#there were originally subtitles on this making that clear but i didn't like the way they looked so i removed them

[papayafiles]

simple like 2019: a carlando edit

[pain-in-the-butler]

Out of curiosity…if Ono is your third fav Seb. What’s your Offical Sebastian Ranking™️?

Just as with the ask about the Anime Expo panel, it's fortunate for me that someone reached out, because I was thinking of making this a post on my own eventually someday anyway. What follows might be more information on my opinions of Sebastian than you care to have, so apologies in advance. Let's count down from worst to best:

6. Hiro Mizushima from Black Butler (2014)

There's a reason no one talks about this movie. It's because it sucks, and somehow I feel I can't really blame Mizushima for his performance, but... it is still a mixture of weird and unmemorable. That hairstyle does him no favors either, but maybe the fact that I find him a little bit frightening to look at should give him points rather than detract them. Off-screen, he looks like a completely normal man; somehow the film's efforts to make him a sexy butler were unfortunately funneled into making him unnerving and unappealing. And the movie is two entire hours long.

There's a lot I've deleted from my memory about the Black Butler live action film, but that lack of memory seems a sign that he should sit in dead last. Whether he's acting like a total weirdo or actually successfully impressing me, Sebastian should never be a forgettable character, and all I can think when I consider Mizushima's performance is that I never need to see it again.

5. Yuya Matsushita from That Butler, Friendship, The Most Beautiful DEATH in the World, and the first run of Lycoris that Blazes the Earth

I know some people may find this placement to be blasphemous, but honestly, the only thing I really like about Yuya's Sebastian is his singing voice, and even then I'm not that wild about it. It's been a few years since I watched TMBDITW, so it's not super crisp in my mind, but I will give him some recognition as an early Sebastian who still had little material to work with. He probably had to do some of his own legwork to adapt the character to the stage and to the original stories he was expected to act in. That can't be easy, and it makes sense that his Sebastian would be one that had to stand somewhat independent from the canon. I also appreciate that he is playing Sebastian with purpose behind his actions and not a sexyman who just serves whatever convenient purpose the narrative dictates, like Mizushima's Seb.

With that caveat out of the way, I still don't like his Sebastian portrayal. It's clear Yuya really drummed up the "I'm no one but I can become anyone" aspect of Sebastian. He can invent personas that suit the situation, like when he decides to seduce Undertaker, but as soon as the problem is solved, he reverts back to being robotic and unsmiling. You get the feeling that he's rather cold and calculating and that he is only interested in doing things that will earn him Ciel's soul. I didn't watch with subtitles, so perhaps that evaluation is misplaced, but his mannerisms dictated that energy to me.

Also, I can't get behind the sort of sexual and romantic tones that sometimes felt present, especially when real children were involved. It will always taint his work for me. There's one song where he and Ciel look at each other the entire time and it's three and a half minutes long but it felt like a year. I wanted to crawl out of my skin because it was so horrifically awkward. Stick this man in fifth.

4. Toshiki Tateishi from The Public School's Secret

So I went into this musical fully prepared to hate Toshiki's performance, considering the act he was following, and... I thought it was actually pretty decent. When I think of Sebastian in the Weston arc, I think of the "sexy professor" angle Yana kept trying to push, and I was worried Toshiki would play into that, especially considering Ciel was being portrayed by a legal adult onstage for the first time. I was pleasantly surprised! That's not what happened at all.

Though likely unintended, I would say Toshiki gives off a rather maternal vibe, behaving more like Seb does in memes: kind of silly, kind of fussy, an overworked single mother who cares for her boy. Toshiki's Sebastian was very attentive of Ciel. He was frequently pleased with his kid's impish nature and didn't seem that annoyed to be taking on extra tasks, only complaining lightly, "Even though I have things to do too!" at the end of the chores song. When Ciel came up with a plan to foil Maurice, Toshiki seemed excited to praise him and gratified to help. He was like Sebastian Lite, only a bit insidious at times, mainly the ever-attentive helper.

To me, it's the first time one of the musicals has made Sebastian feel like a supporting character rather than the driving force behind the story. I prefer when he and Ciel are both treated evenly as protagonists, but I hate it when it's All About Him. I think Toshiki's performance has a good heart and he made me laugh at times. He's not quite canon Sebastian, but I like him. I trust him not to eat the sonboy just yet. Mostly.

3. Daisuke Ono from the Japanese dub of the anime

Daisuke Ono was a part of my first experience with Black Butler, so there's something about his voice that feels like it's just right for Sebastian. And it kind of is. It's a really flexible voice, and one that is clearly giving a performance when you listen to him. He also infuses his dialogue with what sounds to me like inherent smugness, which I think suits Sebastian perfectly. Ono's performance is the most self-satisfied in nature. It makes you think of a well-fed cat licking its chops while it considers its next meal.

His voice is not sexy to me, but I can see why people find it to be. At the same time, Ono isn't afraid to give Sebastian different inflections, even ones that some might consider too embarrassing or OOC for Seb. He's a veteran voice actor and he knows how to do whatever is requested of him. Sebastian treats his career just the same: he too will do essentially whatever Ciel requires. I think Ono is a natural match is what I'm saying, especially having now seen him in person and observing the way he works a crowd so effortlessly.

All that said... Ono's Sebastian is perfect. I don't mean that as a compliment: I mean he's too lacking in flaws. Sure, he has the big flaw (okay with killing a child) but he isn't really giving "silly idiot." Ono's Sebastian is the one the girlies write about in their self-insert fiction. And for the first two seasons, that's kind of who he was supposed to be, so fine. But even when he has silly or idiotic moments, it doesn't feel quite authentic, if that makes sense? I think to Ono, Sebastian's stupid mistakes are just a fluke, quickly corrected. It doesn't feel like they're a fundamental part of who his Sebastian is.

If you consider this nitpicking, you're right! The next two Sebastians are just that good. I still consider Daisuke Ono to be a very talented and accurately-portrayed Sebastian.

2. J. Michael Tatum from the English dub of the anime

While it's possible that I pick up on more nuance in Tatum's performance because he's the only one here who speaks the same language as me, how fortunate we are to have him doing Seb's English voice. He might not actually have a real British accent, but he's just too charming not to love. To me, he has all the vocal command of Ono but is more candid in his delivery. Ono may be Sebastian the perfectionist and Sebastian the performer, but Tatum is Sebastian the butler, well settled and confident in his human role.

I really appreciate the ways you can hear Tatum's voice change notably depending on Sebastian's emotions. This is especially prominent in Book of Atlantic during the flashback sequences: an annoyed Sebastian is an entirely different sounding dude than when he's being cunning, and again when he's being subservient. And he really does have this very silky, ASMR-ass way of speaking that suits Sebastian to a T. It's inherently convincing.

And more to my own interests, Tatum's voice for Sebastian has a really paternal nature to it, and I like that. I think it adds to the complexity of Sebastian's role in Ciel's life when you can hear this caring quality in the voice of a demon that will one day kill the child he works for. He can also be snipped and punctual, and then he can be gentle and reassuring, all in the same scene. And he can be scary too... and I'm super looking forward to hearing how this plays out during season 5.

To compare him to Ono again, I think Tatum knows Sebastian can be an idiot at times, but that quality still takes a backseat to the suaveness. He's almost perfect. And I probably would even say he is perfect, if we hadn't seen perfection itself. As he is, I think Tatum is an excellent voice actor for Sebastian, and I'm grateful that we have him in the position that we do.

1. Yuta Furukawa from the second run of Lycoris that Blazes the Earth, Noah's Ark Circus, and Tango on the Campania

Yuta Furukawa. What a legend. What an icon. This is where I would say "he isn't just playing Sebastian, he is Sebastian," but Furukawa is even more than that. He's what Sebastian should be. And that's not just me being rude to Yana. Yana has flat-out said that Yuta knows Sebastian better than she does herself. She's right.

If you have yet to see Yuta perform, then congratulations: you're in for a treat. What I wouldn't give to forget my first watch of Tango on the Campania and relive that magic all over again. Yuta knows who Sebastian is with every fiber of his being. And the fact that you see him over the course of three plays means you get to witness for yourself how his Sebastian goes from being a smirking demon who lives to impress, to a creature who understands fear, hardship, and pain. And yet you still wonder: is he really learning and growing after all? Or am I too being tricked by this suave being who appears to be emotionally moved?

I'm also proud to report that Yuta plays Sebastian as a true idiot. He says silly things, he behaves in silly ways! He's embarrassing enough to make Ciel roll his eyes, he uses his brawn before his brain, and he's often surprised enough to gasp. He's not afraid to look impressed or astounded or even frightened: he wears his emotions on his sleeves, but he can hide them just as quickly. This Sebastian lives for attention from humans, but what he loves even more is learning from them — perhaps so he can become a better hunter, perhaps so he can become a better scholar. He leaves you wondering which in the most intriguing way.

And I may be biased, but Yuta to me is the most paternal of all the Sebastians. Whether or not a fatherly nature is intended, I'm at least happy to report that his Sebastian is not one romantically inclined towards Ciel. His coworker is an actual child, so there's no reason that should be an acceptable angle anyway, but it really shows in all the little ways he primps at and supports Ciel on-stage. His rapport with Reo is especially adorable and shines through in their every scene.

Not to mention, he's so endlessly entertaining to watch. He has legs for days and he can fuckin groove. He may be playing a demon but he has the voice of an angel. If I called him to my house, he'd probably fix my leaky shower. What can't this gift of a man do??

I could literally go on and on and on for paragraphs. Yana is just the same. We all love Yuta Furukawa, the only Sebastian who is more Sebastian than Sebastian and probably the best thing, in my humble opinion, to come out of the Kuroshitsuji franchise. Thank you, based Yunbastian. We did nothing to deserve you.

[a-memory-a-distant-echo]

it's time for the long-threatened post about how to get subtitles (including translated ones) for videos that don't have subtitles.

in my experience, the methods in this post can probably get you solidly 75% or more of the content of many videos (caveats inside). i've tested this on videos that are originally in chinese, english, french, german, hindi, japanese, korean, spanish, and honestly probably some languages that i'm forgetting. my experience is that it works adequately in all of them. not great, necessarily, but well enough that you can probably follow along.

this is a very long post because this is the overexplaining things website, and because i talk about several different ways to get the captions. this isn't actually difficult, though, or even especially time consuming—the worst of it is pushing a button and ignoring things for a while. actual hands-on work is probably five minutes tops, no matter how long the video is.

i've attempted to format this post understandably, and i hope it's useful to someone.

first up, some disclaimers.

this is just my experience with things, and your experience might be different. the tools used for (and available for) this kind of thing change all the time, and if you're reading this six months after i wrote it, your options might be different. this post is probably still a decent starting place.

background about my biases in this: i work in the creative industries. mostly i'm a fiction editor. i've also been a writer, a technical editor and writer, a transcriptionist, a copyeditor, and something i've seen called a 'translation facilitator' or 'rewrite editor', where something is translated fairly literally (by a person or a machine) and then a native speaker of the target language goes through and rewrites/restructures as needed to make the piece read more naturally in the target language. i've needed to get information out of business meetings that were conducted in a language i didn't speak, and have done a lot of work on things that were written in (or translated into) the writer's second or sixth language, but needed to be presented in natural english.

so to start, most importantly: machine translation is never going to be as good as a translation done by an actual human. human translators can reflect cultural context and nuanced meanings and the artistry of the work in a way that machines will never be able to emulate. that said, if machine translation is your only option, it's better than nothing. i also find it really useful for videos in languages where i have enough knowledge that i'm like, 75% sure that i'm mostly following, and just want something that i can glance at to confirm that.

creating subs like this relies heavily on voice-to-text, which—unfortunately—works a lot better in some situations than it does in others. you'll get the best, cleanest results from videos that have slow, clear speech in a 'neutral' accent, and only one person speaking at a time. (most scripted programs fall into this category, as do many vlogs and single-person interviews.) the results will get worse as voices speed up, overlap more, and vary in volume. that said, i've used this to get captions for cast concerts, reality shows, and variety shows, and the results are imperfect but solidly readable, especially if you have an idea of what's happening in the plot and/or can follow along even a little in the broadcast language.

this also works best when most of the video is in a single language, and you select that language first. the auto detect option sometimes works totally fine, but in my experience there's a nonzero chance that it'll at least occasionally start 'detecting' random other languages in correctly, or someone will say a few words in spanish or whatever, but the automatic detection engine will keep trying to translate from spanish for another three minutes, even tho everything's actually in korean. if there's any way to do so, select the primary language, even if it means that you miss a couple sentences that are in a different language.

two places where these techniques don't work, or don't work without a lot of manual effort on your part: translating words that appear on the screen (introductions, captions, little textual asides, etc), and music. if you're incredibly dedicated, you can do this and add it manually yourself, but honestly, i'm not usually this dedicated. getting captions for the words on the screen will involve either actually editing the video or adding manually translated content to the subs, which is annoying, and lyrics are...complicated. it's possible, and i'm happy to talk about it in another post if anyone is interested, but for the sake of this post, let's call it out of scope, ok? ok. bring up the lyrics on your phone and call it good enough.

places where these techniques are not great: names. it's bad with names. names are going to be mangled. resign yourself to it now. also, in languages that don't have strongly gendered speech, you're going to learn some real fun stuff about the way that the algorithms gender things. (spoiler: not actually fun.) bengali, chinese, and turkish are at least moderately well supported for voice-to-text, but you will get weird pronouns about it.

obligatory caveat about ai and voice-to-text functionality. as far as i'm aware, basically every voice-to-text function is ~ai powered~. i, a person who has spent twenty years working in the creative industries, have a lot of hate for generative ai, and i'm sure that many of you do, too. however, if voice-to-text (or machine translation software) that doesn't rely on it exists anymore, i'm not aware of it.

what we're doing here is the same as what douyin/tiktok/your phone's voice-to-text does, using the same sorts of technology. i mention this because if you look at the tools mentioned in this post, at least some of them will be like 'our great ai stuff lets you transcribe things accurately', and i want you to know why. chat gpt (etc) are basically glorified predictive text, right? so for questions, they're fucking useless, but for things like machine transcription and machine translation, those predictions make it more likely that you get the correct words for things that could have multiple translations, or for words that the software can only partially make out. it's what enables 'he has muscles' vs 'he has mussels', even though muscles and mussels are generally pronounced the same way. i am old enough to have used voice to text back when it was called dictation software, and must grudgingly admit that this is, in fact, much better.

ok! disclaimers over.

let's talk about getting videos

for the most part, this post will assume that you have a video file and nothing else. cobalt.tools is the easiest way i'm aware of to download videos from most sources, though there are other (more robust) options if you're happy to do it from the command line. i assume most people are not, and if you are, you probably don't need this guide anyhow.

i'm going to use 'youtube' as the default 'get a video from' place, but generally speaking, most of this works with basically any source that you can figure out how to download from—your bilibili downloads and torrents and whatever else will work the same way. i'm shorthanding things because this post is already so so long.

if the video you're using has any official (not autogenerated) subtitles that aren't burned in, grab that file, too, regardless of the language. starting from something that a human eye has looked over at some point is always going to give you better results. cobalt.tools doesn't pull subtitles, but plugging the video url into downsub or getsubs and then downloading the srt option is an easy way to get them for most places. (if you use downsub, it'll suggest that you download the full video with subtitles. that's a link to some other software, and i've never used it, so i'm not recommending it one way or the other. the srts are legit, tho.)

the subtitle downloaders also have auto translation options, and they're often (not always) no worse than anything else that we're going to do here—try them and see if they're good enough for your purposes. unfortunately, this only works for things that already have subtitles, which is…not that many things, honestly. so let's move on.

force-translating, lowest stress mode.

this first option is kind of a cheat, but who cares. youtube will auto-caption things in some languages (not you, chinese) assuming that the uploader has enabled it. as ever, the quality is kinda variable, and the likelihood that it's enabled at all seems to vary widely, but if it is, you're in for a much easier time of things, because you turn it on, select whatever language you want it translated to, and youtube…does its best, anyhow.

if you're a weird media hoarder like me and you want to download the autogenerated captions, the best tool that i've found for this is hyprscribr. plug in the video url, select 'download captions via caption grabber', then go to the .srt data tab, copy it out, and paste it into a text file. save this as [name of downloaded video].[language code].srt, and now you have captions! …that you need to translate, which is actually easy. if it's a short video, just grab the text, throw it in google translate (timestamps and all), and then paste the output into a new text file. so if you downloaded cooking.mp4, which is in french, you'll have three files: cooking.mp4, cooking.fr.srt, and cooking.en.srt. this one's done! it's easy! you're free!

but yeah, ok, most stuff isn't quite that easy, and auto-captioning has to be enabled, and it has some very obvious gaps in the langauges it supports. which is sort of weird, because my phone actually has pretty great multilingual support, even for things that youtube does not. which brings us to low-stress force translation option two.

use your phone

this seems a little obvious, but i've surprised several people with this information recently, so just in case. for this option, you don't even need to have downloaded the video—if it's a video you can play on your phone, the phone will almost definitely attempt real-time translation for you. i'm sure iphones have this ability, but i'm an android person, so can only provide directions for that: go into settings and search for (and enable) live translation. the phone will do its best to pick up what's being said and translate it on the fly for you, and if 'what's being said' is a random video on the internet, your phone isn't gonna ask questions. somewhat inexplicably, this works even if the video is muted. i do this a lot at like four a.m. when i'm too lazy to grab earbuds but don't want to wake up my wife.

this is the single least efficient way to force sub/translate things, in my opinion, but it's fast and easy, and really useful for those videos that are like a minute long and probably not that interesting, but like…what if it is, you know? sometimes i'll do this to decide if i'm going to bother more complicated ways of translating things.

similarly—and i feel silly even mentioning this, but that i didn't think of it for an embarrassingly long time—if you're watching something on a device with speakers, you can try just…opening the 'translate' app on your phone. they all accept voice input. like before, it'll translate whatever it picks up.

neither of these methods are especially useful for longer videos, and in my experience, the phone-translation option generally gives the least accurate translation, because in attempting to do things in real time, you lose some of the predicative ability that i was talking about earlier. (filling in the blank for 'he has [muscles/mussels]' is a lot harder if you don't know if the next sentence is about the gym or about dinner.)

one more lazy way

this is more work than the last few options, but often gives better results. with not much effort, you can feed a video playing on your computer directly into google translate. there's a youtube video by yosef k that explains it very quickly and clearly. this will probably give you better translation output than any of the on-the-fly phone things described above, but it won't give you something that you can use as actual subs—it just produces text output that you can read while you watch the video. again, though, really useful for things that you're not totally convinced you care about, or for things where there aren't a lot of visuals, or for stuff where you don't care about keeping your eyes glued to the screen.

but probably you want to watch stuff on the screen at the same time.

let's talk about capcut!

this is probably not a new one for most people, but using it like this is a little weird, so here we go. ahead of time: i'm doing this on an actual computer. i think you probably can do it on your phone, but i have no idea how, and honestly this is already a really long guide so i'm not going to figure it out right now. download capcut and put it on an actual computer. i'm sorry.

anyhow. open up capcut, click new project. import the file that you downloaded, and then drag it down to the editing area. go over to captions, auto captions, and select the spoken language. if you want bilingual captions, pick the language for that, as well, and the captions will be auto-translated into whatever the second language you choose is. (more notes on this later.)

if i remember right, this is the point at which you get told that you can't caption a video that's more than an hour long. however. you have video editing software, and it is open. split the video in two pieces and caption them separately. problem solved.

now the complicated part: saving these subs. (don't panic; it's not actually that complicated.) as everyone is probably aware, exporting captions is a premium feature, and i dunno about the rest of you, but i'm unemployed, so let's assume that's not gonna happen.

the good news is that since you've generated the captions, they're already saved to your computer, they're just kinda secret right now. there are a couple ways to dig them out, but the easiest i'm aware of is the biyaoyun srt generator. you'll have to select the draft file of your project, which is auto-saved once a minute or something. the website tells you where the file is saved by default on your computer. (i realised after writing this entire post that they also have a step-by-step tutorial on how to generate the subtitles, with pictures, so if you're feeling lost, you can check that out here.)

select the project file titled 'draft_content', then click generate. you want the file name to be the same as the video name, and again, i'd suggest srt format, because it seems to be more broadly compatible with media players. click 'save to local' and you now have a subtitle file!

translating your subtitles

you probably still need to translate the subtitles. there are plenty of auto-translation options out there. many of them are fee- or subscription-based, or allow a very limited number of characters, or are like 'we provide amazing free translations' and then in the fine print it says that they provide these translations through the magic of uhhhh google translate. so we're just going to skip to google translate, which has the bonus of being widely available and free.

for shorter video, or one that doesn't have a ton of spoken stuff, you can just copy/paste the contents of the .srt file into the translation software of your choice. the web version of google translate will do 5000 characters in one go, as will systran. that's the most generous allocation that i'm aware of, and will usually get you a couple minutes of video.

the timestamps eat up a ton of characters, though, so for anything longer than a couple minutes, it's easier to upload the whole thing, and google translate is the best for that, because it is, to my knowledge, the only service that allows you to do it. to upload the whole file, you need a .doc or .rtf file.

an .srt file is basically just a text file, so you can just open it in word (or gdocs or whatever), save it as a .doc, and then feed it through google translate. download the output, open it, and save it as an .srt.

you're done! you now have your video and a subtitle file in the language of your choice.

time for vibe, the last option in this post.

vibe is a transcription app (not a sex thing, even tho it sounds like one), and it will also auto-translate the transcribed words to english, if you want.

open vibe and select your file, then select the language. if you want it translated to english, hit advanced and toggle 'translate to english'. click translate and wait a while. after a few minutes (or longer, depending on how long the file is), you'll get the text. the save icon is a folder with a down arrow on it, and i understand why people are moving away from tiny floppy disks, but also: i hate it. anyhow, save the output, and now you have your subs file, which you can translate or edit or whatever, as desired.

vibe and capcom sometimes get very different results. vibe seems to be a little bit better at picking up overlapping speech, or speech when there are other noises happening; capcom seems to be better at getting all the worlds in a sentence. i feel like capcom maybe has a slightly better translation engine, of the two of them, but i usually end up just doing the translation separately. again, it can be worth trying both ways and seeing which gives better results.

special notes about dual/bilingual subs

first: i know that bilingual subs are controversial. if you think they're bad, you don't have to use them! just skip this section.

as with everything else, automatically generating gives mixed results. sometimes the translations are great, and sometimes they're not. i like having dual subs, but for stuff that Matters To Me, for whatever reason, i'll usually generate both just the original and a bilingual version, and then try some other translation methods on the original or parts thereof to see what works best.

not everything displays bilingual subs very well. plex and windows media player both work great, vlc and the default video handler on ubuntu only display whatever the first language is, etc. i'm guessing that if you want dual subbed stuff you already have a system for it.

i'll also point out that if you want dual subs and have gone a route other than capcom, you can create dual subs by pasting the translated version and the untranslated version into a single file. leave the timestamps as they are, delete the line numbers if there are any (sometimes they seem to cause problems when you have dual subs, and i haven't figured out why) and then literally just paste the whole sub file for the first language into a new file. then paste in the whole sub file for the second language. yes, as a single chunk, the whole thing, right under the first language's subs. save the file as [video name].[zh-en].srt (or whatever), and use it like any other sub file.

notes on translation, especially since we're talking about lengthy machine-translations of things.

i default to translation options that allow for translating in large chunks, mostly because i'm lazy. but since an .srt is, again, literally just a text file, they're easy to edit, and if you feel like some of the lines are weird or questionable or whatever, it's easy to change them if you can find a better translation.

so: some fast notes on machine translation options, because i don't know how much time most people spend thinking about this kind of stuff.

one sort of interesting thing to check out is the bing translator. it'll only do 1000 characters at once, but offers the rather interesting option of picking a level of formality. i can't always get it to work, mind, but it's useful especially for times when you're like 'this one line sounds weird'—sometimes the difference between what the translator feels is standard vs formal vs casual english will make a big difference.

very fast illustration of the difference in translations. the random video that i used to make sure i didn't miss any steps explaining things starts with '所以你第二季来'. here's how it got translated:

google: So you come to season 2

google's top alternative: So you come in the second season

bing's standard tone: So here you come for the second season

bing set to casual: So you're coming for the second season, huh?

reverso default guess: So you come in season two

reverso alternate guess: You'll be participating in season two

capcom: So you come in season two

yandex: So you come in the second season

systran: That's why you come in season two

deepl: That's why you're here in season two

vibe: So your second season is here

technically all conveying the same information, but the vibes are very different. sometimes one translator or another will give you a clearly superior translation, so if you feel like the results you're getting are kinda crap, try running a handful of lines through another option and see if it's better.

ok! this was an incredibly long post, and i've almost definitely explained something poorly. again, there are almost certainly better ways to do this, but these ways are free and mostly effective, and they work most of the time, and are better than nothing.

feel free to ask questions and i'll answer as best i can. (the answer to any questions about macs or iphones is 'i'm so sorry, i have no idea tho.' please do not ask those questions.)

[kimberlyannharts]

Ultraman: Rising!

Sure we all know the Power Rangers reboot has been passed on at Netflix but instead we have this hot new piece of toku instead: Ultraman: Rising! And I finally got the chance to check it out last night.

I know Ultraman is one of the big toku/kaiju genre staples but it's never really been on my radar of things to watch. I'm not sure why! I guess Super Sentai/Power Rangers just has more of the it factor that appeals to me. So because of that I really have no context to the story besides it's a guy who can turn into a giant silver superhero that beats up kaiju.........or maybe it's an alien who looks like a human and the silver superhero is his true form? or maybe the human and the silver superhero are two separate beings that share the same body? idk. It's probably all three of those things depending on the series. But this film was marketed as a standalone that new fans could enjoy AND....the big one.....it's ANIMATED, so I felt more inclined to check it out.

And it was really really good!! I enjoyed it a lot!

Spoiler-ish thoughts on the film below:

= Let's get this out of the way: the biggest draw to this was the animation and art direction, and yeah, it slaps. The textures and stylization (always love 2D painted effect animation on explosions and things) and lighting were a full-course meal and the scenes where they focused on Ultraman's shining eyes staring through a window or computer screen were just SO striking. To the point where I feel that if I got around to watching the actual live-action Ultraman, it might feel a little underwhelming in comparison. Oops

= It does kind of fall in the cliches of the "selfish guy learns maturity by having to be a father" plot (with bonus "son is estranged from his dad and mom is missing but they work to improve their relationship" sprinkled in) which makes me appreciate The Return even more (sorry, I'm still Returnpilled) but it's still charming and I can hope if we get more movies they give a little more focus to Ami and Emiko (speaking of which, I know they weren't doing a romance this movie, but Ami having a daughter and the movie being about Ken raising a daughter? oh you know it's happening and I'm here for this because they're both so hot)

= I think Ken is also a better example of the "showboating egotistical hero who learns to mature" than most because the movie isn't afraid to show him vulnerable even before his character development. I was genuinely surprised at that scene where he starts crying out of the stress of balancing his baseball career and figuring out Emi

= Apparently there was some discussion that the movie didn't bring up Ultraman's origins which, as someone who knows next to nothing about Ultraman, that didn't really bother me? Obviously I can still give more benefit of the doubt than people who don't know much about the tokusatsu/kaiju genre to begin with, but even so, I was still pretty down with the concept of "this guy has the ability to turn into a giant silver superpowered man and passed the ability down to his son" - and I think in the age of superhero blockbusters in general the idea isn't that farfetched that it requires more explanation. In any case it's a bit of a moot point since future movies are clearly going to talk about Ultras and their origins more, based on the stinger.

= Is Emi a clear kid-appeal character meant to be shown off in marketing and merchandising because of how squishy and cute she is? Yes. Is she just so fucking squishy and cute and my newest baby child? YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES. I am not immune to monster baby. I think it helps that I always found the old monster screeches cute and applying them to a baby babbling was kinda genius in its execution. And I'm glad they kind of got the obligatory "haha babies poop and are smelly and gross" jokes out of the way early (yeah they had the whole "acid reflux" thing in the second act but I've seen way worse in other media)

= The subtitles calling Sato's Ultra form "Ultradad" and his Ultra mustache were both really funny

= Obviously I knew Ken wasn't going to die when he threw himself on Dr. Onda's mech (btw the mech was sexy) but I definitely expected a little more than just a busted arm with how they were building up how the blast would have "destroyed them all" kdjkfdj maybe they cut to after he had recovered a bit. Though in general I'm not quite sure of how durable Ultraman is

= Kind of a milf. reblog

[xuune]

what did you use to make the bkdk animatic? and well, how long did it take you to make it? it flows so well with the song. it’s,, so cute. my heart, the way baku looks at deku.

ty!! glad you enjoyed watching it and i'm happy that it successfully conveyed the romance between them :]

programs i used were clip studio paint, storyboard pro, and premiere pro. i don't know the exact hours spent, but i finished it roughly within a day. storyboarding didn't take as long since i had enough references for poses (i.e. photos of my hands) to help me get thru it. and also bc i wanted my boards to be clear, not clean. most tedious part was compositing/editing the audio and effects like the blur.

here's my whole process if you wanted to know the specifics:

did my initial thumbnails in clip studio paint since i work better getting main ideas down first. i expanded on a few thumbnails later on:

then i used storyboard pro to draw the storyboards, added more panels in between the key moments, and did camera moves. i imported the song in the timeline to check for the timing i wanted:

since the animatic was already timed within storyboard pro, i just needed to composite subtitles, audio effects, and the blur vfx in premiere pro. my timeline looked like this:

for the audio transition from hearing it faintly thru their earphones to hearing it in clarity, i was inspired by this clip of baby driver. its a simple but neat audio transition of starting the song at a lower volume to raising it once you want to show BEING in the song with them rather than SEEING them listen to the song. originally, i was only gonna edit in the faint speaker/radio effect without transitioning into the volume raising + removing the radio effect, but watching it on playback made it feel very lackluster.

only minor tedious thing about adding blurs was just for this part since i had to mask around a specific area, rather than applying it on the entire thing like in the first scene with dk's vision blurring:

but thats pretty much it. its a very basic animatic, so it wasn't that labor intensive :]

[ask-artsy-oncie]

i would like to hear what Kit Cloudkicker's birthname was, with ur evidence

This is entirely me, overanalyzing what was, in fact, just Jymn Magon reusing a name that didn't get used for a character from an earlier project. Like I don't think a lot of thought went into his first name as opposed to his last name explicitly being something he made up, but I just Have Some Thoughts. And my evidence is mainly just analysis of the character, namely the way he's characterized in the pilot.

I think Kit is a rare case of having what is usually a nickname as a given name.

And this is because Kit is demonstrably a character who, literally from the moment we meet him, does not like being considered a child. This is not something he grows to hate, it's something he consistently showcases throughout the series and only really eases up on later.

So why, if he had every option to choose to nickname himself had he known his full name, would he go with the nickname that sounds exactly like the word "kid" when he could easily just insist people call him "Chris"? It just doesn't make sense to me, like I constantly hear Baloo say "kid" when the subtitles say it's meant to be "Kit", I thought he was calling him a pet name.

I also looked up the popularity of the nickname "Chris" versus "Kit" in the 1920's and 1930's (the decade Kit was born in and the decade Talespin takes place in) and, while "Kit" definitely used to be more popular than it is now, during that time, "Chris" is still undoubtedly more popular throughout history. If he was left with the name "Christopher", given what we know about how stubborn, immature, and independent Kit was when he met Baloo, I just don't think that would be the nickname he would have given himself.

I also think Kit was abandoned. Although the 1920's are generally characterized with capitalistic idealism, there were still plenty of recessions and poverty, including in the US and especially in US territories, post WWI, which is canon to the Talespin universe. Birthrates declined and it was not uncommon for people to abandon kids they could not afford to take care of. I think Kit was given a name but abandoned, as if one or both of his parents cared enough to name him, but couldn't keep him. I don't think Kit was left with a last name, and it's possible he just went around without one until he made it up, himself.

And this is only taking the show into consideration regarding his character and the setting. I could go on about how the context of Long Flight Home supports him having been abandoned but that would make this post even longer and also wasn't what you originally asked about lol.

I just think, if given the choice, this character would have chosen to call himself something else. And I also think that, just because of how clear so many points of the show make it that Kit "secretly" (or, I guess, inwardly) wants to be a part of a family despite outwardly desiring to be independent and recognized as an equal among adults, that it does make sense that he'd hold on to the single, solitary thing he has from his birth parents. Like, something that proves he did used to have a family. (Also like, if he did chose both his first and last name it would be even weirder if he deliberately chose to go by "Kit", you feel me?)

I'd bolster all this with direct references to specific episodes and clips or gifs or whatever but I'm on my phone and that's something I'm way more comfortable doing on a computer. Also the edibles are kicking in.

[publishinggoblin]

Indie Creation is...

Incredible, exhilarating, rewarding, but also hard, demoralizing, and disappointing.

I'm proud of so much of what I've accomplished. The number of other creatives I've been able to work with, to give work to, to pay! It's amazing. But keeping this ship going is hard work.

Today I got a rude email. It wasn't that big of a deal, really, but I was overly affected by it to start off my day. Someone had downloaded the Alleyman's Guidebook PDF from my site and had some... unnecessarily rude critiques.

Recently I downloaded the alleymans tarot guide, via your PDF download link. As I began to read through it I noticed several discrepancies between the cards listed in its table of contents, and the cards then outlined in the actual guide. An example would be the series of death cards; there are death cards in the guide that are labeled incorrectly from the same cards that are  outlined in the guide itself. Furthermore there are even a couple of death cards outlined in the guide, that are not listed in the table of contents at all. It's already an irritant that the download offered on your website appears to be an altered version of the guide, edited into a short form version to suit the taste of idk; Its a big step past irritation for the download offered on your website to be incorrect in addition to having been edited. It doesn't seem like too much to ask that there be one legitimate copy of the guide made available to the public for download, nor does it seem like a very difficult accomplishment.

To put it bluntly, what the fuck? The entitlement is a lot. The final line, that not only should my works be available free and publicly to people, but that it should be up to their standards? I don't owe anyone free ANYTHING, but I give my guides freely on my website for my decks and dice. (You can get those here!)

Their email was uncalled for, the tone, the repeated lines about being irritated with my lack of work and how this didn't "seem like a very difficult accomplishment." Really got under my skin.

And to be clear, of the issues they called out, only one was a real issue or mistake. In the Table of Contents for 137 cards, two cards had their pages swapped (they were within 2 pages of each other anyways) and two of the nine Death cards had their subtitle wrong.

But I have left the PDF as the exact print file that made the in print book out of respect to that time and work I put in to make it originally, given all the work I did alone on that impossibly large project.

All of which is to say, be kind yall! I receive way more kind words in emails and comments than rude ones, but as with anyone, the shitty ones stick in your teeth, a splinter in the skin. They're harder to ignore.

[ebtks-reviews]

High Tension(2005)

Sink Spoilers for High Tension(2005)!

Right after reviewing an awesome movie like the descent I get to review a shit movie with a homophobic premise! :D

High Tension is a French originating film released in 2003 then got a wider release with an English dub and English subtitles in 2005, thus, the 2005 release date.

This movie was bad and not just in a bad plot but beautifully shot but also in a shittily shot way. I don't like to criticize too many stylistic choices made by foreign films because I, someone born only 5 years before the release of this movie in America, won't understand the low budget earily 2000s French horror genre with amazing accuracy. I can only judge what was put Infront of me and it was... Bad. Like. Real bad.

I'll get my basic review out of the way then when can address this movie's homophobic and potential transphobic/ableist side.

Without all the gross bigotry this movie jerks off too, the movie itself is mid and didn't even get to the big set piece it was teasing the entire movie. It starts off with friends Marie and Alexia going to Marie's family's home they just purchased not 6 months ago. This fun friendly drive has a little bit the sapphic "undertones" this movie boasts but not explicitly. It's very clear to anyone with a gaydar that Alexia is supposed to be a butch lesbian and I originally thought she and marie were a couple, only later did I discover they were just friends during a late night kitchen conversation where Marie says she broke up with her boyfriend and asks Alexia when she'll try to get one. In the middle of this drive, the movie remembers it's a horror movie and dose a full neck twisting terminal whiplash 180° into n*crophilia having a random dirty crazy truck driver make a severed head give him head then throws it out the window. No warning. No reason.

I'm fully aware European films are notorious for being full of sex and sexual violence but this was unnessesary. It's clear this movie was inspired by things like Hostel and Saw. Grungy, dirty, exploitive and green. Saw is one of my favorite franchises, if not mostly for nostalgia reasons being some of my first horror movies, so you'd think this movie would be up lane. The movie wasn't shot badly and it wasn't boring necessarily but the big build up of expectations just wasn't there and the twist was both unexpected and nonsensical. The gross trucker guy breaks into the family home, kills the dad by shoving his head through the wood banister and taking it off with a dresser being shoved. I love inventive and intense kills that rock the audience and being one of the first kills of the movie (that we see), it wasn't too bad. The graphics could use some work as there was a very visible cut but this was definitely a low budget movie so I don't blame them for the split. However, instead of doing a nearly decapitation (which would of made sense), his head just explodes like it was under pressure. It really wasn't but ok. Then the mom is killed with a ton of stab wounds as our protag is hiding in their closet. Then he chains up the daughter/Marie and runs out into the field after her little brother. The guy finds him and shoots him and, through alot of confusing nonsense, eventually ends up with a chained and gagged Marie behind him in his big van and alexia hiding with him.

Then they get to a gas station, Alexia manages to hide in the store and when the guy walks in and asks the attendant for some booze, the guy kills the attendent and Alexia hides in some bathrooms. This movie, litterally stated by its own name, is supposed to be scarey and intense. However, I really just couldn't get into it enough to feel that tension and there were rarely any jumpscares that justified the tension with a punctual point. Even without knowledge of the stupid twist (I did a little research to know what kind of gore/violence/etc was in it for any potential triggering content but didn't get spoiled), I wasn't nervous or on edge. I wanted the protagonist and Marie to survive but I just was not super into it. The guy drives off with Marie, Alexia calls the cops then follows the van with the attendant's car. She ends up following the van down a dark path, somehow the van ends up behind her and starts ramming her, runs her off the road. Alexia gets out of the burning vehicle and runs to hide from the bad guy in some green houses. This was the first time the movie was actually tensionous for me. Alexia then fights with the guy, kills him with a pretty good and brutal death scene then gose and saves Marie.

Plot twist Marie pulls the knife on Alexia and calls her a psycho and runs away. Then the movie reveals the big "twist", Alexia is the big dirty bad guy and the movie keeps flipping between showing Alexia running after Marie and showing the big bad guy running after her. Marie hops in a car to hide with a guy, Alexia comes in and kills the guy and tries to kill Marie. It ends with marie escaping the car and when Alexia threatens her with the big saw on the cover, marie relents and tells alexia she loves her, they share a kiss, marie stabs alexia and it flashes forward to alexia in an asylum staring at Marie and scareing her then the movie ends. Basic synopsis. Now let's talk about why I call this movie base-level homophobic and nonsense. We'll start with the nonsense.

The way the movie is shot there is no way for Alexia to be the bad guy because it doesn't make any sense, unless some of those scenes are out of order or not real. How is she in the back of the truck busting out the door while also driving the truck. How is she in the car behind the van and in the van. How is she beating herself to death. The twist doesn't make sense unless you ignore big glaring time jumps and impossibilities. How did she get both the van to the woods and walk all the way back to the gas station, grab a whole ass mustang and drive that all the way back to the woods and intentionally crash it nearly ending her own life. The car's burning wreckage doesn't just dissapear. Of course the twist is unexpected, it doesn't even make any fucking sense! I'll bring up one failed plot point specifically though, that being that this whole movie, though not explicitly, seems to be suggesting that not only has Alexia been killing lots of women in the area (but it's never brought up in the movie) but also obviously taking them to a second location we, as the audience, never see. A whole 2/3rds of this movie is Alexia racing to free Marie from the bad guy whose taking her somewhere in a truck and we never know where or see where. All this build up for a location that doesn't exist and not in a cool emerald city way.

Finally, I'm gonna address the homophobia. As stated in many French reviews, this film implies lesbianism/Sapphism makes one insane. The inciting incident is litterally started by alexia seeing Marie in the shower naked by accident then rubbing one out to her then killing the whole family. This is not a Lowkey movie where the crazy killer just happens to be a lesbian, the whole twist is that she's a lesbian. It takes the very real violent and untrue stereotype that butch sapphics are all violent, abusive and predatory, especially towards femme sapphics and straight women. It makes a monster out of gender non-conforming women, often butches. It's homophobic and plays into the homophobic idea that butch lesbians are just like cishet men aka they won't take no for an answer from women. That masculinity is inherently predatory and straight women should fear butches the same way they fear men and that butches will rape, hurt and kill them to get them "like all gay sex freaks". They literally spell it out by switching between Alexia appearing as she does naturally, as a butch, and a big dirty hairy man. It is not a shocker that this movie was made by a cishet man.

The only other explanations that could be tied to why Alexia sometimes sees herself as a big dirty creepy man is due to 2 other reasons. One is DID , which some suggest since it would make her 3rd person views of the situation make sense but it could be easily waved away as her simply disassociating from her crimes or show her innocent subconscious fighting her evil consciousness. However, this is still a bigoted plot line as its ableist towards those with DID (who have no historical affection for violence or murder. Infact, those with DID are more likely to be murdered or taken advantage of. The idea that DID makes you violent is an old and deadly stereotype) and still homophobic. The second is that she's transgender and the big man is how she really wants to see herself. This is much less common as a theory and as a transgender person, this doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. There's no real suggestion that that's how she actually wants to be perceived and if it was the intention, it'd just be transohobic on top of the homophobia and ableism.

All in all, I did not enjoy this movie. It's mid and boring AT BEST without all the bigoted shit and fundamentally intolerable including it's stupid twist and lesbophobic undertones. It felt like, for once for real this time, the creator had an agenda and desire to harm lesbian/sapphicss and he succeeded in showing them in the most negative and some how even more bigoted light than he stsrted with.

0/10 sinks. Don't waste your money on this movie.

[taliesin-the-bored]

It was a musical, but...I am not beating the allegations.

I shall take this as an opportunity to ramble about Rómeó és Júlia, the subject of said allegations by @unstark, who may have created a monster (/j; thank you for doing so).

The first thing to know is that I haven't read Romeo and Juliet since middle school and liked it well enough then but wasn't really enthused because I liked the poetic elements but found the romance somewhat grating. However, I am a theater kid/opera nerd at heart, and looking at different versions of things and analyzing the connections, sometimes to an obsessive degree, is one of the things I live for (that's part of the lure of Arthuriana).

The second is that Rómeó és Júlia (ResJ) is fantastic, in large part because the cast is incredibly talented. I've seen all or a good portion of several different language versions of the musical, which originated in France as Roméo et Juliette (RetJ), and they all have good or decent but reasonably similar Juliets and mostly fine to mediocre Romeos. In addition to having a good Juliet, this Romeo, played by Dolhai Attila, was quite charming as an actor as well as a great singer so the rest have been mostly downhill. I am afraid, though, that like most of the people on ResJ/RetJ Tumblr, the characters I found most interesting were Mercutio and Tybalt, who both vary wildly from production to production. In ResJ, Mercutio (who fans call Zolicutio because he's played by Zoltán Bereczki) is a force of nature, and I did not properly appreciate that the first time I watched it. He sings, dances almost constantly, acts well, and raps in Magyar, and he never seems to stop or slack in energy until he dies. Tybalt, on the other hand, is a deeply tortured soul who's occasionally comedic in his melodrama (he does the Mr. Bean walk once) but has genuine pathos. I originally watched the first half without subtitles and did not realize the...ahem...concerning nature of his thoughts about Juliet, but that's in almost every version of the musical, and it is not as big a trigger warning as the obvious one, which is that Romeo and Juliet includes onstage suicide and murder, as well as references to sexual content. This is probably the first thing anyone learns about Romeo and Juliet, but I thought I should put that out there to be safe. Anyway, Szilveszter Szabó was vastly different than how I pictured Tybalt while reading the play, but he was excellent and brought a new perspective to the character. You love to see it. Also, ResJ Benvolio is a punk with the heart of a golden retriever, another far-from-the-play take which works in its context.

Now, the 2010 French version. I followed ResJ with the RetJ revival because John Eyzen's Mercutio is the second most popular Mercutio on Tumblr, after the inimitable Zolicutio, and I wanted to see what the hype was about. He is vastly, vastly different, both from how I imagined Mercutio and how Mercutio is in any other production. Eycutio alternates between stillness and over-the-top energy. He may or may not be bad mental illness rep. He may or may not be beholden to the madness-inducing entities of Chaos. Eyzen fully embraced the vibes of "La Follie" and the Queen Mab speech Mercutio has in Shakespeare to create a very unstable dude who revels in unpredictability and danger to a greater degree than Zolicutio and has probably won Best-Haired Veronese Man three years in a row. He has a love/hate relationship with Tybalt and flirts with him while fighting. (Zolicutio also flirts with Tybalt, but less in a I've-secretly-liked-you-since-we-were-twelve-but-also-hate-you-and-we-kissed-at-a-party-once-but-you-pretend-you-don't-remember-and-I'm-going-to-make-that-hard-for-you way than an I-bet-you're-into-me-and-also-that-you'll-hate-this-and-I-could-be-into-you-but-it's-not-clear-and-I-canonically-kissed-Romeo-but-didn't-seem-serious-about-it-and-I-rap-about-not-liking-romance-and-it-might-be-to-hide/drown/prevent-the-pain-or-I-might-be-aroallo-and-thriving way). Tim Ross's 2nd Tybalt looks and acts like the unlikely and maltreated test-tube child of George Michael and Cruella de Vil, and I'm going to leave it about that, because I have rambled too long without mentioning that Romeo's costume is exceptionally terrible in this one, that I really did not like Escalus, and that the Nurse was fantastic. All in all, what this one has to recommend it is the excellent Nurse, plus Tybalt and Mercutio's unevenly acted but ultimately interesting dynamic, which is the stuff of Fanlore pages.

I have not watched all of the 2001 French original, even though many people say Cécilia Cara is the best Juliet, because the other Juliets are also good and apparently a bald Mercutio is one thing I cannot take. (I could under certain conditions. If he were a young cancer patient, then that would add an urgency to his fervor for living life to the fullest, and a suspicion that he's going to die painfully soon whatever he does could influence his recklessness, but him being considerably older and more sophisticated than Romeo is weird). I might watch more of it, but it's low priority.

Apart from those, I've watched large parts of the Italian and Israeli ones, which I prefer to the French ones in acting but not in singing. The Italian one is a lot more dramatic than the Israeli one, which is maybe the least dramatic RetJ variant ever but pulls it off really well. The characters seem like normal people you would meet who try their best but get caught up in a tragedy bigger than they can understand. Of special note, as usual, is that ever-shifting scene, the duel between Mercutio and Tybalt, and this is the most original take on it I've seen. What sets it apart is that THEY DON'T EVEN DISLIKE EACH OTHER. You get the sense that they've had a lighthearted rivalry since they were kids but they're sort of friends and it's all a game to them. It's also the only version I've seen where those two actually have fencing swords, so the fight looks more realistic, emphasizing that they're playing with fire. When he realizes Mercutio is dying, Tybalt is visibly devastated and seems to lose the will to live. I don't usually cry at movies or shows, but that is the version which brought me the closest to crying.

I would like to watch the 2019 Toho version, since it comes highly recommended, but am not sure where to and might have to wait a while on that one. After I'm done with the Italian one, I intend to watch the Russian one, the German one, and the alternate cast recording of the Hungarian one. As for the English one...well, I've listened to a bit of it, and it was awful.

If you want to watch multiple versions at once or see which ones you might like, there is a great playlist on YouTube where someone edited together parts of the videos of different versions. If you want an incoherent-without-watching-the-full-thing but possibly still entertaining look into it, watch this compilation someone made, which is extremely funny if you've actually seen the full musical.

If you've read this entire semi-coherent ramble, you're a trooper. I hope it was vaguely interesting. Have a wonderful day!

it’s really easy to become obsessed with a shakespeare play you just have to watch one version of it and then read the play and then go mad trying to watch every possible version of it you can find and then study several centuries worth of performance history and controversy

[chicoriii]

Season 4, Episode 14 - Sentibulleur (Sentibubbler)

I just seen the episode today, because I wasn't looking forward for another Alya-centric one, I'm already sick of it. I did it only now when have more free time. It's the first time, since I'm a Miraculous fan, when I'm starting watching a completely new episode without feeling even a bit of excitation. I'm not gonna lie that I enjoyed it, I don't, because it's not my cup of tea. This is why this post is more about why I dislike Alya favouritism than Sentibubbler itself. But I need to clarify that I didn't enjoy the episode mostly because of personal taste, I'm not trying to say it's "objectively" bad (though opinions are never objective, only facts could be). If you love Alya's arc, it's completely understandable that you probably love this episode as well.

I thought it would be a DjWfi episode (to be clear, I haven't seen any trailers of it, only one screenshot, which was said to be from this episode, but I don't remember seeing that moment in it at all, and the ending card), but poor Nino was just a background character. This is literally an "Alya is amazing" episode in which she is saving the world with a very little help of Ladybug and even less of Chat Noir, who is treated more like an offending trash. After watching it, I see fan edits like that are even more accurate to describe season 4 (not made by me, I just stole it from Cartoon Apocalypse's video).

Adrien was supposed to be a deuteragonist and a second main character, but Alya is much more like ones than Adrien has ever been. He has never gotten as many episodes focusing on him as much like those with Alya in a season (and we can be sure, it's not the last one) and he has never be as much the main hero in a fight against villains in any of them. Instead of giving him more screentime, he's putted even more in the background than before, because Alya needs to shine. Why they can't do it without treating Adrien that much unfair? I'm not gonna hide that I hate it and it makes me feel that maybe I should stop watching the show, since it looks like it's not something I really enjoy anymore. Adrien is my favourite character, so I'm really pissed of that Alya is stealing his role. We will see, but once I will be sure that Alya favouritism is gonna last forever, I would consider stopping watching the show seriously. Especially that doesn't go hand in hand with good writing. In this episode nothing as much absurd like in Optigami happened, but I still have one big issue.

It's not a problem with Alya herself. I'm used to like her, even if she's been annoying me sometimes before S4. But I don't know what to think about her this season, since I have some issues with her writing. I just don't like the idea of as much favouritism any of the characters who are not the original main ones, especially if Adrien is treated that bad by the writing at the same time. I would say the same if it was Kagami, who is my third favourite character in the show, after Adrien and Plagg. As you see, I like the Japanese girl even more than Marinette, but I still don't think that making her more important than the protagonist would be okay (it would make no sense, but you know what I mean).

Besides, I've seen people speculating that Alya is going to fuse the fox with ladybug Miraculous in an episode in which Marinette is akumatised (if one will ever happen). Don't you see how much unfair to Adrien/Chat Noir it is? Alya is already getting much of special treatment, more than a character who was supposed to be the next most important one after the current Guardian of the Mother Box. An episode with Marinette as an akuma should be the one in which Chat Noir is saving her without help of any other heroes, just like she has saved him alone in Chat Blanc. If there was a fusion of the fox and ladybug, it would mean that's not a story mostly about Marinette and Adrien anymore. It would make it clear that the writers are not even try to hide the fact that's now it's Alya the second most important character. Adrien could be the third one at best, Chat is only a sidekick of the Ladies, not really a hero equal to Ladybug anymore. Besides, episode like that is most probably the only chance to see Tikki using her power without a wielder. Wouldn't it really interesting to see what bad happens when Tikki is using Lucky Charm all by herself?

And to be fair, this season has really way too much Alya generally, I'd like to see more other heroes, not just Rena Rouge and Rena Rouge over and over again. I want more new Miraculous wielders and since Ladybug is calling the old ones (though she definitely should not do it), I want to see them in action too. We need to get a full transformation sequence of Ryuuko at least once. But the more episodes they are released, the less I believe it would ever happen. Good thing that they found few seconds to show Chat's sequence (only a second time in 10 episodes!), but still no Cataclysm. I wonder if they are even going to show it after season 3.

I have no idea what writers are planning to do. If they're want Alya to be a permanent Miraculous holder who is treated like co-guardian by Marinette forever, why they write her that way? Why isn't she really noble and careful? Why all those red flags she's giving Marinette (those she always ignore anyway): like letting Mr. Ramier know that Ladybug's the Guardian now, though she asked her to keep it as a secret, or stealing a Miraculous that almost made Ladybug's identity exposed. Are any of those events be relevant later? Are they there to show that saying Alya everything about the Guardian things and giving her the fox Miraculous permanently are bad decisions? If yes, what's the purpose of Sentibubbler? This episode doesn't seem to be really significant, it's more like another one fan service for Alya stans. The previous ones were actually important, this one could be missed without much a loss for the plot. The only reason it could be seen as significant is to make Marinette letting her guard down even more. But isn't she extremely careless already? After revealing her identity, she immediately started to tell Alya all the Guardian secrets, gave her a code for the Miracle Box, as well as the Miraculous permanently, despite her identity being exposed and all the wrong things she has done. Marinette is already dealing completely reckless with Alya, there's no reason to make her even more. Besides, that dream can't be a prophetic one, right? I remember that adult Bunnix really believed that exposing Ladybug's identity is something what Alya is able to do (from her time at least), but I think it's impossible to happen in real. That's why I see this episode as the most "fillerish" from all of this's season those have been released till now. Other ones introduced new characters or Miraculous wielders at least, nothing really new and crucial happened in this one. There's nothing bad in fillers, but why another Alya-centric one? Why not focusing on a character who hasn't been favoured this season instead?

The most stupid thing in this episode is that Rena Rouge made an illusion in which Ladybug says that she won't give the Miraculous to her anymore, for two reasons. One is that Gabriel bought that very weak lie without questioning it at all. It's clearly a plot armor. I know that they tend to make Gabriel very dumb when they need it from the beginning, but it's extremely stupid even to him. Hey, Gabriel, you know Rena Rouge's identity for some time now and Ladybug has been already giving Rena the fox few times before after her identity being exposed. Why that sudden decision? Isn't it suspect? Second is that it's been portrayed as a clever thing, while it makes Alya unable to be Rena Rouge anymore, if they don't want to show to Shadow Moth that was a lie. I'm not talking only about the battles, Rena can't be seen in public, since Ladyblog is not the only place which is showing content about the heroes. So then there's no reason for Alya to keep the fox anymore. Unless I interpret it wrong, and Marinette doesn't think it would make Gabriel stop going after Alya. But to me it looked like that and that's also make Marinette dumb anyway, because she is still unable of seeing how dangerous it is for her best friend. Alya's plan worked once, but it doesn't mean it would work again, once he discovers the lie, it would make him even more suspicious of a bond between Rena Rouge and Ladybug. Marinette is risking not only safety of Paris and the whole world, but also safety of her best friend. Why everyone is able to see that obvious thing, not only the girls but also all of the Kwamis? I'm not going to change my opinion that they are dumbing down all the characters who are involved in it and that's just bad and lazy writing.

And where's Su-Han when he's needed. I've been working on the English subtitles for the French dubbing of Furious Fu recently and now I remember that he said that he's going to observe Marinette and take the box from her is she makes a slight mistake. She's keeping making bad decisions, but he still isn't showing. That was a lie? Because if he doesn't see anything wrong in how's Marinette is dealing with her guardian duty, I'm gonna to lose the rest of my faith in the writers.

--------

I'm so sorry. I wanted to be active on Tumblr at least a bit after seeing this episode, but I still don't feel motivated. It's painful to say that season 4 is mostly a disappointment to me, especially that I hate the biggest story arc of it.

[eagles-translated]

Analyzing the writing of Eagles

Here's a post I've been wanting to make for a while! I've expressed my thoughts on some of the storylines in previous posts, but I've never done a complete post on the writing of the whole show. I've divided this post into separate parts, focusing on each season and its plot points. Keep reading to see my analysis of the writing in Eagles! 👇 Word Count: 18k

If you've stumbled upon this post from the Young Royals or the Beartown tag (tagged them since I've drawn some parallels from those shows), here's a brief summary of what Eagles is, which you can watch with English subtitles here. This post contains Eagles spoilers from 1x01 - 3x10.

Eagles is a Swedish TV show that revolves around a few teenagers living in the Swedish ice hockey town Oskarshamn while experiencing friendship, love, and rivalry on the ice.

To start this off I would like to say that I have no experience with professional screenwriting and if anything, this is just a way for me to procrastinate on actually writing my own projects.

I love experiencing new stories and when I discover one I really like it's just natural for me to branch off with "what ifs" and to start wondering how the story would've turned out if some things were changed. Sometimes it's with a storyline improvement in mind, and other times it's just out of plain curiosity.

You might feel like this post is leaning towards the critical side, and I can definitely understand why since there are a lot of small details that I've picked apart from all seasons. I added a section for each season with things that I thought were really well done so this post wouldn't be too negative.

I actually did enjoy all seasons and I feel like the quality of not just the writing but every single thing has steadily increased each year.

Season 1: Tropes and clichés

Eagles premiered its first season in 2019 and was, despite many negative reviews, a big success among its target audience. Every episode on SVT Play amassed around 700 000–800 000 views and there didn't seem to be any doubt that the show would get renewed.

What the critics had issues with were that "Eagles rarely takes the unexpected path, and feels like a slightly soulless product of studied target group thinking a little too often," (Karolina Fjellborg in Aftonbladet) and "In Eagles, the characters seem to be locked in the role of a "teenager" but the humanity is missing. They've simplified the construction of the character," (Django Lorentzson in MovieZine).

Eagles was unfortunate enough to constantly be compared to SKAM in its infancy, and that's a tough comparison to live up to. SVT sort of shot themselves in the foot as they were the ones who contributed to it. While the show was still in the casting process, SVT wrote an article hyping the show up as a Swedish SKAM (which has since been edited, but led many to falsely believe that it would involve all the familiar SKAM characters with some hockey elements sprinkled in).

So, why exactly did critics think the first three episodes of the show were predictable and soulless? Well, it's pretty simple. They'd seen it all before. The setting, the characters, the storylines—just in different TV shows and movies.

Season 1 for me is nostalgic and very enjoyable despite its clichéd nature. I also felt like I'd seen the show before due to its generic storylines, but there is a reason why tropes are tropes and why clichés are clichés. It's because they're tried and true, and actually somewhat good writing tools as long as you expand on them. The keyword here is to expand—a story doesn't magically become good simply because you mimic something another writer has done. Tropes are fine to use but you can't just apply them and stop there. Everything in a story needs to be developed in order to be good.

It's safe to say that it's pretty much impossible to write a story without any tropes that have been used before. Striving to avoid clichés at all costs in hopes of making your story as original as possible is harder than it sounds, and almost impossible to boot. Here's a great piece of advice for aspiring writers written by a user on Carvezine:

[...] if you look down at your story and are worried it’s already been told before – don’t spend another second thinking about it. It has. A million times. The only difference is that it hasn’t been told by you. Accept that regurgitation is part of writing, and just do your best not to regurgitate the same way as the guy next to you. We’d all do well to acknowledge there is at least a portion of our stories that are really someone else’s. [...] Beyond that, write with the motivation that if you don’t get around to telling your story, eventually somebody else will.

Even the greatest books have storylines with some clichés. And that's not really a bad thing, either. Think about it. How many times have you decided to binge a TV show solely because it reminded you of another series? Or picked up a book simply because you love a good enemies to lovers romance, a battle between good and evil fantasy, or whatever it might be?

I found this article from Masterclass that perfectly describes what tropes are and why they're used. It's written from the perspective of novel writing but it is still applicable.

A trope in literary terms is a plot device or character attribute that is used so commonly in the genre that it’s seen as commonplace or conventional. For example, a trope in superhero stories is a villain who wants to take over the world. Tropes are popular for a reason—if something has been written about over and over again, there’s a good chance that it’s something readers enjoy reading! Tropes can be helpful, but a novel made up only of tropes will quickly start to feel stale and predictable to readers. That’s why you need to read up on tropes—and then innovate. Deliberately taking a favorite trope and turning it on its head is a great way to put your own unique spin on the genre and keep your readers interested.

Eagles, in its first season, didn't really do a lot of expanding upon the tropes they used and it's understandable that they were still trying to find their footing. I can also imagine it's difficult to do so when you only have eight 20 minute episodes in the season.

However... There definitely should've been more work put into these characters to make them their own. It's tricky, yes, but still achievable if you don't abandon them in their cookie-cutter form and try to actually decorate them with something unique and fresh.

So, how did they write their characters?

Felicia's character and backstory

To start off, Felicia is a famous influencer known for starring in a reality show next to her former NHL professional father. There's already a clear disconnect because it's hard to relate to a character with such a public past and large following. But it is 100% possible if you let the viewer know the character has humane qualities just like the person watching the show.

Look at Wilhelm from Netflix's Young Royals, another Swedish TV show. Wilhelm is the prince of Sweden, set to attend a prestigious elite boarding school, and is the heir to the throne. That doesn't exactly sound like a relatable scenario, does it? And yet the writers make it work because when we're introduced to Wilhelm we realize he's just like everybody else. He wants a normal life, he latches on to his older brother for support, he has anxiety, and he struggles between following his heart versus doing what his family is expecting him to do. A lot of these factors are relatable among the audience.

So, let's look at Felicia Kroon. She is in many ways portrayed as the main character of the show. Eagles starts off with her family having moved to Oskarshamn and the following episodes focus on her developing relationship with Ludde as well as her traumatic past. There's almost too much focus on Felicia here, and I'll get back to that.

Comparing Felicia to Wilhelm from Young Royals, they're both well-known teenagers with famous parents. Of course they have different circumstances considering Felicia is Instagram popular and Wilhelm is a blood royal, but in the grand scheme of things they're similar. Felicia is even referred to as a "Kroon princess" because of her last name Kroon bearing a resemblance to the Swedish word kronprinsessa, meaning crown princess.

The students of their respective schools treat their attendance as a big deal when they first arrive and then Wilhelm and Felicia start spending time with the "popular" crowd despite not really fitting in there.

I personally found it easy to relate to Wilhelm but difficult to relate to Felicia. Some people may feel differently, but her character is basically a popular party girl who attracts the attention of one of the school's star players and is "welcomed" by the popular crowd on her first day of school. I put welcome in quotation marks because Klara, the leader of the girl group, isn't exactly the most welcoming person but she does welcome Felicia to the school. My point is, Felicia doesn't have a lot of relatable traits in the first episodes.

Felicia then goes on a date with the guy she's met, Ludde. Okay, so there haven't been that many layers to her character yet. We're at the third episode and so far she's been kind of flat.

Near the end of the third episode, we get some depth to the character and we hear her back story.

Felicia: [...] We don’t have a good relationship, my dad and I. And that’s probably why we moved from the beginning, because he’s an idiot. We’ve never been close, but… Elias and he have been since they’ve had hockey. [...] And mom has been really involved, so… And I… They’ve never really cared about me. And… And I haven’t really been a problem either. I’ve had good grades, good friends, and… I don’t know why I’m telling you this. I don’t talk about it to people. [...] I just felt so fucking lonely and invisible. I was worried all the time, couldn’t sleep, panicked because I couldn’t sleep… So I started going out more. It went overboard. It started affecting school, my grades slipped… I started taking things to be able to concentrate. Everybody does stuff like that. And then I still couldn’t sleep, so… I started mixing with sleeping pills. And there’s always wine and booze at our place. I don’t want this to come out, that’s really important. Ludde: Of course, I’d never tell. Felicia: One night, something happened that made me… Act out of control more than usual. I woke up the next morning in the hospital. So they sent me to rehab. It was really rough for mom and dad that I was suddenly in focus. When I woke up, dad wasn’t even there. Ludde: What made you take too much that night? Felicia: I’d forgotten my phone at home, so I ran up and got it while my friends were waiting in an Uber. Then I came into the hall and I heard noises. You know, like, when somebody is doing it. Ludde: Okay. Felicia: And I thought it was really weird because mom wasn’t home. So I went into the living room… Dad was fucking my mom’s best friend. On the rug below the couch.

This gives Felicia more layers and does separate her from every other "popular pretty party girl" trope that you see on TV. But this is a huge info dump, and that's a problem. I would've liked to see this happen on-screen instead of only being told what went down. The golden rule of Show don't tell, as people like to say.

Show, don’t tell is a writing technique in which story and characters are related through sensory details and actions rather than exposition. It fosters a style of writing that’s more immersive for the reader, allowing them to “be in the room” with the characters. In his most commonly repeated quote, Chekhov said, “Don’t tell me the moon is shining. Show me the glint of light on broken glass."

This back story could've been more impactful that way if, perhaps, the show began with Felicia in a hospital bed with a strong headache and hazy flashbacks of that night where she saw her dad sleeping with another woman. Then we're introduced to her mother and brother sitting next to the hospital bed tired and worried, and Felicia notices her dad isn't present. They tell her Felicia is being sent to rehab and then there's a time-jump before we see the Kroon family having moved to Oskarshamn.

That's just an idea I threw together at the top of my head, but you get my point. It would've been more interesting if we knew from the beginning that Felicia had a traumatic past like this, leading the viewer to want to know more about what actually happened.

We did get a brief flashback at the very beginning of the show—we see Felicia partying with her friends and taking some pill before lying unconscious on the ground. There's also a glimpse of Ludde's car accident with Andreas yelling at him to get out of there.

That segment only lasts for around 45 seconds and it's easily forgettable upon your first viewing of the show. It's also hard to even recognize Felicia in the dark nightclub setting with the flashing lights. Some dialogue in that short scene could've made it more memorable, because I found that when I first watched season 1 I remembered Andreas yelling at Ludde despite that being drowned out by the music.

Ludde's backstory was way more well-done, in my opinion. We see him having crashed the car and bleeding from his head. He looks terrified and almost frozen by fear, needing to be pulled out of the car by a panicked Andreas yelling at him to bring Ludde back to the reality of the situation. We see Andreas yelling and pointing, telling Ludde he needs to run now. It's more powerful when we get to see it.

And in episode 8, when we learn the truth of what happened, it's not a long and dragged-out monologue. It fits into what's going on in the story. Felicia and Ludde have known each other for a few months now and are much closer than they were on their first date. They've had disagreements and fights, but at this moment they're in a good place.

And it feels like the right moment for Ludde to come clean about what happened to him.

Ludde: Hey… There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you. Felicia: What? Ludde: About… My brother. It’s not really as everybody thinks. Felicia: What do you mean? Ludde: That night when he crashed… It wasn’t Andreas who drove the car. We were on our way home from one of his buddies. We’d had some fun drinking. And then… I’d just started learning how to drive. So I nagged and nagged at him. Felicia: So you were the one driving? But he’s an adult- Ludde: He was drunk as hell. He was going to leave the car, but I thought it was so cold and it was only three blocks away so I thought that I could drive. Felicia: And what happened? Ludde: It was slippery and really dark… And a car came. I hit the brakes in time, but it… Yeah. Right after he pushed me out of the car and yelled that I should run home straight away. He really didn’t want me to get into trouble. So, yeah… It was fucking bad luck. I want to just gather everybody and scream that it was me. Felicia: Hey… I love you. Ludde: I love you too. I love you so fucking much.

As Ludde is telling Felicia what happened as the other car came, we see a silent flashback of it along with Ludde's voice narrating. We see Andreas pulling him out of the car and yelling. Cutting to this scene that we've already seen in the beginning but might've forgotten about is a smart choice and makes the story Ludde is telling more real. We see it unfolding as Ludde is telling this to Felicia. It's a powerful scene.

We then see Felicia hugging Ludde from behind, a sign of support with no words needed. She tells him she loves him and Ludde says it back. It's an honest and sweet moment that comes at a perfect time in the story. It's not too early like Felicia's backstory was.

I sort of understand why Felicia's backstory was info-dumped because it was right before the drama of Mats accidentally spilling the beans to Klara's family. They wanted the audience to know what happened to her early, so they could move on to the plot point of Felicia thinking Ludde was the one who told everybody.

But we don't need every single detail of Felicia's story. Let it come organically. The only thing that was really needed was for Ludde to know that Felicia had struggled with drug use and was sent to rehab for this storyline to work. The reason why could've been saved for later, and it would've made for a more interesting reveal. Maybe just have Felicia allude to seeing something that night, but don't tell the viewers right away what it was.

In 1x06, Felicia is incredibly upset when she hears that her dad was the one who told Klara's family what happened to Felicia in the US. And rightly so.

Felicia: Don’t you get it? You ruined everything! Mats: What? Felicia: You told the whole damn town about me! About the US! Mats: I really didn’t mean to disclose you- Or disclose us. Sorry. Hey, sorry. Flisan, please. Hey. Felicia: Did you tell them you fucked mom’s best friend too? Yes, I saw you.

If this had been the moment where we first find out what Felicia saw, it would've been more surprising. Our reaction would've mirrored Mats's, and it would've been more heart-wrenching to know that Felicia was traumatized by an affair her dad had only to be cheated on herself in the very same episode.

Ludde's problematic nature

One of the scriptwriters of Eagles, Fanny Ekstrand, was interviewed in the behind-the-scenes documentary Edvins Skådisdrömmar. In this interview, she states:

Ludvig, he's the one who's been the easiest to retain the personality of. Because he's so... He's calm and friendly, but he makes dumb decisions. Ludvig isn't a typical hockey guy. He has a bunch of other qualities—music being one of them.

I found myself slightly disagreeing with this take, despite knowing Ekstrand is literally a part of the writing team and most likely helped shaped Ludde's personality. I just interpreted Ludde's character (at least in season 1) differently.

I also didn't find him that much different from any other typical hockey guy just because he happens to have another interest. That's a bit like saying Archie Andrews from The CW's Riverdale isn't a stereotypical jock because he also plays the guitar.

In season 1, we see Ludde break into the rink because he wanted to test out the ice. He just loves hockey that much. He also uses it as a way to express frustration and anger, which we saw in 1x05. He flirts with the new girl in school and in the beginning he even uses it as a tactic to gain a position on the main hockey team. This was confirmed by the creator Stefan H. Lindén in his Q&A, where he said:

My idea has always been that Ludde was blown away by Felicia and that he really likes her but that they both initially interacted and met to go swimming because Felicia knew it would piss her dad off and Ludde knew that it might throw Elias off since they were competing for the same position in the team.

I would say that the characteristics of a typical hockey guy would be someone like Adam—obsessed with the sport, flirting with girls, going to parties, and just spending a lot of time in the rink. Ludde checks off all of these points. However, I will give this the benefit of the doubt since season 2 Ludde seems to change a lot and it's easier to interpret him as the calm and friendly guy he was supposed to be in season 1.

So to me, Ludde wasn't calm and friendly at all. In season 2, yes, but when we're first introduced to him?

Ludde shows anger issues and violent tendencies in 1x05 when he head-butts Elias and breaks his nose. It's violent and messy. He then yells at Felicia to leave when she's trying to communicate with him and belittles her drug problems solely because she's rich. To me, Ludde wasn't a nice person in 1x04 either when he let his friends make suggestive comments about Felicia and what she was like in bed.

Omar: I can tell you one thing - you’re not borrowing my towel today cause I don’t know where that dick has been. Adam: It’s nice when she sucks, right? Omar: Can’t you tell us some more, does she bite you or is it just really, really nice? [...] Adam: Is that what you sound like when you’re coming? What does she sound like?

This was described as "locker room talk" and the writers probably wanted to show an authentic view of what being a hockey player is like. I understand that. But it's a little problematic when it's later swept under the rug and treated like something that we're just supposed to accept.

Elias: [...] it’s not very fun to sit in a hockey locker room where people are talking about how nice it is to fuck my sister. Felicia: Ludde would never say anything like that, you know that. Elias: He wouldn’t? It’s a locker room, Felicia. That’s the only thing they talk about.

It did not sit right with me how Felicia seemed to be the one Elias blamed in this scene, and Ludde and his friends never faced any real consequences for what they said. Elias did lash out at Ludde, but there was no severe consequence for Omar and Adam's comments.

Compare this scenario to another Swedish show, Beartown on HBO. Beartown is similar to Eagles and focuses on a hockey team in a small town with one of the star players hooking up with a girl who's recently moved to their small town.

This girl is raped by the hockey player. And because of his status as the star of the team, he has almost the whole school behind him. The girl however is labeled as a lying slut. It's unfair and frustrating to see it happen, but it's authentic and done in a way that doesn't glamorize the ugly side of hockey culture.

Eagles is not as dark as Beartown so this comparison might be a little unfair. Beartown's whole storyline did revolve around this incident while in Eagles the hockey culture is treated more as a side thought. It's like they decided to throw in a taste of what goes on in a locker room just to create drama without really addressing it further.

Beartown did a much better job of portraying the problematic and toxic elements of hockey culture without making it seem like it's just something normal that we should accept. It was honest and raw. If you haven't seen the show, this short video does a great job of depicting how much thought was put into the toxic hockey culture, winning mentality, and subsequently hockey players thinking they're entitled to do whatever they want.

So, to respond to Ekstrand's quote from Edvins Skådisdrömmar—I did not experience Ludde as a "good guy" who only makes dumb decisions at all. In season 1, he's a bad person for letting his friends sexualize a girl he likes and letting her brother hear their disgusting comments. He's a bad person for fighting with her brother and later yelling at her, saying her drug issues are insignificant despite acting supportive of her only two episodes earlier.

I don't mind conflicts like these because they drive the story forward. I didn't particularly like Ludde in season 1 because of the reasons I just stated, but they're necessary to create drama and make the show interesting.

It's just weird to me how one of the writers is saying that Ludde is a calm person and a good guy when that is not at all how I interpreted his character.

Eagles is a show targeted towards a young audience, among them probably a lot of easily influenced pre-teens. What kind of message does this send to them when the guy letting his friends sexualize a girl he's slept with and on top of that laughing at their inappropriate comments is referred to as the good guy?

Klara is mean... What else?

From the moment we're introduced to Klara, it seems obvious that she'll play a living and breathing version of the infamous Alpha Bitch trope. She's also a prime example of the basic Popular is Evil trope and has her own Girl Posse consisting of Sara and Amie.

Klara feels threatened by the arrival of a potential new popular girl, Felicia, and does everything in her power to bully Felicia to show dominance. She barely shows any good sides of herself.

The only instance I can think of where we sort of see season 1 Klara in a positive light is when she talks to Amie in 1x05 about their friendship and then accompanies Amie to her audition for the school band.

Klara: Ever since Felicia started at school… It’s felt like you only hang out with her and that you’ve forgotten about me. She like took you from me. Amie: But I haven’t forgotten you. Klara: No, but do you get what I mean? Amie: I get it, but I haven’t forgotten you. Klara: No, I know. Amie: I know, but it just turned out that way when school started. Klara: Okay. Amie: But I’m sorry. Klara: It’s fine. Amie: Are you sure? Klara: Yeah. You can make it up to me when you go on your world tour.

Klara is really supportive of Amie's musical endeavors, but she also uses her support as a way to alienate Felicia from the girl group. It's very on the nose and kind of feels suffocating in the way it's written.

Klara: Amie, did you remove the clips? Amie: Yeah, she said they weren’t good. Klara: She’s just jealous. It’s so obvious. I mean, I’m jealous. You sing absolutely amazing. I don’t know, I just think it was really rude of her to sit in the cafeteria and criticize you like that Amie: Yeah, maybe. But she apologized. Klara: But still. That clip of you in the bathroom… Like… Sorry, but I’d be so mad if someone had posted something like that of me. I mean, you were standing there without makeup, completely non-fixed up. And the whole thing with her filming you without you knowing. That’s really weird. You don’t do that. Don’t you think so?

I'm sure there are plenty of people who act like this in real life. And maybe that's part of the problem, because Klara in season 1 really isn't an interesting character. We've met this person before and we know exactly what she's like. There's nothing new to discover. So season 1 is essentially just Klara being petty and rude every chance she gets, and to me it felt like a large part of her character was written just to stir up drama.

In 1x06, we see Klara backstab Amie by filming her making out with Ludde at her Halloween party. But I thought it was established in 1x05 that Klara feels like Amie was taken from her? And if Klara actually cared about Amie and didn't want to lose her as a friend, she wouldn't just stand by and watch with her phone recording the whole thing. It doesn't make a lot of sense.

Klara even made that whole point about how it was really weird of Felicia to film Amie without her knowing. So why would Klara do it, when she expressed that's weird and not something a normal person does? Is that supposed to be foreshadowing? Because if so, that's a clear contradiction and not how foreshadowing works.

When Sara happens to see the video on Klara's phone she immediately says that Klara should delete it.

Sara: What is that? Did they know you were filming? Klara: No, of course they didn’t know. Sara: Oh my god, Klara. You should probably delete it. Klara: I’m going to! But it’s crazy, right? Sara: Yeah, god. But seriously, delete it. Klara: I’m going to.

So Klara says she's going to delete the video. But it's still unclear why it was filmed in the first place if Klara insists that she's going to delete it. It's not like she filmed it just to show it to Sara either, since Sara wasn't meant to see it and only saw it by chance while swiping through Klara's photos on her phone.

It doesn't make sense for Klara to film a video like that of her best friend that she's supposed to care about. It doesn't make sense for Klara to film a video of anybody without their knowledge when she previously made a big deal about how you shouldn't do that.

What Klara's character is, is a bad attempt at the classical mean girl. She's clichéd, boring, and full of tropes.

Even her eventual character development is riddled with tropes like the Heel Realization where a character realizes they're actually one of the bad guys. This realization seems to come in 1x08, where Felicia calls Klara out on her behavior.

Felicia: You know what, Klara. I’m so fucking tired of your fucking comments. You didn’t get to be Lucia this year. Poor you! Was dad unable to fix that? Cry then, Klara. Cry. You’re so fucking mean. Everybody here is tired- Everybody here is scared of you. Even those who liked you once, they can’t take it anymore. Klara: That’s not true. It’s not true. Felicia: Yes, everybody is scared of you. You know what? Look around. Show people some fucking respect. Klara: Well say something, Amie! Amie: What is there to say? She’s right.

Klara needed a wake-up call like this. It's just unfortunate that she goes back to her mean girl behavior and posts the video after Amie insinuated that Klara wasn't a real friend. Klara already knew that Amie felt that way since she said Felicia was right in her assessment of everybody being scared and tired of Klara. So wouldn't it have made more sense for Klara to post the video right after that moment instead of during Amie's performance?

Or rather, why not pull a Subverted Trope and not have Klara post the video at all after she realized how horrible she'd been acting? That would've made me respect her so much more and be a great introduction to her character development in season 2.

The Halloween Incident

To me, the whole Halloween episode was questionable. First off, we never got actual confirmation of what happened in that room between Amie and Ludde. Some viewers insist that they only made out and others believe they went all the way. Here's what the creator of the show, Stefan H. Lindén, had to say about this in a Q&A post he did:

I think if you went into the writers room of Eagles and asked all of us what really happened in that room [between Ludde and Amie at Klara's Halloween party] we would all have different answers.  I know what happened, but I’m not sure we will ever truly know for sure, unless Ludvig or Amie eventually are open enough to admit to anyone what really happened.

This is kind of a vague answer, but that's fair considering that when Stefan did this Q&A the latest episode that had been released was 2x05 and he probably didn't want to spoil anything. However, looking back at this answer knowing how the season turned out I still feel like it's unclear what happened. It's also strange that Stefan seems to be saying that they never actually decided what happened between them since the writers "would all have different answers".

1x06 was just an odd episode for me overall. Lots of things felt rushed and underdeveloped. Let's not forget that this episode also contained, in my opinion, some of the weirdest lines in the whole show (along with Elias's strange monologue about plague vampires).

Ludde: Hey, I only have like 3%. Do you have any power? Adam: Are you wondering if I have a power bank in my shorts? It’s coming-

Ludde: I like shellfish. (said to Amie, wearing a lobster costume)

Up until this episode, Ludde has shown zero interest and attraction towards Amie. We are basically told that Ludde only hooked up with Amie because he was so drunk that he practically had no idea what he was doing.

In 1x02, we see a drunk Amie try to kiss Tobbe and upon getting rejected she moves on to make out with Adam. She gets overly friendly when she's drunk so the fact that she makes out with Ludde later is... Weird, but not entirely out of the realms of possibility.

Ludde on the other hand is moping about Felicia all night. He regrets how he yelled at her at the end of 1x05 and it shows. He's trying to drown all his problems in alcohol and it seems to be working, because when it enters his system he seems to be on top of the world.

What I found kind of ambiguous in this incident was if Ludde even remembered what happened that night. He was drinking so much compared to Amie, who doesn't really need as much alcohol before she reaches her "overly friendly" state. I thought for sure that Ludde was oblivious to the situation when he woke up in his bed the next day and immediately messaged Felicia.

There are just so many questions to unpack here that were never answered. What prompted Amie and Ludde to go into that empty room? Why did Ludde come with her? Why didn't Adam seem to care about this, when he'd been sitting next to Ludde and taking care of him most of the night? And as I wrote before, why would Klara film this video of her best friend when she previously expressed that was a weird thing to do?

There's just too much in 1x06 left unanswered. The Amie/Ludde hook-up was a badly executed plot twist because there wasn't anything hinting that this would happen. It just came out of nowhere.

Unbalanced screentime and Elias's wasted potential

A large portion of season 1 was dedicated to Felicia. This was kind of a let-down for me since I thought more focus would be placed on Eagles as a hockey team (after all, that's what the show is named after). I also thought more attention would be on Elias since he's the talented star player who's supposed to live up to his father's legacy.

The show starts with a couple radio hosts hyping up how Elias Kroon, son of the legendary Mats Kroon, is going to join the Eagles hockey team.

Host #1: [...] It’s finally official. New center in the junior team - Elias Kroon, son to the legendary NHL-pro Mats Kroon, who has now chosen to move home from the US to his hometown where Elias will play in his father’s old club Oskarshamn Eagles. Host #2: This is so freaking cool. Who doesn’t want a Kroon on their team? Host #1: We hope that he’ll take a spot on the A-team.

But we don't learn a lot about who Elias actually is in the first episode. The attention is on Felicia and her interest in Ludde.

Elias is so discarded that he barely has anything to say in the first couple of scenes we see him in. Here are all his eight lines in 1x01, and I'm not even joking.

Elias: Yes. Elias: Shut up. Elias: Ow. Elias: It's fine. Elias: Really? Elias: Fucking hell. Elias: I'll stay here. Elias: No, it's fine.

In 1x02 he has even fewer lines. Three, to be exact, and all he says is that his injury is a sprain and that it's fine. Essentially just an echo of two of the lines he had in the previous episode. It's nothing new.

There's a way to have a character stand out when they don't have many lines, but Elias just fades into the background with every other extra. There's too much time spent on having other characters talk about Elias than us actually getting to know him. So when we do meet him, it's pretty underwhelming.

Compare Elias to his sister who gets so much more attention from the writers. I don't really understand why either, since I thought Elias was a much more interesting character than his influencer sister. Felicia's character only seems to revolve around a guy. I wonder how many times we've seen that before?

In 1x02 we see the Eagles hockey team play their first game, but Elias is unable to play and has to sit in the stands for what was supposed to be his debut match. Why? Because during a hockey practice session in 1x01, Adam rams his stick into Elias to purposely injure him. I mean, fair enough. Adam is trying to get Ludde on the main team since he and Elias are competing for the same position. The shot of Adam smiling after Elias sprains his wrist is a bit too on the nose, but whatever.

What this does is minimize Elias' presence in season 1 by a lot. We don't see the son of the legendary NHL professional play an actual game until 1x05, which is more than halfway into the season. It's kind of disappointing but I understand the injury is done to dramatize his situation.

Elias barely gets his own storylines in the first few episodes. He just has things done to him instead of acting on his own. When we do see him on screen he gets injured by Adam, reprimanded by his father, and later told he can't play in his debut game.

His sweet side (or any side of him, really) isn't shown until 1x03 when Amie wakes up at the Kroon house and Elias reassures her that they didn't do anything together and that she can borrow Felicia's clothes.

Elias doesn't really do much for the plot until he hears Ludde's friends objectify Felicia and he starts a fight with Ludde and confronts Felicia about it. That's when it feels like Elias is actually a part of this show instead of just being an extra shoved into the background. His actions are finally affecting the plot.

Elias's potential in season 1 was hugely wasted. The only episode where we actually got to see him shine was 1x07, when he travels to Karlskrona with Amie. We find out he doesn't want the hockey arrangement his dad has planned for him and that he's actually a pretty goofy guy who likes making jokes (and eating green candy).

If less time was spent with Felicia and the distribution of every episode's 20 minutes was more balanced, season 1 could've been massively improved. It got much better in season 2, but season 1 suffered and made many people think that Felicia was a basic and unentertaining character.

The side characters and their comic relief

So one thing that I found really disappointing with Felicia's amount of screentime is that we barely got enough time for the other main characters, let alone the side characters.

What I mean here is that the only people we really know on the Eagles hockey team are Ludde and Elias. Ludde's friends, Adam and Omar, just feel like comic relief sidekicks. We don't really know what they're like, besides the fact that they like to make jokes and mess around.

This issue is largely created by the short running time the episodes have along with season 1 only having eight episodes in total. That's definitely understandable. It did get better in season 3 where we see Ludde having a deeper conversation with Adam and Omar and they finally don't just feel like the comic relief characters, but actual people with layers.

Ludde: I’m going to quit hockey. Adam: Are you serious? Omar: What the hell are you saying? Ludde: It’s not the same anymore. I’m not passionate about it. I… Yes, it sucks, but… I’ve thought about it for a while now. Omar: We make jokes about it and all, but… Yeah. It wouldn’t be the same without you. Kingelikingen. Adam: I get that it’s a tough choice. But yeah… You’ll work things out. You and Felicia. You always do. Ludde: You guys are pretty awesome sometimes, actually.

This scene was really sweet, and I wish we could've had moments like this between the guys in season 1. Just one scene to show that they're not just the "typical hockey guys". It feels like Ludde was the only person on the team in season 1 who wasn't just a background character. Even Elias, who you would assume should be at the forefront, isn't properly developed until 1x05 where we see him defending his sister and starting a fight with Ludde. Otherwise, it very much felt like Elias was kept in the background.

There are also guys on the team called Herman, Simon, Näslund, Ekbäck, Hoffmann, Berglund (even Montell, which was a fun nod to the show's director)... But who are they, actually? Do you even remember their names? To be honest with you, I don't. Because they're just names—not actual characters.

None of the other guys on the team get any depth. They're just sort of there as extras and to give the audience a sense of comedy with their "hockey team shenanigans". This was illustrated in 1x08, where Adam and Omar make their teammate Liam do a "sexy dance" on a table because he lost his virginity. Or a more extreme example—Jönsson, who only exists to be the comic relief and the unlucky guy who just can't catch a break.

In 2x04, Jönsson is told by Jack to do extra time in the gym and gets told off when he only spends a few minutes on the exercise bike. Later, Jack also makes a joke about how he should get Jönsson a defibrillator. In 2x09 Jönsson invites Ludde, Adam, and Omar to come to his mom's place to hang out. After he's left, Adam makes a comment about how there's no way he's going to "rot" in Jönsson's apartment that doesn't even have a balcony.

Don't get me wrong, these scenes aren't bad and I don't mean they should've been scrapped. Comedy can absolutely have its place in a show like this. Let's take the scene where Ludde flashes a couple of unfortunate old ladies on his first date with Felicia as an example. It feels like something a teenage boy would do to try to make a girl he likes laugh. It's a brief scene and it's nice to see Ludde being able to goof off only moments after talking about Andreas. We know that's a touchy subject for him.

However, it feels slightly overdone sometimes with how almost everybody on the hockey team is only there for comedic purposes and to fill space. It's more refreshing when they're shown to be multi-dimensional. I wish this is something that the writers would've considered when the show is literally titled after the hockey team, yet most of the hockey players are hardly in the story.

To add to this, it felt like Sara and Tobbe completely disappeared from the story in season 2. With Sara we understand that she probably didn't want to hang out with Klara anymore after knowing she filmed the Halloween video and posted it on Instagram, so that's fair. But it would've been nice to see Tobbe stick around in season 2, and I'll get back to why I think that.

The potential of season 1

When I look back on season 1 I feel really nostalgic. No matter how many small details that irked me, I can't deny that the setting of the show is beautiful and I really appreciate the depiction of it. Instead of showing Oskarshamn as a boring small town, we're shown the beauty of it which is incorporated into the storylines.

Some examples would be Ludde and Felicia's first date at Gunnarsö and walk through Havslätt, the gorgeous view of the Oskarshamn harbor from Klara's house Villa Högklint, and Badholmen where the school band performs and we later see Elias and Amie walking by in season 3. All these places are listed on the Eagles Oskarshamn site and I feel like they did a great job tying the storylines in with the locations.

Another aspect of season 1 and its writing that I really enjoyed was Elias and Amie's budding relationship. They just have a natural chemistry together and the dialogue between them also felt authentic and sweet.

Season 1 is just a very polished teen drama overall compared to some of SVT's previous series.

Back in 2007-2010, SVT used to air a soap opera-style show focusing on a few teenagers living in Gothenburg that was called Andra Avenyn (translation: Second Avenue). I was only seven at the time but I watched this show religiously as it aired three times a week. Just mentioning the show brings a lot of nostalgia.

Andra Avenyn amassed around 500 000 viewers per episode and was, just like Eagles, nominated for a Kristallen television award. But how good was it, really? If I take off my rose-colored glasses for a second and actually consider the show's highly dramatized storylines and unlikely scenarios, it had a tendency to drag on (which usually happens with soap operas). It didn't offer a realistic view of teenage life and on IMDb it currently sits at a rating score of 5.6 stars out of 10.

Comparing this old teen series to SVT's newer one, Eagles season 1 was a huge improvement and continues to be the most popular teen series that SVT has aired so far.

This idea and all the characters have lived in Stefan H. Lindéns mind since 2008, while Andra Avenyn was still on the air. It's actually amazing how high the quality of most TV shows has risen since then. Eagles has a rating score of 7.4 out of 10 stars on IMDb and has become internationally known in a way that Andra Avenyn never was.

Eagles season 1 laid the groundwork for SVT's most successful teen series of all time, and that's a huge achievement.

Season 2: "Subverting expectations"

When Eagles came back for season 2, the script made it kind of obvious that the writers had listened to the critique of season 1 being predictable.

I did find season 2 a huge step up from season 1—the directing was so much better and when it came to the script we got a deeper look into all the characters that they hadn't really scratched the surface of in the first season. My main disappointment however was that it felt like they threw in a bunch of weird plot twists just for the sake of "subverting expectations".

The core idea of subverting expectations can be great if done correctly. You lead the audience to believe they know what's going to happen, but then you surprise them with an unexpected and clever twist.

A post in Cinematography written by Mason Leaver defines the phrase of "subverting expectations" as:

[...] a method of surprising the audience with some element of a story, be it the plot, themes, characters, etc. This goes beyond a “twist” in a film. Expectation subversion actively works within the genre of a story, and attempts to reinterpret or subvert the conventions of that genre, breaking patterns in surprising and interesting ways. However, this method of surprising the audience is not always well received- it can sometimes be the source of heavy criticism from fans of the tropes which have been subverted.

This included "unexpected" relationships such as Elias/Klara and Amie/Ludde. The former actually worked, but the latter? Not so much.

Amie's crush on Ludde—make it make sense!

Amie and Ludde were my biggest issue with season 2, and it felt so out of character of Amie to be head over heels for Ludde. They work great as friends but romantically they're a huge mismatch.

But they have music in common, I hear you say. Yes, they do. But having a shared interest doesn't mean people are automatically a good match. You have to consider their chemistry and overall compatibility.

Before actors are cast in a show or movie where their characters will be romantically involved with each other, it's common to do what's called a chemistry read. Here's a neat description from an article in Backstage written by Caroline Liem:

Chemistry is the complex emotional or psychological interaction between two people. If this were a romantic article, it would be about love. Instead, we are discussing the astonishing rapport between two actors, and how that connection is achieved in order to book [...] the role. A chemistry read is an opportunity to read with actors being considered for a role opposite yours, usually lead roles. The main purpose is to see how you instinctively connect and work with the other actor.

This obviously wasn't done for the actors playing Amie and Ludde, since there didn't seem to be any intention of having their characters be involved in a romantic relationship.

That was even confirmed by Stefan H. Lindén in his Q&A of season 2, where he said that a love triangle between Ludde/Felicia/Amie was planned but later scrapped.

I can confirm that from the beginning of development of the series and the first version of the storyline a triangle drama was at some point intended for season 1 but later removed  – however when creating the characters, Ludvigs skill in music and arts was always there from the beginning so by knowing that, we always knew that interactions would appear between them. When looking back at Season 1, in the first scene by the lockers when Amie tells Felicia who Ludvig is, she does know exactly who he is and she is well aware of that his friend Tobias is a music guy that Amie wants to get to know. Also when looking at it, when I was the same age as Ludvig and Amie I, and I am sure a lot of people can relate to it, fact is that we never really knew if it was love or friendship in the beginning.

Knowing that the triangle drama was scrapped for season 1, it makes sense why it seems so arbitrary. There was no groundwork laid down for this pairing before it was hastily thrown together in 1x06 for a cheap plot twist. This continues in season 2, where Amie and Ludde start spending more time together. Yet it's hard to see Ludde as a potential love interest for Amie in the way the writers want us to. They still come off as friends despite having hooked up at a party.

I mentioned that Tobbe should've stuck around for season 2 and here's why. Tobbe was written to be the leader of the school band that Amie later joins, and he was friends with Ludde before the video was posted. He would've been a perfect fit for the Amie/Ludde music storyline but he's completely absent. He had the potential to be the person who could've helped them with the song a little and then later picked up on whatever there was going on between them.

I think the Amie/Ludde storyline could've hugely benefitted from a scene between Amie and Tobbe, where Tobbe asks if she actually has feelings for Ludde and we get to hear exactly what Amie is feeling. Maybe she's torn, not wanting to get together with Ludde because of how much they hurt Felicia, but at the same time finds it hard to suppress her feelings. A scene like that would've allowed us to get into Amie's head and make the Amie/Ludde storyline much clearer.

To add, this storyline was in desperate need of more interest from Ludde's side. There needed to be some indication from him that would make Amie believe he liked him back, even if that wasn't the case. All we get is Ludde complimenting Amie's song and then a hug in 2x05 when Amie says the record label in Stockholm wanted a meeting. And apparently, that was enough for Amie to think Ludde was interested in her despite him blowing off the Stockholm meeting and Amie hearing Ludde say that the Halloween incident was a mistake.

Ludde and Amie don't really mesh as well as Elias/Amie do or even as well as Ludde/Felicia do. Elias and Amie had sparks flying from the very first scene they shared. That pairing is one of the main reasons why the show became popular internationally, and why is that? Because of the actors' chemistry.

Amie and Ludde are a clumsy attempt at throwing together two people who don't really work together with the intention of "subverting expectations". And I suppose that's what the writers wanted to depict—an awkward crush that doesn't really make sense, which I'm sure many people have experienced as a teenager. That part is fine. But what I didn't like about this storyline is that Amie had no good reason to believe Ludde would be interested in anything with her beyond a platonic friendship.

While season 2 was airing, I was convinced that Amie wasn't actually in love with Ludde. She was just lonely after the aftermath of the Halloween video and mistook her feelings for Ludde as love when she just appreciated his company. Here's what I wrote:

So as we know, Amie kissed Ludde in episode 6 when he was in the hospital after having been injured during the hockey game against Karlskrona. She immediately seemed to regret having done that and ran out without an explanation, leaving Ludde alone and confused. I honestly don’t think Amie has any romantic feelings towards Ludde. I think she might mistake her feelings for a crush or something, when in reality she’s just lonely and appreciates Ludde always being there for her and giving her compliments on her musical ability. Ludde was complimenting Amie at the hospital, saying she was amazing, and I think Amie was just really touched by that and maybe wanted to thank him somehow, and ended up kissing him. And then she freaked out and left because oh my god did she really just kiss Ludde. It was an uncomfortable and awkward situation and that’s probably why she ran out. However, I really believe that if she had just stayed to explain and apologize, Ludde would understand and they could’ve just laughed it off. But this is a drama show so of course that wouldn’t happen! Do I think the writers are making them into a couple? No, definitely not. They know that season 1 was sort of predictable and cliché, so they’re making season 2 as different as possible by including these unexpected pairings such as Klara & Elias and Amie & Ludde. But Amie and Ludde won’t ever be a couple, because Ludde is still very much hung up on Felicia. I don’t see them as a couple either - yes, they have music in common, but they work way better as friends than in a relationship.

In Edvins Skådisdrömmar, which is a behind-the-scenes documentary of Eagles season 2, writers Fanny Ekstrand and Michaela Hamilton discuss the writing of the show in the documentary's third episode. The third episode is mostly focused on the lead-up to the scene where Amie kisses Ludde at the hospital. Adrian Öjvindsson, who plays Ludde, says:

Filming the kissing scene was [...] awkward and weird, actually. And that's how it ended up. Yandeh and I haven't really had any intimate scenes. In this case you could take in that it was weird, because that's also what the scene wanted to depict.

When Edvin reads the script, he describes the scene as a "nightmare" scenario. I agree. And the lazy build-up to this Awkward Kiss trope doesn't make it any better, because just like the Halloween incident this doesn't make a lot of sense.

It's supposed to be awkward and weird, just like Adrian said. But he also mentioned one of the most important details: Yandeh and I haven't really had any intimate scenes.

Before this kiss scene, there was nothing that indicated any chemistry between them. No accidental hand-touching, no longing stares, no nothing. Just a friendly hug. A proper build-up to the kiss scene would've made it feel less out of place.

The love confession from Amie to Ludde in 2x10 really threw me off as well. The confession to me made no sense and honestly felt like a prank call. There was no feeling behind it and zero reason for Amie to believe that there was a chance Ludde liked her back.

At the end of 2x08, Felicia goes to Ludde's house after he's confessed the truth to the police about the Andreas situation. Amie happens to overhear the conversation and she hears Ludde very clearly say that he's not interested in Amie.

Ludde: Felicia, there’s nothing between us. Between me and Amie. It was really the biggest mistake of my life. Felicia: Goodbye, Ludde. Ludde: Felicia, please!

Amie, now having her heart broken, crosses Ludde's name off the contract while crying. She knows he doesn't feel the same. So why would Amie even bother to call Ludde up to tell him she's "in love with him"?

Amie: [...] Hey, Ludde… Ludde: Yeah? Amie: It feels really weird to hear our song now. Because I know who the lyrics are about. And… And I… I really like you. Or, well… I’m in love with you. I just need to know how you feel. Or if you feel anything. Just tell me. Ludde: I’ll always want to be your friend, Amie, but… It’s Felicia I’m in love with.

This moment is on par with the awkwardness from the hospital kiss between them in 2x06. The second-hand embarrassment with this one was really rough, and what I don't understand is why this was even added to the script when Amie had already gotten the confirmation that Ludde didn't think of her in a romantic way. This storyline could've ended in 2x08 after Amie overheard the conversation between Ludde and Felicia.

It really didn't need to drag on for the whole season, essentially making Amie's whole storyline in season 2 about a guy. Her moment of finally getting signed to the record label was ruined when it could've been regarded as a fresh start if the storyline had just ended where it should have.

What this storyline did instead was ruining my favorite friendship of season 1, which was Amie/Felicia. This mess made it so hard for them to reconcile and they didn't end up properly addressing it until 3x09, spending almost two whole seasons mad at each other. It sucks that the writers decided to drag out their fighting and disagreements for this long when they could've instead shown two girls in solidarity who don't let a guy get between them and their friendship.

Amie apologized in 3x03 for how she hurt Felicia, but Felicia made it clear in 3x06 that she still harbored ill will towards Amie for what happened at Halloween (which in the timeline of this show was more than a year ago).

Felicia (to Amie): Are you going to start slobbering with [Elias] now too? Just give me back that sweater first, I don’t want slobber on that. Thanks.

I talked about how much I disliked the Amie/Ludde storyline in this post, with my main reason being that it really messed up the character dynamics that were established in season 1.

This storyline [of Ludde and Amie hooking up]—along with Amie falling in love with Ludde—is by far my least favorite one because it messed up the whole character dynamic. I feel like Amie and Felicia won’t ever go back to the kind of friendship they had in season 1 before the Halloween incident because the trust was so broken, and Amie really should’ve tried harder to apologize to Felicia like Ludde did instead of going after her best friend’s ex in season 2.

If there's just one thing I could change about this show, I would 100% get rid of the Amie/Ludde storylines. There is nothing that annoyed me as much as those storylines did.

Amie's musical ambitions

I've talked about this a bit before in another post because this was something that really bugged me about Amie's character in season 2. Here's what I wrote:

I honestly still feel like Amie’s whole storyline with sending in a rather basic demo written by two teenagers with little to no experience and then getting praised on it [by the Stockholm music producers] with comments such as “it’s going to be a real summer hit” felt so unrealistic to me. Maybe they only said that so Amie would accept their offer or something, but that’s still very strange because she would have still said yes without a doubt. I can understand that they thought Amie was marketable as a person and there was this bonus with her having gone viral before on Felicia’s Instagram, but that demo did not seem good enough for me to be immediately released as a single and then have them decide on the spot that Amie would be given a contract. I mean, come on. It never felt earned because we never really saw Amie struggling with her songwriting journey to achieve this dream. Sending in one demo to one record label and having them immediately want to make a whole album with you just doesn’t happen in real life unless the song is extremely good or you have a very unique voice. Amie is really talented but there are hundreds of people just like her, if not thousands. I was never convinced by her getting signed so quickly in season 2. I understand that they wanted to establish her as a successful artist [at the beginning of season 3], but that felt so rushed. I was so sure that the record label would screw her over and steal the song rights to record it with another artist who was already established, and that we’d have to see Amie work even harder to achieve her dreams. But we didn’t get that at all. Where was the struggle? [...] Of course I wanted to see Amie achieve success (and I was happy when she did), but the journey there was so bizarrely easy. She didn’t start to seriously work on making her music career become a reality until season 2. Amie had dabbled in music prior to that, like when she auditioned for the school band and did that performance of Follow, but she didn’t truly start to work towards it until season 2 when she decided to have her work sent to professionals in the business. And then, just five episodes later, she gets contacted by the record label in Stockholm. To put this into context—season 2 took place somewhere around March, and episode 5 around three weeks into April. So when Ludde first started helping Amie it took less than two months for her to get signed. You could argue that the song was just that good or that Amie is just that talented, but it never felt like a realistic storyline to me.

It's tricky to write a storyline like this when you only have ten 20 minute episodes in the season and a limited amount of screentime for every character. All that is understandable. But it's strange that they didn't opt for a time jump to really sell this storyline and make it believable.

Eagles uses time jumps a lot, but somehow this particular plot point was omitted from that and kind of glossed over. I don't really understand how they expected us to buy this storyline. The viewers aren't stupid, and more effort should've been put into this storyline.

In the post where I wrote this, @gajana18 also had an interesting thing to add:

[...] it's equally unrealistic that this huge record company would be hounding Amie, a teenage onehit wonder essentially to come back to the label- don’t they have other bigger artists?

This is a very strong point. Considering how Amie kept expressing that she wanted to finish school and then proceeded to ignore their calls, it's weird that they didn't just decide to discard her contract when Amie clearly wasn't taking her singing career as seriously as they wanted her to.

So, back to season 2. Maybe they could've gone with the record label stealing the rights to Amie's first song and screwing her over. This fuels her to try again and after a time jump of a few months we see Amie having worked really hard on a new and better song. Maybe even a whole album. And this time, she's learned from her past mistakes and improved her songwriting. This time, she's successful in her endeavor and it feels so much more earned after knowing the struggles she's been through to get there.

I also feel like a storyline like that would've made people sympathize with Amie more in season 2. It was really hard to root for her when she had nearly screwed Ludde over by not giving credit to his songwriting and saying "fuck him" when he didn't return Amie's feelings.

Klara's character development

When we're introduced to Klara in season 1, she's a stereotypical mean girl with wealthy parents who is the popular girl at school and has her own followers.

In season 2, the writers decided to develop the character. We find out Klara has issues at home and her mom is barely there. When she is, her parents will start fighting. Klara is feeling really lonely and doesn't really hang out with her friend Sara as much as she used to.

I appreciated the added depth, but it seemed like a drastic shift. The changed perspective could attribute to that but when you step back and really look at s1 Klara and s2 Klara, they're like two completely different people.

Maybe Klara's reputation suffered after she posted the Halloween video? Maybe she had a change of heart after Felicia finally confronted her during Lucia? I mean, I guess.

But what most fans (including me) didn't like about Klara in season 2 was that there were no clear consequences for her after she posted the Halloween video. Klara still hangs out with what seems to be the popular crowd and she has people to go out with. In a post I wrote last year about my thoughts on season 2, I wrote this:

I actually wish that Klara would’ve become more ostracized from her school friends to emphasize how alone she is, but she seems to still be pretty popular so that was kind of disappointing. I thought the fall-out of her posting the video would be worse, but I guess not. Anyway, I like that they’re taking a disliked character and making her into a better person. Feels like it’s been done a few times before, but I still appreciate them doing it. I hated s1 Klara for being so one-dimensional, but s2 Klara is well on her way to being a pretty good and nuanced character.

Her character development sort of comes a little out of nowhere, though. Her reputation wasn't ruined by posting that video and she didn't really lose any friends besides Sara (she had already lost Amie prior to posting that video considering what Amie said to her after Lucia in 1x08).

So what prompted Klara to become this whole new person who actually considers other people's feelings in a relatively short amount of time? Here's a conversation between Felicia and Klara in 2x07.

Felicia: Was there anything in particular you wanted to talk about? I understand that we’re not best friends just because you and Elias are together. We’re not here without a reason, right? Klara: No, I get that this feels weird for you. And if you don’t trust me after everything that’s happened - or that I’ve done. Felicia: Klara… Klara: I know that I haven’t acted like the world’s best person. And I regret that. Sorry.

But why does Klara regret her past behavior? What made her realize she hadn't acted like the "world's best person" if the ramifications from posting the Halloween video were so minimal?

Was it the relationship with Elias that made Klara change? No, I don't think so. When they first start talking at the bar in 2x03, Elias tells Klara that he doesn't always agree with Felicia and that he has his own viewpoints. In 2x07, he says Klara wasn't the one who messed up, but rather Amie and Ludde. And in 2x09, the script tells us that the Elias/Klara relationship seemed to bring more change to Elias rather than Klara.

Felicia: What did you do to him? Klara: What? Felicia: He’s smiling. Elias is like a whole new person since he met you. Klara: Stop. Felicia: I mean it!

So what made Klara change? In 1x08 she's mocking Felicia's drug problems and posts a video that will for sure ruin Amie's reputation. But at the start of season 2, she's suddenly become more withdrawn and considerate of people's feelings.

I can only name one factor that actually makes sense, and that's the fighting between her parents. Klara seems to turn into this quiet child when she has to listen to her mom and dad yelling at each other. This is something that didn't really begin until season 2, when Ola's company GECED started going under. This storyline was very well done.

But the other things, like Klara's reputation and friend group which you would assume would be affected, remain as they were in season 1.

Jack's sudden character change

Jack came into season 2 as a charming and charismatic character, seemingly fooling everybody into thinking he was a good guy. He knew the Kroon family from before and both Felicia and Elias were none the wiser when it came to the eventual reveal of his true colors.

Here's what Stefan H. Lindén had to say about the Jack character in his season 2 Q&A:

Bringing Jack in was actually originally not my idea, it came from my writer colleagues after that they revised my storyline notes for Season 2, while I was still down in Oskarshamn shooting Season 1. We had always intended for a character to come in and raise the stakes but I never imagined it to be Jack. When we started to develop the character, we all started liking him so he was kept in the story. Like with any new character we never really know who they are and what [the] point of them for coming in is [...]

Personally, I feel like the point of Jack's character is pretty obvious. When he first comes to Oskarshamn he is very much the embodiment of the new love interest coming in to date the girl who has broken up with her previous lover, while the previous lover still loves her and does anything he can to get her back although she's dating someone new. Jack is the Romantic False Lead trope who later becomes an alpha-dog Jerkass.

What I found interesting about Jack compared to Klara (in season 1) is that Jack isn't just a bad guy. He's very clever with his manipulation tactics and can easily charm people with his good looks and charisma.

When Felicia accuses Jack of cheating in 2x07, he manages to spin the whole thing around and make Felicia apologize to him and say it was stupid of her to believe he would cheat on her. I talked about this in a post while the season still aired, before Jack's true colors were revealed. Here's what I wrote:

I still don’t know if Jack really is cheating on Felicia with Olivia (the girl that texted him) but I would say he is. Jack is incredibly confident and charming, which makes him able to easily lie and manipulate people. We know he’s not an entirely good person since he’s already lied to Elias about not knowing that Mats would bring him back to Eagles. I wouldn’t be surprised if he really did hook up with Olivia and ended up being a really good liar. The fact is that not only did he deny it but he then shamed Felicia for blaming him and causing a scene, ultimately shifting the focus in the argument to her and making Felicia feel bad that she even confronted him in the first place. Jack says that maybe they shouldn’t even be together, which causes Felicia to backtrack and apologize. It’s actually pretty impressive how Jack was able to spin that around to blame Felicia and make her apologize.

Jack is able to take a small detail and use it as ammunition to get what he wants. In this situation, he brings up the girl in the Stockholm club that Felicia partied with and also kissed.

Jack: You shouldn’t accuse me, either. Felicia: What? Jack: I saw on Instagram, you and some girl in Stockholm. Have I whined about that? Coming here and blaming me for things, it feels really immature. Felicia: Fuck. Sorry, Jack.

Jack wasn't bothered by that at all. It happened before Felicia and Jack were even an official couple, and all they had done was hooking up at a party while Felicia was high. Jack, having cheated on Felicia, couldn't care less about the random girl Felicia kissed. That was just something he used to manipulate her.

When we discover that Jack is actually cheating on Felicia, he immediately reverts to a one-dimensional "evil" character. He's become the 2.0 version of Klara in season 1—written in just to stir up drama.

This "master manipulator" version of him just goes down the drain and Jack turns into a manchild who starts petty fights, files a police report because Ludde pushed him, and says to Felicia "I'm gonna tell on you!". Alright, maybe those weren't his exact words, but you know what I mean. It's a sudden shift and you start wondering how Jack was able to hide this version of himself so well before.

In 3x05, Jack sees Ludde and Andreas after a hockey game and fumbles trying to find any insult he can to hurl at Ludde. Everything he says from that point on is just line after line to really solidify that Jack is the bad guy. You didn't forget that, right? Here, let's have Jack call Felicia a druggie so you know just how shitty he is. And have him call Andreas a junkie later for good measure—there, that should be enough for people to understand that Jack is the villain here.

Jack: Johansson! Ludde: What the hell are you doing here? Jack: What does it look like? Ludde: I guess it’s you I should thank for the victory. Nice work. Jack: What is Felicia doing these days, then? Does she miss me? Ludde: Hey, you’re shutting up now, do you get it?! Jack: Jesus Christ. Do you think you can save her? What do you think she even sees in you? You two play in different leagues, Ludde. Ludde: You have no idea what we’re like. Jack: Come on! You should leave her. While you can. She’ll just pull you down into the dirt with her. You’re no hero, Ludde. Isn’t she still doing drugs? Once a druggie, always a druggie, right?

Jack is a horrible person, but at least he was able to pretend to be a good guy in season 2. And that was actually really fascinating. I wish we could've seen more of Jack's manipulative side that he showed in season 2 instead of making everything coming out of his mouth be a half-assed attempt at insulting the other person. That's a pretty boring villain, in my opinion.

Jack's backstory of his father being an alcoholic and him starting to resent the whole Kroon family because they had everything growing up while he didn't is interesting. It would've also made more sense if his anger was only directed towards the Kroon family since they're the ones he grew up with. They're the ones he was after the whole time.

His anger towards them feels cheapened when Jack also starts insulting Andreas (who he's probably never met before) for no good reason. It's like Jack's human qualities are just gone and all that's left is this empty shell made to start fights. His backstory didn't really make anybody sympathize with him, either.

The improvements of season 2

What I liked about the writing in season 2 was that they explored new ideas and had some solid storylines (besides the mess that was Amie and Ludde). Elias and Klara actually worked pretty well as a couple, even if they were pretty much the 2.0 version of Felicia/Ludde as the "wealthy, popular pretty girl starts dating the star player on the sports team".

Felicia finally gets some more depth. The scene at the end of 2x02, where Felicia and Leila park their car near the harbor and just start crying, is so powerful.

2x05 is also one of my favorite episodes of the show, as well as the ending montage of the 2x10 season finale. In Gameday, we had a very touching scene between Felicia and Mats where they finally communicate. It's not the most understanding conversation but it's a start. It's an interesting contrast between their talk in 1x06 where Felicia revealed she saw Mats cheating on Leila versus the talk they're having now.

Another one of my favorite scenes is when Felicia and Ludde meet up at their bench in 2x10 after Ludde has called her up asking Felicia to come if there's any chance of them getting back together.

The dialogue is simple and to the point. There's no long-winded love confession for the sake of drama. It's a moment that the whole season has been building up for, and when we finally get there we realize that this is how love should be.

Easy and simple.

Ludde: You came back. Felicia: Yeah, I did. Ludde: Do you remember our first date here? Felicia: No. I’ve forgotten. Ludde: I was so freaking nervous. Felicia: Everything you said… Did you mean it? Because you hurt me, Ludvig. And I… I’ve really tried to hurt you back, but… It’s not possible. I can’t… Not love you. Do you think… Do you think it can be us again? Ludde: What do you think? Felicia: I don’t want anything else.

Ludde admitting how nervous he was on their first date is sweet and shows us how much they've been through. Felicia is struggling to find the words to say and she's acknowledging how hurt she was, but still can't seem to find it in her heart to hate Ludde. It's honest.

Another plotline that I think was a little underrated in season 2 is the GECED company going bankrupt and Ola, Klara's dad, is under investigation for financial crime. This isn't a storyline you would usually see in a teen series. It's much more serious. It also gave us a really touching and poignant scene in 2x08 between Ola and Klara sitting on the floor of his office, where Klara has to comfort her father who starts crying.

Ola: When you were little you used to sit like this. On the floor, while I was working. You had your own room, but you wanted to sit with me. “Help daddy work”. Mom’s doing the right thing by leaving for a while, don’t blame her for that. Klara: What, you can’t just leave because things get a little tough. Ola: Maybe you should get away for a while too. You know, I never wanted you two to… That you… Everything’s gone. Klara: It will be fine. It will be fine. Ola: Sorry. I’m sorry.

In 2x09, Klara is at a party when she notices a bunch of missed calls from her dad. She immediately senses something is wrong and rushes home to find her dad having attempted suicide. It's executed very well and I really liked the more serious tone they went for in season 2.

It set up season 3 perfectly, which continued with the darker themes but balanced them very well with the more light-hearted moments.

Season 3: Finding one's footing

Season 3 was a highly anticipated season. I thought the season 2 finale was masterfully done and it left me wanting more. When season 1 finished on its cliffhanger of the video leaking, the focus only seemed to be on that.

But with season 2 there's Felicia/Ludde getting back together and Ludde having been sued by Jack, Jack threatening that he would leak all of the Kroon's family secrets, Klara's dad passing away, Elias deciding to get on the train and go to the draft combine anyway, Amie having finally become a recording artist but being isolated and heartbroken... There's so much to unpack, and it's a lot more interesting than the ending of season 1.

Where's Jack?

Jack is supposed to be the main villain but he's gone for most of the season, failing to show up until 3x05. In the season 2 finale Jack makes a huge deal about how he's going to destroy Felicia's life. He's threatening her in a very violent and abusive way.

Jack: [...] I know a lot about you, Felicia. And your nice family. It’s enough for me to leak to one news site. I can destroy you. Do you get it? I’ll tell them everything. The drugs, the cheating, your abortion! Felicia: Shut up! Jack: Hey. Huh? Did you seriously think I wanted to be with you? The little Kroon princess, who has gotten everything for free her whole fucking life! You and Elias! Like spoiled brats! You don’t understand what it means to fight for something!

In 2x10, Jack decides to report Ludde for assault but he doesn't follow through on destroying this family that he hates. If there's anything Jack seems to despise above all, it should be the Kroon family, right? So why did he fight back with Ludde but not the Kroon family?

I expected Jack to leak all the Kroon secrets at the beginning of season 3, but Felicia seems strangely calm at the funeral which I'm assuming only takes place two weeks or so after Ola's passing in the season 2 finale.

Then, a whole year passes with no indication that Jack is ever going to leak anything. As season 3 was airing, I commented on how strange this felt in an ask I received:

One of my main questions about the time jump is the whole thing with Jack saying he was going to ruin Felicia’s and the Kroon family’s reputation in the press. It seemed like nothing really came of that? I’m pretty sure that detail hasn’t been abandoned entirely and that Jack will come back (we’ve already seen a glimpse of him in the third episode), but it feels strange that Jack threatened to leak all her secrets and then just never did. I got the impression that Jack was a person who, when having his pride wounded, would do pretty much anything to get back at the person who insulted him. And yet there’s no mention of where Jack has been during that time or what he’s been doing. I feel like I would be pretty paranoid about this if I was Felicia, but we don’t see this haunting her until episode 3 when she sees a flash of Jack before realizing it was just some random guy. It seems strange that Felicia was relatively at ease during the funeral (which I assume took place not long after Jack first threatened her) and after the time jump. We don’t really know what’s been going on during that year, but Felicia seems to be fine and like she hasn’t had any thoughts of Jack at all. Maybe she assumed that his threats were empty and that he wouldn’t actually leak anything to the press, which is reasonable but at the same time I don’t understand why Jack has yet to do anything after a year. He was really pissed off in the season 2 finale, after all.

Going to repeat one of the things I wrote here because it deserves to be mentioned twice, and this point is one of my biggest issues.

I got the impression that Jack was a person who, when having his pride wounded, would do pretty much anything to get back at the person who insulted him.

I feel like this was kind of a plot hole that wasn't explained. Jack is ruthless and doesn't hold back at all when his true colors come out. He has no problem talking about the sexual relationship he had with Felicia in front of her father. Jack is just that horrible.

So what prevented him from ruining the Kroon family's lives earlier, when it seems to be the thing he's wanted for years?

Michael's predictable predicament

Michael first appears at the end of 3x04, where he calls Amie up to tell her he's her father.

Man: Hey! Sorry for calling so late. Is it Amie? Amie Condé? Amie: Yeah. Man: I saw you on TV the other day. I’m Michael Condé. I’m your father.

In the next episode, we get a voice-over of the continued conversation between him and Amie.

Michael: [...] I understand if it’s shocking. I’m in Oskarshamn for work for a few weeks and— Could we meet up someday?

So, it's clear what the writers are going for here. It's the estranged father who returns into the child's life when they've become successful. We're made to believe it's a Daddy Had a Good Reason for Abandoning You trope when Michael meets up with Amie and tells her why he left.

Michael: So Petra, she— Has she said anything about me? Amie: Well… That you moved from Sweden before I was born… That you’re working as a lawyer. That you didn’t want to see me. Michael: I was… I was young when we met. Your mom and I. And everything went really fast. I was in love, but she had feelings for somebody else. And when she found out that she— That she was expecting you, then… She didn’t want me there. She said I wasn’t father material. To some degree she might’ve been right, but… I wasn’t much older than you are now. I had just gotten into a law school in Berlin. When I finally came back to Sweden, then… She didn’t let me see you. I had already lost you by then, but I want you to know that I— I’ve thought of you. And about a week ago, I… I’m seeing you. On TV. There you are. With my last name. I’m so proud.

However, it's pretty easy to identify the holes in Michael's story. To be honest this whole storyline was predictable from the very start. Before Michael even came into the story, I made this post which pretty much summed up Michael's whole character when we didn't even know he existed yet (this was when 3x03 was the latest episode that had aired).

I don’t think we’ve heard any mention of Amie’s dad in the whole series except for 3x02 when Amie was being interviewed and was asked about the Condé name where she said that while Samuelsson was from her mother’s side, and Condé was from “the other side”. I found her word choice a little interesting. I don’t think Amie’s dad has passed—but rather that he’s alive and just chosen to not be a part of her life, which is why Petra seemed to be a little offended when asking Amie why she didn’t want her last name anymore. This might also be why Amie said “the other side” rather than “my dad’s side” because they have an estranged relationship. [...] I’m not really sure if they’ll do anything with Amie’s dad (maybe they’ll go for that trope where the parent who previously abandoned their child returns after the child has accomplished something big/something major happened and the parent wants something from them for personal gain?).

When we actually get to meet Michael and hear his explanation of why he left, I wrote this post pointing out some of the holes in this storyline.

Michael meeting Amie only after she’s become famous is a little suspicious, but it’s understandable if he previously thought she didn’t want to meet him and then sees her with his last name on national television. Obviously he would contact her after that. I feel like there were some question marks with Michael’s whole story though, and the fact that his work just conveniently happened to send him to Oskarshamn after he’d just seen Amie on TV. Maybe I’m missing something here, but how did he know Amie had gone back to Oskarshamn if he saw her living as a pop star in Stockholm? Was this information about Amie quitting the tour and going back to her hometown even online? If Elias (who actually witnessed Amie saying she was done and quitting) seemed taken aback when he saw Amie in Oskarshamn, then how did Michael know?

I do think Michael will return for season 4 though, so hopefully this storyline will be straightened out a little. We don't really know what Michael has been up for the past few years and if he has a family of his own. Maybe he'll contact Amie again to tell her she has some younger half-siblings?

They ended on sour terms, but if Michael does have his own family it's something Amie deserves to know and she can decide whatever she wants to do. I'd also like to see a Michael/Petra reunion, but I'm getting a little ahead of myself.

This storyline wasn't bad, and I do appreciate we got to find out what the situation with Amie's dad was. I also liked how I was able to sympathize with Michael. He's not entirely awful, even if he did put a lot of blame on Petra. It's one of those situations where you don't really know what it's like to be in Michael's position unless you've experienced it, and it's very realistic.

Plot holes

Some of the plot holes of season 3 that I've already mentioned are how Jack waited a whole year before leaking the Kroon family's secrets and how Michael conveniently knew Amie was in Oskarshamn when nobody seemed to know she was coming except her mom.

I actually don't mind that it was never explained how Michael got Amie's phone number either, because that's usually pretty easy to find with a Google search. Things like addresses, economic status, and even your criminal history are easily accessible in Sweden when googling someone's name. So finding someone's phone number is probably fairly easy as well.

On the other hand, one of the most glaring plot holes appeared in 3x08. In this episode entitled Lost, the Kroon family is frantically searching for Felicia who has gone missing. Leila and Elias knock on Petra's door to see if Amie is there and might know something about Felicia's whereabouts. Petra tells them Amie isn't there and they leave.

Someone left me an anonymous ask which I answered in this post, pointing out how it was strange that Elias didn't just call Amie to ask her when she wasn't at home. We know Elias has her number because they've been talking on the phone and texting each other several times before in the season.

In 3x08, when Elias and his mom go to Amie's house and ask Petra if Amie has seen or spoken to Felicia or whether she's home, I couldn't help but wonder, uh Elias why not just call Amie and ask her if she has seen or spoken to Felicia? [...] if Elias had called her and she heard how frightened him and his family were and police being involved she would have told him and then there would be no point in the 3x09 episode really.

This is a very strong point. You could argue that maybe Elias just didn't think of that but if they went out of their way to visit Amie's house only to not find her there, it would seem like calling her instead would just be a logical next step in the situation? Here's what I wrote in response to this ask.

This is an issue I had with 3x08 and 3x09 as well. I had a hard time actually enjoying the moment between Felicia, Klara, and Amie knowing that her family was getting increasingly worried for her and even thought for a short moment that Felicia was lying dead at the bottom of the ocean. All that could’ve been avoided. To add, it didn’t make a lot of sense to me that when Klara finally decided to call someone she called Amie instead of Elias. An ex-friend of Felicia’s instead of her brother who could’ve helped a lot more. What was Amie supposed to do when she showed up at the hotel, exactly? I know there was the thing with Klara only knowing Amie’s number off the top of her head, but there is no reason why she couldn’t have gone down to the reception while Felicia was sleeping and asked to use a computer just to get a quick message to Elias. Like, “hey, Felicia attempted something bad but she’s safe with me, we’re at this hotel in this room but she didn’t want me to call anybody, I don’t know what to do”. That would’ve been so much better than keeping quiet about the situation for nearly 24 hours. I know that Klara probably has trauma from leaving her dad at the hospital after his suicide attempt and that she probably didn’t want to go against Felicia’s wishes. I understand the first part 100%. But Felicia was in a very bad place emotionally and was thinking that her whole family hated her when that wasn’t the case. I feel like in a situation like that you kind of have to be the bad guy just to ensure the family that Felicia was safe. Even if everything turned out alright in the end, it could’ve gone so much worse if Felicia had wanted to be kept hidden for longer. [...] Elias calling Amie would’ve been an easy solution to this whole debacle but we would’ve lost the drama. It’s still somewhat of a plot hole though, like you said.

I understand it was done this way for dramatic effect, but that doesn't really patch up the plot hole.

I also found it strange how many people turned on Felicia after Jack ruined her reputation in the press. I talked about this in an ask I received.

I don’t understand why the public turned on Felicia so harshly. And Leila too, for that matter. The way Jack told the story about how these two women had things done to them should indicate that they’re not the ones to be blamed. If I read this article and found out an 18-year-old girl got pregnant by a “violent criminal” who forced her to abort and then abused her I would not be angry with the girl. I would be angry that she was physically abused and also outed on her sexuality for being bi. If I read this article and found out Leila had been cheated on by her husband repeatedly with her best friends, I wouldn’t be angry at her. I would not agree with the decision to turn to alcohol (same as Felicia turning to drugs), but I wouldn’t blame them. And I feel like a lot of people should’ve been on Leila’s side after finding out the reason why they divorced. I don’t understand why people are saying they’re disappointed in Felicia and calling her fake when she’s been through so much trauma in her life. I feel like if this actually happened in real life, all the blame would be shifted to the men because they’re the ones who—in this story—are painted as the bad guys (with the exception of Jack, considering he was anonymous).

I got another anonymous ask sent in after this, pointing out how the anger directed towards Felicia was considerably more about her drug use rather than the abuse she endured. Here was my response to that:

[...] the drug use should’ve been understandable considering the stuff Felicia had been through was also written in that article. I don’t know. I can understand people unfollowing her if they didn’t want their young children to be exposed to all the controversy, but it’s still strange that everything Felicia received was hate messages. Did everybody just skip over the part where the anonymous source stated that Felicia was violently forced to have an abortion by an ex-criminal and probably did so out of fear for her life? Yes, we know this is fake, but why didn’t anybody seem to mention this? [...] they seem to have written this storyline with the idea in mind that the public was against the whole Kroon family. Felicia got comments such as “So fucking disappointed in you and your family”, “What a nasty fucking family”, “You and your family are so fucking disgusting”. So I think Leila received plenty of hate for drinking instead of divorcing her husband sooner and basically turning a blind eye to all the problems her family went through. That’s what Jack told the press, at least. The anger seemed to be directed towards every member of the Kroon family and that didn’t make a lot of sense to me.

Again, this is something the writers did to dramatize the situation and they kind of forgot to consider that what Jack actually told the journalist wasn't as incriminating for Felicia and Leila as it were for Mats and Elias.

The magic of season 3

What season 3 really excelled in, to me, was delving into some more serious topics as well as showing the gradual development of Amie and Elias' relationship. Amie and Elias are the prime example of how a slow burn is so much better than having a couple get together too fast, like Felicia and Ludde did back in season 1.

While season 3 was still airing, I wrote a post dedicated to questions I had received about Elias and Amie. Here's one of the things I said about them:

I think Elias’ interest in her really started to grow after he saw how caring Amie was to Felicia, and later on connecting with her on how they both ended up back in Oskarshamn after following their dreams which didn’t exactly turn out the way they expected. Yes, Elias has always sort of been watching and admiring Amie from afar, but that interest didn’t start growing until he actually got to know her. The experiences they had in the US and Stockholm, respectively, probably changed their mindsets and in my opinion it makes so much more sense for them to get together now than it would’ve in season 1 or season 2.

I still believe that Elias and Amie are the best-written couple of the whole show (at least so far), because they just make sense. We'll see what season 4 has in store for them because we have yet to actually see them in a romantic relationship, but I feel like their personalities and characters just fit together really well.

Another thing I really appreciated was the depiction of Felicia and Ludde's declining relationship. Things like that happen so easily, and I liked how we see Felicia do this huge gesture of planning a picnic for Ludde in 3x04 but there were still underlying problems between them. It's like that in real life too—no matter how big of a romantic gesture you make, communication will always be the number one priority in any relationship and that's where Felicia and Ludde fall short.

The obvious disconnect between them when it comes to money is also important. It's been like this from the beginning, but season 3 gave us an actual conversation about it.

Felicia: Please, I can’t talk about this. Seriously. It was stupid of me to bring this up from the beginning. Fuck, I get such anxiety talking about the future— Ludde: You get anxiety? I’m the one walking around with no money in my account. Mom and dad had to get a loan to pay off mine and Andreas’ fines. I’m playing on a shitty old synth, and living off you like some leech. That’s anxiety. Felicia: Everything isn’t about money. Ludde: Says the one who has money. Felicia: Move out then, if it’s so fucking hard to feel like a leech.

This felt very realistic. Of course a person like Felicia wouldn't think money is everything when she's never experienced financial issues. She's able to move out into her own one-bedroom apartment as soon as she's turned 18, it seems, and doesn't worry at all about the cost of furnishing and decorating it. She didn't even pay for it herself, because Mats mentions he's the one on the mortgage loan. It seems like Felicia has never had an actual job either, and that's starting to worry her because she has no idea what she should be doing.

Felicia: [...] I don’t know what I’ll be or what I’ll do in the future. I don’t know that. Ludde: You’re still an influencer— Felicia: Don’t say I’m an influencer, please. Do you think I want to be that my whole life? It’s not even a career. I'm— I’m graduating next year, and I… My grades suck, and— I have no plan. I only have you. Not like that—I have you. That’s what I have. I want to be here, in Oskarshamn. I don’t want to go to the US and chase some dream and be a hockey wife. That’s not a life. Sometimes I wish neither of us had a plan, just us together here.

Felicia's character finally offers something interesting here, which I've waited for since season 1. She's not just a party girl anymore who has issues with drugs. She's a privileged teenager who is co-dependent on the guys she meets and who has anxiety about the future, to the point where she wishes she could stay in Oskarshamn in her little apartment forever stuck in limbo.

She has to face a harsh reality when Ludde decides to break up with her, and later on when her name is slandered in the press and people all over the country are sending her hate messages. Her own family is furious with her and Felicia has nobody. She's pushed away a lot of people and her mental state is just crumbling in front of our eyes.

It's a strong storyline and actually very well executed. Almost everything gets taken away from her, and at the end of 3x07 you can almost feel what Felicia is feeling. We've been with her through this whole journey, almost, and we understand why she feels like suicide is the only answer.

It's tough to watch that final scene of 3x07. It's greatly amplified by Alva Bratt's superb acting, but the writing of the journey there is also amazing. It's very difficult to write a sensitive storyline like this.

Overall, I don't have a lot of critique towards season 3. I loved most of the episodes. I elaborated on this further in a separate post:

[Episodes 3x04 and 3x05] showcased what Eagles should be all about so well, which is relationships plus the struggles you go through as a teenager in a small town, and then of course hockey. The hockey game episodes are really good, even if I don’t think 3x05 topped 2x05 (the game where Ludde got tackled and knocked out). I loved the contrast in Date night of the budding relationship between Elias and Amie and then that fight between Felicia and Ludde on the cliff. [...] It was interesting to see how this sweet gesture from Felicia turned into a fight between the two of them. I thought that was very realistic, because no matter how big of a gesture Felicia made to apologize there were still underlying problems that they needed to talk about. I also loved the “non-date” between Elias and Amie in this episode. It was cute to see them goofing off before the movie started and then talking about it on the way home. I liked how Elias could connect to her on how they had both returned to Oskarshamn. The recent episodes that dropped last week (3x08 and 3x09) were very strong and discussed some important subject matters [...] They were dark, but not necessarily bad because they needed to happen. However, I have to say that I prefer Eagles when it’s about hockey and teenage relationships. 3x04 and 3x05 made me kind of nostalgic for season 1 and I liked the vibe they both had.

Eagles season 3 is in my opinion the best season of the show so far, and we haven't seen any signs suggesting that there is any reason for season 4 to not be even better.

Season 4: Hopes and wishes

Considering how each season has been increasing in quality bit by bit, I have pretty high hopes for the writing in season 4. I'm excited to see how the transition from teenager to young adult will be portrayed in the main characters, and what their future will hold for them after they've graduated.

My main questions are if Felicia and Ludde will find their way back to each other or if they'll remain broken up (that would be realistic as well), if Klara will reconcile with her mom, what's in store for Elias's hockey career, and if Amie will leave her label and maybe opt for something more independent.

I also want to see how Felicia deals with the new home she's checked in to, and if Ludde will in fact go to the school now that it seems Andreas will be getting into trouble again.

Amie and Klara are kind of wild cards here, because it somewhat feels like they've already reached their happy endings. Amie is famous and successful in her pop music career, and Klara has found her place as a businesswoman following in her father's footsteps. Maybe these developments should've come in season 4 instead of rushing them.

Nonetheless, I have faith in the writers. The writing suffered a little in seasons 1 and 2 but it has gotten better. Most of the things I pointed out about season 3 were just small details in an otherwise stellar season.

In conclusion...

This post was critical, but I tend to be critical of every show I watch. Eagles is still a very special show for me and having grown up in a Swedish small town myself I'm very fond of the show and its characters.

So huge thanks to the creator, Stefan H. Lindén, for making this show a reality and also to the director Carl-Petter Montell for contributing to the writing in season 3. And of course the writers of the show which include Michaela Hamilton, Fanny Ekstrand, and Anton Nyberg (plus Amanda Adolfsson who helped write 1x02 and 1x05 and Simon Ekbäck Nordström who is credited for helping with the hockey scenes in 3x05).

I hope you guys enjoyed this long, long post and major kudos to you if you read this far!

[nothingenoughao3]

I have been visited by royalty! Let me put the kettle on for you, @the-dr-herbert-west.

I appreciate that another theater person has picked up what I put down initially. However, I've seen posts going around about the Laid To Rest Allegations, and my thoughts were percolating before you showed up and made them boil over. I'm therefore doing this as a reblog to contain all my obsessive typing. I hope that's okay!

Every version of "Re-Animator" I acquired had subtitling, because I'm HOH, and every version rendered that line as "Laid to rest!". It never occurred to me that it could be anything else until I saw people circulating GIFs on Tumblr where he's seething out the line "Plagiarist!" instead. I was immediately on board with this line change, and just as disappointed as everybody else when it turned out I was right the first time.

Our collective struggle has to do with how this scene is structured. (This is the last time I ranted about this scene, and features a video clip of everything up to Hill talking sarcastically about looking at "his" discovery.)

Hill calls out West for stealing lab equipment. West calls out Hill for stealing his preferred title of "scientist". Hill straight-up says he wants to steal West's work for his own. The majority of Hill's dialogue after he 'mesmerizes' West focuses on plagiarizing West, and by extension, Gruber. (Who Hill was also accused of stealing from earlier in the film.)

Then Hill verbally structures his plan to plagiarize West, and then reiterates this plan indirectly with the "I--will be--famous!" line.

Their entire interaction is about theft and plagiarism. So when Herbert grits out a line that almost sounds like "Plagiarist!", we want this to be what he's saying. It's satisfying. It's a solid conclusion. It takes the throughline of all their dialogue, the spine of it, and caps it off (with, I guess, hipbones and a skull? I didn't think this metaphor through).

Unfortunately, what the writer(s) seemed to be going for was not a thematic capstone, but A Funny Peri-Mortem One-Liner. Which are, to be clear, cool and good! And apparently something to which West is susceptible!

Structurally, the "Laid to rest!" line is written about in the novelization as Herbert making a funny. He enjoys making 'private' jokes about the death and mayhem he causes and doesn't care if anybody else is laughing. In that sense, it's comparable to him going "Look out!" and cackling/wheezing at Dan's panic after they kill Rufus. As well as the cut line "He didn't have the guts" from BRIDE's script--he's making a pun, and laughing at his own pun, while Dan is having a meltdown about The Horrors.

For why it sounds like it does, and relating this back to the original post topic, Combs does something different with the line delivery here than he normally does in the film, which is gritting his teeth while saying it.

Gaze upon his jawline and his overall stance here in the morgue, where he's stage whispering and making a great duck face:

And contrast with this tragically-blurry moment where he's directly in the middle of delivering the "Laid to rest!" line:

The full-body tension is evident in the second shot. So is the shadow on his jawline revealing just how hard he's clenching his teeth/jaw. Broseph is putting his whole pussy into sounding like he's using a spade to cut off Hill's head.

If he were in a stage production, he wouldn't have done that, because you're right--there's no way the folks in the back could hear him properly. Much less a film audience! I can picture him, instead, biting out each word individually, perhaps wrenching the spade-handle to and fro with each word to really drive it home, and then cacklewheezing as Hill's head rolls away.

I assume he was directed to do what he did by Gordon because it looks better on camera and it emphasizes the physical struggle of the murder. Which it does. So, fair enough.

With all of that, it's pretty clear that West is saying "Laid to rest!" and always was, astronautwithagun dot jaypeg. But, no disrespect, it's really unsatisfying.

It's the least funny of his one-liners. It's coming at a really tense and plot-changing moment, and so is less likely to strike the audience as funny, even by accident. You can't half-ass a joke in these circumstances. It's gotta be good, and this ain't it, jefe. (Contrast with "Shaun of the Dead--which had great Peri- and Pre-Mortem One-Liners... until that one scene towards the end where they completely ditch the jokes.) Finally and importantly, it doesn't follow through with the theme of the scene, which is all about Hill stealing everything that isn't nailed down.

In short (too late for that!), we hear the line "Plagiarist!" because that's actually a better line.

So y'all know how Jeff Combs was doing a theater production which someone involved with Re-Animator saw him in, and how he's suggested that the character he played there influenced how he played Herbert West.

I relayed this to @andalusiapunk and they were like "Oh! That explains it! He's theater-acting!"

I am not an expert by any means, but I did misspend my teenage years in a magnet school as a theater student. I understood immediately what they meant by theater-acting and I'm mad I didn't come up with it.

A lot of this has to do with Herbert's overall physicality. We all love talking about how he's hyper-dramatic, right? How he moves in a particular way that is extremely precise and sharp and, to be on point, theatrical. How he spins the tape recorder in his hand; how he offers Meg's heart in BRIDE; how he fumbles or manipulates syringes in various scenes.

None of that's in the script and it's not necessarily justified by what's happening... unless you're trying to make sure the audience in the backass end of the theater can see you're holding something small, like a tape recorder or a syringe or a human heart. As I observed elsewhere, you can trick the audience into 'seeing' or 'hearing' things that aren't present onstage or screen if your body language insists on its reality.

And, not to get into super-nerdy film history, but: originally theater-acting and movie-acting were one and the same. Early films are blocked like plays, they have extended sequences without constant cutting between shots (like an audience watching a play), and the extremely clear, over-enunciation of a play-actor trying to make sure those poor bastards in the back can hear what they're saying. And like a play, all acting was heavily rehearsed and expected to hit the same points and produce the same results every time.

What changed this was Marlon Brando introducing the idea of improvisation into movie-acting, a choice which also led to a greater flexibility in movie-acting... including delivery of lines. A more "natural", verisimilitudinous delivery became acceptable for films. This doesn't make either style bad, to be clear: each serves its purpose.

Bruce Abbott (to name the most obvious example) is doing movie-acting. He's got some Protagonist Accent going for him, but he has a clear variety of tone and a great deal of subtlety with his facial expressions and delivery. The same goes for the rest of the cast, although David Gale kind of straddles the line between these two styles.

Herbert's delivery is pure theater-acting. When he and Dan invade the morgue, Dan is whispering--but Herbert is stage whispering, which is why he hisses so much. I've made jokes on here before about how Herbert was born on Skid Row in Little Shop of Horrors-verse, and he thinks he's supposed to be in a musical... and, you know, LSOH is a film based on a play, only in that movie, EVERYBODY is theater-acting.

Anyhow, lotta words to find a different way to compliment Combs and the rest of the REANI cast on their acting, because I live for sorcery enjoying these damn movies.

[fantasyinvader]

I'm on chapter 2 Law myself, I just did a bit of research before the route split to see which story really appealed to me.

I think asking whether Vyce is worth it is touching upon one of the things the game is ultimately criticizing. What right do YOU have to pick who lives and who dies? I've seen characters who "kill only when they have to" be criticized in media before. RE: Creators, for instance, called out such as being no different from someone who kills for enjoyment as, at the end of the day the person is making a conscious decision TO kill. Meanwhile, we have characters like Conquest Corrin who get called out for the violence they commit despite trying to keep it non-lethal, and I've seen Kira "Jesus" Yamato gets called out on this in Dynasty Warriors Gundam games over how while he says fighting solves nothing… he solves everything by fighting and just expects people to not have problems with him because he chooses to not kill them with his awesome power.

Sheesh, a Warriors game treated him more seriously than his own series did.

Denam was willing to kill Galgastani soldiers as part of the war, but in Chaos route he decides to not follow orders, fighting his fellow countrymen before fleeing and then killing those who come after him. Is it really okay for Denam to kill when he feels it's the right thing to do? What about when others try to take away his "freedom" (which Kira is supposed to be the champion of, now that I think about it)? Is it really okay for Denam to stain his hands with blood simply because he feels okay with it? Vindicated even? How many can Denam kill before it's too much?

The original, Super Famicom version of the game (I actually have a loose copy) actually went so far as to say that the Galgastani were committing genocide and the camp wasn't a work camp. It was a concentration camp. But the Walister are still outnumbered, the people that you free at the camp can't fight, so how are you going to prevent your ethnic group from being wiped out? Find a way to unite people, which leads to the false flag operation.

But then if you're going around killing people, those affected by it will believe they're justified in their actions as well. This is actually why the Galagstani are committing genocide, because of how the Bakram and the Walister treated them when Valeria was united. And going further, when you go around killing everyone and end up with Denam as a lord, if one group hates him enough he will be assassinated.

Chaos is linked to the darkness, which is also what corrupted the final boss into an ogre, and it's hard not to draw parallels with him and Denam over their backstories if you go for the Chaos-aligned endings. Chaos originally was required for the Terror Knight class. So is it really okay for Denam to go around acting like a shonen hero in a war story, or is it just making him more like Ronwey than he realizes? In the Law ending, Denam fully owns up to how many he's killed regardless of the path taken to get there and it's his best ending.

In Law, Denam didn't decide who gets to live or die, he just followed his orders. However, he eventually comes to realize what Ronwey ordered was wrong, and when it's clear Ronwey shouldn't be leader the army gets rid of him. But again, Law is supposed to champion unity, and when Vyce reveals the truth of the massacre guess what Ronwey loses? And this game does have a subtitle of Let Us Cling Together, the only way to do so with your initial companions (and have two of them as powerhouse classes for the final battle) is a pure Law playthrough. Committing to Law makes Vyce and Catiua stronger, whereas Denam is at his strongest when he gets the more chaotic endings which involve further war meaning he ultimately failed to bring peace to Valeria.

I've been looking into Tactics Ogre again. I think... I think people have been misunderstanding the route split and the alignment system.

I was looking through the PS1 manual and there's a little blurb of worldbuilding about the alignments. Law is aligned with Ishtar (I know they use a different spelling officially now, but ignore), goddess of light and war. What she wants is to unify the people under law, and that got me thinking. It's the Law path that makes it so that childhood friend Vyce doesn't dive off the deep end fighting you and can live. There's other characters that would otherwise die if you went the other route, but can be recruited in Law, and it's characters from the Law route that unlock the post-game CODAs. The game is also called Tactics Ogre Let Us Cling Together.

The Law route is not about following orders, it's about prioritizing unifying the people. The false flag operation you allowed to happen was bad, and the game calls it out, but the purpose wasn't wrong.

Chaos is associated with the dark god Asmodeus, who seeks freedom and believes that through freedom chaos will come about. You go down this path by rejecting the orders. You put your own morality above the call for unity, and as a result your character goes on the run. Instead of allowing your countrymen to be killed, you instead kill your countrymen in the name of your own beliefs and ideals.

In a Confucian-influenced society, Chaos is a bad end and the result of people not doing their duties.

The game also has the Chaos Frame mechanic, where if you have a bad relationship with one of the ethnic groups when you become king, usually through killing enough of them, Denam'll be assassinated in the game's ending which would lead to further war and bloodshed. Likewise, if you can keep them on decent terms... your country is invaded after you take the throne. The former is a Chaos ending, while the latter is a more neutral one. But if you let your sister Catiua take her rightful spot as queen, Chaos Frame doesn't matter and the country lasts for a thousand years before being conquered or joining another group (depending on which version of the game). It's the Law ending.

These endings mirror the route split, with a Chapter 2 Law only moving into a Lawful Chapter 3, whereas Chaos Chapter 2 can either remain Chaos or go Neutral. Chaos is presented as the better option, much like how the Chaos endings give Denam the powerful Lord class, but it doesn't appear to be the right option. You won't be able to save Vyce from himself, as mirroring your selfishness he begins to think too highly of himself and uses his backstory as an excuse, and going Chaos at the endings leads to Catiua's death.

The game still tries to call you out on the Chaos routes, and originally the Terror Knight class was locked to that route. Chaos may mean freedom, but it also is tied to darkness. If you put your own morality above the orders, as shitty as those orders are, it will eventually lead to Vyce going nuts and dying simply because of his desire to beat you. But if you do your mission, you'll eventually fight against your boss when it's revealed that he doesn't really care about the people and is just using the war for his own selfish purposes. And this whole war started because when the king disappeared the country broke apart, not wanting to live together or be ruled by another ethnic group. The war happened because unity broke apart, the land fell to chaos.

In the Chaos routes, you're killing people not to win the war but simply to protect your own freedom. You're killing not because you were told to, but because it's your own call. Same thing with regular battles, which end not with killing every enemy but simply killing the commander. It's possible to only kill them, which would in turn keep your Chaos Frame down. Ishtar may be the goddess of war, but killing is tied more to chaos and in the chaos routes you feel a lot more justified in doing so. But that can lead to falling deeper into chaos, more killing because you believe you're the good guy. Yet the Law route calls out killing far more effectively, makes the player feel like shit but also rewards the player the most. And it's the route tied to light.

But this is based on a detail from the game's manual, and game's don't really have manuals nowadays.

In short, please bring back manuals with physical versions of games. I mean, there's still the tabs to hold them so why not give something to keep there?

[apmnwq]

The original article explains that AMC theaters won't screen any Universal movies anymore. What I got is that usually, releasing movies "only in theaters" is good for both the theater and the studio, but AMC and Universal were trying to figure out and agree on a different strategy that would be even better for both. With the Covid-19 outbreak, "Trolls World Tour" was released exclusively on PVOD, with theaters being closed and all. It earned almost as much as the previous Trolls movie did when released in theaters. So Universal concluded that PVOD is good for them, and will also release Trolls World Tour in theaters once they reopen. AMC is not happy because they had been trying to discuss the new strategy with Universal for four years and then the studio goes and does whatever. So deal is off.

Then op's addition is about various examples of distributors screwing with theatres because of greed and/or lack of regulations. They used to work hand in hand with theatres because it was the best way, but now with VOD and streaming services they have more options and so they're less respectful. Like "play this adam sandler piece of shit 400 times or you don't get Avengers" is clear enough.

Jurassic World being in non-standard format is about the aspect ratio I believe. We mostly know of 4:3 (used for 35 mm films in the silent era) and 16:9 (now the most common aspect ratio for tv and computers). In cinema, the most common are 1.85:1 and 2.39:1. From what I got, digital theatres use a 1.89 screen. This way, a movie in 1.85 will use the full height (but not the full width), and 2.39 uses the full width (but not the full height). You need to adjust the projection lens focal length but once it's done you're good to go for any film.

BUT THEN Jurassic World comes with its 2.00:1 aspect ratio. This isn't a new ratio in itself, but it's mostly used by like Netflix and Amazon Video. So obviously theatres weren't equipped for that and had to readjust everything for this one specific movie. [the reason they used 2:1 is because they wanted the format to be tall enough to see the big dinosaurs appropriately, but didn't want to use 1.85 because it "was too much like high-definition tv". fans were disappointed because all three previous JP movies were shot in 1.85]

Then there's also another issue with how the files used to store the movies are handled. This collection of files (audio, video, subtitles etc) is called a Digital Cinema Package (DCP), and it's encrypted (to avoid piracy), so you need a Key Delivery Message (KDM) to open it. The KDM is always for a specific movie room and has an "expiry date", to avoid leaks and make sure theaters respect the deal. So if studios use "cheaper and nastier distribution companies" for those, it blows up in the theatre's face.

But even when it works, distributors can decide to make last minute changes, like cut a scene or add content or whatever, and the system complicates everything. You need to re-encode stuff in the DCP and you need a new KDM and all this costs money obviously. And distributors seem to looove doing things last minute.

Theatres are tired of being treated like shit, and AMC finally said fuck you to Universal. Some people (comments on OP's article) seem to think that it was a bad move tho, but i hope it'll start to change things.

HOLY FUCKING SHIT GUYS