#trying to gage what the viewers loved the most

[angiemaniac]

Reposted because I had to fix some errors

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

This is the most offensivly ignorant comment I’ve ever had the misfortunte of reading

Unsurprisingly it comes from the King of ‘What you just said is so aggressively idiotic I feel like you just insulted everyone’: RDMacQ. 

For context you need to read this statement from someone else. Whilst I do not agree with this statement I’m not addressing it’s merits or demerits.

“Let me say that I don't like Evil Superman as a concept, but when written well, like Tom Taylor's Injustice comics, where the guy who wrote it clearly has love for the traditional version of Superman and tries to humanize him even at his worst so you can relate and feel for the guy, I accept it, I enjoy it. By that same token, I was always open to Peter/MJ not working out if it was done well, and not done as in the case of OMD/OMIT with the demonstrable intent of slandering MJ's character and making Peter young hip and open to dating younger girls without him coming off as a creep and sleazebag. I am not okay with it happening to preserving Peter's sainthood. I mean the reason I accepted Peter B. in ITSV is that it did that take on the direction the character went into very well. In the case of Life Story #3, you are meant to agree with MJ and she's shown as a moral force, someone who condemns Venom Peter when he is about to kill Kraven-in-Cloth Suit. And of course people need to keep in mind that in Life Story, Reed and Sue didn't work out either, Vision suffers more guilt than even Peter can fathom, Captain America made a bigger and more difficult choice and faces more consequences for his actions than Peter does. So I feel that whatever Zdarsky is doing he's playing fair in the way that other writers don't when they do the story this way. And also tonally, the story is set in the '80s, the age of Watchmen. I think in terms of decade-specific mood and trend, having a story where Spider-man becomes a deadbeat dad worried about not being in prime physical shape and so on...is quite apposite.”

Then we get to RDMacQ’s bullshit

 “Yeah, I find it weird that the main complaint is "This isn't what happened in the original comics" and I'm like "Yeah.... kind of the point!"”

Here is the problem.

Life Story is intended and promoted as a WHAT IF.

 The way a WHAT IF works is that it takes what DID happen and changes variables to explore how that’d impact the outcome.

With Variables A+B you get outcome 1 (the main universe).

 But what if you had Variables C+D? You would get outcome 2.

 Gwen Stacy died so Spider-Man tried (and ultimately refrained) from murdering the Green Goblin.

 But what If Spider-Man saved Gwen Stacy? Then she’d accept him, he’d stop the Goblin, but the Goblin would expose his identity in the interim and thus ruin Peter’s life.

 Kingpin’s assassin injured Aunt May so Peter beat him up.

 But what If the Kingpin’s assassin didn’t injure Aunt May but simply outright killed Mary Jane? Then Peter would directly murder the Kingpin.

 Life Story doesn’t play fair as a What if in the slightest.

 A what if done properly is confined by the parameters of the original story. Everyone still needs to act in character within the context of the new situation as defined by the older stories.

 That isn’t he case in Life Story

 To begin with it isn’t changing just one variable it’s changing multiple. Spider-Man is aging in real time. The events of his life are happening in roughly the same time period they would’ve been published, but not in the same order. The level of realism is drastically higher since Marvel heroes are going to the Vietnam War.

 Characters act arbitrarily differently in ways they wouldn’t do in the context of the new variables. Case in point, why exactly would Norman Osborn pull the scheme he di in issue #2 just because he’s in prison? His plan never made sense. And in issue #4 his plan was even more asinine. He wanted to destroy Spider-Man and due to being too old to do it himself he pulled the Clone Saga and got Doc Ock to attack Spidey on his behalf. But he knew who Peter was, why not just reveal the truth. Doing so couldn’t harm him as he’d already paid for his crimes as the Goblin and his identity was public knowledge.

 That doesn’t make sense. That’s not an opinion that’s just self-evident by the story. The cause and effect of it doesn’t add up.

 But RDMacQ doesn’t believe in that. According to him Norman’s actions are justified because ‘ a crazy person did something that didn’t make sense’. That’s the laziest most pathetic attempt at analysis. And yet this cum bubble of a human being has the audiactity to claim I  don’t analyse.

 To him authorial intent is everything unless he doesn’t like it.

 Because the point is that it’s supposed to be different from canon that means that characters can act in ANY way that’s different. ANY thing that is different is a viable option. Which obviously defeats the entire object of the project. If you are going to do that what is the point of rooting it in 616 canon in the first place? Why rely upon familiarity with the canon universe if you are going to randomly change anything on a whim as opposed to in logical response to a changed variable?

 In doing that all you have accomplished is a weird and unfocussed Ultimate Universe, not a What if.

 But then ol’ Big Mac starts to step up the game.

 “I think probably my issue arises due to certain recent fan outrages, and a lot of the rationalizations and justifications that came from them. The latest episode of Game of Thrones, for example, had a lot of people- and I mean a LOT of people- decrying a character's "Heel" turn and their "Out of character" moments- while at the same time showing a bit of a misreading of the material or the subject matter.”

 Bear in mind when he wrote this the latest episode of HBO’s Game of Thrones was the penultimate episode of it’s eighth and final season. In it, key protagonist, Daenerys slaughtered a whole city full of civilians with a fire breathing dragon and her army. Throughout the show she’d previously been defined as being unwilling to kill innocents on principle, once claiming that each enslaved person in a city was a reason to conquer the city and liberate it’s people. She was so horrified that one of her dragons inadvertently killed a child that she locked them up. She once affirmed that she did not want to be ‘Queen of the Ashes’ amidst her campaign to retake her homeland.

 It’s fair to say the overwhelming majority of viewers AND professional critics took major issue with this and declared it a travesty and out of character.

 Behind-the-scenes stories also heavily point to Emilia Clarke (the actress portraying the character) being upset and disenchanted with her character’s direction.

For my money these two videos are the best examinations of the disaster that was Daenerys heel turn in this episode of Game of Thrones.*

Also please bear in mind the ‘man’ saying people are misreading things is the same man who has continually insisted that Norman Osborn merely wants to kill Spider-Man in spite of me citing examples to the contrary, including this page.

So you know, not exactly demonstrating great analytical skills there. 

“I think it's far too easy to cry "Out of character" when a character does something different, or simply questionable, because it's an easy catch all phrase that sounds like you know something, but in reality it's just a cover for a lack of understanding of things like characterization or plot development.”

Says the ‘man’ who genuinely once said Norman Osborn doing something nonsensical is justified because ‘he’s crazy’.

 Says the ‘man’ who leaned incredibly hard on the idea that Miles Warren in Life Story would not have intervened in Gwen’s marriage to Peter Parker even though his entire character revolves around his jealous obsession over her.

 Says the guy who once said a writer can randomly decide all of Mary Jane’s character development since the 1980s didn’t matter.

 Says the ‘man’ who once claimed Doc Ock at the end of Gage’s Superior run was he real Doc Ock even though he was literally a clone of his mind in a clone of his body…and then he refused to listen to me when I repeatedly spelled that fact out for him. His rationale was ‘Marvel are treating him as the real guy so he is’.

 Says the ‘man’ that in his ‘interpretation’ Spider-Man regarded Ned Leeds as a ‘viper’ after he was revealed as the Hobgoblin, in spite of literally no evidence supporting that interpretation and you know Spider-Man literally saying otherwise multiple times; including in the issue he learned Ned was a villain. In fact when I pointed this out to ol’ big Mac he referred to such things as ‘arbitrary’.

 Says the guy who once said it’s better for stories to be in multi-parters because before the rise of decompression al stories had rushed endings. Remember how Amazing Fantasy #15, The Kid Who Collects Spider-Man, Sensational Annual 2007, The Conversation and When Commeth the Commuter all had ‘rushed’ endings?

 Says the poor excuse for a ‘man’ who once claimed there was nothing wrong with the JMS run having magic but who also lambasted Peter David’s Spider-Man work for involving magic and time travel, even though JMS wrote ASM #500 which is literally about magic time travel.

 What I am trying to say is this ‘man’ has systemically demonstrated immense hypocrisy and stupidity but a staggering deficiency when it comes to literary analytical skills.

 “The movie reviewer Bob Chipman mentioned this in one of his videos where he talked about the problems that a lot of "Modern" viewers have is that they believe because they watch a lot of movies in a year, that somehow makes them film buffs or gives them insight into the storytelling process, when in reality what they are doing is watching all the Marvel movies or all the big releases, and assuming that gives them the same sort of insight that people who go to school to learn this sort of thing do. And I kind of think that's also true of comics as well.”

 Oh boy, is there a lot to unpack here.

 Keeper of the Gate

For starters let’s call this out for what it is. As much as he might be softening the statement by saying ‘kind of’, what he is actually doing right here is GATEKEEPING.**

 He is saying unless you have ‘gone to school to learn this sort of thing’ you don’t COUNT as a critic.***

 Okay let’s dive into that one.

 Schooling ain’t everything

Gone to school to do what exactly? How to make movies? That’s what film school is for right? So you can learn how to write, produce, direct, etc movies. Correct me if I am wrong but film school does not teach you how to CRITIQUE movies.

 So by this logic going to film school wouldn’t qualify you to critique a movie, just how to make them. Except no one argues that. Bob Chipman himself studied film at school and it is from that point of view that his analyses come from.

 So by RDMacQ’s own logic Bob himself isn’t qualified for his own job, let alone RD himself. At which point why does Bob’s words carry any weight at all?

 But wait, we can go yet deeper.

 What if we aren’t talking about film school specifically? What if someone just studied film as their major in college but not strictly film school? Is that good enough to be a film critic or not? If it is are you a lower echelon of film critic?

 What if you minored in film/media studies instead of majored in it? Are you yet lower on the totem pole?

 What if you went to film school but dropped out?

 What if you studied from home and didn’t actually GO to the school itself?

 What if you studied it at A school but pre-college?

 What if you studied it privately outside of an educational institution? In other words a self-taught film student?

 Shit, what about the first ever film critics or the first ever film makers who pioneered techniques and the art form? If they were going through the trial and error of formulating the art form and medium there obviously couldn’t have BEEN film schools back then?

 Do they not count?

 Not to mention the cultural implications of this. If you are an American who attended a French film school are you unqualified to critique American films and only French ones, even if you grew up predominantly with American cinema?

 Let’s change things up a little and look to TV in Britain. One of the most acclaimed British TV writers of all time was a man named John Sullivan. Sullivan created multiple beloved and acclaimed sitcoms, the most famous of which is called Only Fools and Horses. So successful was this show that it was the most viewed TV show in Britain in both the 90s and the 2000s. The latte in particular is an achievement since the show existed purely as reruns in the 2000s sans literally 3 episodes.

 The show had a total of 64 episodes and ran between 1981-2003. Do you know how many of those 64 episodes Sullivan wrote?

 ALL of them.

 And do you know how many of them have predominantly negative reviews? Arguably  just four.

 Not only has the show been positively received it’s been regarded as the singular greatest British comedy of all time, a title it still holds to this day.

 Amidst the praise that the show has received is it’s great characterization, it’s emotional moments and in particular it’s utter command of narrative structure. Not only do the jokes land they land with grace and make the feat seem easy when it’s all over. The cherry on his record was his OBE, an official government recognition of his positive contributions to the arts.

 So you know, this guy clearly knew how to tell a good story. He did like 60 times in a row single handily.

 So when and where did he study film? The answer is, he didn’t.

 He never studied film. His formal education stopped at age 15 when he dropped out of school with no qualifications. Even if he had completed his secondary high school education he’d have not studied film. Film was not on the British curriculum at the time and to my knowledge still isn’t. At best you can study ‘media studies’ starting at age 16-18 before you go on to university. But up until age 16 it’s just not an available option.

 He did go to evening classes for English and read teach yourself books but that was it.

 By Big Mac’s standards this writer who’s been recognized by the government themselves wasn’t qualified to write anything, let alone critique it.

 Additionally let’s consider one teeny weeny little fact. If you’ve lived through the formal education system in pretty much any Western country you have almost certainly been educated on how to gain an insight into the storytelling process. Because that’s a big part of what fucking ENGLISH class is for!****

 MovieBob

I’d say I’m shocked and appalled at RD’s audacity and lack of self-awareness in citing MovieBob Chipman. But I’m not. It actually makes far too much sense.

MovieBob is a broken clock that’s often not even right twice a day. His credibility as a critic and as a human being is also woefully lacking.

For starters RD is a big Spider-Marriage proponent (though he’s recently turned traitor and says he doesn’t really mid if it doesn’t come back). To his credit he has often called out and deconstructed unfair and disingenuous arguments against the Spider-Marriage.

Bob however is staunchly on the other side of that debate.

He’s even said the marriage was never good, came from an illegitimate place, that Spider-Mans imply should never be married and in fact argued that a late Slott era Spider-Man and MJ were more interesting than they were before.

Thus I find RD’s citing of Bob to back up his claims about who is ‘qualified’ to be a critic the height of irony.

But you know, that doesn’t necessarily hurt RD’s argument. Hell, Bob un-ironically believing in eugenics or intelligence testing for voters doesn’t necessarily hurt RD’s argument.

Nor does MovieBob’s weird, weird views on how society apparently punishes the Big Brains like himself of course. Although it’s so telling that an arrogant prick like RD would invoke the words of a ‘brother-in-arms’ like Bob.

 No, what hurts RD’s argument is where Bob was probably coming from with his initial statement.

 See I heavily suspect that RD’s claims about Bob are kind of stem from his interpretations of this video Bob made called ‘BIG PICTURE: PLOTHOLE SURFERS’. Noticeably that video cites this video by another Youtube film critic named Patrick Willems. Called ‘SHUT UP ABOUT PLOT HOLES’.

The sentiments of both videos explicitly or implicitly echo Big MacQuack’s. Everyone is wrong in how they are critiquing movies except them and people like them because they are ‘professionals’ because they went to school.

None of these arguments hold up to scrutiny both due to stuff I have mentioned above but also for various other reasons I’m not going to bother unpacking here. If you want a detailed look at why Chipman and Willems (and by extension RD) are full of shit there are several Youtube videos dissecting their points, particularly Willems’.

However, I’ve found the most detailed to be this video. 

There is also this video where they more directly address Bob’s video.

Fair warning they are long and get less than PC, and yet they do address why the videos don’t hold up to scrutiny.

Self-taught critic

Here is a crazy thought, if you’ve watched all the Marvel movies and big releases every year, why SHOULDN’T that give you a potential insight when critiquing OTHER Marvel movies or big releases? Those things are competing against one another, they are broadly going for the same audience. If you familiarise yourself with them then it is not beyond impossibility that you could mentally play spot the difference in the storytelling and critically evaluate them. It’s almost like in consuming that media you have formulated a CRITERIA which you are then CRITICALLY judging similar such media against.

Hypocrisy

The best part about RD’s statements? He himself has never gone to film school. Nor has he gone to a school specifically teaching him how to analyse comic books nor write them.

By his own logic he has disqualified himself from partaking in critiquing any story, as he did with Life Story or Game of Thrones earlier on.

But the best part?

If you check out the thread this is from and observe the poster called Chase the Blues Away they often disagree. CTBA  points out holes in RD’s arguments and subtly questions his reading comprehension. Entirely separately they also implied they felt GoT’s writing was illogical towards the end of season 8 as well.

Why is CTBA relevant.

Because they actually HAVE gone to film school!

Furthermore, on both Life Story and most other matters related to Spider-Man CTBA and myself have been on the same page, whether this entails agreeing with one another’s statements or by coincidence having similar positions.

Now me?

I NEVER went to film school nor did I study English literature formally beyond age 18. Oh, I’ve read bits and bobs about writing (my favourite being Russell T Davies’ book ‘A Writer’s Tale’). But I have no college level formal education on the craft of writing. My analytical skills were cultivated from my school experiences and a whole load of osmosis and practice.

I have also found myself often on the same page as another person who at least studied English at a college level. They are another poster on the same forum called MacGoblin, perhaps better known as the creator of the (now defunct) SpideyKicksButt website. For many people the site was THE best source of Spider-Man analysis on the web for over a decade.

MadGoblin still participates regularly on a podcast covering new Spider-Man issues and whether or not I agree with all his assessments the manner in which he analyses (with an eye upon continuity) is similar to myself and indeed all the other panellists on the podcast.

One of the former panellists on the podcast (who I have also been on the same page with more often than not) was called Donomark and he too studied English at a college level.

So that’s three people who meet RD’s arbitrary rules for who is a ‘real’ critic. And yet I (someone who doesn’t meet RD’s criteria) have come to mostly the exact same conclusions as they have through entirely independent analysis.

As have other people I know who didn’t study film or English Lit in college.

So, either I’m just an absolute prodigy, or RDMacQ, Willems and MovieBob’s criteria for who can and can’t grasp plot and characters is full of shit.

“A lot of the complaints I've seen is that Peter wouldn't or didn't do this in the original comics. But arguing "Peter wouldn't do this because in ASM #225, on page 11..." isn't pointing out the flaw in the story.”

As always RD is devoid of nuance or appreciating the complexities of things.

If in Life Story or any Spider-Man story in canon Peter acts in a way at odds with his established characterization  which is DEFINED by ASM #225 then absolutely  that’s pointing out a flaw in a story.

Case in point, here is this poorly drawn satire of Superior Spider-Man RDMacQ himself made:

Most of the gags at the expense of Superior Spider-Man in this page was made through the lens of knowing the characters’ past, of knowing what they did and how they acted in older stories.

The confusion over Crazy Town Banana Pants derives from Superior claiming Peter routinely said this when he in fact never did.

Carlie’s suspicions over Superior’s behaviour stems from he fact that the older stories have established how Peter acts and established that Carlie knows how he acts. Therefore Carlie not realizing the truth when she’s been told is illogical. That’s the gag from someone who’s stamped his foot on the ground and angrily refuted that human beings are capable of being logical.

The same is true of this next page too.

Captain America refers to ‘usual’ people involved with the Avengers (super scientists, etc.). Usual means there is a precedent and a precedent can only be defined via a pattern. A pattern of what? A pattern of older stories!

The second panel is bringing up the OLDER STORY ‘Ends of the Earth’ to prove the hypocrisy of Doc Ock

The final panel references SEVERAL past events. The Clone Saga. The Alien Costume Saga. Every time the Chameleon or another shape shifter has impersonated him. Kraven’s Last Hunt.

It’s also referencing the fact that MJ would KNOW about them and even goes really specific by referencing the events of a few pages of one specific issue of Kraven’s Last Hunt. Not the gist of the story, not the climax or the most famous moments. This one scene in the middle of everything else.

RD is using that very specific moment to draw a comparison between it and the events of Superior in order to point out how MJ is not acting consistently.

Almost like she’s, I dunno, OUT OF CHARACTER or something?

Oh, and or the record declaring Peter would or wouldn’t act this way because of ASm #225 p11 is bullshit because Peter isn’t even on that page.

“That's just spouting comic book trivia, which isn't the same thing.”

But referencing events in the middle of KLH which are hardly iconic and immediately memorable and pointing out how MJ didn’t act consistently with them in Superior Spider-Man?

 Oh no, that’s NOT ‘spouting comic book trivia’.

 Can you see the hypocrisy of this creature now?

 Can you see how BROKEN it is to argue a character being established as acting a certain way by an older story DOESN’T mean it matters thereafter?

 And he says I am bad at analysis, Jesus Christ.

 “Knowledge of trivia isn't the same as understanding plot structure, foreshadowing, character development, or knowing or accepting that just because something happens in issue 1 doesn't mean it will stay that way throughout the entire book.”

 First of all the sheer audacity of someone with such non-existent analytical skills to DARE fucking throw shade like this is astounding. That’s like Michael Bay trying to explain how you make a movie with substance.

 Second of all he’s right and wrong here.

 Knowing the history of the characters is not the same as knowing those things.

 But that doesn’t render it trivia because it’s the fucking histories of the characters that define who they goddam are!

 Everyone agrees Spider-Man would not have acted the way he did in One More Day right? And that MJ wouldn’t have acted the way she did in OMIT right?

 Why? Why do people feel the characters would not behave that way?

 Because they read older stories that depicted them acting in certain ways in certain situations that were then contradicted by OMD and OMIT.

 You know like MJ not realising Superior Spidey wasn’t really Peter even though the situation was incredibly similar to Kraven’s Last Hunt and both entailed imposters pretending to be Spider-Man.

 No, knowing the history isn’t the same as knowing all that other stuff.

 But it is undeniably an integral PART of being able to analyse something because if the prior events don’t matter, if they are merely trivia (or worse trivia when he wants it to be but not when he doesn’t) then NOTHING matters.

 Why the fuck should issue #1 matter when reading issue #2? Or issue #3 when reading issue #5?

 What does it matter if chapter 1 established our protagonist as an adult black man with a wife but by chapter 10, with no explanation they are a teenaged white woman claiming they’ve never been married?

 Hey, chapter 1 is just trivia right. Why should that matter?

 By the way, go ask Harry Potter fans if those little details are irrelevant and see how that goes.

 He’s also (unsurprisingly) disgustingly disingenuous in his final point. Yes, things between issue #1 and issue #25 will change. But there is a world of difference between something changing via development vs. lazy contradictive writing.

 Case in point, in ASM #1 Peter Parker doesn’t have a job, is a pariah at school and runs away crying from a failed adventure. In issue #25 he has a freelance job, isn’t running away crying and 2 ladies are interested in him.

 WHAT? Isn’t this a contradiction? Doesn’t accepting this change mean you accept that issue #1 was mere trivia?

 No, because between issue #1 and #25 we saw how and when Peter got a job, those two ladies became interested in him and we saw his skills, experience and confidence grow. The end result is that issue #25 was different to issue #1 because we’d been on a JOURNEY to get us there.

 In contrast in ASM #700 Doc Ock is seemingly turned into a good guy because all of Spider-Man’s memories were beamed into his head, teaching him Uncle Ben’s famous mantra. But in Superior Spider-Man #1 he’s randomly reverted to what he was doing back in ASM #698.

 So that stuff was just trivia? But that stuff was the resolution of ASM #700 and therefore the set up for Superior #1. The latter couldn’t exist without the former and yet it doesn’t make sense.

 And you see that? You see how that cause and effect problem exists? Yeah, that’s PART of critiquing plot structure and foreshadowing. It’s ALMOST like the older stories aren’t merely trivia but actually very important and play a factor  in the other forms of analysis RD listed off.

 Not to mention, the idiocy of saying knowing the trivia doesn’t mean you understand foreshadowing. Motherfucker, the entire concept of foreshadowing is that you establish details in the present because you want to hint at readers about where the story is going to go later. It practically HINGES upon readers remembering that ‘trivia’.

 If ASM #225 p11 had Spider-Man pass by a black cat and say ‘Boy that reminds me of Felicia Hardy.’ THAT would be foreshadowing for the next issue, but you couldn’t appreciate that UNLESS you remembered what happened in ASM #225 p11.

 And the imbecility of bringing this shit up whilst referencing Game of Thrones too? As if Daenerys heel turn was actually foreshadowed and not just created from splicing old voice overs together in the previously segment of the show.

The next bit is in reference to Life Story again by the way.

“I mean, one of the best bits of subtle foreshadowing here is what happens with Peter and Reed's relationship. In issue 2, Peter reflects on how Reed pushed Sue away with his actions, and how he doesn't want to end up like that. But come issue 3, Peter ends up doing just that, despite his best efforts to the contrary and knowing what happened to Reed beforehand. That shows smart plot structure, which doesn't come out and yell at you "THIS IS IMPORTANT!" or hold your hand in any way. That shows that this story is pretty smart with the narrative choices that are being made.”

No it doesn’t.

Because the way in which Peter pushed MJ away contradicted his character and made no fucking sense. He had a mid-life crisis in spite of being well under 40 years old.

Also, you can have, by skill or by fluke, a dash of GOOD writing amidst your shitty writing.

A LOT of people would argue the podrace or Duel of the Fates fight in Phantom Menace were legitimately good sequences in an otherwise bad movie.

People broadbrush 90s Marvel as wall to wall trash but equally everyone praises Spider-Man 2099, Joe Kelly’s Deadpool run, Ron Marz’s Green Lantern run, etc.

Goddammit, 99% of all Doctor Who is fans celebrating the bits that were great amidst the bits that were bad. There are no end of Dr. Who stories were fans will praise the set design or costumes whilst shitting on the over all writing.

Shockingly a piece of media can have good AND bad elements!

Whenever someone says a story is good or bad they are almost always speaking OVERALL. A New Hope is OVERALL good. It’s not claiming there aren’t flaws to it.

Dan Slott’s Spider-Man run was OVERALL bad. Even I have said there are good elements to it.

But the mere existence of good elements doesn’t prove that something is overall one thing or another.

In Life Story’s case, let’s pretend RD is right. Then Zdarsky executed a good bit of foreshadowing.

Key word there: ‘bit’.

It doesn’t PROVE the over all story is smart with its narrative choices.

That’s such an utterly childish  manner of analysis. ‘Well this bit is good that means everything else has to be good’.

Like how the fuck does doing a good bit of foreshadowing prove that Life Story wasn’t mischaracterizing anyone or knew how to tell a good alternate history story?

Shit, DAN SLOTT had foreshadowing, sometimes it was even competently executed. Didn’t mean it wasn’t happening within the context of mischaracterization. 

Trust Bobby Mac to have no grasp  of nuance.

 “But rather than acknowledging that, instead we get stuff like being concerned with that because Gwen finds out Peter's secret identity at the end of issue 1, that therefore means that Peter is going to be hooking up with Gwen throughout the rest of the story, that this is going to be one big Peter/ Gwen book, that Chip Zdarsky is somehow a Gwen shipper because he wanted to just have her as a best friend in Spectacular, that MJ only having two lines in the first issue means her importance will be diminished overall, and that the whole series is going to try and be a rewrite to push that ship.”

None of the allegedly great foreshadowing RD spoke of above was in issue #1

Even if it was nobody could possibly have talked about that as a point of praise because the nature of foreshadowing is we wouldn’t have realised it was goddam foreshadowing until we finally GOT to the bit it was setting up in later issues

RD has been one of the most involved people in discussions about the Spider-Marriage, frequently clashing with a fell named Mister Mets on CBR and on the linked message board. He knows that Marvel from OMD onwards used to spite fans over OMD and the Spider-Marriage and that circa 2019 when Life Story was being released the latest of such instances had occurred maybe just 1 year earlier in Slott’s Red Goblin storyline. He also knows Zdarsky pissed in the well of the Spider-Marriage fans with his FCBD 2017 Spidey story which involved Mary Jane. So for a heavily burned and abused fanbase to suddenly be concerned that Zdarksy would be pushing an agenda was a totally natural and justified reaction to have at the time even if it was proven incorrect in the long run.

RD is being a shithead again. ‘Ugh, look at these overwrought FaNz. wHy CaNt dey celebrate the GUD stuff and not focus on the WRONG stuff’.The wrong stuff being Zdarsky shitting on the Spider-Man marriage, which he clearly did by breaking up Peter and Mj in the 80s when they didn’t break up then but he needed to ship Peter with Jessica Jones I guess

 “Yet here we, two issues later, and Gwen is dead, Peter married MJ and now they have kids.”

And in LF #3 their marriage was in a toxic place and they split up. In issue #4 they get back together but only by Peter giving up being Spider-Man. Almost like the story was saying having a family and being Spidey are incompatible or something.

Shit issue #3 BEGINS with MJ griping about Peter.

 “All the reactionary nonsense turned out to be for naught, since the story was going in a different direction, and just because Gwen was prominent early on didn't mean MJ wasn't going to play an important role later.”

 It wasn’t reactionary nonsense it was entirely justified  reactionary concern. People weren’t concerned that MJ wouldn’t be important but that Zdarsky would be pushing a pro-Gwen/anti-Mj agenda which he at least debatably did and certainly seemed to be doing in the first 3 issues.

 “And yet we still continue to see that reactionary nonsense continue with decrying because Peter and MJ leave off on a bad note here, it therefore means the rest of the series will be an unending slide into misery.”

Which was proven partially true.

Issue #4 Harry dies, Peter quits like a coward.

Issue #5 Peter’s child is crippled, his identity is outted, ben Reilly dies and he becomes a fugitive as a super human civil war breaks out.

Issue #6 the world has turned to shit because of that civil war and the only way to fix it is for Spider-Man to die.

But again, he’s missing the point like the fool that he is.

People were concerned and upset BECAUSE the series split Peter and MJ up in the first place. Both because that defied the mission statement of the series but also because they know Peter and MJ WOULDN’T split up and the circumstances engineering it were fucking contrived shit.

“Which then unfortunately leads into bashing the creator himself, which I find incredibly unreasonable given the tremendous job Zdarsky is doing.”

He didn’t do a tremendous job.

Chase the Blues Away, the film school student, had been saying so and continued to say so after RD made this comment. So I guess by his own metric he was full of shit.

This is one of RD’s fundamental and fatal flaws. He’s a hypocrite. Everything is subjective unless it’s the shit HE likes or hates. Then it’s objectively good or bad.

Not to mention no one had been bashing the creator personally. He can’t grasp this either. He doesn’t grasp the distinction between bashing the work of a writer vs. bashing the writer personally.

E.g. he falsely claims I’ve sworn at him. I have sworn at him…here. On my own blog here I don’t feel the need to play nice.

On a public forum? Never. I’ve sworn in the course of conversations with him. I’ve sworn in regards to his argument but never sworn to attack him personally.

“Decrying Zdarsky as some form of hack because halfway through a six part story he's had the protagonist go through a rough time and that he is just putting out "Fan fiction," or- as I saw someone else argue- that the reason Zdarsky did this was because he himself went through marital troubles at one time in his life is just silly.”

It’s really not. He admitted that he wrote MJ in FCBD 2017 as his ex wife.

Fanfiction is exactly what LF was. Peter hooks up with Jessica Jones because…no given reason. It’d make infinitely more sense for that to have been Felicia but it was Jessica Jones. Zdarsky invents his own personal new spin on the Goblin who’s wearing kewl black because why not. He has characters randomly act in any way he wants for the story to happen regardless of how little sense it makes. That’s bad fanfiction 101. He has logic holes you can drive a truck through. FFS Russia launched nukes on America in issue #3 and this DIDN”T result in all out nuclear Armageddon. That’s amateuris

 “Just like it's silly to say that D&B from GoT are purposefully destroying the show because they hate it and they hate women and they just want to move onto Star Wars,”

This is at worst a strawman.

At best an utterly myopic oversimplification.

The MAJORITY of people crying out against GoT season 8 weren’t claiming D&B were engaging in deliberate sabotage but rather they were ruining the series via their incompetence and RUSHING to get to the end.

Additionally the idea that they are misogynists is REALLY not a ‘silly’ argument. MANY people throughout the show’s history have made that argument, long before the popular opinion was that the show was bad,

A  season 4 subplot that was heavily embellished (to the point of being called practically original) from the books entailed rogue Night’s Watchmen raping a household of women beyond the Wall. The most infamous line from the subplot was ‘Fuck them all to death.’

In that same season Jamie Lannister makes sexual advances on his sister Cersei even though she was saying no.

Sansa Stark, in a scene not in the books, was raped by Ramsey Bolton with the focus being upon Theon Greyjoy’s horror at the situation.

And of course there is ever so slightly a dash of gratuitous nudity involving women in the show.

Look, I’m not even saying for sure that D&B hate women or that that was at the root of how they fucked up Daenerys’ character in season 8.

But it’s idiotic to just dismiss the idea as wholesale silly as Smac a Mac is doing above.

 “when in reality D&B were the reason the show got made in the first place and all those great female characters were brought to television for a wider audience to experience.”

Hollywood had been wanting to adapt George R. R. Martin’s books for years before he let D&B do it

Their first pilot was so bad they had to reshoot it.

They weren’t the reason we got those great female characters. Martin’s writing was why we got those characters and those good stories and why anyone wanted to make his books into a live action property at all.

Again, RD FAILING at nuance. A female character can have good writing AND bad writing. They can be good over all but drop the ball in certain moments. They can be great for 7 seasons but then fumble disastrously at the finish line. An opinion shared by all those critics that went to film school

Writers can be capable of doing good female characters even if they are misogynists. Writers who are not misogynists are capable of still being sexist at times. Friggin Stan Lee had sexist female characters in spite of also inventing Mary Jane who is lauded as a great female character even in the 1960s. Again, nuance. Mac Attac ain’t good at it.

“We can dislike or criticize a work without having to demonize the creators,”

It’s not demonizing D&B or Zdarsky to call them incompetent writers.

“and I think it's just become far too easy nowadays for people to rationalize their statements by making the creators themselves into remorseless villains, since that justifies them acting however they please in response.”

And it’s become far too difficult for me to stomach any more of this piece of shit.

*For what it is worth, these events are also listed on TV Tropes under the Face Heel Turn page:

Daenerys herself falls victim to this in the final seasons. Her actions in Essos had the purest of intentions: fighting against the Dothraki's misogyny and ending slavery in western Essos. Even her morally questionable acts still had these goals in mind. But when she set her sights on conquering Westeros, which is more or less a standard medieval European setting, her only goal was conquest. Even her claim that the Iron Throne is her birthright falls short since her father was killed due to his madness and love of burning things. Dany really doesn't help her case by burning alive any captive soldiers who don't side with her. This culminates with her slaughtering most of King's Landing's civilian population in the penultimate episode. Had the show started with the sixth season, there'd be no question that she is Daddy's Little Villain, her tragic backstory and past heroic deeds being a footnote at best.

**This is especially ironic as he’s accused me of doing the same.

Me, I’ve called people out or corrected them when they have gotten facts wrong. I’ve even said they don’t know what they are talking about. The difference is I’m not doing it just on principal as he is here.

I’ve never said someone doesn’t belong in the fandom or is not a real fan. Yet here RDMacQ is outright disqualifying people from having the legitimacy to critique comic books unless they’ve gone through what he deems the ‘appropriate steps’.

If I have told someone they are wrong or don’t know what they are talking about or don’t understand the material I have corroborative EVIDENCE to back it up. Their own statements prove that point.

E.g. RDMacQ doesn’t understand Norman Osborn’s character. Why? Because his statements contradicts the clear cut TEXT (not the subtext) of the source material. See? The source material is the EVIDENCE that supports my accusation. But RDMacQ doesn’t believe in analysis that way and has told me so himself.

***This laughable in he modern day and age where film criticism is so transparently ideologically driven as opposed to sincerely critiquing the merits of a film.

Hence why Bob Chipman and most other professional critics laud works like the Last Jedi which a fifth grader can see has little internal consistency.

[megansplacetocreate]

how have I got here?

During the last few months on my graphic design course, I've explored a wide range of methods and mediums that have expanded my creative practice. My first encounter with my graphic design specialism was through the project, Blind Date. I found it fascinating to try and encapsulate a person within just one image - to let the photo do all the communication to the audience whilst also leaving room for others interpretation. While this was quite a challenge, I found the project to be one of my favourites I have completed during my specialism - as I discovered photography is one of my preferred formats of communication. I often find that text can deprive us of our imagination, as sometimes it spells out everything for us. I like the concept of showcasing an emotion, feeling or theme within an image and letting the audience interpret that through their own words and experiences. 

I also think when developing initial ideas within a project, photography is a great way to visualise certain outcomes e.g. collecting images as primary research or to gage how something will look within a certain context - photography has become one of my favourite ways to experiment as well as a medium that I believes helps me to flourish creatively. I think in preparation for my FMP I want to further my exploration of this medium by expanding my technical skills, to produce technically better photographs as well as the capacity to create interesting outcomes in programs like photoshop. 

Within certain projects, such as Just My Type, whilst I was pleased with my final outcome I think my development and overall project could’ve benefitted from more experimentation, especially in terms of printing (perhaps trying screen printing etc). I find I become intimidated by practices I have no initial experience in and refrain from letting myself play around with certain mediums. Throughout my time in graphics I think I have stuck to what I know I can execute well and have often played things safe which may have hindered my final outcomes and its possible formats. While I have some time during my FMP I would love to experiment within my chosen theme to produce certain products or pieces as well as initial developments that are further away from the collection of work I have already accumulated. 

Most recently, I've been really inspired by our final project within graphic design, ‘24/7′, with the exhibition (of the same name) presenting many intriguing and thought-provoking works that really cause the viewer to question and challenge the modern world they’re living in. The exhibition, to me, served as a reminder to look after ourselves in a world dominated and ruled by damaging technology. The concept to remind people of the simple things in life really intrigued me as they are often glazed over, this served as inspiration for my final outcome - as well as something I would’ve wanted to explore more in terms of format, if I had freedom to create something bigger than a book. 

In preparation for my FMP, I’ve been thinking of using an idea or theme that I have a lot of interest in but didn’t have enough time to properly explore creatively - due to crowded time schedule around the time of the project, ‘24/7′ seemed like something that was quite rushed and put on the back-burner in comparison to portfolio preparation and interviews, perhaps not making it as effective or creatively interesting. So currently, my interest lie within expanding the theme of sleep I briefly explored through my book and developing it into something more informative and active in kickstarting a change in the way we view sleep and it’s importance. 

[howsermax]

Thoughts on Pet Sematary (2019)

So I saw Pet Sematary in theaters a few days back, and I’ve gotta say, I was deeply, deeply disappointed. While I love the 1989 film about as much as I love the book, with the screenplay for the film being one of the only good screenplays written by King himself, it was admittedly in dire need of an upgrade. From Louis Creed’s hilarious line delivery, to the obvious switching to a Chucky-style doll during certain scenes with Gage, to the cinematography, the problems with the 1989 version of the flick were only in execution. The story could have been kept entirely the same (with a more ambiguous, book accurate ending), and it could have been an amazing remake. But instead, we got a very disappointing film.

First, I’ll go over what I liked. The cinematography, while gray, was still pretty creative at times in terms of camera movement. All the actors do a pretty good job for the most part, however, Ellie only does a good job after she dies. The practical effects were all pretty amazing, even though Ellie could have used a little more rot. The score is also pretty memorable and interesting. Surprisingly, the movie makes a few changes to the source material I actually really welcome. For example, the Zelda storyline is changed up in a way where it makes more sense why Rachel’s feeling of disgust towards Zelda added to her guilt by making Zelda’s death directly involve Rachel’s reluctance to interact with her. The Zelda flashbacks also have very creative transitions. However, those are all the praises I can really sing for this movie.

The writing is the most noticeable flaw with this movie. The characters never once talk like real people, they simplify story concepts way too often (for example, Rachel’s feelings of guilt in the first place are barely explored), and the movie brings up it’s themes of coping with death and loss in the most amazingly ham-fisted and basic ways possible. After Ellie asks about what will happen when Church dies, Rachel and Louis share a conversation IN PRIVATE about whether or not they believe in the afterlife. The movie quite literally decides it’s going to directly tell the audience that the character who is a surgeon doesn’t believe in the afterlife. Keep in mind, this isn’t really written into any other aspects of his character. I really don’t think these writers passed Screenwriting 101.

But on the other hand, the movie also has a recurring tendency to forget to write about the themes of the story altogether. For example, Pascow is criminally underused in this movie. You may remember in the original movie, Pascow was extremely important, as he spent his screen time trying to stop Louis from trying to cross the barrier between life and death, so Louis can learn to accept death. However, Remake Pascow is the most vague, boring, cookie-cutter horror movie ghost you can imagine, complete with never explaining what he means, and not influencing the events around him. Pascow also doesn’t appear at all during the ending. The writers genuinely don’t understand the importance he serves to the themes of the story. But his underuse is the least of this movie’s problems.

Now, I don’t have a problem with just the concept of changing things from book/old movie to movie. It’s necessary at times, and this remake has some welcome changes up it’s sleeve. However, this movie is almost entirely full of unnecessary changes that make the movie worse in one way or another. The first one I want to talk about is the decision to have Ellie be killed on the road rather than Gage. This is something that was explicitly revealed in the trailer to anyone who remembers the original story, and what’s worse? They extensively spoke about this major plot point in the film industry press surrounding the movie before release. I get that the trailer thing is a topic for a separate nerd tirade, but I can’t describe how stupid it was of these producers to talk about such a big change pre-release. Even though it’s a remake, it’s kind of alienating to movie-goers who don’t know the classic Pet Sematary story somehow. The filmmakers extensively spoke about how they made the change so that the resurrected child could be bigger and more threatening, though I think they were too weak to give us the true depressing movie we came here to watch. Because I guess movie audiences are somehow more emotional than they were 30 years ago? Comparing this attitude to how they actually put the scene together, it looks more like they were trying to pull an ol’ switcharoo on the people who know the story. Which begs the question: WHY ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT IT IN PLACES WHERE POTENTIAL MOVIE VIEWERS CAN SEE IT??

Another huge issue I have with this movie is how fucking seriously it takes itself. The original had a very light sheen of comedy to it, think something similar to An American Werewolf in London. This is extremely prevalent in the scenes involving Pascow, where he casually stands around the afterlife, contrasting against everything and everyone as a walking corpse that nobody can see. The remake genuinely lacks all intentional comedy, which makes it really really hard to actually remember the experience, or care about it. It also ends up making certain parts of the movie unintentionally funny. For example, during the scene where Louis does his internet research on the Pet Sematary, he finds a fucking newspaper clipping about a literal fucking bison being implied to have been buried in and resurrected by the Pet Sematary. I subsequently chuckled out loud in the theater, as my mind was crossed with the mental image of a grieving child lugging an entire bison to the Pet Sematary, and struggling to find a place to bury it in the already cramped cemetery.

The editing and scene pacing is legitimately the most stereotypical modern horror film schlock ever put to screen. Firstly, jumpscares are all over this film, and it’s not a look. From the Orinco trucks, to Zelda in the dumbwaiter, to Church, everything in the film is given a loud THUD effect to accompany it, and I was supplied with many Silent Hill: Revelation 3D pop-tart jumpscare flashbacks through it’s run-time. The placement of the THUDs at times felt like watching one of my Spooky Guys episodes. Again, back to Pascow being utterly useless in the story, he instead spends this film being relegated to “look at me, I’m vague and say 3 spooky sentences I repeat over and over and I’m in a modern horror film and that’s my whole character I’m scary I say stuff about ghosts and death”.

Now here’s the big one. The ending. The ending is genuinely the worst thing about the entire film. Here’s a basic summary from what I remember. So Louis buries his dead daughter and waits for her to come back as his family tries to contact him, while Gage is troubled by visions of Pascow (who does nothing of note through the whole story). Ellie comes back and catches on to the fact that she died, but Louis denies that and gives her a bath. Jud goes over and suspects that Louis has brought Ellie back from the grave, and Ellie gets mad about it and kills Jud. Rachel and Gage arrive back at the house after Louis stops returning their calls, and Rachel is greeted by an undead Ellie. Ellie thinks that Rachel doesn���t want her around anymore, and tries to kill her, Gage, and Louis. Rachel manages to allow Gage and Louis to escape, but she’s impaled and buried by Ellie. Louis puts Gage in the car and tells him to not open the door for anyone, not even Ellie. Louis faces off with Ellie in the Pet Sematary, before being killed by the now resurrected Rachel. Rachel and Ellie resurrect Louis, and for some reason unlike Ellie, Louis and Rachel are big dumb traditional zombies. At daybreak, they approach the car with a can of gasoline, having burned down Jud’s house. However, instead, they decide to unlock the car for Gage. I have a lot to say about this.

First off, this ending is fucking weak compared to the original ending. In the original film, the process of Louis killing Gage with the lethal injection is so indescribably heart-breaking. It’s actually a high point for the actor’s performance, and he definitely sells the sheer emotion of the scene. The remake’s ending definitely suffers from how frequently it fails to actually capture the emotion of the original story and film. With that, let’s just say, this movie is the prime example of why horror movies with dead protagonists fail so often. If you aren’t both careful and skilled, killing your protagonist can result in your protagonist’s character arc not being fulfilled or completed. The original Pet Sematary story has a very strong and compelling character arc for Louis. In the final scenes of the original film, after Louis has begrudgingly put down Church and Gage, and has burned Jud’s house down, he carries Rachel’s corpse with him. Pascow tries to get him to no longer try and cross the barrier between life and death, and that he needs to let go of those he loves. He needs to learn to cope with death, and understand that dead is better. Louis, however, doesn’t listen, and finds a reason to think it’ll be different this time: because she just died. Pascow realizes that Louis has failed to learn his lesson, and shouts an admittely hilarious “NOOOOOOO” as he fades away. Louis waits in his home after burying Rachel, and as she walks in, now decayed and deformed, Louis makes out with the walking corpse, before being killed by her. What works here is Louis has completed his character arc. Granted the character arc consists of failing to learn his lesson, but it’s a powerful arc no less. It drives home how much the movie is truly about being as grateful for death as we are for life, and how a life spent yearning for those who’ve passed to return is a life spent suffering. While the more ambiguous book ending is more favorable, the 1989 film version still drives home this theme extremely well.

Overall, very bad movie. Don’t waste your money on this. Save your money for Endgame, that looks good. Or if you’re a King fan, wait for It: Part 2. Just... please no more ‘80s jokes guys, it isn’t funny anymore.

[abitterlifethroughcinema]

                          MORE WOKE! Film Reviews for Spring ’19

We Shan’t Leave You Again Without Some Dope Films to Step To

                                                         by

                                        Lucas Avram Cavazos

Beautiful Boy #### premiered a couple of Fridays ago here in the Iberian peninsula, and this is a film that hits on so many levels, especially within the confines of the USA at a time when more people are dying from drug overdoses in North America than almost anything else. Telling the story of Nic Sheff (Timothée Chalamet) and his horrid struggle with meth (but really all manner of drugs) and how that affects his familial relationships, most significantly with his father, played to impeccable perfection by Steve Carrell. Director Felix van Groeningen makes his English-language debut with such a tour de force that it’s ever so apparent that he has been slowly crafting his oeuvre over the last decade-and-a-half. (MUST SEE: The Broken Circle Breakdown) Adapted from two separate autobiographies by the Sheff family (dad and son) on the subject matter of a young adult’s journey into massive addiction, the director’s take on this subject matter becomes a lesson in patience, in futility, in the understanding of the addiction process. There is a specific scene that stuck with me, a moment of medical jargon that simply emblazoned itself in my memory because we, the viewer, start to learn just how certain drugs (most especially methamphetamine) severely inhibits and erodes pertinent cerebral functions…often to the point of no repair. So as you watch the deterioration of this wonderful young man, it becomes all too real that sometimes the only way to help anyone, even when it’s family you love, is to let them the hell GO! The thing is…that hell is exactly what you may feel when doing so, just like the father feels he has caused his son. You especially feel that at one brutally moving scene towards the end of the film, when it’s fair game to say that all is lost. For anyone who has ever struggled with drug addiction or has experienced this in one’s family, the truth that it tells is something that is as redemptive as it is heartbreaking.

Pet Sematary ###…It’s sad to say that this remake is just a bit better than the first interpretation that did its best to butcher a Stephen King classic three decades ago…Can it be that long ago now? Yes…yes, it can. That said, it does something that outshines the original film and highlights the need of more discussions on our very westernised inability to deal with our fear of death, an inevitable part of life. In that vein, they respect the tenants of the King novel because that is truly what he was aiming for, this critic would say. Revamping the narrative of Louis and Rachel Creed fresh from a move to Maine from Boston, along with their cute-as-heck kids Ellie and Gage, plus kitty Church, we see the perfect little family getting away from the city to a life of relative tranquility, or so one thinks. After a series of odd deaths, the one that strikes fear into the hearts of men is the greatest fear any parent can face. A bit earlier in the film, their new neighbour Jud (John Lithgow) mentions not to venture out alone in the woods, for fear of the danger within. This naturally acts as a foreshadowing on things to come, but it also helps foment some fertile ground to talk about the Wendigo, spirits that possess humans or animals, making them monstrous…which incidentally is also used in medical lexicons as being a psychosis. When that greatest of parental fears occurs, after a seeming resurrection of the dead family cat, the need to try and practice the same possibility of burying their daughter in the forestal pet cemetery occurs, so we get to see what happens. It almost becomes almost too much to bear. Sequencing slight moments of creepiness with dramatic tinges makes things ever so gripping at times, but the languid nature of a rather quick film culminates in an eerie, if expected, ending. Better for the local box office perhaps had it been released around Halloween, this stronger piece makes an effective case for turning a formulaic remake into a wannabe think-piece of sorts.

Boy Erased #### Dealing with a situation that can not be overstated in its ridiculous tactics to make life a Mike Pence wet dream, this latest celluloid effort on the topic, after some time I might add, of Christian, gay conversion camps is likely the best one yet. I recall a film from years back called But I’m a Cheerleader with Natasha Lyonne that took a comedic look at this topic, as well as, Chloe Moretz’s dramatic The Miseducation of Cameron Post; however, here we get a dose of reality that paints these camps in such a light that it’s hard not to see why these institutions should be closed and deemed unlawful. I realised a bit into the film that the acting in it was brutally honest and frighteningly real, at times like watching life being played out in front of your eyes on a screen. Lucas Hedges stars as a sexually-confused, Christian teenager in this practically perfect and poignant outing by actor/writer/director Joel Edgerton, who creates a canvass of middle-class, deep-US believers’ lives in a way that definitely struck a chord to this youngish Judeo-Christian watching. Baptist minister and wife Marshall and Nancy (Aussie royalty Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman, respectively) quietly shuffle their son off to a conversion camp called Love in Action, in an attempt to reprogram him. Director Edgerton plays programme director Victor Sykes, a man whose likely quasi-sordid past is the demon that forces him to reign over this camp like a military official…Flea of Chili Peppers fame makes the best cameo as a teacher at the camp, good Lord! Detailing all of your family’s dirty secrets, and thereby airing out all dirty family laundry, is just one of the many ploys used by the camp to “cure” their clients/patients/students, I mean…what can you call these poor kids? Your heart will likely break watching the insanity, so do be warned, but there is a redemptive factor that shines through with the incredible performances by Hedges and his cinematic parents, and stay through the credits…they catch us up on the au courant life of the man on whom this story was based, Garrard Conley…tears.  

[fred-frederator-studios]

“My absolute dream is to create my own television show.”

Sometimes I’ll get an email from someone who likes what Frederator does and would like to know something about the cartoon business. In this case it’s a college senior in an animation program (who’d corresponded with me when he was in high school) who’s working on his senior thesis film and would like to create his own series someday. 

These questions were really good and reflected some of the issues that many students from outside the industry are concerned with when their only insight comes from reading. In this case I felt like the inquiries were a little too concerned with the ‘how’ of selling a series. 

Here are the questions and my answers. 

As a bonus, I’m adding some smart thoughts from Frederator’s Eric Homan, our head of development and creative affairs.

How is Frederator specifically able to take what is intended to be a 15-30 minute episode and shorten it into 2-3 minutes while keeping the integrity of the story/implying a larger universe within the possible show?

We never do what you’re suggesting.

1) Frederator asks for a 6 minute cartoon short pitch (that is, when we're in a cycle of shorts production like Oh Yeah! or Too Cool! or GO! Cartoons). It's not a random length, it's approximately how the great theatrical shorts were produced and I've always figured, steal from the greatest. If it were completely in my control, I'd always make 6 minute cartoons, but most of the world wants 11s. That being said, we want to know there are great characters we love, and a filmmaker who has control of his/her situation on film.

2) As a producer who wants to see the most for the least, I've tried to do 2-3 minute cartoons for 25 years. Filmmakers resist, as do my smarter-than-me development colleagues, correctly, because in three minutes it's way harder for one to truly get a sense of character (the most important thing, in our opinion). A short film like that tends towards the punch line, the gag, which, while it can be hilarious, gives you no sense of how the character behaves, what it wants, how it really moves throughout a film.

3) The one time we agreed to produce a 20 minute storyboard and cut it down for 6 minute production there was really a problem (the first Powerpuff Girls short). What had been a clean, coherent story was truncated, almost impossible to follow. Almost killed the potential series.

I would suggest that you don't want a film to be anything but the greatest it can be for whatever format you choose. If it’s going to be two or three minutes, try and map out the greatest two minute cartoon you can muster. 

Don't think about what it could be in another format. You'll inevitably fail at both.

I have two characters in my series who would occur in every episode of my theoretical show and be extremely important. I also believe these characters have not only mascot capability, but toy line possibilities in this magical theoretical world in which my show were to get picked up.

Stop worrying about the "pick up." Maybe it'll happen, maybe it won't. Make a great f-ing film, full stop. That's the most likely thing to help your future, a wonderful picture. Sure, it's possible your characters are wonderful enough for a future (it's happened a few times for creators we work with, but it's extremely rare, maybe 1%. 1%! But showing you're a talented filmmaker gives you the most opportunity. 

I’ll add that a lot of creators are convinced of the “toy line possibilities” of their cartoon characters. But you know, if the cartoon doesn’t succeed, there are no toys. And even if it does, successful cartoons often don’t translate into toy sales. Seriously. 

Should I get rid of these characters in my thesis and focus on a good short film, or is it worth it to take the time to keep them in, as a way to help the producers better visualize the dynamic of the show?

Stop with the worrying about producers. Create a great short. See above.

OR would telling any producer this much detail just scare them off?

I would only be repeating myself.

Also, I was wondering about pitch meetings; first off, how does one go about getting a pitch meeting?

You call every development department at every studio or network you can locate and ask for a meeting. Some will see you (like Frederator), many won't. If they do, you'll be ask to sign a legal release that says they’ve probably seen characters and ideas like your before (it's true, though very few believe it) and you won't sue if something similar turns up in a production schedule 1000 years from now.

I realize that it is a lot of who you know, but what kind of channels should I take to go about getting my work out there?

A lot of it is who you know. But, an email address on YouTube will net you 1 billion potential viewers around the world. A few of them are producers or development executives. They’re even some watching other video platforms.

Festivals, local animation events, conferences are good places to expand the "who you know" category.

My favorite advice, which all filmmakers reject, is to get a low level job at a studio to meet people who have trod the same path as you're going to go on. They've all been there and, in my experience, are incredibly generous with new generations of ambitious, hard working people. There really are worse routes to travel.

Should I get an agent, or try to crowd source it, in hopes that it gains traction?

You should try everything. It can be frustrating and painful, but what's great that isn't?

Should I submit it to the New York pilot episode film festival? If that's a good route, are there any other festivals you would recommend me submitting to, or are those submission fees just a waste of money?

Try everything and anything. You have nothing to lose, everything to gain.

Finally, let's say I find a genie and use one of my wishes for a pitch meeting? How many ideas for the series should I walk in with, to show I'm passionate about this project, while not scaring them off or making the producer feel like they can't get their hands in it?

If producers are scared of you, they're not the producers for you. My personal advice is to go in with the project you most believe in. Since it's unlikely (not impossible) you're going to sell it anyway, gauge how producers feel about the thing you feel best about. If they don't understand it, they're not for you. On the other hand, their critiques could be useful, if you're open enough to actually hear it.

Should I tell them about toy ideas or an app idea that could partner very nicely with the show? Or should I leave those ideas for later and keep them in my pocket?

Up to you. As I wrote up above, my experience is that many creators are positive the toys are going to be major sellers (seldom true with comedies, by the way) and honestly, at the initial stage, I could care less. We're focused on whether or not we want to work with the creator, is the film going to glorious, do we love the characters. The more someone has thought about merch, in my mind (probably untrue) the less they've thought about the actual film.

>>>>>>

(Even better) advice from Frederator’s Eric Homan: 

If you're interested in being a successful cartoon creator, maybe research your favorite animators, cartoonists, and artists and find out how they trained and got to where they are today. While there isn't one true path to success, you'll sure find some commonalities that should help you along the way. For instance, you should really work on those drawing and filmmaking skills. You don't have to be the best artist in the world, but if you look at your favorite cartoons—and most successful ones—you'll probably find most were created by cartoonists.

Today, with streaming services and the Internet, past constraints in which properties need to fit—including demographics and length of not only episodes but also in "seasons"—are falling by the wayside. Every executive will ask you how you envision your work being told, but more and more we're seeing what works best for your story and characters dictate length, not the other way around.

Frederator is focused on falling in love with characters. If there's anything in a pitch that overwhelms them, consider scaling back the non-character elements or work on your characters. Probably both. You want to give executives just enough to get them excited to see more, or enough that she can then pitch the idea to her boss. Like Winston Churchill said, "A good speech should be like a woman's skirt; long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest.”

Not working for a toy-driven studio, I tune out when creators being to talk about merchandise. If you're pitching to studio where merchandise is a key factor to a “yes,” I can pretty much guarantee you the folks you're pitching to will have a strong sense of what properties are better for toys and such.

I would always start with just one pitch, your favorite. This is especially true for new people in the room, whether creators or executives. The feedback you receive on that one pitch will help you craft your second.

In general always being working on the those non-creative things, too, that will make executives want to work with you, including responsibility, relationships, and resume. 

[wazafam]

Stephen King's coming-of-age drama Stand By Me is a timeless tale of four friends, just as relevant today as it was on its initial release in 1986. The film is based off a novella by King called The Body, and was directed by Rob Reiner. It was received well by fans and had largely positive reviews, with critics praising the performances of the young stars. Reiner calls it the favorite of all his projects, and King loved the adaptation. But what would a 2021 version look like?

The story of the movie is told through the point of view of Gordie Lachance (Wil Wheaton), who, as an adult, reads in the newspaper that his childhood friend Chris (River Phoenix) has been killed. He begins to write a recollection of a childhood adventure with Chris and their friends Vern (Jerry O'Connell) and Teddy (Corey Feldman) in which they go on a quest to find the dead body of a teenager in their neighborhood who had gone missing. Some older teens led by the terrifying Ace Merrill (Kiefer Sutherland) also seek the body, wanting to claim the glory for locating the boy. Ace threatens, bullies, and belittles the younger boys, pushing them to their emotional limits. Gordie, who is mourning the death of his kind older brother Denny, finds the strength within to stand up to Ace, defending himself and his friends.

RELATED: Every George Romero & Stephen King Collaboration That Never Happened

The drama touched audiences and remains a fan favorite, retaining its legacy over thirty years after its debut. Much of the magic of the film was credited to the casting, about which Wheaton said, "Rob Reiner found four young boys who basically were the characters we played." Were the film to be remade today, it would be necessary to recapture the striking chemistry and lovely acting that made Stand By Me so special.

As the film's point of view character, the role of Gordie requires a lot of sensitivity and strength. Gordie is an imaginative, reflective boy who has lost the only family member who noticed and appreciated his talent for storytelling. At the tender age of 12, Gordie feels invisible in his own home, cast aside in favor of his athletic and charming older brother whose death has rocked his family. His father is not handling grief well, acting gruffly and dismissively toward Gordie, who just wants to be seen. Gordie feels like the shadow cast by his older brother will forever get in the way of his relationship with his parents. He seeks closeness with his friends, particularly Chris, who acts as his cheerleader, telling him that his parents simply don't know him, and that one day he'll be a great writer.

Wheaton's portrayal of Gordie was powerful and poignant, and it earned him a spot on VH1's "100 Greatest Kid Stars." The boy who replaces him would have to be a skilled actor and a bankable star, and Jacob Tremblay is both. At a young age, he has already garnered praise from critics for the dramatic heavy-hitter Room, and his performance in another King story, Doctor Sleep, was so effective that he disturbed all of his adult co-stars. Tremblay has shown enormous range and star power for one so young, and his winning relatability and potent depths would bring Gordie Lachance to a new generation.

As the naïve, silly comic of the group, Vern is often picked on but is resilient enough to brush right by the taunts. He is the one who introduces the idea of the trip to the group, asking them if they want to go see a dead body. He was under the porch digging for a jar of pennies he had lost when he overheard his brother talking to a friend about spotting the dead body of Ray Brower. Vern's desire to find the body coincides with his yearning to be a town hero instead of a "town loser." He is so often dismissed and ignored that he seems keen to prove himself. At first glance, Vern may seem a little slow and merely there to be a source of comedic relief, but he just like the other boys is facing an unfamiliar and yawning future, and he is trying to reinvent himself via an act of bravado.

RELATED: How Old Are Stranger Things' Child Actors?

Stand By Me was O'Connell's very first film, and his breezy, natural skills are effortlessly presented. Similarly, Lonnie Chavis is relatively new on the scene but has already won audiences and adult co-stars over with his maturity and adaptability. A keen observer of life and the human condition, Chavis was able to dive into his roles with electric energy and a firm grasp on reality that won him a significant role on the hit show This Is Us. Chavis would be a fun, fresh face to experience on the silver screen.

Teddy is perhaps the most tortured and erratic of the group. He suffers from a frightening home life with a father who has PTSD and takes the worst of his episodes out on Teddy, including an incident wherein he held Teddy's ear to the stove until it almost burned off. Despite this, Teddy venerates his father, holding sacred the fact that he "stormed the beaches of Normandy" in World War II. Teddy is often given over to fits of rage and sorrow, attempting suicide by standing in front of a train and getting into a screaming match with the man who runs the local dump. Teddy, in a way, is a symbol of the aftereffects of war, something still very close to home at the close of the 1950s when the film takes place. The window of innocence seen in the '50s would soon give way to the turmoil of the '60s, something that these young men are about to face along with adulthood.

Feldman was already a rising star when he appeared in Stand By Me, and the film stood as a testament to his position as an up-and-comer. His turn as Teddy Duchamp was truly incredible, marking a high point in the actor's career. Another such up-and-comer is Dylan Gage, who broke the hearts of audiences with his sweet, plaintive, and effective portrayal of young gay teen Gabe on the comedy Pen15. Fans of the show were gobsmacked and undone by Gage's performance as the middle-schooler coming to grips with his sexuality, finding the earnest performance gracefully executed. Gabe was also a theater actor, playing a sort of Edward Albee-esque character onstage across lead actor Maya Erskine, showing off his comedic ability and wonderful range.

In the 1986 movie, the late River Phoenix played Chris Chambers. As the narrator, Gordie says of Chris, "He came from a bad family and everyone just knew he'd turn out bad...including Chris." Chris Chambers is the leader of the group and Gordie's best friend, but he has trouble seeing the light in himself as much as he sees it in other people. His father and brother are violent toward him, and he has become convinced that he is worthless and will never amount to anything. He struggles against the turmoil of lowered expectations, desiring to advance academically but not being permitted to due to a suspension from school and access to the economic security that his friend Gordie has. He tells Gordie that they are bound to go separate ways because Gordie, unlike the rest, will have the opportunity to go to college, and he won't want to hang with losers like them. In the end, it is revealed that Chris pushed himself to graduate high school, attend college, and become a lawyer. He bravely tries to intervene in a bar fight where he is stabbed to death.

RELATED: Why Lost Boys Was Almost Like The Goonies (& Why It Changed)

Like Chris, Phoenix faced a difficult home life, sensitive emotionality, and a premature death. The talented young actor offered an abundance of heart and fire for one so young, and his performance in Stand By Me is one revered by fans. To replace him would be no easy task indeed, and that is why the role should be taken up by someone whose popularity and talent are pronounced. Noah Schnapp of Stranger Things has proven himself a valuable and enlightened actor whose star is beginning to shine.

Ace Merrill is not only a terrifying bully in Stephen King's Castle Rock, but a kind of symbol of childhood trauma and death. His palpable presence onscreen casts a pall over the film, acting as a dark and heavy cloud that disrupts the sunny bubble of childhood that the four young boys wish to hold on to. A notable turning point for Gordie occurs when the boy aims a gun at Ace, confronting his newfound comprehension of death and the unknowable consequences of the future all at once.

Sutherland was chilling as Merrill, his presence onscreen almost Shakespearean as he stalked through the hamlet of Castle Rock, Oregon. His smooth, detached performance is icy and effective, convincing audiences that he might pose a deadly threat to the boys. To match such a profoundly unnerving performance would take experience and poise, both of which Asa Butterfield has in spades. The young star of Hugo and Sex Education has enough clout to carry the bully off with aplomb.

The older version of Gordie is not visible through much of the film, but his voice carries the story. He is the audience's lens through which these characters are seen and the mirror of adulthood that many viewers face. At the end of the film, his words, "I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?" reflect thoughts that many people have had. Richard Dreyfuss plays the role tenderly in the original, and a return of Sutherland would be a fun nod for fans of the original as well as an echo of what happens with adulthood. Sutherland and Tremblay also bear a passing resemblance, so he would fit the role nicely.

RELATED: Every Horror Movie With A Final Boy (Not Girl)

Though the role of Gordie's older brother is a mere cameo, he is a weighty presence in the film. Much of Gordie's character hangs on the approval of his older brother, and the motivation to find the dead body leads Gordie to a profound understanding of death, life's ultimate conclusion. When he gazes upon the body of Ray Brower, he not only understands the finality of existence but the phenomenon that took his brother away from him. The actor who plays Denny Lachance has to sparkle. He is handsome, charismatic, and kind, and the original cameo by John Cusack was just the ticket. Movie star Tom Holland would be well suited to such a task. Universally adored, sweet, and bankable, the star of Spider-Man is the perfect choice to play Gordie's beloved older brother in a Stand By Me reboot.

NEXT: Recasting Horror Movies' Most Iconic Final Girls In 2021

Recasting Stand By Me In 2021 (Every Major Character) from https://ift.tt/3rEmkjQ

[negotiatedbriefog]

CASEBOOK

REFLECTION

Overall I am really pleased with the results of my project, I have really challenged my techincal skills and addressed a topic which I am personally connected with and I think it will be an effective project to display in my portfolio going forward. 

I found this brief really challenging to my ability, but I think that has in fact helped me develop my work more successfully as the work I have produced is different to what I have done before and also connects to such a topical issue. 

The conscious consumption brief is something I have been passionate about personally for a while, and supporting sustainability efforts has really driven my love for the project. 

COVID-19 has effected me personally and my family, working from home and trying to complete work to the highest standard without the support has been difficult yet a rewarding thing. 

I think the University support system for those going through COVID could be improved but I was really grateful of Juan’s fast response over the Christmas break in regards to my family having the virus and having to isolate.

Web App

Developing my assets for the web app.

When developing my web app I initially planned to use WIX.com. However I decided to use Adobe XD as a

prototyping tool as I think this was more challenging to my skills and also enabled me to make it completely personal to my project and how I wanted it to be styled and the pages I wanted to include.

Making Your Own Mask

This is a great way for people to pass time during another lockdown and I think a creative way to become more conscious of consumption. As people have been spending more time at home, they are likely to have that old bed linen or tshirt which needs to be thrown away, yet by up-cycling that into your new favourite face mask you’re creating a unique piece whilst making conscious and sustainable choices.

Purchasing a Sustainable Mask

As consumers we are becoming ever more engaged with how we interact with businesses and the imprint the brands we support have on the environment. I wanted to encourage sales towards small brands which are making changes to how we purchase and why we purchase through those brands. For example, if a customer knows the brands are using minimal packaging, sustainably sourced materials and based locally (little transport pollution), then they are more likely to pay a little extra knowing their pollution footprint is limited.

The connection to fast fashion and single use masks are indeed now intertwined, it’s often the easy and convenient option. However, Forbes have recognised this is changing as consumers are aware of being mo

User Testing

This has been a little difficult however throughout my design process I interacted my project with potential consumers to gage how it would be recieved to first time viewers.

This enabled me to ensure that what I have included is relevant and that the concept and design link well and effectively.

CREATIVE CONSCIENCE : MASK POLLUTION PREVENTION

A project looking in to the influx of single-use plastic masks in response to COVID-19. The pale blue surgical masks we see scattered across pavements and overflowing from bins, are made from Polypropylene, a thermoplastic. These masks are most likely to make their way from landfill to our oceans. This plastic can take up to 450 years to decompose, so whilst these masks are protecting us, they are causing rapidly causing irreversible damage to the environment.

With an estimated 53 million facemasks being discarded each day, and 90% of those reportedly being single use, the mask products we are using to protect ourselves are slowly poisoning our planet.

Often, as individuals we dont physically see the damage our output is having on the environment, and how one irresponsible action, is not just a drop in the ocean. I wanted to change that, addressing how masks can be used, reused and disposed of more sustainably and without causing further damage to the planet.

Research/Development

I went back to research and found some really effective ways of using Photoshop to manipulate images shown on Behance in my blog. This was something I hasnt explored before and was really effective in exploring new skills in image manipulation in my design process. I think these campaigns combine visuals and text really well to convey their message and this is something I wanted to ensure in my campaign going forward.

Goals

My goal was to use my project as a lead for consumers to make conscious decisions, by interacting with the campaign they are becoming involved in a pledge which promotes habitual and behavioural changes for good. I proposed to make 2 posters which can be displayed in areas where masks are commonly used i.e shops, with a scannable QR code to a webapp which informs the user of the problem, engages them to take action, and pledge their participation. As humans, when we make a positive change, we often want to positive reinforcement and by pledging to have becoming part of the campaign it makes the consumer feel good, and encourages others in return.

[emperor-lover]

Hello could you please write a minhyun fanfic about him and Y/N being on we got married (and later on starts dating irl?) thank you (ps, i love your minhyun scenarios so much)

omg WGM :o hahaha ngl i was never a big fan of WGM even though two members of one of my favourite groups have been on it, but i tried my best! i’ll write anything fluffy for minhyun lmao Sorry about the wait!

A continuation of this will be up next which is from another anon’s request!! 

Hwang Minhyun WGM!AU 

ok so lets give you a bit of background to set the scene 

you’re an idol, but originally you were going to be an actress except you really liked dancing and singing so your company was like ‘why not both?’ (think female version of Ong)

You became a fixed MC on a music show last year so you’ve been able to meet a lot of people

Popularity-wise, you’re pretty well liked, you’ve never had any scandals or issues

Plus because you’re bi/multilingual so you’ve been able to further expand Hallyu internationally, and yknow everyone loves a bit of patriotism 

So this is why you were extremely uncertain about being on WGM

It’s a show that puts you in the spotlight

and kinda tries to brand you with this false image, and if you don’t fit that image the public tend to be like wtf is wrong with you

WGM could be a make or break for the virtual couples who participated on the show

You had heard from other celebrities who had been on WGM about how strange it was, like just the whole concept of a “virtual” relationship wasn’t something you’d ever been too keen on

So you were skeptical and it didnt help that your company hadn’t given you much warning about being on it

They just said to be prepared for the invitation over the next week or so

So when the red mailbox appeared outside your dorm along with a bunch of MBC camera staff you realised they hadn’t been kidding

You had read the letter outloud for the cameras;

“To my soon-to-be virtual wife, our first meeting place will be at the xxxxxx Building tomorrow. Before we meet, I’ll give you a big clue as to who I am, I wonder if you’ll be able to guess! I’m in an idol group, and I’ve debuted twice…I look forward to meeting you~

You read the letter again, absorbing all the information….

“EH? Tomorrow??” 

no wonder your manager had been awfully quiet when you had asked her about your schedule

Oh well, guess you gotta prepare for this virtual blind date

Tbh…now that you had accepted the fact that you had to go on this show, you were kinda excited

It’s literally so rare for you to ever get the chance to go on a proper date, even if this counted as a fake/virtual one

——next day—–

You hadn’t slept well the night before, in both fear and anticipation

Hopefully the person you were going to ‘marry’ would be nice

Because your partner was fully in charge of organising this first date, you had decided to prepare a gift for him

Which you found to be super difficult, seeing as you weren’t sure who they were but tbh you had narrowed it down to a couple of possibilities

Like in the pre-meet interview that morning they had asked you if you had any idea who the person could be and you had listed a few names of idols you knew had debuted twice, like mino, or sungwoon or minhyunnnn

but seeing as you knew he’s an idol you decided on little things you knew you found helpful being an idol yourself

You packed a neck pillow, a heat pack, and this really big woollen scarf you had knitted yourself (imagine it’s winter time pls)

Your manager drops you off outside the building and you hop out of the car in this big fluffy sweater and black jeans, completed bundled up and warm

The staff ushered you over to the elevator and you’re left awkwardly and nervously rambling to yourself as they press the buttons to every 2nd floor

The doors open to the second floor and a hotel staff pops their head in and gives you a bouquet of flowers with a note

“You’re here! Today’s the day we finally meet~”

You smiled to yourself, seems like this guy is a bit of a hopeless romantic

The doors to the fourth floor open and sitting on the ground is a little fox plushie doll

You pick it up and attached is another note that says,

“I’ve heard that I resemble a desert fox~”

You froze, no freaking way could it be….

On the sixth floor it was a jar of honey - “My voice is sweet like honey wahhh this is embarrassing >

Your eyes widened. There was no denying who it was now.

WGM had never done something like this before, usually people who went on the show had never previously met or had many interactions, but in your case it would be different

You had met Minhyun before, multiple times in fact

You had been good friends with Aron from NU’EST as well as other English speaking idols and had naturally gotten to know the other boys from NU’EST as well

And although you wouldn’t consider yourself best friends with Minhyun or anything, you had always been able to joke round with him

plus he’s a super cute and super nice guy that was always easy to talk to

Now that you think about it, it’s kinda even more terrifying now that you know who’s waiting for you and the fact you already know him as well??? and he doesnt have a clue who you are???? what if he’s disappointed??? like how awkward would that be, you’d actually die from embarrassment

Finally the doors to the 10th floor open and lo and behold Minhyun is standing there, with his back facing you

When he heard the door open he had immediately tensed up

He was nervous as hell too, poor thing

Like kinda kicking himself for being so cheesy with the whole elevator thing, but y’know, gotta make a strong first impression

He can hear your footsteps approach him and he fights the urge to turn round 

The staff signal to you to say something and you become a big stuttering mess, like what are you meant to say???

“uHHhhHH Minhyun, IT’S ME, Y/N”

And he whizzes round so fking fast with his eyes popping out of his head literally everyone is laughing so hard

And he’s bright red because in the pre-interview they had asked him who he’d choose if any idol was able to go on wgm as his partner, and he had said Y/N, and he just assumed that you wouldn’t be on this show and didnt have his hopes up

so the fact you’re actually standing in front of him about to become his virtual wife is so strange but surreal to both of you

so of course, the two of you hit it off right away, seeing as you already know each other

After migrating to a cafe, you thanked him for the gifts and the elevator surprises and gave him the present you prepared

and he loves it so much, and he puts on the scarf you made straight away and is super proud of it

and you kinda just catch up on life with him, and find out how he’s doing in Wanna One

and that night after the filming was over, he sent you a text telling you how he was happy that you were his partner

and you spent the whole night just messaging cute little shy texts back and forth

After a few more days of filming, the first episode was finally broadcasted

And you were anxiously sitting by the tv with your group members trying to gage their reactions

it was embarrassing to see yourself become such a blushing mess in front of Minhyun

It was embarrassing for your friends too though, because no one is used to seeing you all shy like this

Funnily enough, Minhyun was the same in his dorm, and all the W1 boys were teasing him relentlessly

like collectively cringing at the notes he had left for you, and commenting on everything he did

And after the episode finishes, you’re a bit anxious of what the viewers think of it all

but luckily it turns out lots of people tuned in and love it

It seems to be a realistic fantasy(?) of people’s to go from friends to lovers

so with each following episode, the public laps up all the cuteness the two of you just naturally exude

Like they love how both of you were supposedly motae solo (single since birth), and that for both of you this would be the first ‘proper’ relationship

And minhyun has always had Boyfriend goals vibe attached to him

and you were top notch wife material too

You guys become known as the “Royal” couple

every one is like “충성충성” (choongseongchoongseong) I pledge my loyalty to you

So the first time you guys had proper skinship was super natural but cheesy as well

It was a filming by the Han River and you hadn’t worn gloves and it was getting pretty chilly

You had been rubbing your hands together to warm them up and it hadn’t been particularly obvious but Minhyun just reaches over and gently clasps your hand in his and puts it in his pocket

literally at that part though, everyone watching it had squealed

even you had been like omg bf goals

And bit later on when you had moved into the honeymoon house, the two of you would often rest your heads on the other’s shoulder and read books together

One of the most heart pounding days had been the wedding day, because although you knew it wasn’t a legit thing, something about Minhyun wearing a tuxedo and standing there waiting for you to walk towards him had made you feel things

And clearly you had the same effect on him, because he was absolutely speechless when he saw you

That night before heading back to the dorm, it seemed that the something had changed between the two of you

The hug Minhyun had given you had been longer, and gentler, if that was even possible

and he’d brushed the hair away from your face and whispered a string of sweet nothings into your ear before giving you a cute little wave and scampering over to get into his manager’s van

and you weren’t too sure what to think of it, because it’s not like the two of you are properly dating or anything

although it definitely feels like it

You go on lots more dates every week and each one was full of memories

Like you’d gone to movies, but you’d actually fallen asleep and Minhyun had just giggled

“Minhyun, you should’ve woken me up!”

“But you looked cute! i think you drooled tho” 

And you’d gone tandem biking, and wandered round different museums, and you went to karaoke together, and Minhyun ended up serenading you with cute af songs

and there was a day that the two of you went shopping to look for gifts for each other, and you ended up getting matching phone charms

There was also the time where there was a special guest episode, where both of you had invited friends round and cooked dinner for them

And everything goes smoothly for the following couple of months, with your relationship only getting closer each day

Until one day a letter arrives, and it’s different from the others so both of you immediately know what it is 

A week before the final episode, you started to distance yourself from Minhyun

mainly because both of you have been so shy about your true feelings, despite talking lots and becoming closer, you still have no clue if minhyun actually considers you to be more than a friend

and because you knew it was coming to an end, you’d have to say goodbye anyways so you were trying to let go without having to have your feelings hurt more than they would be

it didn’t feel right though, and Minhyun could tell something was wrong 

so he had come up to you and put a hand on your arm just before the crew started filming the final episode to talk to you

“Y/N…are we…okay?”

You glanced up at him and you could see his eyes trying to decipher the expression on your face and as much as it pained for you to say it, you decided it would be the best to break ties now

“Yeah, why wouldn’t we be, we’re friends aren’t we?”

And after you had said that, Minhyun’s face had fallen

Like he was upset that you appeared so nonchalant that the ‘marriage’ would be over and you’d revert back to being just friends

He dropped his hand that was on your arm and nodded, his face hardening and he turned to walk away

A few steps though, and he stopped turning back, eyes meeting yours

“I know this was a virtual marriage, but I was always sincere every moment I spent with you. I just thought I’d tell you that before we started filiming.”

And he walked off towards his waiting room, and left you standing there not too sure what to do anymore

During the filming, you struggled not to cry as Minhyun’s hand held yours

The movie theatre dimmed and started playing all the memories you’d made together

it was making you so emotional, and the sad piano BGM playing did not help at all

so you couldn’t stop the tears from falling when the video cut to a solo shot of Minhyun sending you a video message

“…This marriage may be coming to an end, but I will always treasure all the times and memories we made together…”

Covering a hand over your mouth, you tried not to sob out loud but it ended up sounding like you were having a coughing fit 

Minhyun had been quite cold to you after the encounter earlier that day, and hadn’t been particularly affectionate at all, but when he looked over at you, his face went from expressionless to one of alarm when he noticed that your cheeks were stained with tears

he immediately reached over and gently dabbed the tears away with his sleeve and pulled you into his chest

“hey, hey, don’t cry Y/N, it’s alright, babe don’t cry, I’m here for you.”

and this only made you sniffle more

Minhyun’s hand was soothingly patting the back of your head and for a minute you both forgot about the cameras as he pulled back and gently pressed his lips to your forehead

and it was such a touching and emotional moment

until you hiccupped

and Minhyun broke out into laughter his own eyes shining back at you

and you couldn’t help but join in with him in the laughter

you left the set holding hands, still sad but not as emotional as before

and you realised that this would be the last chance for you to say something

“Minhyun?”

He glanced down at you his gaze softening at the sight of your puffy eyes

“This isn’t goodbye right? Just because we’re not on the show anymore doesn’t mean we can’t see each other right?”

Minhyun just kinda looks at you like you’re crazy

“Did you really think that I’d just go on this show with you, the girl that i actually truly like, just to never talk to you again now the show’s over?”

and you were like ?? blinking in confusion…because minhyun actually does like like you, and it’s not one sided like you assumed girl it was so obv tho

He kept talking, “I looked forward to the days when i’d get to see you to film, because spending time with you is like the most natural thing in the world to me. Look I even keep this photo we took in my wallet.”

He shows you a cute little photo of the two of you at the cafe you’d been to on the first date.

“So Y/N? Don’t worry, this won’t be goodbye, you can’t get rid of your virtual husband that easily,” he says shooting finger hearts and winks at you

So, legitimately dating Minhyun is obviously not as open and conspicuous as WGM, but it’s still super cute

and on your first anniversary the two of you go on a late night outing to the cafe where you had your first date

and you buy the same drinks you had on that day and just enjoy each others company, forever grateful that you have Minhyun in your life

I hit 100 followers the other day and I’m so so grateful, thank you to everyone who reads my random little writings, even though I’m definitely still lacking lots! I’m working on the current requests that were sent in, so please hold tight if you’re still waiting~ ❤️❤️

[nyxelestia]

You're basically saying that TW stole a bunch of tropes commonly used by Stereks in their romantic Sterek fics, and in the next breath blaming Sterek fans for leaving when it became evident tptb had no intention of exploring their relationship. Viewers have no obligation to continue watching a show they feel no attachment to, and contrary to Posey's statement, I don't think there is any right or wrong reason to watch a show. You also say that the baiting/encouragement by actors, tptb etc 1/-

was benign and innocuous, as they were only doing their job. You say that Stydia and Scallison was hyped as well. Sterek was multitudinously bigger, which was reflected by the hyping of it and the many articles written about it in mainstream media. You then blame Sterek fans for buying into it, which OK, I guess we were all supposed to be savvy enough to realize it was all for funsies. I disagree with the notion that it’s the job of the cast and crew to tease a queer ship that they have no 2/-

make canon, just because fans enjoy it. The honest thing would have been to say something along the line of “we see you dig Sterek, that’s great! It’s not going canon but we support your creativity”. You see basis for Scerek in canon, which awesome. Write all the fics about them. Don’t however discredit the vast number of people who did see canon basis for Sterek. Not everyone has been fooled by corrupted gifsets. As for the clusterfuck that is the bi-baiting of Stiles. That’s just ugly. ¾

They baited and baited his bisexuality, whilst being adamant of not ever explicitly stating it. I think the fact that the writers felt compelled to get Stiles a gf, is the main warning sign of their incompetence. “Erica’s going to be girlfriend material. Gage leaves. Oh shit, we have to bring in another girl. YES, an as of yet completely forgotten Hale girl! Adelaide leaves. Desperation grows. AH, dub-con sex between two mentally ill teens in an institution!”. Sterek fans are not at fault here.

Ever seen that gifset about “when Stiles was being protective of Derek” when Chris was threatening him and Jackson in the last episode of Season 1? Derek was never mentioned in that scene, and Stiles was talking about Scott and Kate. // Just a friendly reminder that Derek was in fact mentioned in that scene. STILES: “Would you prefer I locked him in the basement and burned the whole house down around him?” … “Oh right, Derek said you guys had a code. Guess no one ever breaks it.” -Transcript

Posey has always referred to TW as “his own show” - ex: the cast interview with Cody C. and Dylan Sprayerry in which Posey states that shipping non canon pairing doesn’t make any sense and it’s incredibly offensive and disrespectful towards the writer, the producers and everyone involved in “his show” - and he also became a producer, so… Why did Posey never address what HIS show have done to Arden/Kira? He simply said that “Scott doesn’t need a love interest in order to be interesting” instead

You are picking and choosing from interviews to supplement your agenda.

TPTB aren’t a monolith, either - they are a group of writers, producers, and actors who all have to answer to someone else (MTV), even Jeff Davis. Collectively, have their own agenda, their own plans for the story as a work of narration, and the show as a production. They have to react and take into account the fanbase - but that does not mean that fans get to dictate the show, either. They also regularly disagree with each other, have no idea what the central narrative will be, or sometimes just aren’t in constant communication with each other.

Queerbaiting, generally speaking, is a shitty thing to do. Especially on a show that also, already, has queer characters. On that, we agree. And I don’t know how you got “benign and innocuous” out of “they were doing their jobs”. You are, again, trying to put words into my metaphorical mouth to make a strawman argument.

And you’re right, we are going to disagree on most of the rest.

Such as reasons for watching a show. There is a right reason and a wrong reason for watching a show. It’s not about characters or ships or plot - it’s about watching the show to enjoy the show, vs watching it because you keep waiting for something to enjoy (and then getting mad when something that was never supposed to be there, isn’t there).

There is a world of difference between watching the show for inspiration for Sterek, and watching the show expecting Sterek to happen. There is a world of difference between watching the show because you like a side character, and waiting for that side character to supplant the main character as the star of the show. There is a world of difference between hoping for a ship and expecting a ship.

There is also a world of difference between “listening to fandom” and “bowing down to fandom”. By and large, the producers and actors of the show were listening. They were not obeying, they never had to, and they never should have had to.

As for the actors, there is also a world of difference between “I’d be down to play this” and “this is probably going to happen”. There is a world of difference between “I have some ideas for this dynamic” and “I want these two characters to hook up/end up together”. There is a world of difference between “this could happen (as could many other things)” vs “this probably will happen (as opposed to many other things)”.

It’s that element of picking and choosing again. Take Hoechlin’s idea for how the Darach confrontation in Derek’s loft could’ve gone - his idea was for a platonic interaction between two characters who he refers to as friends and partners in crime. Fandom took it as a shipping scene. This is probably the force that also leads to people seeing so many “Sterek questions” in interviews and panels that they forget - or never see in the first place - things like questions about Stydia, or other ships, or other character arcs unrelated to shipping at all.

I don’t pretend to have seen all the Teen Wolf interviews and such ever, but what I have seen is that along with Sterek, the cast have a lot to say about a lot of ships, hypothetical and otherwise. Of course, if you’re only ever looking for what they say about your own ship - and you only ship one thing - you’ll never see them.

(Which is probably why Posey got accused of being a homophobe. If you only pay attention to what he says about Sterek, then it’s easy to make that accusation, because you’ve never seen or paid attention to him talking about being open to Scott having a boyfriend, and being down to play Sciles or Scisaac.)

Yes, they were pandering to Sterek shippers. They were also pandering to Stydia shippers. They were pandering to Scallison shippers even while building an Allisaac relationship. They were pandering to Sterek and Stydia shippers while also pandering to the former Sterica base with Stora, and then with Stalia.

And I hate to break it to you, but Stiles’ “would you prefer I locked him in a basement?” line was still about Scott, not Derek. The conversation was about Kate, and Stiles didn’t particularly care about Derek in that scene, or in that season as a whole. Mentioning a piece of information provided by Derek was still about Kate.

I also really hate to break this to you, but Posey’s promotion doesn’t actually give him much sway over the decisions made about the show, just how those decisions are carried out. Equating the star of a show referring to said show as “theirs” and equating it with production power is a strawman argument - you are ascribing power and influence that Posey does not have to him, then blaming him for not using it, and for not putting his career on the line to speak more openly about the problems of the show.

It would ultimately achieve nothing and fix nothing - remember, racism isn’t just about individual shows, but also about the broader industry, and bias against WOC is rampant in Hollywood, MTV and otherwise. Look at fucking Hawaii 5-0 - if Daniel Dae Kim and Grace Park could not get parity on a show whose ensemble they have been a part of since the very beginning of the show, what was Posey going to accomplish for himself or for Cho?

Especially given that he’s facing some tremendous cuts, himself - as a lot of people have pointed out, Scott practically became a side character on his own show in Season 6 to make room for Stydia, and this is with Posey having a production component in the show that was not there in the earlier seasons.

tl;dr - The show did its job of trying to pander to every ship. Sterek fandom took it personally when their ship wasn’t given even more preferential treatment than it was already getting, just because it also happened to be so big.

I’ve said before that fandom often blames Scott for failing to be omniscient. What you are doing is blaming Posey for failing to be omnnipotent.

[sugarwaterradio]

How Rick Ross

Well in May forbes said this guy was worth 150 million bucks but now fitty cent doesn't have two quarters to rub together I remember reading headlines about 50 Cent's financial troubles and thinking there was something incredibly tragic about the man that released get rich or die trying' going bankrupt however on last check 50 cent was actually still alive which did make me think that maybe there was slightly more to the bankruptcy story than meets the eye in order to truly understand what happened we need to go way back to 2008 at the start of his feud with everybody's favorite wing slinging fake drug-dealing rapper Rick Ross it was actually Rick Ross that started off the beef by saying that 50 cent and looked at him some kind of way at the Beatty Awards Awards not what little kid made an expression on his face that carries disappointing me what kind of expression 50 responded saying he didn't even see Rick Ross at the awards which i think is hard to believe considering the Rick Ross weighs 350 pounds now Ricky Ross made the beef official when he released the song of mafia music which fired a few shots at 50 cent for allegedly burning down his baby mamas house January 29th 2009 and 50 cent comes out with a response to mafia music his own disc called officer Ricky the next day Rick Ross calls in to Angela Yee show and says that that response is trash and 50 has 48 hours to respond with something Feder 24 hours later well i'ma fuck your life up but fine I paid for the transcripts to your court case and now that I got you address will be on your doorstep Ricky on that same day 50 also releases the first episode of his officer Ricky cartoon series damn because I said your mama look like the Klumps a couple of days later 50 of sticking true to his promise of fucking up Rick Ross's life for fuck 50 starts out the video by saying that what you're about to see is something is a little bit more sophisticated than what we've been offering in the past which I think's a massive disservice to 50 Cent's car work I mean this video is so lowbrow it makes candy shop look like the Beethoven symphony in the video the mother of Rick Ross's child calls out rot for having rented jewelry and leased cars and he takes her first shopping whilst isn't she lovely by Stevie Wonder plays you cannot make this shit up 50 also takes the opportunity to call out Rick Ross's other baby mama for being a cool girl a few days after that Rick Ross releases the diss song kiss my pinky ring curly this song is accompanied by a music video of Rick Ross hanging out in New York with some miscellaneous goons the song also featured what felt like several hundred lyrics accusing 50 cent of being gage an allegation which seemingly becomes a big part of this beef from both sides two days after that it's the 8th of February and 50 cent is dropping more content than Netflix he puts out officer Ricky episode 2 which shows how Rick Ross got a deal from jay-z he then drops the first of a series of new comedy segments featuring a character that he's created called pimping curly curl this is basically just 50 cent wearing a curly wig while shrieking about how much of a pimp ears and threatening Rick Ross on with a knife Oh Livie without you I've got you then along with his crew g-unit 50-cent releases I'll be the shooter which features so many shout outs of different types of guns the song might as well have been recorded in TI's trunk in response to this Rick Ross essentially coffees fifties idea of the animated this video and releases his own version called gay unit workouts which I'm sure even the slowest of viewers can work out what that means this entire video is basically just calling out g-unit members for being gay it also disses 50 cent for allegedly using steroids and also for some reason Rick Ross decided that this video was the perfect place to debut his new single with John Legend magnificent over visuals of a cartoon g-unit having a three-way gangbang that same day Rick Ross dropped the diss track push him over the ledge which is basically a two minute juice freestyle mainly consisting of you guessed it oh hey he mentions one specific rumor of g-unit member Lloyd Banks being in a gay porno dick on Google which I did a lot of digging on I couldn't seem to find any evidence for that but there was one a guy that looks a little bit like Lloyd Banks appeared in a gay porno the next day 50 cent puts out a video that's probably the most menacing thing I've ever seen in a hip hop beef I mean this thing makes the story if added on look like the story of Balamory he releases the video a psychic told me this little poem / dj khaled check this shit out right it's cool I just wanted to tell you what it's like you told me your car tires gonna stare down now you know I know will you be and or will your mama house it and all your mama work it now look at sleep to make this even more spicy we later found out that the person actually filmed this was French Montana he's even seen in one of these videos wearing him this is 50 t-shirt which he can't blame on his stylist over the next month these two trade shots back and forth over disc tracks and animated videos 50 goes on to drop several more cartoons which don't just clown Rick Ross but also go after Ti DMX Suge Knight and Chris Brown but it's on March the 17th that 50 made the ultimate mistake that would eventually wind him up in bankruptcy 50 cent actually leaks a sex tape starring Rick Ross's other baby mama Brooke with an introduction of himself in character as pimp and curly and commentary throughout the entire video I personally don't think it's right or legal to show you any of that tape so what I'm going to do is I'm gonna play you some of 50s commentary over some very innocent six days after the sex tape leaked on March 23rd Rick Ross came out with a very unusual video essentially saying sorry not sorry to the gay community I heard a knife in the homosexual community I apologize I'm offering a record will openly gay artists such as City sing we all know he's gay so now all the gays good later Rick Ross drops his long-awaited album deeper than rap now the album is out and there's very little to be gained from beefing these two kind of lose interest in each other during that time fifty seems to get closer to Rick Ross's baby mama Tia helping her release her own tell-all biography but things get really Savage in November where seemingly out of nowhere fifty decides to take Rick Ross's baby mama and his kids to Floyd Mayweather's house I've got to say it's pretty painful to watch I mean it seems like 50-cent treats Ross's kids better than his own February 25th 2010 and Rick Ross's baby mama Brooke brings a court case against $for Leake in that sex tape this court case takes an entire five years to get resolved during that time the 50 and Ross beef simmers and a few things happen here and there that are quite interesting Ross publicly suffers from some seizures gunplay from Rick Ross's Maybach Music crew gets beaten up by g-unit at an award show and 50 cent is pictured wearing his Maybach music chain er of bowling alley a few days later 50 pounds Rick Ross for getting his car shot up and Rick Ross gets accused of pistol whipping his groundskeeper who is later pictured on Instagram with 50 cent five years go by and it's in July 2015 that that court case finally gets resolved and fifty loses the court order 50 to pay five million dollars to Brooke for the sex tape leaked and two million dollars in punitive damages three days after losing that case fifty Cent files for chapter 11 bankruptcy now it's important to realize that there's a big difference between filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy and filing for chapter 7 bankruptcy chapter 11 is more about reorganizing your assets so that you can then end up making the payments that you owe whereas chapter 7 is a lot more about admitting that there's no way you can pay your payments however this didn't stop Rick Ross and the whole world from clowning on 50 my first album was time Richard and I've bankrupt I guess he's 50 cent even got in on some of the action mocking the idea of him being bankrupt which actually caused him to get hauled back into court to explain himself 50 told the court that the money in the pictures and his whole lavish lifestyle was actually Fae 50 cents money woes didn't last very long by 2017 only two years after losing that court case 50 was actually able to pay off his entire 22 million dollar debt five years herb so if you think 50s broke 50 ain't broke but how the hell did 50 suddenly get all of this money to pay these debts 50 didn't just go bankrupt from losing the sextape case he'd also been in and out court with slick audio based on a dispute around the SMS audio headphones deal that he had going on 50 had originally partnered with sleek to engineer the headphones but he later left them and ended up doing a deal with somebody else slick sued him and won and he ended up owning them 17 million dollars for the development of these headphones and that to the outstanding amount that he had to pay Brooke for the sex tape lawsuit in December 2016 50 actually won a court case against the lawyers who had represented him in the original sleek audio case that he lost by winning that case against his lawyers he got 14 and a half million dollars which he then combined with his own funds of million dollars to basically pay off the entire outstanding debt and get out of bankruptcy put off the hill to that when he decided to sue the lawyers from his sex tape case as well specifically he argues that they failed to interview Rick Ross about leaking the sex tape before 50 did furthermore he claimed that there was actually a conflict of interest between an old lawyer that 50 had in 2004 and Rick Ross's current lawyer as far as I can tell that Court case is currently unresolved but what I could find was that 50 is looking for thirty two million dollars from this case even though 50 beat bankruptcy we can assume that he learned his lesson and he will never leak a sex tape ever again okay I hope you enjoyed that video make sure that you like and scribe below hit that notification bell so you can see every single time I upload and if you've been enjoying my work lately I definitely recommend that you go and check out the patreon account I've started there's some really cool benefits on there that I think you will definitely like and I would really appreciate your support so I can keep making these videos and hopefully I can upload more often thanks very much and peace out Read the full article

[papermoonloveslucy]

Lucy Gets Caught Up in the Draft

S5;E9 ~ November 14, 1966

Synopsis

Lucy Carmichael gets an induction letter for a “Lou C” Carmichael telling her to report for military duty. While Mr. Mooney is trying to get it straightened out, a drill sergeant puts Lucy through the paces rather than ignore protocol.  

Regular Cast

Lucille Ball (Lucy Carmichael), Gale Gordon (Theodore J. Mooney)

Mary Jane Croft (Mary Jane Lewis) does not appear in this episode, but Lucy does have a telephone conversation with her. 

Guest Cast

Clark Howat (Army Lieutenant Howat) was known for playing sobering law enforcement officials as well as military, doctors and politicos. He was a member of Jack Webb's stock company and had a recurring role as Webb's police captain on "Dragnet."  This marks his only appearance with Lucille Ball.

Although the character's surname is not spoken aloud, it is written on his office door.

Herb Vigran (Major Cooper, the Doctor) played Jule, Ricky Ricardo’s music agent on two episodes of “I Love Lucy” in addition to playing movie publicist Hal Sparks in “Lucy is Envious” (ILL S3;23). He was seen in the Lucy-Desi film The Long, Long Trailer. This is the last of his six episodes of “The Lucy Show.” He played doctors in four of them!  A month after this episode, he made his second of four appearances on “Gomer Pyle: USMC” with Jim Nabors.  

Although the character's surname and rank are not spoken aloud, it is written on his office door.  

Harry Hickox (Marine Drill Sergeant) was best known for playing anvil salesman Charlie Cowell in the 1962 film The Music Man. He also played a Sergeant named King on “No Time for Sergeants” (1964-65). When not playing sergeants, he specialized in sheriffs. He will do three episodes of “Here's Lucy,” all as policemen, once as a sergeant!    

Ben Gage (Marine Lieutenant) was once married to Hollywood swimming starlet Esther Williams. His first screen appearance was as an uncredited swimmer in her 1954 film Dangerous When Wet. Their names were mentioned as attending Lucy and Ricky's Mocambo anniversary party in “Hollywood Anniversary” (ILL S4;E23, below). 

They couple divorced in 1959. This is the first of Gage's two “Lucy Show” appearances. He will next play a policeman in “Lucy and Sid Caesar” (S6;E23).  

Jim Nabors (“Gomer Pyle”) was a square-jawed and amiable singer and actor born in 1930 in Alabama. He started playing Gomer Pyle on “The Andy Griffith Show” in 1962, which followed “The Lucy Show” on CBS prime time and was filmed on the Desilu backlot. In 1964 his character was spun off into his own series “Gomer Pyle: USMC” with Gomer enlisting in the US Marines. The series continued until 1969, although Nabors sometimes played the character in TV specials and reunions. In 2013, the 82-year-old Nabors married his life partner of 38 years, retired firefighter Stan Cadwallader. He died in 2017 at age 87.

Nabors enters at the very end of the episode, but does not state his name nor is he listed in the final credits. The gag depends on the TV viewing audience having seen “Gomer Pyle: USMC.”  

Sid Gould (Joe, the Postman) made more than 45 appearances on “The Lucy Show,” all as background characters. He also did 40 episodes of “Here’s Lucy.” Gould (born Sydney Greenfader) was Lucille Ball’s cousin by marriage to Gary Morton.

Marine Sergeant Pierce (who demonstrates the rifle drill) and eight male background performers play the other recruits and are not listed in the credits. 

The final draft of this script was dated June 15, 1966. The episode was filmed on August 11, 1966. It is sometimes referred to by the title “Lucy Gets Caught in the Draft” (no “Up”) which could infer she was feeling a “draft” from an open door or window, not that she was conscripted into military service.  

From 1940 until 1973, during both peacetime and periods of conflict, men were drafted to fill vacancies in the United States Armed Forces that could not be filled through voluntary means. The draft ended when the US moved to an all-volunteer military force. However, the Selective Service System remains in place as a contingency plan; all male civilians between the ages of 18 and 25 are required to register so that a draft can be readily resumed if needed. Women have never had to register for the US draft, although a 2016 bill came close to making it a requirement.

Lucy Carmichael has already served her country, as a WAVE in the US Navy during World War II. This fact was often mentioned back in Danfield, but hasn't been discussed at all in California.  

Gale Gordon gets some tepid entrance applause from the studio audience.

Mr. Mooney buys Lucy a sandwich that costs thirty five cents (around $2.80 in today, adjusting for inflation). Lucy's manicure cost $2 plus a fifty cent tip!  That would be nearly $20 today.

This is the first mention of Lucy's son since his appearance in “Lucy the Choirmaster” (S4;E14), more than a year earlier.  At the end of the episode, Mr. Mooney notes that Lucy is exempt from the draft because she has two children. Her daughter, Chris Carmichael, however, has not been mentioned by name since season 4 when Lucy said she was attending college in Northern California.

Mr. Mooney brags that he was an officer in the last war. In “Lucy and the Submarine” (S5;E2) he also brags about his military experience, but we later learned that he was a Navy housing officer stationed outside of Wichita. 

Lucy compares Mr. Mooney to Simon Legree, the tyrannical slave owner in the Harriet Beacher Stowe's 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. The book was previously referenced in “Lucy and the Countess Lose Weight” (S3;E21) and “Lucy is Her Own Lawyer” (S2;E23).

Most of the humor in the episode comes from Lucy being a female in a male-oriented environment like the US military (circa 1966). When the doctor first sees Lucy, he infers that she may be a man in a dress, a tactic that some used in order to be classified as homosexual or transvestite, which was then considered an instant “4-F” (rejection) from military service. The best example of this ploy (although he was not successful) was the character of Klinger (played by Jamie Farr, above) on TV's “M*A*S*H.” Farr had guest starred on “Lucy, the Rain Goddess” (S4;E15).  

In the TV universe, this Gomer Pyle crossover brings the loop of shows filmed at Desilu full circle:

Lucy Ricardo would meet Danny Williams (Danny Thomas) and his TV family on an episode of “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour”; 

Danny Williams drives through Mayberry and meets Sheriff Taylor, which spawns “The Andy Griffith Show”; 

“The Andy Griffith Show” is where the Gomer Pyle (Jim Neighbors) character began before getting his own show; 

and now Gomer, although unnamed and uncredited, turns up on “The Lucy Show,” although here she is Lucy Carmichael, not Lucy Ricardo (even though both women share the maiden name McGillacuddy). 

The upshot of all of this is that Lucy Ricardo and Lucy Carmichael both exist in the same world. Ponder that, fans!

Jim Nabors' cameo as Gomer Pyle is similar to the way “Here's Lucy” presents a cameo by Jackie Gleason as Ralph Kramden from “The Honeymooners” in “Lucy Meets Jack Benny” (HL S1;E2): 

Both arrive at the end of the episode, 

Do not give their names, 

Play a recognizable TV character dressed in their character's costumes from the show, 

And get laughs based on viewers having watched their TV shows!  

Callbacks!

The plot of this episode is similar to 1951's “Drafted” (ILL S1;E11), where Lucy Ricardo reads a letter from the Army that Ricky is to report to Fort Dix. Lucy thinks he has been drafted, but he is simply going there to entertain. Like many early episodes of “I Love Lucy,” this plot is almost identical to “George Is Drafted,” a January 1951 episode of Lucy’s radio show (co-starring Gale Gordon) “My Favorite Husband.”

In “Lucy Meets Orson Welles” (ILL S6;E3) Welles calls Lucy “the Princess Loo Cee” during his magic act, another homonym of Lucy.  

Lucy Carmichael previously wore fatigues in “Lucy and the Military Academy” (S2;E10) where she went undercover as a male soldier in order to visit her son. She also faced an obstacle course consisting of a tire step, landing net climb, and a tunnel crawl. Naturally, Lucy has trouble with every one of them in both episodes. 

In this episode, the tunnel crawl is made out of wire and present on the course, but is not attempted by the recruits. Coincidentally, both episodes begin with Sid Gould playing a mailman delivering a letter from Lucy's son in Military School.

Blooper Alerts!

What’s In A Name? When Lucy receives a letter from her son in the beginning of this episode, she calls him 'Jimmy' instead of correctly calling him 'Jerry.' According to Geoffrey Mark Fidelman's The Lucy Book, when Lucille Ball was handed the script for the first time, she complained that they had used the wrong name. She was reminded that it was 'Jimmy' Garrett who played 'Jerry' Carmichael. Ball still insisted that she was right and (picking their battles, probably) the crew left the reference as 'Jimmy.' However it came about, it certainly is one of the biggest mistakes of the series.

Hair & Make-Up! Although Lucy was at first mistaken for a man during the episode, her hair wasn't cut nearly as short as the other recruits and she still wears her thick eyelashes.

Period of Adjustment! In clarifying the name error to the Doctor, Lucy says the letter was meant for “Lou period C period.” Why would there be a period after “Lou”?  

Say It Again! If Lucille Ball thought another actor's line was not heard due to loud audience laughter, she would say “What did you say?” to cue them to repeat it, which is just what she does with Jim Nabors' only line.  

His Reputation Precedes Him! When Nabors announces he is Lucy Carmichael's replacement, Lucy laughs and says to the Drill Sergeant “Good luck, buddy!” and the Sergeant rolls his eyes in dismay. They both seem to know who the new soldier is and his reputation for being a screw-up. But how?  

“Lucy Gets Caught Up in the Draft” rates 3 Paper Hearts out of 5

[thingsireflecaut]

Post Six, Part One

For the first page, I played around with the idea of what my protagonist might look like and what their room would look like. I though setting up a portion of their room would be a great way to introduce the character and the story as this is their special place where they keep their collected items. I started off with a sketch of a part of my own childhood bedroom, as this is where I drew inspiration for the story. I knew I wanted to exaggerate this image and my belongings of the time though; I had more books than in the drawing, but not all of them were on the floor in my room, instead I had a collection of my favourites and the next to be read on my drawers, and the rest in the garage/ I put the pile of books on the floor because I thought it would add nice symmetry to the illustration; I liked the idea of the protagonist in the middle of the world of their things welcoming the reader, and being excited to share with the reader the things that were special to them. this is also why I drew the protagonist with their arms out wide as if in such excitement that they have to spread their arms out to express all the glory of their world.

My first sketch was me trying to just get the idea out of my head and have a starting point; once I was done I knew that I had relied too heavily on Quentin Blakes technique for the kid. I decided on the blob character, let’s call them Cass, because this is something I have doodled for years. I thought it would be a nice idea for Cass to be someone I was already familiar with; I’ve drawn them for years and have always enjoyed their flexibility to be whatever I needed or wanted them to be. This was always a release for me, something that never had to be perfect, and that is what I want the kid to stand for; they are fluid, they make their own rules.

I played with the idea of them having hair but it felt unnatural and a little creepy. I also played with different expressions.

I also made sure that I was exploring different routes and going out of my comfort zone, I wanted to play more with the idea of “They are all me & I am all them”, so I decided to take that literally; what if the protagonist was actually made out of one of their favourite things?

So, I started with the outline of Cass and then drew them so they were made out of books, as you can see in the top left-hand corner of the first image. I did like this effect but it felt a little forced and on the nose, I also wanted to make sure that the reader could still identify in some way with Cass, and didn’t want to make them too far from human form.

Instead, I created a mini Cass as a secret easter egg on their shelf in the first image.

In the next image, I explored another protagonist. I wanted a relatable girl character; I think selfishly because this is what could have helped me a little as a kid. I am definitely lucky to grow up in a world where my light skin color was portrayed as the more ‘beautiful’ in media, but all of the cool girls that I wanted to be like had straight blonde hair, and I was ashamed to have curly hair – obviously this is very shallow and such a small thing to be upset about, but all the same with my narrow world view, I was. So I wanted to create a cool girl that readers might want to be that had curly hair, and I love this character, but I liked Cass better; they portray an empty canvas, and aren’t something a kid would get upset about not looking like.

For the second page, I explored ideas of what each item on the list might look like. I started with the idea for the first sentence with Cass holding a huge $2 coin, as a visual representation of the epicness and importance of something as small as a $2 coin to a child. I rubbed this out as it felt that it didn’t fit the book; it was a little too comic book-y and out of place as it wasn’t fully in my style, but also wasn’t fully in comic book style. I then decided it could be interesting to have the comic book element but do it my way, so I created a vintage comic book to include in the book as a representation of the $2 element. I also liked the idea of a simple drawing with a big jar full of coins and a hand reaching in.

I wasn’t sure what I wanted the “In the middle of a tree” illustration to look like so I played around with a few ideas. The first idea was the one I had imagined when writing the story; Cass wrestling something from a squirrel’s mouth in the top of a tree. I thought this had an element of silliness that I was keen to include, but after drawing the scene, I thought it would be worthwhile to explore other routes as well. I remembered how much I loved the unreal reality that Sendak created in Where The Wild Things Are, and wanted to make something magical, so came up with the idea of Cass being privy to a secret door in the middle of trees where they could explore a whole new world, and come back with gifts. So I drew a doorway leading to this other dimension in a huge old tree.

I also imagined that another way I could portray this is in the middle on a cut down tree trunk; I thought this could be a good way to keep the drawing small so that I could have multiple drawings on the page as the verse I wrote lists multiple things I so could almost have a montage of Cass’s expeditions. I liked the drawing but felt that having a cut down tree was too much of a cynical metaphor; although it could be a metaphor for finding beauty out of destruction, the truth is that the tree is still cut down; it felt like an ending, instead of the beginning of the endless world that the doorway creates.

I thought I could include my idea from the first page “They are all me, and I am all them” and the object expressing that that’s on Cass’s drawers of a mini Cass, and illustrate Cass finding this version of themself as what they find on the bench. I mulled over the idea of them finding a good stick, or someone’s lost pocket watch, but I found the mini Cass linking to the first page to have the most meaning, and I liked the slight awkwardness and comfortable uncertainty that the drawing had between Cass and mini Cass.

For “This one was drenched” I took a toy car of mine and placed it in the rain. I was nervous that it was unclear that the car was tiny, so I added the curbside with grass to hopefully make sure that the viewer gages the proportions.

For “This one is French”, I tried to think of different classic French things that weren’t cliché or a negative / one dimensional stereotype. One of my favorite books ever is the children’s book Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, and an iconic illustration from the book is the boa constructor that swallowed an elephant; the meaning behind it is that there is always more than meets the eye, and the beauty of the world is in the eye of those with an imagination. This has stayed with me since I first read it, and wanted to reference it.

I looked around my house for inspiration for this page and realized that one pile of my already read books was sitting quietly on my dresser collecting dust. Sometimes I lend one out to someone, but generally they don’t move, so this is what I drew for that stanza.

I was experimenting with different points of view for Cass to be looking at them from, but then as I looked at the page as a whole, I realized that it looked really fun as a little montage; it had movement to it and came alive a little bit.

It made sense to follow the abstract cartoonish style of Cass and draw their friends in that style as well. It also gave me freedom to create different, unique characters that didn’t have to look like anything in particular.

I also made sure to investigate different routes. So I drew a less abstract and more detailed version, but it didn’t have the same energy, and didn’t feel as cohesive.

I thought the jewels for “These are my jewels, I collect them on my walks” could be colorful autumn leaves, so drew a mockup and colored it with watercolor pencil.

The floral pages are some of my favorite planning pages, I especially like the one for “flowers are my favourites...”. The concept was easy to imagine because I could envision it when I was writing the story. I definitely took inspiration from Quentin Blakes style of watercolor and the style of the flowers, but I don’t think it was too derivative because my protagonist is quite different from his style, and the flowers were done without reference.

I wanted to make sure that I explored a few different routes and ideas with this, so I tried ideas that I didn’t necessarily think would work; some did, for example the top right drawing, and some didn’t, for example the bottom left drawing of the ink bottle and spotted flower.

The images for “This one I made, it hangs on my wall...” felt relatively obvious to me; I knew what I wanted, and it was relatively easy to execute. I wanted it to be understated that Cass could move objects with their mind; I didn’t want it to be a big scene, or dramatic, I wanted it to seem cool and underplayed, because that felt more realistic; as a child, you feel like maybe you can do these supernatural things, so you try alone in your room. You don’t expect a huge freak accident to happen, you kind of expect just a slight shudder that you notice. This is what I wanted to convey in the drawing; a sense of normality that the readers could relate to, but the undertone of magic about to happen.

“Sometimes I lose my things, in fact I do a lot... It’s usually those silly Grimbles. This is a Grimble hotspot.” I found this stanza hard to imagine, and in turn hard to illustrate. It felt like there had to be a lot of information conveyed in the image; the creature itself, the action of stealing something, and the room. I wanted the room to have a sleepy kind of atmosphere and I think I did that well through the use of color.

I was very lost on how to illustrate the Grimble; I wanted it to be strange but not intimidating, and not scary for the reader. I explored different ideas of what it might look like at the bottom of the page. 

I wanted this bed to be the most comfy bed in the world; I loved the idea of someone remembering this book years after reading it and having a nostalgic love for the warmth and coziness of bed because of it.

This meant that I had to make the bed look fluffy and soft, and make Cass look relaxed. I made sure to round out the edges of the drawing for a soft feel, and to have Cass tucked in nicely, with a big fluffy pillow.

I didn’t want it to be extravagant because that seemed unattainable to a lot of children; I wanted it to be the bed that everybody has; underrated but warm, small but soft, fluffy and cozy.

[ireflectaut]

Post Six

For the first page, I played around with the idea of what my protagonist might look like and what their room would look like. I though setting up a portion of their room would be a great way to introduce the character and the story as this is their special place where they keep their collected items. I started off with a sketch of a part of my own childhood bedroom, as this is where I drew inspiration for the story. I knew I wanted to exaggerate this image and my belongings of the time though; I had more books than in the drawing, but not all of them were on the floor in my room, instead I had a collection of my favourites and the next to be read on my drawers, and the rest in the garage/ I put the pile of books on the floor because I thought it would add nice symmetry to the illustration; I liked the idea of the protagonist in the middle of the world of their things welcoming the reader, and being excited to share with the reader the things that were special to them. this is also why I drew the protagonist with their arms out wide as if in such excitement that they have to spread their arms out to express all the glory of their world.

My first sketch was me trying to just get the idea out of my head and have a starting point; once I was done I knew that I had relied too heavily on Quentin Blakes technique for the kid. I decided on the blob character, let's call them Cass, because this is something I have doodled for years. I thought it would be a nice idea for Cass to be someone I was already familiar with; I’ve drawn them for years and have always enjoyed their flexibility to be whatever I needed or wanted them to be. This was always a release for me, something that never had to be perfect, and that is what I want the kid to stand for; they are fluid, they make their own rules.

I played with the idea of them having hair but it felt unnatural and a little creepy. I also played with different expressions.

I also made sure that I was exploring different routes and going out of my comfort zone, I wanted to play more with the idea of “They are all me & I am all them”, so I decided to take that literally; what if the protagonist was actually made out of one of their favourite things?

So, I started with the outline of Cass and then drew them so they were made out of books, as you can see in the top left-hand corner of the first image. I did like this effect but it felt a little forced and on the nose, I also wanted to make sure that the reader could still identify in some way with Cass, and didn’t want to make them too far from human form.

Instead, I created a mini Cass as a secret easter egg on their shelf in the first image.

In the next image, I explored another protagonist. I wanted a relatable girl character; I think selfishly because this is what could have helped me a little as a kid. I am definitely lucky to grow up in a world where my light skin color was portrayed as the more ‘beautiful’ in media, but all of the cool girls that I wanted to be like had straight blonde hair, and I was ashamed to have curly hair – obviously this is very shallow and such a small thing to be upset about, but all the same with my narrow world view, I was. So I wanted to create a cool girl that readers might want to be that had curly hair, and I love this character, but I liked Cass better; they portray an empty canvas, and aren’t something a kid would get upset about not looking like.

For the second page, I explored ideas of what each item on the list might look like. I started with the idea for the first sentence with Cass holding a huge $2 coin, as a visual representation of the epicness and importance of something as small as a $2 coin to a child. I rubbed this out as it felt that it didn’t fit the book; it was a little too comic book-y and out of place as it wasn’t fully in my style, but also wasn’t fully in comic book style. I then decided it could be interesting to have the comic book element but do it my way, so I created a vintage comic book to include in the book as a representation of the $2 element. I also liked the idea of a simple drawing with a big jar full of coins and a hand reaching in.

I wasn’t sure what I wanted the “In the middle of a tree” illustration to look like so I played around with a few ideas. The first idea was the one I had imagined when writing the story; Cass wrestling something from a squirrel’s mouth in the top of a tree. I thought this had an element of silliness that I was keen to include, but after drawing the scene, I thought it would be worthwhile to explore other routes as well. I remembered how much I loved the unreal reality that Sendak created in Where The Wild Things Are, and wanted to make something magical, so came up with the idea of Cass being privy to a secret door in the middle of trees where they could explore a whole new world, and come back with gifts. So I drew a doorway leading to this other dimension in a huge old tree.

I also imagined that another way I could portray this is in the middle on a cut down tree trunk; I thought this could be a good way to keep the drawing small so that I could have multiple drawings on the page as the verse I wrote lists multiple things I so could almost have a montage of Cass’s expeditions. I liked the drawing but felt that having a cut down tree was too much of a cynical metaphor; although it could be a metaphor for finding beauty out of destruction, the truth is that the tree is still cut down; it felt like an ending, instead of the beginning of the endless world that the doorway creates.

I thought I could include my idea from the first page “They are all me, and I am all them” and the object expressing that that’s on Cass’s drawers of a mini Cass, and illustrate Cass finding this version of themself as what they find on the bench. I mulled over the idea of them finding a good stick, or someone's lost pocket watch, but I found the mini Cass linking to the first page to have the most meaning, and I liked the slight awkwardness and comfortable uncertainty that the drawing had between Cass and mini Cass.

For “This one was drenched” I took a toy car of mine and placed it in the rain. I was nervous that it was unclear that the car was tiny, so I added the curbside with grass to hopefully make sure that the viewer gages the proportions.

For “This one is French”, I tried to think of different classic French things that weren't cliché or a negative / one dimensional stereotype. One of my favorite books ever is the children's book Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, and an iconic illustration from the book is the boa constructor that swallowed an elephant; the meaning behind it is that there is always more than meets the eye, and the beauty of the world is in the eye of those with an imagination. This has stayed with me since I first read it, and wanted to reference it.

I looked around my house for inspiration for this page and realized that one pile of my already read books was sitting quietly on my dresser collecting dust. Sometimes I lend one out to someone, but generally they don’t move, so this is what I drew for that stanza.

I was experimenting with different points of view for Cass to be looking at them from, but then as I looked at the page as a whole, I realized that it looked really fun as a little montage; it had movement to it and came alive a little bit.

It made sense to follow the abstract cartoonish style of Cass and draw their friends in that style as well. It also gave me freedom to create different, unique characters that didn’t have to look like anything in particular.

I also made sure to investigate different routes. So I drew a less abstract and more detailed version, but it didn’t have the same energy, and didn’t feel as cohesive.

I thought the gems could be colorful autumn leaves, so drew a mockup and colored it with watercolor pencil.

These are some of my favorite planning pages. The concept was easy to imagine because I could envision it when I was writing the story. I definitely took inspiration from Quentin Blakes style of watercolor and the style of the flowers, but I don’t think it was too derivative because my protagonist is quite different from his style, and the flowers were done without reference.

I wanted to make sure that I explored a few different routes and ideas with this, so I tried ideas that I didn’t necessarily think would work; some did, for example the top right drawing, and some didn’t, for example the bottom left drawing.

This felt relatively obvious to me; I knew what I wanted, and it was relatively easy to execute. I wanted it to be understated that Cass could move objects with their mind; I didn’t want it to be a big scene, or dramatic, I wanted it to seem cool and underplayed, because that felt more realistic; as a child, you feel like maybe you can do these supernatural things, so you try alone in your room. You don’t expect a huge freak accident to happen, you kind of expect just a slight shudder that you notice. This is what I wanted to convey in the drawing; a sense of normality that the readers could relate to, but the undertone of magic about to happen.

I found this stanza hard to imagine, and in turn hard to illustrate. It felt like there had to be a lot of information conveyed in the image; the creature itself, the action of stealing something, and the room. I wanted the room to have a sleepy kind of atmosphere and I think I did that well through the use of color.

I was very lost on how to illustrate the Grimble; I wanted it to be strange but not intimidating, and not scary for the reader. I explored different ideas of what it might look like at the bottom of the page.

[flauntpage]

The Blurred Line Between Real Violence and Wrestling Violence

A significant part of pro wrestling’s in-ring appeal isn’t balletic dives or feats of strength. It’s the simulated violence, where we collectively sneak up to the line of the real, secure in the knowledge that it’s all under control, with pulled punches and magicians’ hands softening the headbutts.

That line can be extremely porous. As two high profile events over the past week proved, the simulation can turn extremely real through lack of care or maliciousness, and the results of real violence are very different from the stuff in the ring.

The first was during the David Arquette-Nick Gage match at Joey Janela’s LA Confidential on Friday night. Joey Janela has turned the weekends around each of WWE’s Big Four shows—Sunday was Survivor Series—into his own traveling circus show, where his post-ironic celebration of camp in pro wrestling runs into legitimate dream matches to make must-see pay-per-views over the past couple of years.

David Arquette might seem like an odd choice for a dream match, but the 47-year-old actor has quietly been one of the strangest feel-good stories in pro wrestling history over the past six months. It’s perhaps exited public memory, but he was talked into becoming WCW world champion in the waning days of that promotion. It was a farce meant to draw mainstream attention, and it did for a bit, but his reign went down as one of the major factors in WCW’s demise.

Arquette is a lifelong pro wrestling fan and he’s spent the past 18 years agonizing over his role in what he not incorrectly feels was a disrespecting of a tradition he loves. And he, in turn, feels disrespected as a joke who never cared. His solution was to train—really train—to be a pro wrestler. That’s what he’s been doing, working small indie shows just to have fun and give back. As he’s done so, he’s actually made a name as a decent worker and great guy, with fan sentiment building from a grudging respect to genuine appreciation.

Janela booked Arquette to wrestle his first ever death match against Nick Gage, the first CZW heavyweight champion, a legendary death match wrestler, and convicted bank robber. Gage is, as these things go, safe, but he also has an air of legitimate menace around him that most pro wrestlers simply don’t have. That air made the match with Arquette a perfect representation of what Janela’s shows try to do: on the one hand, it’s absurd and not a little bit funny that the man who killed WCW, David Arquette, would be wrestling known badass Nick Gage, on the other, this is a legitimate match with reputational stakes with two complimentary real-life stories of redemption colliding.

The match was standard death match fare until the end, when the horrific happens. Gage grabs a broken light tube and does the gruesome but well-worn spot of taking the jagged end and grinding it into Arquette’s forehead. Arquette yells and legit freaks out a bit, flailing and taking Gage down. The light tube slips on the way down and gashes Arquette near the jugular, causing blood to gush out.

What happens next isn’t staged. After holding Gage down with one hand, the other clasped to his throat to staunch the bleeding, Arquette tries to pin Gage, who isn’t having it. Arquette tries to leave, comes back, and Gage kayfabe attacks him. At that point, Arquette has clearly had enough and absolutely wallops his opponent with a chair and tries to fight him. Gage drops a very real judo throw, pins Arquette, and it’s over.

It’s worth watching the footage in full if you can stomach blood, especially the fan angles which popped up all over Twitter. The reactions of the two men as the violence becomes extremely real are telling. They move from continuing to go through the motions to confusion to fear to anger in a scant two minutes. It’s extremely human and the quick transition from the “real” to the real shows the gulf between the two.

The other intrusion of violence into the simulation came on last week’s Smackdown Live. During a pull apart brawl between the SmackDown and Raw women, Nia Jax hauls off and punches WWE’s hottest act of the year, Becky Lynch, full in the face. Jax has about 150 pounds and not quite half a foot on Lynch; the impact broke Lynch’s nose and gave her a concussion.

For her part, Lynch gamely went on after a brief moment down on the mat. When she got up, blood was all over her face. The image became immediately iconic: Becky Lynch, Smackdown women’s champion, bloody-faced and sneering as she backs away from the ring after conducting an ambush, arms outstretched as she verbally hammers her kayfabe opponents.

The wrestling world exploded when it happened. The sight of the bloodied Lynch cemented her as the next coming of Stone Cold Steve Austin for some, and even for the less hyperbolic, it seemed like an undeniably important moment. Here was a woman taking the sometimes cloying rhetoric around WWE’s corporate announcement of the women’s revolution and turning it into a statement: I can bleed, I can hurt, and I can by God sell tickets as good as any man, maybe even better, given the sometimes dismal state of the men’s matches this year.

There were real world consequences, too. Lynch was scheduled to wrestle Raw women’s champion Ronda Rousey—notably, a wrestler who made her name on real violence in UFC—on Sunday’s Survivor Series. That didn’t happen due to WWE’s concussion protocols. We instead got an extremely good match between Rousey and Charlotte Flair, but it was supposed to be the white hot Lynch in the ring. We didn’t get that because, in real violence, a lot of the time it’s just one punch that ends things, with physical repercussions that last.

Jax, for her part, seems utterly unrepentant. The fan footage of the incident has become pro wrestling’s Zapruder film over the past week, with people poring over what happened and how. The question of whether it was an accident or a deliberate sucker punch has arisen. Chris Jericho stated on his podcast that he thought it looked deliberate, and I’m inclined to agree; she steps fully into the punch after looking right at Lynch. On the other hand, this is just the latest example of Jax injuring her opponents. She’s a sloppy worker and this is in keeping with her reputation.

Regardless of intent, the damage is done and it is, again, real. There are all sorts of injuries pro wrestlers get, from broken bones to ruptured ligaments, but those are largely the injuries of athletes. They feel like the cost of doing business. It’s when the injuries are the types people get in fights and brawls that you catch your breath a bit.

But let’s also not kid ourselves: it’s also those injuries which we get shamefully thrilled by, and the pro wrestling apparatus knows it. It’s no accident that the gruesome Arquette situation was near the top of Twitter trends in the wake of LA Confidential, nor that Janela’s next show is liable to get a boost to viewers because of it. Nor is it an accident that WWE made hay on Lynch’s bloody visage over the past week. Rumors were swirling that Jax was in backstage trouble for the punch, yet she strode to the ring on Sunday holding her fist aloft and was the last woman standing in her match at Survivor Series. And she was booed mercilessly, but there was undeniable joy in those boos, as the crowd could genuinely hate someone for legitimately hurting someone they equally genuinely love.

All of which points to the fact that the relation between controlled and uncontrolled violence in the pro wrestling imagination isn’t as distant as we like to think. There’s something about peering over the edge into the realm of chaos which gets us going, where we watch the Nia Jax punch and David Arquette shooting on Nick Gage over and over again. We may not like the real thing, but we sure are fascinated by it.

The Blurred Line Between Real Violence and Wrestling Violence published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

[leehaws]

The Blurred Line Between Real Violence and Wrestling Violence

A significant part of pro wrestling’s in-ring appeal isn’t balletic dives or feats of strength. It’s the simulated violence, where we collectively sneak up to the line of the real, secure in the knowledge that it’s all under control, with pulled punches and magicians’ hands softening the headbutts.

That line can be extremely porous. As two high profile events over the past week proved, the simulation can turn extremely real through lack of care or maliciousness, and the results of real violence are very different from the stuff in the ring.

The first was during the David Arquette-Nick Gage match at Joey Janela’s LA Confidential on Friday night. Joey Janela has turned the weekends around each of WWE’s Big Four shows—Sunday was Survivor Series—into his own traveling circus show, where his post-ironic celebration of camp in pro wrestling runs into legitimate dream matches to make must-see pay-per-views over the past couple of years.

David Arquette might seem like an odd choice for a dream match, but the 47-year-old actor has quietly been one of the strangest feel-good stories in pro wrestling history over the past six months. It’s perhaps exited public memory, but he was talked into becoming WCW world champion in the waning days of that promotion. It was a farce meant to draw mainstream attention, and it did for a bit, but his reign went down as one of the major factors in WCW’s demise.

Arquette is a lifelong pro wrestling fan and he’s spent the past 18 years agonizing over his role in what he not incorrectly feels was a disrespecting of a tradition he loves. And he, in turn, feels disrespected as a joke who never cared. His solution was to train—really train—to be a pro wrestler. That’s what he’s been doing, working small indie shows just to have fun and give back. As he’s done so, he’s actually made a name as a decent worker and great guy, with fan sentiment building from a grudging respect to genuine appreciation.

Janela booked Arquette to wrestle his first ever death match against Nick Gage, the first CZW heavyweight champion, a legendary death match wrestler, and convicted bank robber. Gage is, as these things go, safe, but he also has an air of legitimate menace around him that most pro wrestlers simply don’t have. That air made the match with Arquette a perfect representation of what Janela’s shows try to do: on the one hand, it’s absurd and not a little bit funny that the man who killed WCW, David Arquette, would be wrestling known badass Nick Gage, on the other, this is a legitimate match with reputational stakes with two complimentary real-life stories of redemption colliding.

The match was standard death match fare until the end, when the horrific happens. Gage grabs a broken light tube and does the gruesome but well-worn spot of taking the jagged end and grinding it into Arquette’s forehead. Arquette yells and legit freaks out a bit, flailing and taking Gage down. The light tube slips on the way down and gashes Arquette near the jugular, causing blood to gush out.

What happens next isn’t staged. After holding Gage down with one hand, the other clasped to his throat to staunch the bleeding, Arquette tries to pin Gage, who isn’t having it. Arquette tries to leave, comes back, and Gage kayfabe attacks him. At that point, Arquette has clearly had enough and absolutely wallops his opponent with a chair and tries to fight him. Gage drops a very real judo throw, pins Arquette, and it’s over.

It’s worth watching the footage in full if you can stomach blood, especially the fan angles which popped up all over Twitter. The reactions of the two men as the violence becomes extremely real are telling. They move from continuing to go through the motions to confusion to fear to anger in a scant two minutes. It’s extremely human and the quick transition from the “real” to the real shows the gulf between the two.

The other intrusion of violence into the simulation came on last week’s Smackdown Live. During a pull apart brawl between the SmackDown and Raw women, Nia Jax hauls off and punches WWE’s hottest act of the year, Becky Lynch, full in the face. Jax has about 150 pounds and not quite half a foot on Lynch; the impact broke Lynch’s nose and gave her a concussion.

For her part, Lynch gamely went on after a brief moment down on the mat. When she got up, blood was all over her face. The image became immediately iconic: Becky Lynch, Smackdown women’s champion, bloody-faced and sneering as she backs away from the ring after conducting an ambush, arms outstretched as she verbally hammers her kayfabe opponents.

The wrestling world exploded when it happened. The sight of the bloodied Lynch cemented her as the next coming of Stone Cold Steve Austin for some, and even for the less hyperbolic, it seemed like an undeniably important moment. Here was a woman taking the sometimes cloying rhetoric around WWE’s corporate announcement of the women’s revolution and turning it into a statement: I can bleed, I can hurt, and I can by God sell tickets as good as any man, maybe even better, given the sometimes dismal state of the men’s matches this year.

There were real world consequences, too. Lynch was scheduled to wrestle Raw women’s champion Ronda Rousey—notably, a wrestler who made her name on real violence in UFC—on Sunday’s Survivor Series. That didn’t happen due to WWE’s concussion protocols. We instead got an extremely good match between Rousey and Charlotte Flair, but it was supposed to be the white hot Lynch in the ring. We didn’t get that because, in real violence, a lot of the time it’s just one punch that ends things, with physical repercussions that last.

Jax, for her part, seems utterly unrepentant. The fan footage of the incident has become pro wrestling’s Zapruder film over the past week, with people poring over what happened and how. The question of whether it was an accident or a deliberate sucker punch has arisen. Chris Jericho stated on his podcast that he thought it looked deliberate, and I’m inclined to agree; she steps fully into the punch after looking right at Lynch. On the other hand, this is just the latest example of Jax injuring her opponents. She’s a sloppy worker and this is in keeping with her reputation.

https://sports.vice.com/en_us/embed/article/kbdgk3/a-case-for-more-blood-in-wrestling?utm_source=stylizedembed_sports.vice.com&utm_campaign=kzvbna&site=sports

Regardless of intent, the damage is done and it is, again, real. There are all sorts of injuries pro wrestlers get, from broken bones to ruptured ligaments, but those are largely the injuries of athletes. They feel like the cost of doing business. It’s when the injuries are the types people get in fights and brawls that you catch your breath a bit.

But let’s also not kid ourselves: it’s also those injuries which we get shamefully thrilled by, and the pro wrestling apparatus knows it. It’s no accident that the gruesome Arquette situation was near the top of Twitter trends in the wake of LA Confidential, nor that Janela’s next show is liable to get a boost to viewers because of it. Nor is it an accident that WWE made hay on Lynch’s bloody visage over the past week. Rumors were swirling that Jax was in backstage trouble for the punch, yet she strode to the ring on Sunday holding her fist aloft and was the last woman standing in her match at Survivor Series. And she was booed mercilessly, but there was undeniable joy in those boos, as the crowd could genuinely hate someone for legitimately hurting someone they equally genuinely love.

All of which points to the fact that the relation between controlled and uncontrolled violence in the pro wrestling imagination isn’t as distant as we like to think. There’s something about peering over the edge into the realm of chaos which gets us going, where we watch the Nia Jax punch and David Arquette shooting on Nick Gage over and over again. We may not like the real thing, but we sure are fascinated by it.

The Blurred Line Between Real Violence and Wrestling Violence syndicated from https://justinbetreviews.wordpress.com/