#used as an example of badly executed narrative arcs

[tossawary]

There has to be a term already for when stories accumulate this... "narrative debt" that they end up not paying back. When stories fail to stick the landing when it comes to character development or thematic development, a mismatch between what the beginning of the story apparently constructed and what the final scenes ultimately ended up being.

I want to compare it to "The Empty Mystery Box Problem", almost, where the story lays on twisty element after twisty element to pull you into some great mystery, only to ultimately reveal that the writers never had a cool explanation for any of this and were pretty much just jerking the audience around to keep them watching for as long as possible. It has a similar feeling of investing your attention, only to get nothing satisfying and to feel betrayed for caring.

There's a disconnect between author and audience. A sense that perhaps the author, who has their own visions in mind, is not even aware of what they ended up depicting in the execution. As an audience member, I do sometimes have to ask myself, "Was I just projecting my own arcs onto this while the author wanted to do something different? Am I upset just because I didn't get the resolution I anticipated?" And sometimes I come to the conclusion that, no, if the author always intended for the story what they claimed, then they did it badly, and the parts that I found resonant were definitely there, just... perhaps done accidentally and/or carelessly.

Like, let's say that there's some show that ends up depicting a protagonist who has substance abuse issues.

The show repeatedly shows the audience that the protagonist feels dependent on alcohol, we see lots of shots of them drinking, often at very inappropriate times. As the plot goes on, the show even appears to be showing us the consequences of this addiction, in that the character's relentless over-drinking apparently negatively affects their job performance, their love life, their relationships with friends and family. The character is miserable, perhaps even explicitly expresses some of their depressed feelings, and it seems obvious that taking a known depressant is a big part of this tangle. There may even be some looming threat that if the protagonist doesn't get this issue under control or get help, there will be even more serious consequences.

So, we've spent aaaaall of this screentime dwelling on this obvious character problem, but then... well, one way for the story to handle it poorly is to just not handle it. It's just never really addressed. A potentially great character arc about someone struggling with addiction just fizzles out because the plot climax takes up so much space that you think... maybe the writers... somehow forgot that they made unhealthy alcohol dependence an enormous part of the character's life? Maybe???

Like, there's not even a visual cue at the end that the character is now making an effort to tackle their addiction or something. There's not even a single line of dialogue in the epilogue to tell us that the protagonist went through rehab and they're sober now or something. What you may have read as a very serious problem just vanishes overnight. A story element that ate up aaaaall that screentime just never gets any satisfying resolution.

I'm not saying here that I need to see the story handhold a character through the rehabilitation process. It's not a requirement that all characters overcome their addiction by the end of the story. Sometimes, a story ends a little sadly, yeah, or is an outright tragedy. Sometimes, one problem is solved and another sticks around. I just think it's disorienting when I THOUGHT that the story was trying to actually say something about substance abuse, they spent all this fucking time showing us scenes that revolved around that element, and it turns out that the writers were like, "Oh, yeah, I guess! We weren't really thinking about that as a serious problem. We mostly just had the protagonist drinking all the time because it looked cool, and I guess that part ties in pretty well with how they were fucking up their life, actually, but we dropped it because we didn't think it was important."

The OTHER way for a story to handle an arc like this poorly is to do a total reversal at the end. The author is not only blissfully unaware that they have been telling a nuanced story about substance abuse until now, they don't even think that addiction is real. The ending yells really loudly: "Not ONLY is this character's drinking actually NOT a problem! It helps them save the day! And also every other character has been super mean to them about this; everyone else needs to grovel at the protagonist's feet and apologize for saying super mean things like, 'Don't you think it's inappropriate to show up drunk to a child's birthday party?' Because the WORLD would have ENDED if the badass protagonist hadn't been doing the objectively correct thing of being hammered all of the time."

At which point, the only thing to do is leave the show behind, because caring about it is a waste of time. But it's hard to stop thinking about it because the show paid all of this time... into a narrative element that felt SO obvious and crucial and like it was going somewhere... and it was an accident??? Like, the story was good when it was making all of these interesting promises, until the end came around and it turns out that it couldn't pay the bills and/or never had any intention of paying.

"The Empty Mystery Box Problem" except the box is wide open the entire fucking time and there's cool stuff in it, but the writers apparently aren't paying attention to the box or what they're putting in it!?!?!

[radical-sasukeist]

One thing that really pisses me off about the trajectory of the Naruto narrative is that it presents huge, glaring problems with the shinobi system, culture, and society, has the main characters notice and acknowledge these problems, but never has them solve these problems.

For example, at the beginning of the series in the Land of Waves arc, the real antagonist is not Zabuza, but Gato, a ruthless billionaire, capitalist that hires shinobi to help him monopolize businesses in small lands until he controls all of their wealth at the expense of their people. He does this in the Land of Waves, but Tazuna is building a bridge that will open up commerce and sap some of his control and profit, so he hires Zabuza to kill him. Before that, he publicly executed Inari’s dad for organizing the people in the Land of Waves against him.

After Team 7 fights Zabuza and Haku, and Haku sacrifices himself to save Zabuza from Kakashi, Gato shows up with some manpower with the goal to kill Tazuna AND Zabuza because he doesn’t want to pay Zabuza for the job. Mad at Haku for disrespecting him before, he kicks his dead body. Naruto gets upset by this and confronts Zabuza about his lack of anger re: how Haku’s body is being treated. This is when Zabuza states that shinobi are simply tools to be used and that he only used Haku for his skills and we get Naruto’s “he cared about you [...] to die as a tool is just too sad” speech.

Naruto is upset by the fact that shinobis’ are only viewed as valuable if they can provide their labor for a service that enables someone else to profit. Outside of that, in this capitalist system, their humanity and lives aren’t viewed as valuable or worthwhile. He’s afraid that he will end up thinking that way, too, the longer he is a ninja, hence him asking “is that how you get when your powers are as strong as yours?”, i.e., heartless/only viewing people as valuable based on what you can get from them.

Unfortunately, the shinobi system operates in a capitalist society and ingrains an ideology into it’s children (LITERALLY CHILD SOLDIERS THAT PERFORM LABOR SO THE VILLAGE CAN PROFIT) that teaches them that their lives ARE only valuable if they work to serve the world’s countries’ leaders (daimyo) (and the wealthy) because that is literally how the shinobi villages get paid: by taking jobs, even assassinations, from these wealthy, powerful people. They’re literally tools of a violent, capitalist system!

Naruto’s whole character is based in the fact that he rejects this idea of what being a ninja means and that he wants to be a different type of ninja who operates in a different kind of system, one where people’s lives are valued not just for what they can produce for the wealthy and powerful. This is why the ending sucks so badly and why Naruto seemingly betrays everything he is with that epilogue. Why the shitty ending and the retconning of Naruto’s character? I think there are a few reasons:

1. Kishimoto sucks at writing, 2. he caved to the pressure his editor’s put on him when it came to changing the story too often, 3. he lives in a capitlist country and even though he can see the problems capitalism creates (war is bad! valuing people based on what they can produce through their labor for the wealthy and powerful is bad! oppressing people is bad!) he can’t admit that capitalism is the problem because the cognitive dissonance is just too much. Kishimoto has a bad case of the liberal-like idea that even though xyz oppression or harmful acts is bad, we need to be nice and peaceful and patient and polite when asking for justice—eventually they’ll give it to us (hence the demonization of Sasuke’s character and his attempts to fix the injustices of the system by the other characters in Naruto. He wants change and he’s not afraid to call out the fact that the system sucks and that those who maintain the status quo are responsible for it continuing to suck. He feels no cognitive dissonance about it).

Justice for Naruto and justice for Sasuke tbh. They deserved a world where the system was dismantled, where shinobi villages stopped working for the wealthy and powerful for their own interests, where shinobi could produce their own resources and maybe do some meaningful shit in the world, like provide mutual aid, instead of being forced into violence to line someone else's pockets.

[misscrawfords]

For the bad Austen take game: Fanny Price is boring. (I hated even typing that)

 Aaaaahhhh, you went straight to the jugular!

Mansfield Park was published in 1814, a year after Pride and Prejudice. The latter contained a spirited, active, and witty heroine. The former, a heroine who was shy, physically weak, and very introverted.

Fanny Price is actually closer to what a lot of contemporary heroines were like. Elizabeth Bennet, bursting in on the scene with her “pert opinions” and physical vigor and her direct challenges to the hero is not ahistorical because clever and witty heroines do exist in literature of the time, but she takes that to the next level.

The “perfect heroine” of the early 18th century in many novels was sweet, virtuous, morally dutiful, and somewhat passive. She was prone to fainting, basically had no faults, and at the end of the novel was rewarded with the love of the hero. She is not always a particularly interesting figure and often such narratives have a foil in a lively, witty anti-heroine who brings the fun to the novel but cannot be rewarded with a happy ending because she does not display the appropriate morals. That way the author and reader can get the pleasure of a “bad girl” or at least a “fun girl” without disrupting the expected didactic morals required of (many) novelists at the time.

Fanny Price and Mary Crawford are interesting variations on that. Fanny, like all of Austen’s heroines, challenges contemporary notions of what being a heroine was about. Austen does this in all her novels though Emma is the most obvious example. Fanny has many of the qualities that you would expect from a contemporary heroine but she is also not particularly attractive (a heroine should always be the most beautiful woman in the room) and it is hard to read her excessive passivity and not feel irritated by it. She has a much deeper inner life than most of her contemporaries of this type. We see her jealousy of Mary Crawford, we see her misery, we see her unrequited love for Edmund, her complicated feelings regarding her home in Portsmouth in ways that make her fully rounded internally, only little of that is spoken out loud. These feelings are very human and understandable, but they are not always to her credit and knowing them, we wish she could act on them. Austen seems to be asking the reader to take the classic novel heroine and then ask, “How would she really respond to novel situations?”

Austen’s plot also challenges expected novelistic plots. Edmund Bertram is not a satisfactory romantic hero. He is as quiet and rigidly moral as Fanny... except he blows all his convictions by his blind infatuation on Mary and he spends 99.9% of the novel oblivious to Fanny’s feelings or even that she’s an eligible woman at all. I have sympathy for him as well as for Fanny because he’s very young (only 22/23) and making poor judgements over women at that age and being an oblivious numpty over your childhood best friend’s crush seems pretty normal to me. Nevertheless, following Mr. Darcy, he’s hardly the stuff of dreams.

The character and plot that does seem more novelistic is Henry Crawford and his pursuit of Fanny. He’s handsome and rich and a bit of a rake. Then he meets Fanny who he attempts to seduce, falls in love with her for real, proposes to her and is rejected, then changes his behaviour, tries again and is accepted now that he is reformed and worthy her love.... wait. Rewind. That’s not what happened! Think this plot looks familiar? It should. Henry Crawford is what a lot of people think Mr. Darcy is who don’t understand Mr. Darcy on any level. Henry Crawford genuinely is a handsome bad boy who is reformed by the love of a virtuous woman after being rejected by her. And Austen teases readers with a redemption arc and a real enemies-to-lovers plot. But Henry is as real and complicated and human as Fanny and Edmund - he fails at the last hurdle and cannot complete his redemption arc. He relapses at the last moment. Isn’t that true to life? And is reforming a rake really Fanny’s destiny in life? She doesn’t think so. She sees right through his charm and hates who he is underneath. She doesn’t reject him as Elizabeth does Darcy because she doesn’t understand him; she rejects him because she understands him perfectly. She is the only person in the novel who does. I feel it would be a poor ending for Fanny to make her marry a man she despises and become the mistress of a large estate which brings with it the kind of social duties she must have been unhappy executing.

Fanny gets what she wants. She quietly, patiently does not change. She is surrounded by the superficial, the brash, the badly behaved, the immoral, the weak and she remains strong and stoical and by doing this and remaining true to her values, she triumphs. She wins. She gets the man she wants. She is truly and fully adopted into the heart of Mansfield Park with all her enemies and rivals removed. She is acknowledged as the best of them all. Without even needed to do anything except endure and stick to her guns, she defeats every big boss in her path.

These are not attractive modern values. Our concept of a “strong woman” (*shudder*) is Elizabeth Bennet. But not all of us are Elizabeth Bennets. Most of us aren’t in fact. Most of us are quiet and insecure and filled with envies, jealousies, private sadnesses. Many of us have experienced at some point less than ideal family situations and reacted not by being spirited and clever but by curling up in a ball and just waiting it out. Shouldn’t Fanny be held up as an icon for winning in absolutely the worst of circumstances? But she is an Aeneas in a society that only wants to read about Odysseuses and Achilleses.

Finally, another way in which Austen was distinctly saying in MP, “Hey, so, if you thought I was going to write another P&P, JOKE’S ON YOU, MATEY!” is that the entire novel is an anti-romance. Of course you’re going to be frustrated with Fanny and Edmund if you’re looking for a pair of exciting characters who fall in love and get a swoonworthy romance. But if you read MP as an examination of bad love, inappropriate love, selfish love, inexperienced love, love that taints and goes wrong through the eyes of a quiet and insightful observer who herself suffers the crushing and all too familiar pangs of hopelessly unrequited love - then you find a character and a novel that are rich, satirical, and deeply intimate and clever.

[serpenteve]

I see what she wanted to do with alina and tbh it's not a bad plot but was executed badly and reads off as something done just so the ship could end up together. For example if we want to look at power corrupts- in lotr we can actually see how the ring changes people, we see actual examples of it and how their behaviour changes; it's not a hypothetical "am I becoming evil?" internal monologue without any actual evidence of it. Maybe if book 2 and part of 3 actually showed gave us a dark alina arc where she crosses some lines, and then maybe mal and genya help get her back to the main mission and she realizes she doesn't want that much power and is exhausted.

It still doesn't explain why she would lose ALL her powers, maybe she could have a less powerful version of her sun summoning, so she lives long but is not immortal.

Also I think leigh kinda messed up by making alina's past not exactly a happy place. From sab I dont get the vibe that she was v happy in the orphanage, she was weak and sick and called ugly and only had one friend who she loved but who was kind of a Casanova figure and it's not a time she looks back on fondly. So then for her to go back there doesn't make sense.

So maybe if alina had happier associations of the orphanage AND she goes through an actual dark alina arc I'd buy this whole "power corrupts" plot and that she wants to go live a quiet life in the place she was happy with a guy she loves but right now meh.

All true and great points! 🙌🏽

It's baffling that Leigh gave Alina the kind of character arc that you'd typically only see for ruthless anti-heroines who need to face consequences for their fatal flaw. She must have been aware she messed up at some point because she ends up trying to give the inverse of Alina's arc to Zoya in the Nikolai duology, except she ends up having to retcon the lore and making Alina's original punishment even more nonsensical and arbitrary.

The orphanage being a sad place is also an interesting point. The books seem to emphasize that Alina didn't like the orphanage so much as she liked Mal. But combined with the other mistakes in her arc, the story beginning and ending the same way essentially makes us wonder why the hell we were even following this story in the first place. Literally nothing changes for Alina in that had she not been the sun summoner, would she not have had this exact same ending? What was the point of her journey? Why are we following a protagonist so hell-bent on removing herself form her own narrative???

[a-student-out-of-time]

Rambling about V3 Again

Today I saw a really interesting quote from author Brandon Sanderson and it honestly got me thinking. He talked about what he considers the single worst thing you can do with critique in writing, and that’s if a critic “tries to make your story into one they would write, rather a better version of one you want to write.”

That got me thinking about V3.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that V3 is a very polarizing game, and I’ve seen many people talk about how they would’ve preferred to see the story play out, from character arcs to deaths to story conclusions. And while I do honestly enjoy seeing alternative perspectives and takes and AU’s, I feel like a lot about the game, what it’s trying to say and be, is skewed by those ideals.

I’m not saying that the critiques about the game are invalid, because there are a fair share of flaws with the game. What I am saying is that we end up talking so much about what we wish V3 could’ve been that what V3 was trying to be often ends up lost in that, and I want to talk about it.

It wasn’t until I really saw this quote that I was able to articulate all my likes and dislikes about the game and the reactions to it into a cohesive whole, which is what I’d like to do here.

So let’s ask this: what was V3 really trying to be?

Let’s start from the game’s theme: the relationship between truth and lies. This is best exemplified by the fact that you have the option to lie during trials, that you can use deception to find the truth. That’s a very different take from the previous games, where hope was associated with finding and confronting the truth.

Kokichi is another example, as he’s a self-admitted liar who claims to lead a criminal organization and it’s hard to tell exactly what he’s thinking or saying. Yet Kokichi actually helps bring the group to several truths: he helps find the culprit in trials, he reveals Maki’s identity as the Ultimate Assassin, tells the truth about Gonta murdering Miu and it’s thanks to his actions that the group later discovers the reality of their situation.

Throughout their journey, the group is confronted by numerous truths they don’t want to acknowledge, even refusing to do so and attacking people who continue to push them through. And with every revelation, there’s always those lingering details that don’t really make a lot of sense.

Let’s look at the game’s main narrative. At the start of the game, Kaede remembers she was kidnapped in broad daylight, thrown into a van, and brought to some abandoned school with a bunch of other people. She doesn’t act like a particularly nice person and is dressed differently, at least until the Monokubs arrive and give everyone their new clothes and memories. From that point, the narrative shifts considerably.

Kaede is suddenly an outgoing, optimistic leader and Shuichi is a sullen, withdrawn detective who serves as her deuteragonist for Chapter 1. She’s resolved to escape the Killing Game and tries to rally the group together. However, when her methods don’t prove successful and they start drifting away from her, she considers saving them by any means necessary and goes so far as to attempt murder against the mastermind. When that happens, she’s found guilty and executed, leaving Shuichi to take up her role as protagonist.

As you go through the game, using devices called flashback lights that apparently reawaken lost memories, you learn more and more about the reason that the group was brought here: the Gofer Project. When meteors began raining down on earth, all seemed lost until they established this project to send a group of survivors into space to colonize a new planet. A group of Ultimates.

They had established early on that Ultimates have even greater rights in this world: they’re the only ones allowed to vote and hold office. As the meteors came down and the news of this project got out, some people formed a cult that believed it was divine judgement and that mankind should be destroyed. That’s when they began the Ultimate Hunt, pursuing the candidates for the Gofer Project across the world. The Ultimates, with no other way out, decided to erase their memories of talent and live their last days as normal people.

To protect them, the people in charge spread a false story that the Ultimates had died, even holding a fake funeral for them and sent them into space secretly. However, while everyone was in cold sleep, one member of the cult- Kokichi- had sneaked aboard and piloted the ship back to the ruined and now inhospitable earth. They have no way back and no way to survive outside, and thanks to Kokichi’s claims to be the mastermind, they’ve been killing each for nothing. The group ultimately loses hope.

However, they’re resolved to continue on in their fight against the mastermind when they find a flashback light that reveals they weren’t just any ultimates: they were the next generation of ultimates from Hope’s Peak Academy. It wasn’t really the meteorites that got everyone, it was an alien virus that pushed mankind to the brink of extinction. That the cult that rose in the wake of this was Ultimate Despair.

That seems like a definitive way to link this game with its predecessors...until you really begin to stop and pick it apart. If this was about saving mankind, why did nobody have their memories right away? Why would you only bring 16 people? Why students who don’t make them suited to colonization? Why people like a death row inmate, a serial killer, a self-proclaimed liar and criminal, and an assassin?

Furthermore, going through many Fte’s highlights how much of the characters’ backstories seem very out there. Gonta wasn’t raised by wolves but a race of dinosaur people living in the woods, Kirumi is so hyper-competent that she became prime minister during the meteor crisis, Korekiyo’s killed almost 100 women and yet has never been caught, Maki can attend high school despite Japanese orphanages being too underfunded for kids to usually attend, Tenko’s neo-aikido breaks all the rules of traditional aikido and she's impulsive, has low pain tolerance, and disregards fair rules, none of which are very befitting of a martial artist.

And to conclude, even I thought that the reveal of their connection to Hope’s Peak felt very fanficy and out there, especially when the game had made no references or implications of it beforehand. But the reason for all of this is simple and effective:

None of this is real. It’s all staged.

Chapter 6 reveals that everything from their identities to the outside world they thought they knew was all just a fabrication. In truth, Tsumugi shows herself as the mastermind and that they’re actually in the 53rd season of an in-universe show called Danganronpa. Something alluded to even in the beginning of the game with the Team Danganronpa logo. This moment was very make or break for a lot of people, but let’s treat it fairly.

According to Tsumugi, the outside world has become a peaceful, boring place and Danganronpa is the only source of real entertainment the people have. A place where people literally come to have their identities replaced with those of Ultimates and then made to kill each other. This, as it turns out, was an outgrowth of the actual series we’d played before. A game that’s gone over 53 times.

This revelation is devastating for the characters. The lives and memories they’d known were all fabrications, which Tsumugi claims to have intentionally written. The Flashback lights were designed to implant fake memories to manipulate them, which is why that Hope’s Peak connection was set up after everyone gave up following the reveal of the outside world. A truth that could lead the world to despair, a lie that could lead the world to hope.

She even goes so far as to show everyone’s audition tapes, claiming that Kaede, Kaito, and Shuichi himself were willing to participate in the killings out of sheer misanthropy, popularity, and morbid excitement 

Kiibo is also revealed to be the audience’s means of interacting with the game, able to carry out their wishes and can even be hijacked and used as a way to fight against the characters’ decisions.

In the end, Tsumugi claims that the ongoing battle of hope vs despair needs to continue in perpetuity and that the survivors need to sacrifice someone, since only two people can survive Danganronpa. Shuichi, however, convinces Maki and Himiko not to vote for anyone and actually convinces the in-universe audience to give up on the series. Kiibo then blows the set to hell and allows Shuichi, Maki, and Himiko the chance to escape and see the world outside and what sort of influence they could have.

Now, let’s this break this down piece by piece here, because I feel like this part of the game is often conflated. Often I’ve seen people say that Chapter 6 is a giant middle finger to fans of the series, that nothing about the series really mattered, or that the flaws of the game can simply be attributed to bad writing on the creator’s part.

I honestly used to be in that camp myself, but the more I’ve thought about it, the more I feel those statements don’t hold up to scrutiny. We often conflate writing and narrative decisions we don’t like with bad writing. However, if the creator deliberately wants the narrative to move in that direction and has made intentional foreshadowing, references, and motivations that match it, we can’t simply equate that with it being “badly written.”

It’s not bad simply because we would’ve preferred they do something different. There’s a lot of very acclaimed books out there that I’ll admit I don’t care for because of their narrative decisions, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say they’re badly-written.

Furthermore, if something intentionally doesn’t make sense in-story, that is not bad writing. That is purposeful on the part of the creator, not a plot hole. The Gofer Project is not supposed to be a logical narrative, it’s meant to serve V3′s role: deconstruction of the nature of the series. It does this in many different ways:

Sequelization: 53 is a ridiculous amount of entries in a franchise and as I’m sure we’re all aware, as the number of entries goes up, the writing quality tends to go down. The Gofer Project story was purposefully meant to be nonsensical because it’s a story in an in-universe franchise that jumped the shark long ago.

A lot of people found it confusing or ridiculous that Shuichi and Kaede would have a romantic connection despite knowing each other barely a few days. That’s also the point; quick romances are a convenient narrative device to establish a means for character growth, followed by fridging her, a bad narrative trope designed to propel Shuichi toward development. Tsumugi even said as much during Chapter 6.

Similarly, Maki’s role in the story and her feelings for Kaito were reminiscent of that as well, with him helping her come out of her shell. 

When you go back, you can see Danganronpa is loaded with references to other series. Tsumugi is an obsessive otaku and went so far as to fill the entire story with deliberate references and callbacks to things she enjoys.

The Monokubs are deliberate references to executive decisions to add more marketable and merchandisable characters as the series drags on.

The fact that there are (supposedly) people willing to sign up for a killing game deconstructs the idea that some in the fandom may have had. That is, actually being in a killing game would not be fun or exciting, but horrific and traumatizing. Most of us wouldn’t be badass detectives or heroes, we’d be scared out of our minds, afraid, and want to find a way out.

Furthermore, Shuichi being repeatedly told that he’s just a fictional character and that his role is to be the protagonist, to go through hardships and come out stronger for the audience’s entertainment pisses him off so much that he wants no part of it. 

The climax is ultimately a deconstruction of what the series is famous for: the battle of hope vs. despair. In-universe, this has been reduced down to a simple narrative where the audience wants the same thing again and again: to see hope win in the end. Because hope keeps winning, the audience keeps wanting more. It’s become so formulaic that the audience doesn’t want to break out of its shell and just wants to see it over and over.

The final PTA against Kiibo is not meant to be an insult to the audience, but a representation of fighting against toxicity and entitlement in the fanbase, especially the ones that don’t want change. It’s not saying “you’re stupid for liking this series,” it’s saying “don’t be like these people.”

And how does the game? An unsatisfying ending that’s so bad that it drives the audience to give up on the show, finally allowing the killing to stop. Tsumugi decides she can’t live in a world without her favorite show and decides to die.

And that brings me to what I think is the ultimate thing that people conflate about the ending: that it’s all fiction, so nothing about it matters. That the entire franchise was fake, so it’s not worth your time.

That’s exactly the opposite of what V3 is trying to say.

First, Tsumugi is a completely unreliable narrator. The kind of person who let fiction consume her entire life, yet she believes it can’t change reality. She’s a liar and a hypocrite, and there’s no way of knowing if anything she says about the outside world is even true. It could be like she says or it might not be.

The fact that they have technology that can remove memories and add fake ones adds an entire dimension of ambiguity to everything she says, especially when you consider how the beginning of the game does not match up with what she says. We have no idea what the kids were really like before the killing game, so why should we believe anything she says?

And how can we be certain of her claims that she just wrote everything as planned? Kokichi and Kaito managed to put together a plan that completely threw her and Monokuma for a loop

Shuichi, Maki, and Himiko ultimately choosing to take the words of Kaede, Kaito, and Tenko to heart, even if they were part of a fictional narrative, is proof that they still had an influence on the trio. They choose to take something meaningful from their experiences regardless of the reality of their situation. And that’s something we all do.

The media we consume has an influence over who we are as people, and it’s part of why so many of us have such strong attachments to works we love. They were often influential in help shape who we are as people now, for good and for ill, and it’s important to take that into account.

V3′s message is that yes, that is important, and that you should read and enjoy stories and fiction, just as long as you don’t let it consume your life. They can influence you and even the world at large, and so it’s our responsibility as writers, artists, and creators to use that influence positively, to use the medium as a way to change the world for the better. That the only way for stale franchises that we’re tired of seeing over and over is to demand change, even if that means walking out on them. That the only way for things to change is for us to take action and demand change.

And by the end, we may not see immediate results, but we can at least work hard at trying to bring them about. V3 ends with Shuichi, Maki, and Himiko facing an uncertain future in a world they really know nothing about, but hopeful that their actions can and will change the world for the better. Real life doesn’t have solid, satisfying conclusions and it always doesn’t play out like a story, but that doesn’t mean you should give up on ever finding something satisfying or hopeful out there.

This, by no means, is me saying that V3 is a flawless story. I can point to numerous critiques that I still think hold water. However, Sanderson’s point is that we shouldn’t criticize a work based on what we wish it was rather than how it is and what it was trying to do.

I know there’s a lot about the story that bothers people, I know there’s a lot that wasn’t polished and a lot that feels uncomfortable and hard to swallow. Like Shuichi, coming out feeling confused, lost, unsure of what to do, but choosing to see merit and things to take to heart even in a story that turned out to be full of lies and uncomfortable truths.

If you didn’t enjoy V3, I wouldn’t force you to enjoy it. If you did love it, then you should love it. These are all just my thoughts on a story that, as time goes on, honestly feels more and more relevant to me.

[the-mercurial-star-o-vesper]

ITS EYE AGAINST I

... And me against You. Hello random people of the internet, and the select RvB audience I’m intending to talk to. Time for millions to ignore my existence, while a select few look at my fancy garbage. Now, with no sense of decorum, or tact... I present to you. That Red vs Blue seasons 15 through 17 are continuity breaking and noncanon. To be honest, I’m not overly fond of the over all plotlines and more than a few handfuls of episodes were just... dull. And that’s saying something for a series I’ve been attached to for the last decade. That isn’t to say there weren’t parts I didn’t like. There were plenty of things that were just fantastic and launched perfectly. But let’s get to the whys and hows. Let’s set out the point system: First point. The Blues and Reds, our blue visor assmonkeys... were unnecessarily stupid. They were a copypasta team, with a poor excuse to be there, that not only doesn’t fit what is already established but breaks continuity by being there. If we were to take the rest of the 15-17 series, it’d be easier to make them into alternative universe counter parts or what-ifs, from different timelines caused by the series later use of Time travel. Rather than this blessed mess. They spit in the face of Agent Florida’s workhistory. And while you can see where the idea came from, the execution and establishment was lacking. The very fact that it includes Doc already tells you that we’re not with Agent Kansas anymore, and that it utterly destroyed Doc’s history prior to coming to Blood Gulch. Second Point. The Time Travel. [frustrated exhausted ugh-ing] The best I can say is that the series analysis of Time Travel was fantastic. It acknowledged that the inclusion of Time Travel is meant to break continuity and reshape it. The difference here, is that it only broke continuity. In fact it shattered it so badly that we’d have to ask the Homestuck Fandom to pick the remaining pieces back up, and classpect it for good measure. The fact that Human History was so severely fusterclucked by our Teams already shows you how much respect Continuity got in these last seasons, as well as how much respect to Canon. And then there were the “Gods”. Just... Introducing someone for the funny designs and the fantastic graphic and digital movements is nice, but it doesn’t do anything. See every pitfall CGI and 3D ran into for the last few decades. See, RvB is meant to run along side Halo without destroying one another in an “Upstoppable Force meets Immovable Object” sort of way. And if nothing else, its already established that RvB also has ties to Marathon too (which, while muddled up, still works). And while plenty of the shenanigans were fantastic (Loved that Cyclops scene), the reason they got there was Weak, and it just utterly detonates itself like Church and his stomach bomb... Surrounded by people you hate, and being hunted down by the world’s worst player at a knock-knock jokes. The Third Point I despise Jax. ... I kid, that isn’t the third point. But I still don’t like the Jax. His growth into a terrible director was funny, but it doesn’t really save him or his purpose in the series. I digress. Its what I dub the “Super Hero Ex Machina”. In a “Super Hero Ex Machina” situation, reality crashes in, breaks both Narrative flow and rules, for drama. And example is with Spiderman and his web shooting. In his narrative, he can save someone easily from falling with his web shot. But if the Drama Machina Maker is introduced, then the reality of the situation crashes down as the force of the fall would completely shatter the victim’s skeleton if Spiderman caught them. As this is not already established as happening before, its only there to cause drama and not meant for any serious development or character arc. Or if a show adheres to keeping the status quo at all costs. Things that would realistically and permanently mess up the status quo are solved in 1 or 2 episodes. But if Reality crashes because Plot said so, it breaks the established rules of the Narrative (and pacing). Especially if said plotpoint could have already been solved in prior episodes easily. And that’s what they pulled on Agent Washington and his throat injury. Washington is an established survivor. He has survived some pretty messed up stuff, both mentally and physically, and he’s come so far as a character. To a point where he’s almost unrecognizable from when he was first established as the “Noir Detective Soldier Mercenary Man who plays by corrupt rules but still shines that hurting heart of gold once in a while”. Some of the stuff he’s had to survive, and potentially had to survive would’ve killed normal people. Even his writers had to take a step back and say, “No he can’t survive getting cut in half by a car”. RvB is good about changing status quo, and keeping to a rule of “actions have consequences” in order to both forward character and story. So it isn’t like they’re above permanently messing someone up (... Church.) But there are Rules on how its Handled. Story will establish and evolve said rules over time, this is true, but its a “more things change, more they stay the same” situation. And Washington’s injury... breaks that. For easy reason; For one thing, we already have a Freelancer with throat injuries, and he got them in a far worse scenario. Agent Maine was bloody machine gunned in the throat, then tossed off a freeway stories up from a ground we never even saw. And all he got was a messed up voice. There isn’t a good reason to give Wash that injury, realistic as it may be, besides playing it for Drama. And while such a circumstance should be given both the realism and seriousness it deserves, this only works if, you know, don’t play it to make a person or people suffer for Drama. Does this forward Character? No. No it doesn’t. The seasons retreat everyone’s character arcs. What little it does show is how far everyone has come... By making them take 20 steps back, and 5 steps forward. An ultimately useless gesture that neither show cases the human condition of “repeat until you finally get the lesson” or “sometimes shit happens”. Does it move the story? Only for drama. Which is a very weak reason. Even worse, as the series has already established that it can think deeply and use drama as a tool and not a plot point. If not for character or story, is it meant to be a metaphor? Metaphor for what. RvB doesn’t do metaphors. If not metaphor, is it supposed to be informative of the condition itself? RvB has bloody PSAs. No. A story is decent enough if it can mix those questions up without one consuming the other. But there wasn’t a point to do it. Just to see Wash or Carolina or the guys to suffer? To show that sometimes people get injuries they don’t bounce back from? Are you Kidding? We just permanently lost Church, and they set out to find the possibility of his existence again! That right there already Tells you that sometimes folks don’t Bounce Back. There was an entire Arc for Caboose, fer the gods’ sake, talking about it. CABOOSE. What the flyin Fu-- Ahem. There was already a ruling about Actions have Consequences. It was apart of the status quo that went as far back as the Blood Gulch Chronicles. Its filed under “The More things change, the more they stay the same”, and even throughout the Reconstruction series, there were plenty of characters pulling permanently changing stunts that affected them through the rest of their lives, or caused their death for it. [deep breath, lets it out] So. Inspite of my many problems with S15-17, there are things I adored about it. - Donut and Caboose’s arcs. Fantastically done. Caboose getting to the understanding he got in S14 about losing friends was heart breaking and beautiful. Donut’s may seem like retread and flanderization, but that is actually easily explained. When you’re under sufficient stress, your coping mechanisms will boost out from 10 to 100, and just because you’re now fully aware of it doesn’t mean you have the power or development yet to stop. It was a fantastic look into his character. - Sister. They made her into more than just a gimick and Grif’s Sister, which was a problem I had with her in Blood Gulch. Good patch up there. - The Background info and the details in Background Info with our main characters. Ye Gods, we got some backstory! The humor works, the seriousness works, its a beautiful set of puzzle pieces that fit snuggly into both canon and continuity. - Chrovos. Inspite of the time travel plot pitfalls, I actually really liked Chrovos. Wish they did more with them (Him? Her? I don’t remember if they established their pronouns). Did not like Jenkins, inspite of him being created out of a cut character. The Gods didn’t work very much either, and would’ve been better suited as characters that weren’t “gods”. It doesn’t help that they just... had inconsistant rules. - The Freelancers. I love the introduction to the Freelancers and all their nice armor designs. Too bad they’re all feckin’ dead. - Temple. I actually really liked Temple and the idea behind him. However, instead of the malakey we got, and the Time Travel Nonsense that could be theorized afterwards. It would’ve worked better if he had been the leader of a Cult of Personality or sorts, purposely and badly mimicking the hype of the RvB teams’ fame and gathering surviving former stim troopers. The terrorist thing could work, and so could the Church plot. Everything else was stupid. Remove the Time Travel, this isn’t Homestuck Hour. Thanks for you for your continued reading. ... oh Right, I forgot. As awesome as it was to see Locus again, the uselessness of Wash’s throat injury and how he was reintroduced makes him more into a Deus ex Machina (and not that Halo 3 Machinima from way back). Its like fitting a circle peg into a square hole... But getting it stuck halfway and ruining the children’s puzzle toy. ADDENDUM (edited) I hate Hate HATED how Vic parodied Church’s epilogue speech, and I just about wish Church would come back just to beat the shiznet out of him for it.

[chaoskirin]

Book Review -- The Heartstrikers Series

This is a book review about the first three books in the Heartstrikers Series, which starts with Nice Dragons Finish Last.

I liked these books, but I didn’t love them. It's definitely a solid three stars, and I'll read the last two books to see where it goes. Overall, if you like fantasy with YA elements, you will probably enjoy this series.

This review will contain some minor spoilers in order to justify my rating, with some MAJOR spoilers at the end.

First, the good. The plot is absolutely solid and it's clear the the author had a good idea of what she was going to do before she wrote it. It has a very mobster-type feel which I would expect with the way the dragons are characterized. The writing is occasionally clever and the main character is likable, relatable, and I'm able to empathize with his situation. The author may be projecting a bit as Julius' situation can get a little heavy-handed, but the theme of a found family is definitely present and well-executed.

I love the world that's been created. I'm originally from Detroit, so it was a pleasant surprise to find that the entire first book takes place in a sort of ghost-town version of it. I can picture the descriptions of the houses (I used to work in an old mansion converted in to an office, in fact!) and it's pretty clear that the author is from Detroit, or at least spent a lot of time there. Sometimes it got a little name-droppy as far as locations were concerned, but I kept hoping the author would namedrop the place where I'm from, so it's a fair trade. XD (She did not, sadly, but it was still fun to read about.)

The spirits and how they exist is also very interesting. Algonquin is an amazing villain in the second ant third books, and I can't wait to read more about her and the other spirits in the last two books.

There's also a great amount of action interspersed with the narrative, so that kept things interesting! Some books tend to either get lost in endless exposition or endless action sequences, but this book balances them very well.

Now for the not-so-good.

I picked up the first book expecting dragons. The title is "Nice Dragons Finish Last," after all, and while it's very clear from the description that the main character, Julius, is "sealed," I had hoped that there would be at least some mythological creature action. This is kept to an absolute minimum, though, in favor of dragons in their human shape. It's even a rather contrived "rule" in Detroit that dragons aren't allowed to be there. This trope has become outright cliche... I've been reading books for years and this was a common theme way back in the days of Dragonlance--take an incredibly powerful being and shove them into human shape, but add a coolness factor by calling them a dragon. (I wrote this part after the first book: there's much more ACTUAL dragon action in books 2 and 3. I still wish there was more.)

But they aren't really dragons. They think like humans, they act like humans, they seem to have the same emotions as humans... Except for another fantasy trope, which is taking every member of a species and shoving them into a single alignment (lawful evil in this case). Julius is the one exception, so it's a very Drizzt Do'urden situation and it's always been odd to me that every member of a species could be evil/good just because of what they are. (this is especially a problem with goblins and rampant antisemitism, but that's another discussion entirely.)

It's a problem that allows justified racism. If the entirety of one species is mean, it's really easy to make everyone hate them, and you lose the nuance of what real racism is. I would suggest that people not write about racism unless they've either experienced it or they've consulted with members of their community who have been the target of it. This becomes more of a problem in the second and third books when Julius is trying to prove that Not All Dragons Are Bad. And it becomes clear that both humans and spirits are very racist against dragons, but it completely lacks the reality of what racism really is. As one poster on tumblr said, "racism isn't just one species being mean to another."

Essentially, it puts all dragons on an uphill battle against everyone else, fails to become a proper allegory, and discards depth and warmth.

A small problem that I should mention is that sometimes plot points sort of fade? There was a situation where Julius' mom visits and he was very mean to Marci, and she was very upset about that, but it's never actually addressed. It sort of fizzles and ends and then everything moves on. It should have at least been mentioned and tied up.

Another problem is repetitiveness or filler text. When I'm going through beta reading for my books, I ask my readers to tell me ANY TIME they skim over text. When your readers are skimming, what you've written isn't interesting, and it has to be changed. I found myself doing this a lot in this book. I forced myself to read back and see what I've skimmed over, and it was usually information I'd already read being presented in a slightly different way. My advice would be to allow the readers to infer information without explaining it into the ground. One thing I would avoid is the discussion of plans before executing said plans--even if they ultimately go wrong. It's enough to say that your protagonist HAS a plan, then let the text speak for itself. These planning phases were what I tended to skip the most.

I can supply one sample of repetitiveness without spoiling the story too badly: One of the main characters is talking with a dragon character about a plan at the beginning-ish of book 3. And breaking the text down to its basics, it goes like this:

Amelia: You have to. Marci: I don't know... Amelia: But you have to. Marci: I don't know... Amelia: You really should do this. Marci: I don't know... Amelia: It's a good idea. Marci: Okay I'll do it. Amelia: Are you sure? Marci: Yes I'll do it. Amelia: Are you sure???

And the argument became VERY spread out over the whole chapter, interspersed with the same explanation of why Marci Should Do The thing, most of which I ended up skimming to the part where Marci ultimately accepted Amelia's idea.

Another chapter I skipped was in book 3 where two human characters had lunch with Marci. And as soon as it became clear they were discussing stuff Marci basically already knew, I just skipped the whole chapter. It was an unnecessary bit of writing that could have been summarized in one or two paragraphs instead. I went back and actually read it later. I didn't miss anything.

(my examples are from the third book because I just finished it and it's the freshest in my mind, but this is an issue in the first two books as well.)

I think there's a certain amount of realism in conversations like this. The problem is that your readers have already figured out where something is going, and they want to get there. If the author reads this, my suggestion would be this: Sometimes it's okay to cut events out when they're uninteresting. If you hate writing it, and your beta readers hate reading it, it can go. I wouldn't follow the advice that you should cut out EVERYTHING irrelevant to the plot, because sometimes it's fun to have fun, but the extra boring tedium can be safely summarized.

Next, Marci.

I first want to state here that my PREFERENCE is writing female characters. Most of my characters are women. And I understand there are a lot of readers who outright dislike all female characters, but I'm not one of them. I feel like that's an important thing to state before going into more detail about my issues with Marci.

I wanted to read more of the series before posting this review, because I felt Marci was a shallow character after book one. She felt like a female character who was STRONG, but NOT a strong female character.

And through the first book, she felt like a prop to the other main character, Julius, instead of a character all her own. (And to be fair, her ENTIRE story from the first book is sort of... hand-waved in books 2 and 3.)

In the first book, Marci isn't really written with a story arc. She's a sort of deus ex machina for Julius; she appears into his life mysteriously as he's looking for a mage, first of all. And while it SEEMS that she does have her own arc, it becomes clear by the end of the story that she's only a catalyst for the dragons' stories. The thing she's protecting eventually ends up in the hands of the dragons; she's essentially just a walking suitcase for them. She's a roadblock for the villains. And there's not even a true explanation of Why She Has The Thing They Want except that it's really cool and she wants it.

This alone may have prevented me from reading the rest of the series, but I'm VERY glad I did--While Marci has a slow start, her story does pick up in the second and third books and she becomes much more likeable. She still feels like a prop at times (other characters refer to her as a "weapon" even) but within that description, she's fighting her own battles and has become much less shallow.

I do wish she had more agency. I wish her decisions truly felt like hers, instead of the manipulations/machinations of those with higher power. But she's not the worst-written female character I've ever read, and the author makes it clear in the second and third books that she knows how to write good female characters (cough chelsie cough) so I can forgive Marci's shortcomings.

There's one Bad thing that I want to address, too, which mostly came up at the end of book 2 and throughout book 3. And this is a fairly major spoiler, I'm sorry.

You don't give a tyrannical dictator power after you defeat her. You just don't. Julius could have banished his mother if he refused to kill her. He could have let someone else kill her. He could have done any number of things. But the first thing he does is give her a seat on the new council and is just like "yes you still get to make decisions." And as you can imagine, this goes very wrong.

And book 3 is FULL of Julius refusing to let his brothers and sisters kill anyone, even when it's justified. This has always been a trope that rankled... You can't write about a coup and then have nobody die. It suggests that genocidal dictators Can Change If You Give Them The Right Opportunities, and we all know from real life that that doesn't happen. Tyrannical people in power will fight to keep that power. They don't learn. And props to the author for showing that these people don't learn, but... seriously, you don't keep people around who actively want to kill you.

I was so annoyed with Julius by the end of book 3, and the hoops the writing had to jump through to show his decision was good and right. He felt naive and almost stupid. And (VERY major spoiler here, just stop reading if you don't want the end of book 3 spoiled!)

...

...

...

...

...

...

Julius' mother had enslaved his sister for hundreds of years. When the sister was released, she immediately tried to kill her mother.

This would have justified ALL of Julius' actions up until that point if he'd just LET HER. Bethesda hurt Chelsie the most out of ANY Of her children. It would have been a PERFECT way to allow Chelsie to get her well-deserved revenge AND end the problem of Bethesda (who REALLY deserves to die.) And Julius made her stop, because That's Not How We're Doing Things Anymore.

I don't like that Bethesda is effectively not paying for the thousands of atrocities she committed over the last thousand years because the main character is a pacifist. It just doesn't sit right. And IDK if the author is building to Bethesda's death in the last couple books or not, but letting Chelsie kill her would have been the PERFECT end, and I'm really disappointed. No end for Bethesda would have been better than that.

Anyway.

As I said at the beginning of this review, I still recommend reading the series. It's a really interesting urban fantasy-type book, and while it crosses into YA territory, the fantasy aspect is interesting enough to keep me reading.

[kuronekonerochan]

Very messy thoughts about a very messy kdrama: Melting Me Softly

Overall:

I loved the premise...it looked like the kind of ridiculous over the top kdrama that could make for an interesting entertaining watch...unfortunately it is just badly executed. It doesn't know what it wants to be. The action syfy part is confusing, there is no emotional weigh over the tragedy of losing 20 years of life on the part of the Male Lead, although we feel it with the FL(who, by the way, is the only good part of the drama as far as acting goes, despite having little to work with), and even the jokes don't land because the supposed funny side characters are either too annoying and terrible people or they are too pathetic and I pity them instead of finding any of it funny (like the scenes with his family).

Melting me softly is a mess. Honestly with only just how all over the place the pilot was most ppl would have drop it then, but ji chang wook is soooo pretty and it's his comeback after military, still.... lord, is the drama bad. 

The syfy element is a mess, the characters are all shallow and unlikable in the few scenes we had with them so far (except the FL who seems nice enough but hasn't had that much to do yet).

The Characters:

 JCW is surprisingly unlikable for me and it's not even that he's the cliche jerk. Surprisingly it’s even worse because he’s just boring as a character. He’s not nice, but he doesn’t go out of his way to be cruel so that he can be redeemable later.

Nope, he’s just arrogant and entitled and he interacts with everyone mostly by casting judgmental side eye and being kind of uninterested in anyone else. Not in a charming megalo centric  way (like the Lead from What’s Wrong With Secretary Kim, who was a good person despite his ego), but in a dismissive everyday style that makes him all the more unlikable. What’s worse is that it’s even more evident with his family, who are problematic and a bit clingly and “golddigging/leaching” but still they seem to like each other enough in their own weird way. The lead though, treats his family coldly, like a disgusted spectator and it’s hard to watch. There is no chemistry between him and the rest of the cast because the character treats everyone like they’re not worthy of his respect.

That scene where the leads meet and she’s upset over losing 20 years of her life? -  I automatically went: *eyeroll Ugh, Men... It's not all about you everytime. You convinced her, effed up her life, own it and stop making excuses! The right thing to do is apologize and shut the f up!

The side characters, as I said are all either pathetic or terrible people, with the exception of the female lead’s family, who seem to be in a different, better acted drama. The shift in tone is jarring.

The Plot:

The plot is a complete mess and the main conflict so far is stupid. His producing team (that ended up convincing his gf) decided to hush things up in the past because outrage, audience ratings, yada yada and that's it! Yet it’s super confusing bc it seems like they are hiding what they did from him and scheming behind his back, while at the same time it's obvious he knows they threw him under the bus back them, so where’s the conflict? Also it's petty and the real villains involved with the cryoproject and the attack on the scientist are still just a vague concept that the drama clearly wont go into anytime soon, so it all seems like filler. 

To top it all, last episode's cliffhanger is about their previous romantic interests (who are now in their 40s) reconnecting when one of them is married and the other cover up the ML's disappearance, so it's all just more annoying filler I have no interest in watching...

The production design/ technical aspects:

The technical aspects are also bad, especially the editing...scenes are chopped off and put together and seem cut short or pointless. Time is also weird, they mix office scenes with home scenes from ML and random FL scenes without parallels and it's impossible to make out when the days start and end. It's been a while since I saw such messy execution from the production. Usually it's stuff like plot or characters or acting that bothers me, at most camera work, but here it really is the production as a whole. 

What I meant by parallels is that when you are starting to tell a narrative with two leads from their separate povs before they are onscreen together, there's usually an editing order:

Both leads wake up, both leads wander away. Ok so far. Both leads reconnect with family. Scene of FL at home with family followed by scene with ML with family. New day starts. Day 1: looking for answers: contacting the police, talking to the last ppl involved in the experience, etc. Sequencial scenes showing how each go about finding answers in their own way (the method helps to start establishing character and  personality differences between the leads). ML does that, but for some reason the FL doesn't?  (Maybe here a nightime scene each with the family to further develop feelings/angst and exposition of changes in family dinamics and events that happened while they were gone.) Next is trying to get back the life they left behind. Again, sequencial scenes of his workplace and in this case her university.

And with that we get the feeling a few days have passed and they went around on their parallel journeys. But here it's all jumbled and mashed together. He keeps talking to the people from his network in random chopped talks where it feels like he doesn't ask everything logically just so the drama can have another different scene with them later, he is home, his family is a mess but that isn't even edited in contrast to the scenes of her family for juxtaposition...and he seems to have more scenes than her and hers fall randomly out of nowhere and without logic. After being discharged from the hospital and talking to her family, why wouldn't her first reaction be trying to find him and ask what the hell happened? Instead she goes around, even returns to college before going to him?  The drama and the leads seem to walk around in circles without purpose. The transitions are also lowsy...usually all the driving in kdramas is too much but here it is lacking. The ML jumping around from the hospital, to the network, to the (most baffling) secret patient room where the scientist is without us knowing how he got there is distracting. Besides, those small driving scenes are important for character interaction and development: either with phone calls that allow us to see a more intimate side of the characters, how he takes things when nobody is watching, or with another person in the car communicating, or even just silent rides with body language and expression giving us a glimpse of their state of mind....  without any of this, by just appearing in places and doing things, the characters seem shallow and incomplete.

Minor complaints: 

They made the choice to make the 2nd Female lead kind of bitchy, greedy and backstabbing by having her agree to the cover up and her decision of not telling him immediately  what she had done now and apologize (when her younger self seemed much sweeter than that). I feel like the drama has barely begun and they already did her dirty by choosing to go that way with her character after her introduction on the pilot. Also, typecast of the actress playing her older self... she always plays a bitch (she's very good at it but I wanted to see her on a softer role). I wouldn’t mind  if this were a noona romance, since so far the leads have zero chemistry together. To be fair, there wasn’t any with the 2nd female lead, or JCW and any other character in a non romatic way either, in fact, except for the kid niece who actually seems to get a genuine reaction out of him.

 Plus we know from K2 that JCW and noonas have better chemistry ;)

At least I wish they had given her a better arc, for example, the girlfriend who was left behind, because of how it went down, never got over her love for him. They could have a romantic interest for her who she met after the lead was frozen, and the two had become very close over the years but she couldn't move on... they could give her closure so she'd finally realize in her heart how she felt about her own romantic interest without it being clouded with guilt and unresolved feelings for the lead. 

@kdramaxoxo

[swtorramblings]

You know what, since that ask meme thing I just reblogged from you made me think of it: Would you rather keep the current SWTOR story in the state it is in, or preferred KOTXX were never written in the first place, altogether? I guess an intellectual question of "we both know they've got their issues and extremely bad parts, but are they so bad you'd rather they never existed, or still somewhat enjoyable?"

Short version: Mixed. It changed my entire perception of the game, which makes me feel badly but maybe it’s for the best.

Long answer: It comes down to this: I have always recognized that there are numerous flaws in BW’s work. I didn’t catch every single one, no, because some of the problems were outside my personal experience. But there was, I thought, a fair amount of good, as well. I still do, sometimes. But they finally did the one thing in KotXX that broke my ability to give them the benefit of the doubt when they do something I find suspicious: They made my character responsible.

Let’s use Felix as an example. Yes, I could recognize that he took it on the chin, and now it’s multiple times. I had misgivings about it, but I liked the character very well and, ultimately, it was the villains doing it. I could accept that. Zhorrid? Much the same, and as much as I think the writers not giving us any real options with her, especially after the recital speech, is terrible, it’s still the villains, doing what villains do. I can’t view them that way now.

Then, KotXX. Knowing what he is, we seek Valkorion’s council, do what he suggests, use his techniques, mock his victims. Far too much, we seem to be lead to believe that he may not be right, but that maybe he has a point. Yes, especially with Vaylin, but to a lesser extent, if only lesser since we have an actual choice with them, Senya, Arcann, and Koth. Several older companions, as well, but I’m sticking with the core KotXX characters. Claiming that Arcann’s execution can in any way a Light Side decision pisses me off less only because we never have to see it. I always assumed that Vaylin would die and Arcann might live, because that’s the way this goes,  but by giving us no choice but to mock, torture, and humiliate her, see her on her knees over and over again, all with insufficient discernible regret, especially since I was playing an overly-goody-two-shoes Consular, and with it portrayed as heroic, I now look at similar stories throughout their work and wonder if they thought some of the terrible things people do was somehow righteous behavior.

And fans seem to buy into that narrative, even in part, when it’s entirely trash.

I mean, just changing it to “you CAN be saved” and her reacting the exact same way would have probably allowed me to let it go by this time. The fact that the needed changes were so small adds to me not trusting their intentions.

And then there’s Quinn’s execution, years after his betrayal it’s suddenly important to get revenge. Especially with him as an LI, and I don’t even like him. And the nemesis’s, several of them were just off. And Theron. Companion returns left too long then giving us five minutes, in more than one case destroying their character arcs. They introduced Malora just for her to introduce the revived Malgus, at least that’s how it feels to me. And so on. Without KotXX, I might have viewed all of that differently. Maybe not, I’m sure I would have reached a breaking point eventually, anyway, but KotXX happened to be it.

There is a lot in KotXX and later that I like, and I’d hate to lose the characters and other elements completely, but with a choice of leaving it as is and it never existing, if it was expunged I’m sure I’d feel better and be able to enjoy their work better. Then again, I’m too old to be so naive, to be viewing these things with blinders on, so maybe it’s for the best. If I thought that they would do better, that might be enough, but while they’ve said “mistakes were made”, after so long, I think I’d need to see them do something to fix the story or throw us some kind of bone, showing contrition, perhaps. Considering the fan reaction, that’s never going to happen, I think.

[uncommon-etc]

5 Ways in which bad writing was the real villain of GOT 8x05

I know tempers are running high right now but after lying awake for hours being angry about the way this season is going I’ve decided to try and rationalize just what it was about this episode that left such a bitter taste in everyone’s mouths. Did I think there were obvious elements of misogyny and racism at play? Definitely. But pointing that out without concrete proof isn’t going to win any arguments and none of it would have happened if it weren’t for a total disregard for the basic principles of good storytelling so let’s dig in: 

1. Hitchcock’s Law of Suspense? What’s that? 

In creating his high-intensity thrillers (on very limited budgets and with minimal special effects compared to today’s media) Alfred Hitchcock often referenced a scene in which a bomb goes off under a table while two characters are talking. He said it was better to get 15 minutes of suspense rather than 15 seconds of surprise so rather than simply let the bomb explode for shock value why not show the bomb being planted, allow the characters to carry on with their conversation as the audience is literally yelling at them that a bomb is about to go off then you could have someone defuse it at the last minute. 

8x05 threw this out of the window in multiple ways but if you want an example of a time when Game of thrones used it to amazing effect look no further than season 6 and the blowing up of the great sept of Baelor. The music was textbook suspense building, the reactions of the characters to Cersei not being present at her trial are a genius way of building tension, the futility of lancel’s attempt to stop the wildfire exploding and then the actual climax of the scene make it one of the most memorable uses of suspense in modern television. Did we get that in this episode? Nope, we got lots of people being burned alive needlessly, several huge anti-climaxes and an over-use if CGI. 

On a lesser not Jaime’s decision to return to King’s Landing was a major wasted opportunity in the suspense stakes, had he made his motives less clear and allowed the audience to wonder whether he was returning to King’s Landing to kill Cersei or save her his final scenes would have been much more compelling. 

2. Show, don’t tell.  

Part of the reason everyone seemed so out-of-character this episode was because the writers seem to have forgotten the basic principle that instead of going round telling everyone that a character has certain qualities/motivations you should demonstrate said qualities to the viewer to win them around to to that character’s perspective here are a few examples:

When Tyrion is initially named hand of the king the writers want you to think he’s the cleverest character so rather than have other characters be like “he’s the cleverest character” they have him outsmart the likes of varys, littlefinger and maester pycelle to find out which one of them was informing on him to Cersei, it was a brilliantly well-executed scene and set him up as one of the smartest characters on the show. A+ 

When Tyrion is named hand of the queen he makes a lot of stupid decisions, we’re told that a lot of this stems from underestimating his own family yet previous seasons establish he and Cersei as having one of the most intriguing complex sibling relationships on the show by allowing the events of the plot to foster constant mistrust between them. We’re constantly told Tyrion is still one of the cleverest characters but without a hidden agenda none of his current actions make any sense in relation to those qualities. D- 

3. Proper Characterization is a marathon, not  a sprint. 

The last thing viewers/readers who have spent years with a character, understanding their motivations, qualities and back-story should feel is that the writer’s weren’t sure what to do with that character half way through the episode but that’s exactly how many viewers felt upon watching Jon and Danaerys’ arcs unfold in 8x05. Neither were given any build-up or foreshadowing to the decisions they made and it  Simultaneously ruined the 7-season character arcs of two fan-favorites. 

Jon’s been stripped of many of his more interesting qualities as a leader this season and in attempts to make him look like a loyal, brave hero all the writers have done is make him look weak. If they were setting him up to have to kill Danaerys and save the realm next episode they did an extremely poor job of it, mainly because the one scene they shared together this episode was such a confused mess. 

If the writers’ wanted Jon to be a cold and calculating political leader he occasionally appears in the books they could have made him work a lot harder at convincing Danaerys that he loves her and would do anything for her, probably going a lot further than one kind of awkward kiss.  

And if they wanted to show him genuinely being in love with her and retaining some semblance of humanity his response should have been more like “Yes I love you but we’re related and it’s weird and I’m still coming to terms with the fact my entire identity for 7 seasons has been a lie so could you maybe give me some space to process that.”

Somehow the destruction of Danaerys entire arc managed to be even worse as they’ve spent all this time building her up as a protector of the innocent and a fair ruler. They abandoned the kind of nuanced and considered writing that found her struggling to rule in Mereen (which happened to be one of her most interesting story-lines) in favor of pure shock-tactics. 

There were many better ways in which the destruction of king’s landing could have played out with very similar consequences. The bell-ringing could have been a ploy to put her armies at ease before more Lannister soldiers appeared from out of nowhere and start slaughtering them so she has no choice but to attack, the wildfire could have been a major plot-device rather than an afterthought and the burning of the red-keep could have triggered much larger explosions all over the city. So it wasn’t only out-of-character, it was badly timed and made no actual sense in relation to the plot.  

4. Don’t invalidate your own work

As a writer the last thing you should to is completely go back on your own plot developments but when a lot of viewers are asking “So why didn’t Danaerys just take Olenna’s advice and burn King’s Landing in season 7, then she’d still have three dragons and most of her army” then you’ve messed up big-time. 

Killing off fan-favorites, sending characters down dark paths, regressing on certain aspects of character-development and reminding people of the horrors of being a civilian caught up in a conflict are all valid means of storytelling and can be used very effectively given the proper time and foreshadowing to see it through but when writing one scene badly makes almost everything else you’ve written seem futile and pointless not only are you failing as a writer your failing those who have invested considerable time and energy into those characters and their story-lines/redemption arcs/perspectives.   

Which brings us onto my final point

5. Look at your story in a wider context 

Like it or not, no narrative exists in isolation and no matter how fantastical a setting it will always be the characters, their emotions and the way they relate to each other that viewers and readers are captivated by. Many of a character’s actions may become horribly dated as times (and attitudes) change, one need only watch any film about a young working class man made between 1960 and 1987 to see that treating female characters like crap used to be the norm even for well-liked protagonists but with this in mind writers still need to be conscious of the way their story will be received.

If Game of Thrones was ever supposed to be about disrupting an oppressive feudal order, giving voice to those who were robbed of it and dismantling the power structures that allowed might and ruthlessness to triumph over intelligence and common decency then it failed miserably. 

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t read a lot into these things but it seemed pretty obvious that the message was one of utter futility; never try to escape a toxic relationship, you’ll just end up going back and it’ll be the death of you, never try to be better than your insane family, you’ll just end up turning into them and if you’re born a slave don’t try to be anything else because you’ll probably still die in chains. And that’s before you even dig into how much the show is wrecking Sansa’s character arc by implying that she should be grateful for all the horrible things which happened to her rather having her consciously decide to do things differently to those who tormented her. 

So those were the biggies. There were countless other examples of sloppy writing (Qyburns scorpions being able to take down a dragon from behind and island on a boat but not being able to hit one and point blank range, yara being robbed of the chance to kill her uncle, Varys not even knowing Jon but being determined that even though all Targaryans have the potential to be nuts he’d be the better ruler) but I digress, if I’ve missed anything major message me or leave me a comment, I’m sorry that this has been such a long post but I’ve invested too much of my life into both the show and the books to allow this mess to pass for acceptable writing.   

[scifigeneration]

From Star Wars to Apocalypse Now, director’s cuts are all the rage. But do they make the films any better?

by Ben McCann

Ridley Scott and James Cameron did it, and George Lucas never stops. Directors ceaselessly return to their work to tweak, tinker, chop and change.

Extended Cut, Definitive Version, Special Edition: the list goes on.

Apocalypse Now: Final Cut, Francis Ford Coppola’s supposedly definitive version of his 1979 epic Vietnam war film, will be released in Australia today. But are these new versions just an excuse for obsessive tinkering and self-indulgence?

The director’s cut refers to a version of the film that remains closest to the director’s original vision, rather than the theatrical version officially released by the studio. In an era of DVD and streaming services, these alternative cuts are becoming increasingly attractive to studio boss, director and movie lover alike.

These “new” films, often only fractionally altered, throw the commerce versus art equation that has underpinned Hollywood for more than a century into sharp relief. The studio gets another chance to market a beloved film, the fans can endlessly debate the differences between the old and new version, while the director can once more return to the editing studio, elusively seeking perfection. In that sense, everyone wins.

With director’s cuts, the romantic myth of the brilliant (usually male) director battling against numbers-obsessed Hollywood is also reinforced.

The good and the bad

Director’s cuts often seek to rectify an injustice. Studio executives will often demand last-minute edits or reshoots if test screenings go badly. Directors who bitterly complained about how studios altered their vision can now go back and showcase the film as it was meant to be seen.

For example, director David Ayer recently acknowledged his original cut of the dark superhero film Suicide Squad was radically different to the studio-sanctioned release. The studio requested significant reshoots to lighten the tone and inject more comedy – but the “Ayer cut” only can be accessed on DVD and Blu-ray.

Other director’s cuts improve on the original version by bolstering visual scope, narrative continuity and emotional engagement. For example, the 17 minutes of deleted footage from James Cameron’s Aliens (1986), since restored to the 1990 Special Edition, are a masterclass in building tension and deepening character.

Ridley Scott’s endless reworking of the science-fiction/neo-noir Blade Runner remains the gold standard. First released in 1982, Scott oversaw a new version ten years on, and then the so-called Final Cut in 2007 (re-released on Blu-ray in 2017). He removed the ponderous voice-over from Deckard (Harrison Ford), axed the happy ending and inserted opaque dream sequences that continue to nourish the film’s philosophical ambiguities.

But some directors just do not know when to stop. To coincide with the 20 year anniversary of Star Wars in 1997, George Lucas created a digitally remastered Special Edition (spruced up versions of The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983) followed a few weeks later). Lucas stuffed the trilogy with reinstated scenes, polished up degraded images and sound and reaped extraordinary success (US$472 million at the global box office was mightily impressive for a trilogy nearly two decades old).

There was only one problem – the Special Editions were castigated by fans. Many resented the retrofitted visuals and jarring CGI enhancements; for others, the most egregious alteration – having bounty hunter Greedo now shoot Han Solo first in a Mos Eisley cantina – compromised Han’s character arc from rogue to hero across the trilogy.

Lucas’s incessant meddling (he returned to the trilogy again in 2004 and 2011) has been seen as a way of perpetually monetising the much-beloved originals. All along, his response to such criticism has been consistent – he was waiting for technology to catch up to his original vision.

Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford in Star Wars. Director George Lucas has tinkered endlessly with his work. Lucasfilm/IMDB

As for Coppola, he has been here before. In 2001, he presented Apocalypse Now: Redux to ecstatic reviews during the Cannes Film Festival. Nearly an hour of footage cut from the 1979 version was reinserted, including the famously woozy “French plantation” scene. This new version was hailed as extraordinary – “redux” means “a work of art presented in a new way”.

But Coppola clearly was not done. Apocalypse Now: Final Cut premiered in New York back in April, 19 minutes shorter than Redux. In Final Cut, Coppola has finessed the colour balance and sound design, no doubt hoping to add to the film’s hallucinogenic qualities.

Despite the important contributions of writer John Milius, cinematographer Vittorio Storaro and sound designer and editor Walter Murch, this latest version reinforces the romantic idea of the director as the sole auteur.

Coppola’s fingerprints are all over Final Cut. Here is a powerful director who, like Spielberg, Lucas and Scott, has been given endless opportunities to refine his vision. This tells us a lot about Hollywood’s commodification of the auteur and the ongoing importance of the director’s name in selling a product.

“A work of art is never completed, only abandoned”, noted the French poet Paul Valéry. Apocalypse Now: Final Cut is the latest exhibit to suggest films are never really finished – the artistic process is endlessly reworkable.

About The Author:

Ben McCann is an Associate Professor of French Studies at the University of Adelaide

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. 

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #375

Top Ten Games That Could be Films

Well. Sonic. That’s a thing, yeah? The last couple of weeks, when not consumed with Avengers-related news and emotions, have seen people on t’net talking about Sonic, and his weird human legs and nice set of teeth. It’s certainly an odd design, although I sympathise with the creatives involved, even the executives who (I’m presuming) were the driving force behind Sonic’s movie look, okaying what the artists and animators were producing and steering them towards something that, I’m sure, they thought would sell. It’s a tough business and, to paraphrase William Goldman, nobody really knows that much when you think about it.

Among the many think-pieces that have sprung up, however, there is one point I disagree with: that it’s pointless to adapt a game into a movie at all. Certainly there should be no attempt to “legitimise” a gaming property with a film adaptation; games are great and will always be great, as games. But there are games with an iconography, storyline, or set of characters that could translate into movies. As it happens, Sonic the Hedgehog is one such game. He’s instantly familiar both to old farts like myself who remember the nineties, and also to the young folk who will be the film’s target audience. As it happens, I think the rough plot of the film – Sonic and Robotnik enter the “real world” – is probably the best storyline to tell, rather than adapting the game’s plot; it gives us a recognisable world, allows for some A-list casting (Jim Carrey as Robotnik, James Marsden as Sonic’s human pal), and following on from the likes of Alvin and the Chipmunks, The Smurfs, Christopher Robin, et al, the notion of CGI characters interacting with humans is a familiar movie trope, so much so that it’s practically a sub-genre of kids’ films (and can end up getting lampooned in adult-oriented films such as Paul or Ted).

No, I think a much worse decision is to try to adapt a game’s plot; to straight-up cart it across from console to movie screen (or, if you’re watching it on DVD, from, er, Xbox to Xbox, I guess). The first generation of game adaptations were especially guilty of this, often trying to graft a more realistic plotline, with character motivations and whatnot, onto games where “story” should really be read as “objective”: Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Super Mario Bros, Doom, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. Whilst some of those films still retain a goofy charm (I will go to bat for Street Fighter being an absolute camp delight), they’re not good, not really. Far better, in my opinion, to take an existing world, one with deep and familiar iconography, and tell stories within it: sort of what the Sonic movie is doing, which we can almost assume is in continuity with the previous games. The best example of this, I think, is Halo; there have been a number of shorts and TV series based on the Halo games, set in the same world, often serving as prequels to the games themselves. And whilst they rarely go beyond a spot of pulpy fun, they do feel of a part with the games themselves. What they don’t do is re-tell the story of the games, and in that, they succeed where other game adaptations have fallen down.

There are examples of games with strong storylines that could be adapted, I think, but they would need care and attention, and should avoid being straight-up ports of the games. Use the storylines, if strong enough, but feel free to chop and change to make it work on film.

Another thing that some games have going for them, that makes them difficult to translate into movies, is that they’re really just film adaptations anyway. I think this is why the Doom and Tomb Raider movies have been less successful than perhaps you’d think; Doom is a sci-fi horror film, not too far away from Aliens (and especially quite close, even though it pre-dated it, to Event Horizon); Tomb Raider is basically Indiana Jones with a woman. The same is true for Red Dead Redemption, which I’m sure has Hollywood types arranging meetings as we speak; it’s a blockbuster, a game with instant name-recognition, a built-in audience, and strong iconography. The problem is that iconography is adapted from dozens of Westerns from The Searchers to Unforgiven to Deadwood to Bone Tomahawk. Quite frankly, we’ve seen that before.

Anyway: here are ten games (or game franchises, I suppose) that I think could stand to be adapted. Some of them are strong stories, some of them are great worlds. Hollywood, feel free to get in touch.

The Secret of Monkey Island (1990): despite banging on about adapting worlds not stories, Monkey Island has a story worth adapting. Sure, it needs adapting, but it has characters, a beginning, middle, and end, and a world that could be seen on the big screen. Pirates of the Caribbean probably stole a bit of its thunder, but that franchise looks like it’s sinking at the moment (no pun intended), so doing a much wackier, almost ZAZ-style take on the pirate movie could be really good fun. My advice would be to put Guybrush and Elaine together for much of the narrative and give them some screwball dialogue.

Command and Conquer (1995): hear me out… the C&C games have a seam of mythology richer than a source of Tiberium, and could lend themselves to a sci-fi war epic. There are characters in there worth adapting – well, Kane, at least – and whilst the risk of it turning into a GI JOE movie is great, if they keep their tongue slightly in their cheek it could be a really good, fun action movie that harks back to ‘80s genre classics. I mean, the C&C cut-scenes are famously hammy, and whilst I don’t think they should quite dial it up to eleven, maybe keeping it a good seven or eight would be good fun. Also: Red Alert, which arguably is funnier (and funner, if that’s a word), but at the moment “comedy Russian bad guys” isn’t quite so benign a concept.

The Legend of Zelda (1986): either as an animation or live-action, I could definitely see a Zelda movie working. For a start, every game is sort of a reboot, a brand new story but still set in the same world as tropes, characters, and events repeat themselves. That means you could tell a story right from the start, drawing on the best plot elements and pieces of iconography from across multiple Zelda games, but it could still be in-continuity with the game series itself. A sprawling fantasy epic but skewing younger than the likes of Lord of the Rings, it could be an absolute winner. Like Monkey Island, I’d keep Link and Zelda together for much of the narrative, however.

Mass Effect (2007): this one might be cheating a bit, because I think there actually is a film in the works (I mean, there’s probably a film in the works for half of these games…). Also it might be cheating a bit because in this case, I don’t think you’d adapt it into a film, but rather a TV series. I’d adapt the story, roughly, but give it a direct narrative thrust. I think if it was a film you’d have to cut too much; it’d feel too propulsive, and risk becoming just another sci-fi action movie. But a series – maybe a 12-episode Netflix affair or something, with a big budget – could allow room to linger, to have the odd episode go off on a tangent to explore the Geth or Rachni or whatever. I’d also look at both men and women for the lead, and cast whoever was best, in a nod to the gender choices of the game itself.

Fable (2004): this is one where I think it’s the world rather than the plot that’s worth adapting: a fun, almost Python-esque version of a fictional fairy-tale Britain. A new recruit to the Hero Academy who is trying to prove themselves whilst also battling Jack of Blades. I’d keep the humour and the bawdy tone, and add in characters from across the Fable series, making it much more of an ensemble. Arguably it’s the gameplay and the emergent storytelling that’s part of Fable’s charm, but I do really think there’s enough there to hang an adult comedy fantasy film on.

Duke Nukem 3D (1996): this is one that could go very badly, but I still think there’s potential. Duke Nukem as a character is a boor, an oaf, a misogynistic pig, a relic of a bygone age worth forgetting. Whilst I think exploring this character in a contemporary setting would be more interesting in a game (especially as you could explore the twenty-year-old gameplay differences, too), you could use Duke as an avatar of the ‘80s, almost, to critique action cinema of years gone by. A washed-up sexist dinosaur who has to be pulled out of retirement, I’d cast an older actor with some comedy chops but also a solid physical pedigree: maybe even Arnie?! You’d have to be careful that if you had a redemption arc for him you didn’t end up justifying the crassness of the original game, however.

Another World (1991): this is one where it’s the world and the style that’s the key, although there’s a vague enough story there to adapt. A scientist is transported to, literally, another world, and has to survive, ending up joining a slave rebellion. The game is all funky graphics and cool gameplay (by 1991 standards, at least), but with the right director you could transfer that brilliantly to the screen, and it allows enough room to explore the psychological effects on Lester Chaykin. One of the things I really like about the game, is that unlike other human-transported-to-alien-world storylines, Lester is way out of his depth; he’s not a superhero, not a revolutionary. He is battered by the elements, hunted by animals, imprisoned, beaten, and ultimately (spoiler alert) saved by one of the aliens. You’d have to keep this element of the game to avoid it feeling like too much of a cliché.

BioShock (2007): this one might be a bit more conventional, and risk being another Doom-style adaptation of a game, trying to follow a story that’s more about gameplay than literary flourish. But there is something there, I think; for one, there’s the steampunk aesthetic of a decaying underwater 1940s utopia, all art-deco and brass, the outside world rushing in and laying waste to such finery. There’s the philosophical discussion at the heart of BioShock, giving filmmakers something interesting to hang it all on. There’s the horror element: the creepy Little Sisters, the shock-horror Splicers, the terrifying Big Daddies. Finally, there’s the twist, which – I’m gonna be honest here – would not work anywhere near as well in a film, but all the same, it’s a twist. It is, perhaps, the most vanilla of the options I’ve laid out here, but I’d still like to see it.

Jet Set Willy (1984): there are quite a few relatively obscure (compared to, say, God of War) 1980s games that could make good films. The first Maniac Miner; Skool Daze; Dizzy. But I’ve plumped for the surrealism of Jet Set Willy. Picture it: cast someone who broke through in the ‘80s – Pierce Brosnan, Richard E. Grant, Adrian Edmondson – and get someone like Danny Boyle or Edgar Wright to direct. The tale of a drunken gone-to-seed former celebrity who starts out trying to clean himself up after one party too many – possibly in some vain attempt at a comeback – only for the film to just get crazier and crazier as he ventures deeper into his bizarre stately home, discovering hidden treasures, secret rooms, occult shenanigans, and much more. Is it “real”? Is he losing his mind? A freakish, twisty, deeply surreal black comedy ensues. It’d probably make no money but be a cult classic!

Worms (1995): most of these I’ve imagined as being live-action, often big-budget affairs; Hollywood blockbusters. But who’s to say we can’t adapt a game into a cartoon? Certainly, it’s been done before, and with degrees of success: obviously on TV, but there’s also the Angry Birds movie, which I’ve not seen and which doesn’t strike me as being overly impressive, but which was clearly a big enough deal to warrant a sequel. There’s an animated Mario movie in the works, animated Pokémon has been a staple for twenty years, and there are those who’d argue that animation was a better route for Sonic, too. So why not apply that logic to Worms, a great British success story? There could be different clans of Worms warring over a piece of land (perhaps a garden that, from their view, is an epic battlefield); that would allow the different Worm voices to come into play. But something means they have to unite for a common cause. Inject it with a dose of British humour, a splash of surrealism, and a some satirical social commentary, and you’re onto a winner.

There you are. Seemingly-obvious suggestions like Metal Gear, Gears of War, or Half-Life I have quietly shifted to one side, and other adventure games with good stories (Grim Fandango, Thimbleweed Park, Life is Strange) I sort of feel had their box ticked by Monkey Island. But somewhere in this list I’m convinced there’s at least one great, great film. In the meantime, I’m off to see Detective Pikachu. Who knows? Perhaps that will be the film that breaks videogaming’s cinematic duck (or at least Psyduck).

[murasaki-murasame]

I wasn’t entirely sure if I wanted to do entire posts about each episode of :re season 2, but episode 14 was really good and I have a lot of things to say about it, so here we are, lol.

It still might crash and burn later, but for now I’m still enjoying it, even though I’m clearly in the minority.

Anyway, the rest will be under a cut since it’ll be long and also spoil the entire series.

In a lot of ways, I ended up being pleasantly surprised by this episode, even though a lot of it technically went the way I expected. Like how they decided to end on the note of Arima slitting his throat. But a lot of the stuff in-between was interesting.

I was kinda surprised that they actually included Yomo’s entire backstory flashback about how Hikari and Arata got killed. I kinda figured they might cut it out, or at least heavily condense it, but they kept it pretty intact. I’m glad they did, though, since it gave this arc some much-needed thematic content.

On a more minor note, I appreciate that the anime doesn’t bother with some of the little things the manga did in order to set up chapter by chapter cliffhangers. In the Yomo-Arima fight in the manga, there was a whole cliffhanger where it looked like Yomo got killed, but that doesn’t really work at all in an anime when you don’t have to wait a week to see how the scene progresses, so thankfully they don’t even bother with stuff like that. On the one hand, it probably contributes to the overall feeling of the fights being less ‘intense’ than they were in the manga, but on the other hand, I very quickly got burned out by the constant, unnecessary cliffhangers in the manga. So this is much more pleasant in my opinion.

The other big change, from what I remember [beyond the fact that this episode just focused on continuing the Cochlea arc instead of swapping between it and the Rushima arc like the manga did], is the stuff with Hide. I feel like I’m gonna need to sit on it for a while to sort out all of my feelings about it, and in general I’m very curious to see how they handle his character later on once he actually returns to the main story, but my immediate reaction is that I think I actually prefer this to how the manga handled it.

As much as I love Hide as a character and basically everything surrounding his relationship with Kaneki, I never actually liked how Ishida handled the whole plot point of how Kaneki ate part of Hide’s face at the end of the first series. At the very least, it was executed very haphazardly, and a lot of it felt kinda clumsy and unplanned, with the flashbacks that Kaneki had to it at this point in the manga being some of the more glaring examples of it. It still to this day bugs me that, in the manga, we never got any clear answers for why Hide knew to find Kaneki there, why he knew to lead him to Arima, why he was willing to let Kaneki eat him, etc etc, and I feel like even once he came back into the story, there was no real impact to it, and the story spent absolutely zero time exploring the concept of how Kaneki’s feelings of guilt would change after knowing that Hide’s actually alive. And the specific way that the initial flashback to the sewers was handled always felt like a blatant retcon in general, and it just didn’t really cleanly fit with how the scene was initially portrayed in the first series.

So honestly I can totally live with the anime heavily changing how it handles this entire plot point. It’s always been a bit of a thorn in my side, so I’m glad they pretty much cut out the stuff that annoyed me the most, and kept the really nice stuff.

And also, I think that the whole detail of Kaneki being suicidal in this arc still makes total sense even without the whole lingering thread of him thinking that he murdered Hide. It’s pretty consistent with Kaneki’s personality in general to be suicidal and want to throw his life away to protect others, so I think it still works totally fine. And it also avoids the kinda awkward dissonance the manga had where the idea of Hide’s self-sacrifice got unironically glorified by the narrative and never criticized or explored at all, but it was used to say that Kaneki’s self-sacrificial attitude was bad and stupid, which still feels kinda hypocritical to me.

I wish the hallucination scene could have been a little longer, but it was still really nice and effective to see Kaneki finally open up about how severely he misses Hide. I still think that it’s a very effective scene even if you remove the context of him thinking that he killed Hide in the first series. Also, the :re character designer’s take on Hide is cute as hell and I can’t wait to see more of him later on.

We’ll see how it goes, but I’m really hoping they change things a bit later on so that he shows back up again a fair bit earlier than he did in the manga, since it felt like by the time he became relevant again, he was immediately overshadowed by everything else going on, and there was no time to do anything with him. So I hope they bring him back into the main cast a fair bit earlier, so they have more time to work with.

I’d actually kinda forgotten about it at first, but I guess they also skipped over Kaneki’s flashbacks to being kept prisoner in Cochlea, and how he lost his memories. To begin with, it’s entirely possible that they’ll just bring it up later, like during Arima’s whole dying monologue or something, but honestly I don’t think it’s a huge deal. It doesn’t tell the audience anything that couldn’t be easily pieced together. It also put an even more overtly off-putting slant on Kaneki and Arima’s relationship. It reminds me a little bit about how the manga outright spells out that Akira is intentionally acting as a mother figure to Kaneki because she was told to do so by her bosses to manipulate him more effectively, but I prefer how the anime cut it out and just let the audience think on their own terms about Kaneki and Akira’s relationship.

Other than that, I don’t think there’s too much to say about this episode itself. Although I did quite like the choice of translating that one line from Furuta as ‘teeth-hee!’. That was pretty good.

I know this post is mostly just about episode 14, but I’ve been thinking a lot over the last week about the writing choices made in episode 13, in terms of how it dives straight into the Cochlea/Rushima arc, and the more I think about it, the more I think I really like it. It’s not completely perfect, but still.

I think people forget that the overall start of the whole Cochlea/Rushima arc in the manga was where the pacing of :re in general started getting notably unbalanced and wonky, and a lot of things just kinda happen or get introduced with very little set-up. For example, the manga doesn’t exactly give much more of an explanation for how the CCG found out about the Aogiri base on Rushima. We just kinda find out soon after the time-skip that they’ve already started their raid on the island. And even the introduction to the second generation Qs was basically just ‘here they are, here’s their names and a few personality-establishing lines, OK now we’re going to do other stuff now and forget about them’. It basically ended up being a running joke that the Qs got more and more unimportant as more of them were introduced.

I’m at least assuming that some of the details like the way that Urie and Mutsuki in particular feel betrayed by Kaneki abandoning them will get touched upon once we properly go back to the Rushima arc, but that’s really most of the relevant stuff that episode 13 skipped over. It was also a bit sad to see them cut the dinner party scene with Urie and Matsuri, but honestly I’d prefer the anime not do anything with Matsuri at all as a character, if the alternative is them handling him as badly as the manga did in the long run.

Also, another important detail is that the manga also intentionally took us out of Kaneki’s head for a while after the time-skip. There was a good like eight or nine chapters or so where he was basically just being moody and we had no idea what was going on with him. So it’s not exactly a surprise that episode 13 also involved us not getting a look into his head.

I also really like that the anime is way more focused in how it’s just showing one arc at a time, whereas the manga was a lot more liberal with how it kept jumping between Cochlea and Rushima. And as someone who was reading the series as it came out by that point, trust me when I say that it was pretty agonizing. This is WAY smoother. To put it into perspective, Kaneki’s hair turns white at the end of :re chapter 75, but after that it doesn’t really return to his fight with Arima until around chapter 82, which ends with Arima slitting his throat. So the pacing here really does feel WAY more satisfying.

It’s also part of why the anime probably feels faster to people than it actually is, since it’s front-loading the Cochlea arc much more heavily than the manga did, and pushing back the Rushima arc to later.

And on that note, it looks like we’re actually going to have a Rushima arc episode next week, which is a little bit surprising, since I thought they would go through the entire Cochlea arc at this rate before going to the Rushima arc. But this is fine. We left off on a pretty satisfying cliffhanger with this episode, so I’m down with the anime shifting to an entirely Rushima arc-focused episode now.

I’m curious to see exactly how much of the arc they cover in the next episode. Considering that about half of volume 8 and all of volume 9 of the manga was focused on it, I think it’d take some substantial cuts for them to cover it all in one episode. The preview/synopsis for it seems to focus mostly on the Suzuya-Kurona fight, and the Tatara-Houji fight, but it also looks like it’ll also include some of the stuff with Takizawa, and at least some of the Mutsuki-Torso stuff. But even aside from that, there’s still stuff like the flashbacks to the time Amon and Takizawa spent with Aogiri, the raid on Kanou’s lab, and the whole scene where Marude assassinates Yoshitoki, so I don’t exactly think they’re going to get through all of that in one episode.

So after the next episode, I suppose it’s just a question of if they can wrap up the remaining threads of both arcs in one episode, or if they’ll need two. I guess we’ll see.

In the long term, I still have no idea exactly how the anime will be paced after this whole arc ends, but either way it looks like we’d effectively be left with seven or eight episodes to adapt the last seven volumes of the manga, so I’d expect there to be some substantial cuts and changes to make it work. Hopefully it’ll work well.

[millicentthecat]

Why The Last Jedi is a Reactionary Propaganda Film

I've been waiting for my thoughts to coalesce (and for the "spoiler" window to pass) to make a unifying analysis of Star Wars: The Last Jedi.  This is not a position piece on whether you should or should not enjoy the movie.  It is not any kind of call to action.  It is only an analysis on how The Last Jedi works as a propaganda film.  It’s my personal interpretation based on my experience with assembling message.  This post is tagged "tlj critical" and "discourse" in hopes that will assist people in finding or blocking the content they wish to read.

To begin:   

As important as diversity in representation is, so too is balanced programming of message.  Programming message involves building value by presenting the very ideologies and mechanisms which sustain paradigms of injustice.  Will these be established as inescapable, natural, desirable, or effective?  The Last Jedi (TLJ henceforth) promotes integration with these ideologies and mechanisms.  It does not promote Resistance.

There are three central messages repeating in TLJ.  They are:

1. Respect and trust authority figures and institutional hierarchy

2. Girls like guys who Join (the military)

3. It is the work/role of women to be caretakers and educators (for men)

1. Respect and trust authority figures and institutional hierarchy

After The Force Awakens, my understanding of Poe Dameron's character was that he was designed as a classic rogue-individualist pilot--a hotheaded "flyboy," as it were.  This was not the fanon interpretation, which is understandable; The Force Awakens gave us a lot of poetic material to take in different directions.  I felt my interpretation was valid as it was supported by the visual dictionary (which calls Poe a rogue, I believe) and a line in The Force Awakens novelization about how some people are inherently more important than others.

In short, Poe Dameron was an individual who trusted his own instincts more than others and didn't believe in always playing nice.  In TLJ, this manifests in his relationship with a new character: Vice Admiral Holdo.  Now one of the only things we know FOR SURE about Poe Dameron is that he has no problem taking orders from women, respecting a female General, and trusting her experience.  This is demonstrated by his relationship to Leia, who he knows.  Holdo is a stranger who Poe has never met.  She is not just a woman, but an unknown woman.  EVEN SO, Poe is willing to trust her (at first) by sharing his assessment of the situation--essentially, submitting what he knows for her consideration, sharing his thoughts.  She responds to this by withholding information, reminding him of his recent demotion, and calling him names.  She responded to his  gesture of openness and respect with domination and authority.

This is well within her right, as established by both in-universe and our-universe rules of institutional hierarchy.  Poe, however, does not blindly trust authority figures OR institutional hierarchy more than his own instincts.  It's actually pretty unusual for a protagonist in this universe to do that, for reasons.

Later, General Leia reveals to both Poe and the audience that Holdo had information she was not willing to share.  She is strongly moralized as having been "right" about her plan: Poe takes his reprimand from Leia like a boy accepting a scolding.  Holdo is martyred and established as an example of strong leadership.  Her decision to withhold information from her subordinate is never highlighted (by a narrative authority or third party, such as Leia) as a mistake.  In our society, the rules of hierarchy dictate that "superiors" do not have to share what they have with "inferiors" or treat them with respect.  Those with more power are not beholden to those with less.  Poe is reprimanded for challenging that.

I was almost willing to overlook this deliberately moralized messaging as a botched attempt at a feminist moment before encountering the reviews about TLJ.  In general, there are a large number of reviews for this film which insinuate that most of the people who dislike this film are white male bigots, threatened by the presence of women. (a, b , c , d , e , f , g , h) .  This is not my experience.  The other thing many reviews point to is how Feminist this film is (as a selling point.)  It is an eerily unanimous opinion in mainstream, corporate media that Poe mistrusted Holdo because of her femininity--not her behaviors.  On social media where unpaid people are speaking, many young women are challenging this.  The shouting-down of women's opinions by accusing us of misogyny is a separate topic, but I did want to call attention to the discrepancy between the corporate media response and the social media response.  To me this is evidence of a deliberate misdirection.

Another story arc which enforces the position that we should trust authority figures and institutional hierarchy is in the reestablishment of the Jedi Order, via Luke, Yoda's Force Ghost, and, more significantly, Rey.  Now, much has been written (on this blog, and in many more prestigious place and by better known writers.  See Tom Carson's "Jedi Uber Alles," for instance) in the way of criticism of the Jedi.  The child abducting, the mind control, the over-extension of executive powers, the militarized cult status, the extermination of the Sith race, the monopolization of the Force; their crimes go on and on.  Moreover these are not just mistakes the Jedi made--crimes secondary to their nature--but rather these are the very nature of what their institution stood for.  The Jedi are not "the Light."  They are a specific religion with specific, inherently problematic practices and ideologies.

The Last Jedi is literally a movie about how it's ok that there are going to be more Jedi.

Luke's not on board with that, at first.  Master Yoda (from beyond the grave) reasserts the divine right of the Jedi to rule, as badly and indefinitely as they like.  Because even their failure is valuable.  Try try again, one supposes.  Whatever happened to, "there is no try?"  Oh yes, I remember.  The laws of the privileged do not apply to them.  

Last but not least, the character most overtly challenge institutional hierarchy in TLJ is Kylo Ren, when he kills Supreme Leader Snoke.  This move is not specifically negatively moralized (unless you read Kylo as the villain, which I prefer to) but it also very clearly does not result in a positive or progressive change for Kylo.  At the end of the film, he is miserable; his coup changed nothing.

2. Girls like guys who Join (the military)

"It's all a machine, brother," slurs an alcoholic loner-character known as "Don't Join," sometime after dropping the news on us that Good Guys and Bad Guys buy their weapons from the same arms dealer.  His general sense of hopelessness rubs off on Finn, who grows in his story arc from being willing to Unjoin, himself (as a deserter) to throwing himself into a suicide run for the Resistance.  What stops Finn from a kamikaze end is Rose: she saves him.  For the young viewer who agrees with DJ and sees machinery in war and capitalism, this suicide run represents the realistic (and popular trope) outcome of "joining."  War leads to death.  Capitalism leads to death.  Our generation knows this and we ask, as many before have asked, "why should I be a hero?  I'll just end up dead!"

The Last Jedi does what every great work of propaganda targeting young men does.  It gives a reason.  Why be a hero?  Because girls, that's why.

Before this pact is made, however, there needs to be a little softening-of-the-way--a little grooming.  The word "hero" has been deconstructed in the language enough that people know to associate it with self sacrifice.  We are wary of heros.  The Last Jedi substitutes the word "leader" to mean what hero once meant: a person in power whose sacrifices are gratified with moral rightness in the narrative.  This subverts any counter-programming people were able to apply towards "heroic" stories.  Leadership is presented as an inherently positive and desirable quality, linked to selflessness, sacrifice, martyrdom, and rewarded with female attention.

This same re-programming wordplay is employed in Rose Tico's call to action: "not fighting what we hate.  Saving what we love!"  Question: if the behaviors and outcome are the same, does the mental engineering matter?  Is a Rose by any other name still a Rose?

Is war still war if you call it love?

At this point I also want to call attention to the fact that there is AGAIN very little opportunity in this film where to SEE the First Order committing atrocities: abducting kids, repressing a labor uprising, etc etc.  The First Order is never called fascist (nor, if I recall, are they referred to as an actual nation.)  Their politics aren't even alluded to.  I wouldn't go so far as to say that the film implies it doesn't matter which side you join, but I think there's definitely an argument that being involves with one side or the other is lauded more highly than staying neutral.

Worth mentioning: "Girls like guys who Join" is also the message of Luke's story arc.  Both Rey and Leia wanted Luke to rejoin the arena.  Rey even expresses a willingness to get closer to Kylo--while he is acting like a Joiner.  The minute he makes it clear that he wants no part in either side of the conflict (No Jedi, No Sith, no ties to the past, etc) Rey's trust is broken.  She leaves.  Her rejection IMMEDIATELY follows his insistence on leaving tribal war in the past.  It does not correspond with any immediacy to his acts of violence, nor to his stubborn declaration that she "will be the one to turn."

A brief note.  Army enrollment messaging is a necessary and functional part of maintaining an imperial state.  The in-text discourse positions an offensive/insurgent military organization against a defensive military organization, during combat.  "Join up" is therefore an aggressively interventionist and arguably imperialist position.

3. It is the work/role of women to be caretakers and educators (for men)

This is one of the oldest motifs in storytelling, so when I say it's conservative I mean really, really conservative.  Traditional gender roles and traditional family values are just that: extremely traditional.  Many people find comfort in them and are extremely threatened by their breakdown.  For this reason, storytellers are authorized to hand-wave or sexualize an inordinate amount of violence toward women in order to keep paradigms of labor as gendered as possible.

First of all, there are literal feminine-coded creatures on the island of Ahch-to called "caretakers."  These aliens watch over the island and look after the hutts where Luke Skywalker has taken up residence.

Second of all, Holdo's arc with Poe and Rose's arc with Finn are full of nods to the idea that women must teach and lead men.  Men (who are inherently dogs, apparently) will speak over us, desert us, aim guns at us, and otherwise challenge us, and it is our duty to keep them in line.  This is to be expected.  Flyboys will be flyboys.

Third, it is Rey's sacred duty to prepare Luke to return to the arena of battle.  When Luke fails to step into that role, she turns to Kylo Ren.  Rey and Leia both possess Force-related powers.  Both spend most of their time directing these powers to trying to save, protect, or heal male warriors around them.  When they do fight, rather than act themselves as subjects, they punish men who objectify them inappropriately as a corrective measure.

To be fair, Admiral Holdo and Paige Tico both act directly against the enemy.  They also both have close mentor relationships with other women.  However, Paige and Holdo both die in the course of the film.

A final personal note: in my opinion, there are many ways socially problematic and coercive content offers comfort to a population where uncomfortable traditions feel like the only option.  However, this way of life is not the only option, and this media is not comforting to everyone.

[reading-while-queer]

Six of Crows, Leigh Bardugo

Rating: Great Read Genre: Fantasy Representation: -Gay/bi protagonists (ensemble) -Two protagonists of color (ensemble) -Disabled protagonist (ensemble) -Mentally ill protagonist (unspecified, trauma related) Note: Not sexually explicit Trigger warnings: Violence, Death, Graphic injury, Fantasy drug abuse, Rape/sex trafficking/CSA (not in scene; character backstory), Guns, Slavery, Racism (exotification), Genocide (explicit; Holocaust metaphor)

Six of Crows was a great read, hands down.  It was not without its problems, but I want to focus first on how it was successful. I read Six of Crows—a hefty tome, to say the least--in a little over a month.  I couldn’t put it down.  Bardugo does an excellent job maintaining tension and keeping the plot rolling, which is especially impressive considering the frequency with which her characters recall the past.  What I liked the best was the unpredictable nature of the plot.  Bardugo holds back just enough information to keep the reader guessing without becoming frustrated.  This is done expertly by telling the story through multiple character perspectives.  The reader worries alongside them that they will never to be able to get out of the latest mess they’ve gotten themselves into—until another character reveals they have planned for this all along.  It’s a narrative trick that Bardugo uses again and again—and damned if it doesn’t work every time.

The premise of Six of Crows is that a ragtag team of criminals are hired to break into an impenetrable palace and rescue a political prisoner before said prisoner is either killed or coerced into releasing the secret formula to a super-drug that transforms magic-using Grisha into human weapons.  Six of Crows is a heist novel, which isn’t my usual cup of tea, but it helps that the characters aren’t suave spies who know exactly what they’re doing. Bardugo does a great job humanizing her cast.  They have weaknesses from gambling to trauma to romantic crushes.  They don’t know that they are going to get out of this heist alive, but the money is too good to turn down, and each of them have a desperate need for it.  The fact that the main cast themselves aren’t confident they will pull of their heist adds to the tension and makes for some delightful storytelling.

Beyond pacing and plot, I felt that the characters were well developed and had interesting dynamics with one another.  They had fears, weaknesses, allegiances, histories, and relationships that grew and changed as the story progressed.  I won’t spoil any romances beyond saying that there are a few, and that I was, for the most part, satisfied with their progression.

As for representation, I had heard that I would have to get through this book to get to the sequel before any queer relationships began to develop.  While it’s true that there is no queer romance in book one, two characters in Six of Crows are clearly queer—they don’t necessarily have to get together for them to be valid representation.  They flirt, they dance around the possibility of reciprocated feelings, and it’s all very cute.  Most importantly of all, they have character traits beyond their queerness—it isn’t central to their motivation, which is refreshing.

The straight romance is hit or miss.  One couple has an extremely satisfying progression to their relationship.  But the other romance is so aggravating that it makes me reconsider rating Six of Crows so highly.  Which brings me to the Holocaust metaphor.  In Bardugo’s fantasy world, Grisha, or magic users of various disciplines, are persecuted by the reactionary Fjerdan government.  Fjerda is at war with Ravka, which boasts the Second Army, all of them Grisha magic users collected from various nations where being Grisha puts them at risk of slavery or execution.  Fjerda’s citizenry is white, blonde haired, and blue eyed. The country is vaguely Nordic in religion and language, and its people value discipline. Of all the countries, Fjerda is the most violent towards Grisha—Grisha are perceived as less than human, and are burned to death on pyres by the elite military of Druskelle—who wear black uniforms. Fjerda is very clearly a parallel to Nazi Germany.  

This is made worse by two things:

First, Six of Crows pairs a Druskelle and Grisha romantically, which was never going to be satisfying.  I won’t give too many spoilers as far as whether they get together, but regardless of the outcome, it wasn’t a good call.  You can’t have your Holocaust metaphor and your romance, it’s like having your cake and eating it too.  The narrative wants you to pity Mattias for the torment of loving Nina while seeing her as an inhuman abomination.  The fact that Nina loves him too is incredibly frustrating considering how solid her character is otherwise.  Bardugo put forth a valiant effort to earn a romantic relationship between them, but no effort would have been enough.  I’m sure the relationship—and Mattias’ redemption arc alone—is enough to make Six of Crows a deal-breaker for some.

Second, you can’t have a heavy-handed Holocaust metaphor and also try to make the point that both sides have their problems.  The Grisha fight back, often fighting dirty, and this is used in the book to open Nina’s eyes to the Fjerdan perspective.  Which wouldn’t be so bad if Bardugo didn’t lean so hard on the Nazi metaphor, from the black uniforms to the racial coding.  Again: I can very easily see this being a deal-breaker.

And continuing on the thread of deal-breakers…I personally liked how the novel handled race and gender marginalization, but it might be triggering to some readers.  The two female protagonists are victims of slavery or sex trafficking.  Inej was trafficked into sex work before being bought out of her contract.  Nina was threatened with rape when she was captured by Druskelle.  The threat of sexual violence is a heavy weight on both of them.  Personally, I thought that it was handled well as an element of worldbuilding.  It wasn’t played for shock value.  I felt that while exploring the histories of characters from the “Barrel”—a slum in Ketterdam (fantasy Amsterdam), it would be remiss to skip over the ugliness.  Happily, while Bardugo usually doesn’t shy away from graphic brutality, she spares the reader graphic detail when it comes to sexual violence.

As for race, I felt that Bardugo constructed race in her fantasy world with careful attention to how race would be understood on a global stage that never had racial slavery. There is exoticism—“Suli (Middle Eastern) lynx,” for example, is the racial caricature foisted on Suli sex workers. Shu Han (East Asian) and Zemeni (African) people have their own caricatures as well.  But exoticism seems to be more based on nationality than race: “Fjerdan (Nordic) wolf” and “Kaelish (Irish) mare” are apparently equally dehumanizing caricatures.  The only time race plays a role in the book is in identifying people or attempting to avoid identification.  The main cast is searching for a Shu Han man, and scan prisoners for racialized features. Inej, who is Suli, likewise worries that her and Jesper’s skin tone will make them stand out in a pale-skinned Fjerdan crowd.  But discrimination doesn’t come into play.  Difference is noted, but there is no systemic oppression.  Suli and Zemeni and Shu Han characters make their way in the world unmolested.  The “White” nationalities, Kerch, Fjerdan, and Kaelish, regard each other with the same eye of difference, not common race. In their world, colonization exists, but it is just beginning.  One can sense global change on the horizon—just not quite yet.

This brings me to a spoiler-y point.  I recommend skipping this paragraph if you don’t want to be spoiled on a plot point near the end of the book.  One Kerch character (fantasy Dutch/German) elects to disguise himself as another character who doesn’t share his race/nationality.  The disguise may or may not be permanent, but the Kerch character takes the chance that he might look like another character forever.  It is necessary in order to pull off a trick Kaz is planning, but of course divorced from Bardugo’s invented world, it’s blackface/yellowface/brownface.  A lot of readers might be very uncomfortable with this. If the world of Kerch and Fjerda and Ravka were real, it wouldn’t be racist.  There is no history there that would lead to a taboo on black/brown/yellowface: it would a neutral disguise like any other.  But reading from our world, it recalls a lot of pain.  I’m not prepared to say it’s a bad thing that one character uses magic to change his appearance to match another’s out of disguise/necessity in the context of a de-racialized world.  I think that it sets up an interesting problem for the sequel--a problem that can’t be explored outside of fantasy literature--and I’m interested (if concerned) about how Bardugo will handle it.  Hopefully with more delicacy than the Druskelle/Grisha Holocaust metaphor.  Then again, much like the disaster of a Holocaust metaphor, whether or not the fantasy world justifies it doesn’t matter if it causes real world distress to readers of color.  All I can say is: read with caution.

All this, and I have said nothing about Kaz.  

The real delight of this book is Kaz Brekker, the leader of the heist and feared gang member back in Ketterdam.  His character illustrates the relationship between poverty and trauma.  The trauma is not an addendum to his character with little impact; rather, it is a part of him that shapes his relationships and impacts his ability to make decisions.  I thought the handling illustrated well how trauma integrates itself with a person.  The topic was taken seriously and handled with care.

Kaz’s physical disability is important to discuss, too—Kaz uses a cane full-time as a result of a badly healed break.  His relationship to his disability is well executed, and given that it comes from a disabled author, that is little surprise.  His cane is not a symbol of disaster, but rather, of strength.  It is his weapon as well as his mobility, and he views it as a symbol of his rise from the ashes.  With his cane, he goes from barely surviving to practically running a major gang.  

Altogether, and despite it’s marked flaws, I have decided to rate Six of Crows highly.  The idea is original and well-executed.  The characters are well developed, and you will be extremely worried for them as you read.  You’ll root for the queer characters as they slowly reveal more of themselves.  Disability, queerness, and trauma of all kinds are handled very well.  What isn’t handled well is really in bad taste--that cannot be overlooked.  I just regret that it might prohibit some readers from enjoying an otherwise great novel.

For more from Leigh Bardugo, visit her website here.

[wolfie-dragon-rider]

Voltron LD, Season 2 review

I finished watching Voltron season 2 on Friday (Finally!), and I wanted to write down my thoughts on it. What did I like, what did I not like, what worked, what didn't? A sort of review, I guess. Note that I'll go into spoiler territory below the cut, so if you still have to watch it, do that first. Also, I can't be bothered to find tons of pictures for this post, so I apologize for not having the images to represent the scenes I'm talking about.

Also, DISCLAIMER: I am not a shipper for this show. I honestly don't see the Klance or Sheith or whatever. I've got terrible gaydar. I'm not gonna comment on romantic relationships in this review. Ship whatever you wanna ship, I don't care. Just don't bash me for it.

Okay, quick first thought/summary: Overall, I liked it. I liked the first season better, but it was close. But there were some… trends in this season that I didn't like, and I hope those don't get worse in future seasons. I'll now go into a bit more detail on various aspects, and explain what I mean with the previous sentence. It was far from perfect, and this is not going to be some “SQUEE! I Love it so much!!!1!” post. I'm not writing this to bash on anything, but to collect my thoughts for myself, and maybe in some vain hope that the writers will see it and think a bit about it.

Pacing

I am honestly not quite sure why, but the pacing felt off to me. Clearly they tried to create a more overarching plot and narrative, especially in the latter half of the season. But it didn't really work for me. I think one problem I had is that there were several episodes that were clearly linked, but there was very little connection between these 'groups' of episodes.

For example, the first two episodes dealt with the cliffhanger at the end of Season 1, detailing how the Paladins found each other again. But it felt very out of place to me. It felt like they added these episodes just to justify having a cliffhanger in the first place. Pretty much nothing that happened in these episodes actually matters for the rest of the season. No one has any real character growth, nothing is set up, and the only meaningful thing is the “If I don't make it...” line, which, in my opinion, could have been set up in a better part, such as in the Blade of Marmora arc.

Then there are the Blade of Marmora arc and the 'Zarkon is chasing us, shit shit shit shit' arcs, which are pretty much intertwined strangely weirdly. The Blade arc started in Episode 3, with Ulaz' introduction and subsequent death. Then there are some episodes with Zarkon chasing them.

And then there's Space Mall. Oh my gods, what were they thinking with this episode? Look, I loved this episode, I did. It was funny, even if it was ridiculously silly a bit over the top and clearly written for a younger audience than me. But as for pacing? It felt so ridiculously out of place. It was all death and destruction and barely escaping Zarkon, and then along came a goofy episode like this. Now, I perfectly understand you need humor to break up the dark parts. But it did it so… unironically. It might have been nice if the show itself acknowledged how silly this episode was, especially compared to the narrative as a whole. It was like a Big-lipped Alligator Moment, something ridiculously silly, out of place, and then never mentioned again.

Anyway, after Space Mall, we suddenly go back to the Blade of Marmora, who I'd half forgotten about by now, and we get Keith's arc. I'll go into more detail about this in other sections, but I'm just saying I didn't really care about the Blade by now.

Finally we get the whole 'bait Zarkon' arc, which was… badly set up, in my opinion. Several of the episodes, especially the prison break and Slav's character in Escape from Beta Traz, came out of nowhere. I spent all of that episode wondering who the frick Slav was and why they needed him. The plan to trap Zarkon was unclear and explained too hastily. Many of these episodes had the same problem the first two episodes seemed to have: They were very disjoint, and seemed not to really fit in the overall jigsaw puzzle, so to speak. Ill go into this more in the next section.

So overall, to me it felt like the pacing was weird and all over the place, with episodes that didn't seem to have much to do with each other. Season 1 did it much better, with episodes and arcs following each other much more organically. The Balmera arc followed the 'siege' arc, and the episodes following that flowed naturally from the infected crystal. While in this season in went to and fro, with episodes and twists coming out of absolutely nowhere.

Worldbuilding

In this section I'm going to be a bit salty, because worldbuilding and overall plot is something I've had a problem with in the first season as well.

My biggest complaint is just that the world doesn't seem very logical, and not very alive. I've been thinking a lot about this over the past few days, and I realized it is like a videogame, with a very protagonist-centered world. What I mean by that is that it doesn't seem like anything at all happens in the universe, apart from the places where the Castle of Lions happens to be at that moment.

For example, in Greening The Cube (which is my favorite episode, by the way, for reasons I'll get into later) apparently the Olkari have been enslaved for years or longer (given that they have build an entire new civilization in the woods, and the SOS spores travelled halfway across the galaxy before reaching Voltron), but literally the very day Voltron arrives the cube is finished. Also, given how easily the Olkari defeated the Galra when they finally rose up, it makes you wonder why they didn't rise up earlier, or how they lost in the first place.

But the most notable example is that the Galra Empire, this vast, evil, conquering nation that (or at least, so we're told) spreads through the galaxy like a cancer, doesn't really seem to do anything. They don't seem to gather forces or mobilize in preparation for a great war with Voltron. They don't follow Voltron and take back the planets they liberated, such as Arus and the Balmera. Why do they not do this? They have an empire spanning a million stars, why don't they spare a few ships to take back the Balmera the moment Voltron leaves it defenseless?

On this note, the Galra Empire seems to be so… cartoonishly evil. In the first season they were at least logically evil, enslaving the Balmera and harvesting the crystals they need for fuel. But in this season… I'm honestly surprised these Galra commanders don't all have huge moustaches they twirl all the time as they do EVIL acts. It's this stupid evil, the silly corrupt aristocrat who sabotaged the Taujeer ship in The Ark of Taujeer for no real reason other than reminding us of how EVIL the Galra are, or the commander enslaving the Olkari who commands the execution of the king in ridiculously hammy fashion.

I get that it's a cartoon, but instances like this make it very hard for me to take the Galra seriously. Also, maybe a minor note and I'm reading way too much into this, but the Galra empire doesn't seem to be that bad? I say this because in Space Mall, things certainly seem to be safer than when the Alteans were still in charge. Coran remembers seedy bars, black markets, places controlled by mafia and thugs. And now, the mall is clean, safe, and calm. It's not like the population is controlled by fear, either. The girl Coran tries to bribe literally doesn't understand what could be dangerous about this place. 

I know it's just a joke, but there are many such instances and jokes, and it gives me the impression that the whole Galra Empire doesn't seem… well thought out. It's evil when Voltron needs something to fight, but for the rest the galaxy seems pretty peaceful and okay.

Also, there are a ton of complaints I have about worldbuilding in general in this universe. It simply feels incomplete, and many episodes just generate more questions. Do the Galra control everything, or are there independent nations? How common is space travel? Why does everybody speak English? How did they get videogames from Earth? Not to mention the cow?! I know they're minor things, but together they make the world feel empty and illogical.

Characters

The characters are… mixed, in my opinion. Some are good, some are great, and some are bad. I'll go over the notable ones. The order is somewhat from bad to best.

Let me start of with the worst: Hunk. What the hell happened to you, man? What did they do to you? They turned you from an adorable smart mechanical genius into a one-dimensional idiot who pretty much only talks about food. I guess about 90% of his lines are food jokes. Another 5% is him being nervous and second guessing everything, and about 3% is him being an utter jerk to Keith. Seriously, that was not cool, man. The rest is him being actually productive. Hunk had no arc, no character development, and what character development he had in the first season (relationship with Shay, determined to defeat Zarkon) seems to have disappeared. I'm sorry, but I can't really say anything positive about Hunk here.

Slav. What the hell. Okay, I will admit this is mostly a personal pet pieve of mine, but I HATE the mad scientist trope. You'd think with a show that got Pidge perfectly right (more on that below), they wouldn't go down that path, but they did. He was funny, and seeing Shiro blow up at him was great, but  he just didn't really seem to add anything to the team or plot. They could have replaced him with Ryner, the Olkari chieftess, and used the Beta Traz episode for something more interesting.

Next worse, probably Lance. Okay, I'm gonna say this upfront: I don't like Lance. In general, even in the first season. So keep that in mind as you read this. Don't kill me for it.

He's not as bad as Hunk, if only for the fact that he's pretty much invisible this entire season. He has some weird moments with Keith, but his 'Casanova' behavior just keeps getting him into trouble, like with the mermaids. You'd think he'd learn at some point not to think with his penis all the time. He sort of had a small arc in Beta Traz, but it was… weak, easily resolved, and he managed to become ridiculously smug about it in about five minutes. Sorry I'm so negative, maybe I'd like him more if he stopped being a jerk for five minutes.

Zarkon was a bit of an idiot. I guess they tried to make him obsessed and determined about the Black Lion, but it came across to me like a toddler having a tantrum because he lost his favorite toy. Not much comment on him. Hagar was a LOT more competent than he is, and it makes me wonder how he even managed to rule for 10 thousand years.

Next up: Coran. I get that Coran is the comic relief here. I do. And I'm probably too old for the jokes here, but many of his scenes just fell flat for me this season. He seems to become sillier and stupider over time, with his worst moment when he became sick and refused to accept it. He had some good moments, for example comforting Allura, but overall I felt he was less good than in Season 1.

Allura was mostly the same as Season 1. I don't have much notable to say about her, to be honest. Her arc where she started hating Keith, then accepting him was a bit sudden (especially the accepting part), but overall I liked it, and it was one of the best (if not THE best) overarching subplots this season.

I liked Shiro this season. He's growing into his role as leader, and is clearly grooming Keith to be his successor (whether that's wise or not is… questionable, IMO). His defense of Ulaz was admirable, and his bonding episode was good, even if it went pretty quickly (only need like an hour to bond with your lion?). This season made me feel for Shiro, and I'm very worried about what happened to him.

Keith's character development was good! I didn't like him much in season 1, but I'm more fond of him now. His blade arc was good, though I have to say the whole 'Keith being Galra' thing kind of… it didn't come out of nowhere, but it wasn't resolved very well. His entire arc was about finding answers. But in the end, we didn't get many answers. Who were his parents really? What happened to them? Why did the Blade come to Earth? We never get any explanation about any of that.

Now, I will admit upfront that Pidge is, has been, and probably always will be my absolute favorite character in VLD. I was nervous watching this, because I was scared they were gonna ruin that. But they managed to make her (I will refer to Pidge with female pronouns here. I personally think she's a girl, but if you think she's transgender or nonbinary or whatever, that's perfectly fine. It doesn't matter to me what her gender or sex or whatever is. Please don't kill me) even better.

Holy freaking crap, I LOVED Greening the Cube. It was such an immense relief for me to watch that, because for the first time I've ever seen, they got a nerd right. They didn't bash Pidge for her nerdiness, she was allowed to be smart, praised for it. And that's rare.

I'm gonna go into a bit of a sidetour here and try to explain why Greening the Cube was so good. If you don't care about math or science or philosophy, go ahead and skip this part.

One thing I liked even back in Season 1 was that the writers actually know their science. Remember when they infiltrated the transit hub in episode 12, and Hunk started rambling about something when explaining how the hack worked? He ranted about something that actually exists, and makes sense in that context, and if you know the terms you see what they're getting at. It's not just buzzwords randomly strewn together.

Pidge is a mathematician and computer scientist. And one important thing about those disciplines is that they aren't limited by physics. A central paradigm in computer science is so called Turing Completeness. Basically, the idea is that any computing device, programming language, or other concept, is equally powerful, and effectively the same, as long as they can do some simple operations, because that's all you need to be able to do everything. It's hard to explain here, I might make a separate post about it if people are interested, but the important part is that you can make a computer from almost ANYTHING. You can define computers based on card games, ant colonies, DNA strings, cell biology (I did my bachelor thesis on this, actually, about representing data as molecules which are modified by biological cells), musical notation, anything.

That's what the Olkari were talking about when they said everything is connected and the same. That's why Pidge was able to bend the wood into something else. Because it's all the same computer, just with a different interface. All Pidge had to do was understand how to convert the magic wood computer into a regular Turing machine, and she can use it. That's what the echo cube was about as well, a learning AI that emulates and copies everything it sees. And the writers get this. They understand this concept which can be so hard to understand when you haven't studied computer science. And it isn't ridiculed. Pidge is initially dismissive, saying she prefers the indoors (implying she prefers her regular computer), but she is curious, open to it.

It's no surprise that Pidge said Turing is her favorite scientist (I'm going to be smug here and point out I totally called this in my fanfic The Imitation Game). Because Turing was the guy who figured this out. And Turing wasn't just a mathematician. Turing was ALSO a biologist, a chemist, a philosopher. He was interdisciplinary and versatile, just like Pidge. No matter how much she moans about sunburn and mosquitos (I sympathize with her, though), she's still curious about the Olkari, and eager to learn.

Anyway, the point is, it's so liberating to see a tech junkie math character who isn't ridiculed or made fun off or made one-dimensional. This show gets what it's like to be a math nerd. It gets the philosophical and scientific concepts. And it uses that knowledge to let Pidge grow further.

Pidge was great in the rest of the season as well. She doesn't give up on searching for her brother, but she learned to give saving the universe higher priority. I liked the moment in the prison where she searches the database for him without compromising the mission. She's badass as always, settling into her support role. She doesn't always have to fight to help the team, sometimes helping Coran with repairs or overseeing security systems.

I loved her moment in the first episode where she made copies of the other paladins and mocked them, it was hilarious and not mean-spirited. It shows how she's the 'jester' on the team, keeping them levelheaded and pointing it out when they are acting like idiots. And the way she made that giant antenna by herself was amazing. She didn't sit back and wait to be rescued.

If there's one criticism I have it's that she didn't get another companion. I want to see a new Rover, or another robot she builds herself. She hacked a robot in Beta Traz, but it kind of disappeared without a word. But I'm eager to see where her journey takes her next.

Conclusion

I guess my review comes across as fairly negative, but I did like it. There were pacing problems, and the world seems kind of empty and lifeless at times, but I still like it a lot. Action was great, the enemies were less gimicky and silly than in the previous season (though the suddenly reborn Robeast in Stayin Alive was kind of weird). The team as a whole is doing great, working together more and more, though Hunk and Lance's characters are regressing a bit. I loved loved loved Pidge, and I can't wait for Season 3!

If you want clarification, or discuss something about this review, you can always send me a PM. Have  a great day!