have the weekends off, or you can be like Brutus and have the option to work seven days a week... Awesome

Brutus would reconnect with old friends, enemies, and make new connections as well all while seeing the world from the other side. For well over a decade Brutus had sat in classrooms, discussed news stories, learned how to read and write. To speak. Do math. Write essays. But the problem is what is it used for? Brutus believes we have FORGOTTEN. The world is in such disarray it can be just a matter of time before it is abolished. And maybe that's what the world wants too.

This is the problem with Brutus he tends to overthink the situation clinging onto the curtains of the universe. What a quandary. He was going to meet the future of the Earth and my oh my does it look like it's gonna change. Great news if you hate the current state of the world. What it needs is knowledge and love. Make it rain, cloud, and blow wind. It would be good for everyone.

The Subbing was going alright. Brutus was getting the hang of it. He would be spending his time acting as the teacher's agent to permit them to leave with a hall pass. Write a paper with three takeaways and two questions about the TEDtalk you watched. 30 minutes silenced reading. A word puzzle. Using Aeries to take attendance marking absent or tardy. The students on their computers. The students on their phone. The students that are too poor to do any of this. It's mind blowing!

Brutus would substitute for the remainder of his life. He saw it as a priority to help advise the youth into the direction of success. That is created by making money and happiness. Do what you are going to enjoy doing. There is a reward called freedom and happiness. We should make it available for anyone with that desire. We know the old ways are making themselves out. The question is: Where will it take us? Will we end war permanently? Will Jesus ever come back?

THE END

[perihthiscasual]

Almighty Animal Advocates!

APRIL 27TH - 30TH, 2023

w/ Versus Evil Paws Your Game

Join myself & many others between the Versus Evil & Paws Your Game communities as we raise money for animal shelters in need!

Personalized Incentives & Information below!

April 27th - April 30th ALMIGHTY ANIMAL ADVOCATES (Versus Evil X Paws Your Game) GOAL : $2,000

Versus Evil : https://versusevil.com/ Paws Your Game : https://pawsyourgame.org/ ALMIGHTY Kill Your Gods : https://versusevil.com/game-almighty/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1206600/Almighty_Kill_Your_Gods/

Almighty Animal Advocates is a second-coming collaboration with the team over at Versus Evil & the Ambassadors of Paws Your Game, a 501 Nonprofit animal welfare organization. Staring the recently revised Almighty : Kill Your Gods, a 1-4 Co-Op RPG adventure, we'll be showcasing the new & improved layout of this Early Access while raising funds to support animal shelters in need & benefiting the multiple assets Paws Your Game has to offer with full-time streamers with pets.

Learn about Anderson Humane, our Shelter choice for the event : https://ahconnects.org/ Learn about the various PYG Streamer Grants (Currently on pause due to funding) : https://twitter.com/PawsYourGame/status/1633973161103351808

This is one of our biggest events so far in terms of on the channel & within the Last City Community - so naturally, it has some incentives to get you motivated on sharing that wallet of yours. Lets' go over them in detail!

Individual Incentives

➛ Top 3 Donors The top 3 donors of the event will be reached out by Perih at the conclusion of the event for a chance to have a modified pixel variant of a Pokemon of choice to participate in a customized on-stream run of Pokemon Reborn, a Pokemon fan-game with the ability to import custom sprites (example below : Art done by Kirk). Courtesy of our humble & talented Kirk Kladen, Perih will be commissioning up to three custom sprites to be added in the journey & gifting the pixel-PNG to those involved. (Any of the top 3 donors can opt out of this chance if not interested & request a substitute incentive within reason). ➛ $25 or more… Donate $25USD or more towards the event goal & your name will automatically be tied to a raffle for a full art piece done by @Perih! This will include up to two characters, full background, within talent / reason. (Donating multiples of 25 will grant one additional raffle entry, up to 4 entries i.e. $100 total). ➛ $50 or more… Donate $50 or more towards the event goal & you'll have the option to opt in for a physical thank you letter in mail, with a personalized message, Nico autograph (inked pawprint) & perhaps even another goodie or two. ➛ Every $1,000USD raised… For every $1,000 raised in the event, @Perih will be donating an additional $100 to the total. ➛ $2,000 Goal… If the $2,000 Goal is met by the end of event, April 30th, Perih will grant the Last City Community reigns in designing the next large-scale charity event, including what activities/games are involved, goals & incentives (within reason). More details in this regard will come at a later date.

Tier Goals

$200/$2,000 New Bones the Platypus Outfit (TTS Outfit Redeem) $300/$2,000 Add it to the List… Nioh 2 (Nioh 2 Playthrough) $500/$2,000 Trombone Champ V2 (Trombone Champ Stream #2) $700/$2,000 Destiny 2 Raid Encounter Tier List $900/$2,000 Community creates a new Channel Point Redeem (within reason) $1,000/$2,000 Monty Python & the Holy Grail Script Read (Script Stream) $1,200/$2,000 FFXIV Music Tier List $1,400/$2,000 Community creates 3 new Emote ideas to be added to the Stream & Discord $1,600/$2,000 Community chooses a title for Pact of Pain (Youtube Video/Series w/ Kibo) $1,800/$2,000 Destiny 2 Sherpa Week - Full Week of First-Time clears/Assistance $1,900/$2,000 Hot Sauce Challenge (Community Choice on a Hot Sauce Sampler to be held on Stream) 2,000/$2,000 Community Designs a VROID Outfit (Names of Donors will be added into the Design)

As promised, our first official event is to be bigger & better than events past! Thank you to everyone whose got us here so far, & look forward to the big weekend with you all!