#visual media definitely has more potential to fuck a kid up

[demadogs]

hello loveliest person ever. would you consider no byler to be queerbait ?

hey bestie

if byler didnt happen i would genuinely believe that their intention was to go through with it but they dropped it or were told to drop it. because if its queerbait theyre literally doing it all wrong? the ultimate goal of baiting is to gain an audience from a selected community, in this case the queer community, by promoting the media as potential representation and yet they have done everything in their power to AVOID this with byler.

for starters the majority of queerbait is usually achieved in the marketing side of things. and yet there was ZERO joint press with noah and finn, where they could have promoted byler the most. almost all of their scenes are together but they deliberately separated them so there wasnt even a chance for spoilers about byler. that is not how you queerbait.

queerbaiting is supposed to be obvious. it shouldnt require elaborate theories, it should be thrown in our faces. this article shows a clip of a trailer from riverdale that includes a gay kiss. i think the kiss was just to distract the character, it wasnt intended to be romantic at all and yet they put it in the trailer? that was obviously for the goal of getting queer audiences more excited and more likely to watch this (absolutely fucking horrendous) show.

on the flip side!! theres also straight bait and again, aaaaalll in the marketing.

i cant even believe these are real lmao.

they did this for s3 too. theres a flash of this in the s3 trailer, which had lots of mlvn shippers thinking this was the season of nothing but love for them and yet el broke up with him in the second episode. we also get audio of mike saying “we’re not kids anymore” but no visuals that showed he was talking to will and definitely not the “its not my fault you dont like girls” line, which would have been such a clear opportunity to queerbait.

and s4 was very gay and they could have so easily grabbed a LOT of peoples attention and curiosity by adding some byler scenes in the trailer but there was nothing.

could you imagine if they showed one of these in the trailer?? they had such a clear opportunity to queerbait and they didnt.

the only thing they did include was this and i didnt even notice will the first time i watched it.

the only things we’ve seen in the marketing that relate to byler are from netflix accounts in other countries that loosely imply that they ship byler but thats literally it. and these accounts dont actually have any access to the writers room. theyre not implying or confirming anything theyre just trying to be relatable and a lot of people would relate to the post if they mention byler.

aside from them just avoiding the topic in the promotion for the show, theres also the fact that byler has inspired loads of in depth theories and analyses based on how they portray them in the show. the point of queerbaiting is to throw it in your face. “look a gay kiss! watch our show to see gay people!” the fact that we’re reading into shit like lighting, colors, music, framing, all this stuff that the ga doesnt read into is a big sign that their goal isnt queerbait. one time i got an anon that summed it up perfectly, “why would they queerbait only to gay film nerds?” and its so true.

queerbaiting should not have people thinking too hard. like the kiss in riverdale, its supposed to be shoved in our faces in order to actually achieve what theyre trying to do. not everybody has time or cares enough to read entire analyses on specific film choices, and because of that, they would be completely failing to bait people. the goal is to gain their audience and no one has been baited for this because it doesnt seem obvious that its actually going to happen.

because of all this if byler didnt happen i dont think queerbait would be the right word. itd be a whole different thing entirely and i would genuinely believe they were forced to not go through with it if it didnt happen. but i highly highly doubt that would ever happen. its netflix’s biggest show and they trust the duffers and its the last season so even if people dont like it its not like theyd lose money because people would stop watching. by then theyd already finished the whole show.

[mcytwebweaving]

hello web! hope you're doing well :D just out of curiosity, how do you collect material for your web weaves? what's your creative process like? big fan of your work <3

Omg thank you so much!!! I'm doing okay, have been very busy with some stuff tho (so sorry for the lack of original content 😅). I will get back into it soon tho, already have some stuff in the making!

I have already answered asks about where exactly do I get all the materials I use from, so I won't elaborate on that part, but here is my normal process: (it's under Read More bc the post turned out longer that I expected haha)

• Starting point is either me getting a request, or my brain going "haha remember that quote/image you saw on tumblr 2 weeks ago? would it be fucked up or what to connect it with a character you like?" (btw in that case I almost never end up using the original quote/image that gave me inspiration for some reason)

• Then I outline some key words about the web weaving I am going to make. I usually go for very abstract and broad concepts, so I can encounter some more interesting stuff. Around that stage I also visualize what exact media I would like to use. Basically, when I go into the "search for the stuff to use" part, I already have a pretty clear understanding of what I will be going for

• And then I go through the websites, Tumblr tags and online archives looking for stuff. I start by searching for stuff relating to my key words, then based on what u find, I can change things up. Actually, about 90% of the time, my website turn out really different from how I imagined them to be at first, just because I encounter some interesting things that I like more. For example, my first knifetrick web weaving wasn't supposed to be centered around the theme of hands at all - the thing I started with was that quote about Jackie laughing like a seagull or something, and I never ended up using it. But even if I throw all of my plans in the window, I wouldn't say that visualisation and coming up with concepts is meaningless work - if you have a direction to move in, you won't be overwhelmed with options.

If I see something that I can't use for a certain theme/character, but I think may be useful for something else, I save it too, so it makes the work a bit easier in future. To avoid all those different things cluttering in my Downloads, I keep separate folders for each web I am working on/could potentially do.

This is definitely the longest part of my work process, partly because despite the 10 image limit per post Tumblr has, I usually save much more stuff to use for each web weaving.

• Compiling/formatting this all in a post and giving credit is the last thing I do. Since I have an excess of material, I have to think what I will keep. My main priorities are 1) matching the theme and 2) keeping a consistent look. With quotes/song lyrics I sometimes can copy paste them into a google doc and play around with fonts, text and background colors. Then I think of positioning it all, which is more important than you may think. In my dsmp!tommyinnit web the colors in both the text and images go from warm orange/yellow hues to grey (it's more obvious with pictures tbh), as a way to symbolize a feeling of desperation and loneliness settling in. I don't even know how many people notice stuff like that, but it's important to me, so I do it. Last thing is putting down the credits (Don't forget your credits, kids!!). Usually it's formatted like [title of the media], [authors name], and images get links to sources :].

That's pretty much it! One web takes me around 4 hours to finish, so it's a pretty long process, and I put a lot of thoughts behind it all :] Sorry it's so long, I am actually glad I had an opportunity to share a little step by step! :D

[365days365movies]

May 6, 2021: The Martian (2015) (Recap: Part One)

We’re leaving lo-fi sci-fi, people. Kind of.

I mentioned before that films like Her are what I define as “lo-fi sci-fi”, which is a category that I’ve kind of made up. Basically, it’s the science fiction version of low fantasy, meaning it contains science fiction themes contained within an otherwise contemporary setting. In the case of Her, Joaquin Phoenix’s character, along with many others, live in a world and setting basically like ours, but with technology advanced enough to generate AIs (like Siri) that are intelligent enough to actually ascend our reality. Because we live in a society.

You give me Joaquin Phoenix, I’m gonna make a Joker reference; it’s in the contract of my existence. Anyway, that is admittedly kind of broad, right? I mean, that has the capability of crossing over with a BUNCH of sci-fi genres and themes. And, considering that we’ve already seen magic, speculative technology, time travel, monsters, and artificial intelligence, we’ve already touched on quite a bit.

And with science fiction, the sky’s the limit. Literally. So, I think it behooves us to re-examine lo-fi sci-fi a little bit. Specifically, we should note that it can also be defined as an extension of currently existing technologies and possibilities. Writers would call this “speculative sci-fi”, assuming in this case that it’s set within the present or a near and attainable future. Her definitely fits in this category, as does Westworld. But, let’s crossover to another genre by speculating upon another possibility. And it begins with this man. Probably.

Hey, Elon, what’s up? Now, Mr. Musk here is a...controversial figure, for COMPLETELY understandable reasons. Instead of touch upon the man himself, I feel like touching upon one of his recent focuses: space travel. With SpaceX and the various upcoming space trips and journeys that they’re planning, Musk has made it clear that he plans to shoot to the Moon. Again, literally.

In fact, this full plan is to go even further than that, and to fuel potential commercial space flights in the future, which is admittedly very cool. And of course, if you’re going to shoot for the Moon...

Guys...guys, that’s Mars. THAT’S FUCKING MARS

Is that not amazing? We have sound and pictures from FUCKING MARS! THAT’S A DIFFERENT PLANET, GODDAMN IT! It’s cooler than I have the ability to properly express, but it IS goddamn cool. And this means that, easily within my lifetime, we could (and likely will) land on Mars. Which is amazing. God, I really want to see that happen.

And so, landing on Mars is BARELY science fiction, but since we haven’t yet done so...yeah, it’s fictional at the moment. And so, any film about landing on Mars falls within this category. Well...to an extent.

2000′s Mission to Mars, for example, was a Disney-funded film (to my IMMENSE surprise; and it’s based off of an old Disney World ride, WHAT), and a movie that I saw a LOT when I was a kid. I also barely remember it, to be honest. But that film is straight-up science fiction because of, well...aliens. The idea of Martians is, as far as we know it, fictional. And most fiction involving Mars includes these aliens somehow. Whether it’s DC Comics’ entire civilization of Martians, as seen in Justice League, Supergirl, or Young Justice...

...Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s heavily mythologized civilization, as seen in the Barsoom series of novels (and another Disney film)...

...Or one of the best Looney Tunes characters.

Mmm. Yes. Isn’t that lovely?

But, yeah, Mars and aliens go hand-in-hand in our media. So, to properly look at lo-fi science and speculative science fiction in relation to the Red Planet, we’ll need a movie that goes to the planet, and doesn’t touch upon the concept of aliens AT ALL.

Enter...Ridley Scott?

Yeah, the director of Legend, Alien, Thelma and Louise, Blade Runner, Gladiator. Also the director of Kingdom of Heaven, Prometheus, Exodus: Gods and Kings, and...ugh, 1492: Conquest of Paradise. I’ve talked about his mixed record before, in my Recap of Legend right here.

In 2014, he was brought on to adapt a book by Andy Weir called The Martian, which is a great book! I’ve listened to the audio book, and I whole-heartedly recommend doing that. And because of that, I am VERY MUCH looking forward to watching this film, especially seeing as it’s often called one of the best science fiction films made during that year, and was critically acclaimed then and now. It got seven Oscar nominations (although it won none of them), amongst other awards. So, enough navel-gazing, huh? The Martian!

SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Recap (1/2)

On Acidalia Plantitia, at the landing site of the Ares III mission, a group of scientists are gathering samples. These scientists are commander and geologist Melissa Lewis (Jessica Chastain), pilot Rick Martinez (Michael Pena), systems operator Beth Johanssen (Kate Mara), surgeon Chris Beck (Sebastian Stan), German chemist Alex Vogel (Aksel Hennie), and overly talkative botanist Mark Watney (Matt Damon). 

The group seems to have a good dynamic, but that dynamic is interrupted by a massive dust storm, which is large enough to cause the entire crew to evacuate. However, in the chaos of the dust storm, Mark is hit by debris and lost in the shuffle. Although Lewis goes back to find him, she can’t get to him before they need to leave, and Mark is believed dead. This is reported (pretty callously) by NASA Director Teddy Sanders (Jeff Daniels) to the press soon afterwards.

But of course, that wouldn’t be much of a movie, now would it? Mark’s alive! And Mark’s alone. With his suit damaged, and low on oxygen, he trudges back to headquarters, which is intact and still contains breathable oxygen. He gets inside, and realizes that he’s been stabbed in the abdomen by some debris. He removes it, and stitches up his own wound. Which is...god, it’s fucking BRUTAL just to think about, nevertheless watch.

Once he’s finished, he records a log for the future, if he doesn’t make it. It’s day 19 of the 31-day mission at this point, and Mark’s basically screwed. He needs lasting oxygen, water, and food, and he might need that for 4 years, when the next manned mission can come to the red planet. Additionally, he has absolutely no way to contact NASA, leaving him completely stranded. Another dust storm rolls in that night, and Mark looks over the belongings of his colleagues, packing them up for their eventual return. It’s somber, to say the least. However, Mark affirms that he’s determined not to die on the planet.

After doing the math, Mark should have enough food to last him for about 300 days, especially if he rations it. Until then, he’ll need to figure out how to grow his own food, on a planet where nothing grows. Which is, of course, going to be a difficult feat to accomplish. But Mark Watney’s a botanist with botany powers, and he’s gonna do it.

It’s day 31, and Mark’s brought in dirt from the outside, and uses the bio-waste from the crew’s stay there for a form of compost. After 5 days, mostly full of him watching Happy Days on TV and trying to farm, he realizes that he needs water, both for himself and for the soil. To do that, he goes chemical and decides to use hydrogen-laden rocket fuel, wood from Martinez’s belongings, and good old-fashioned fire to make water! And since hydrogen + oxygen = water, it should work. With a minor side-effect.

So, yeah, he blew himself up. As as he records a video log, the sound mixing makes itself impressively known by subtly and realistically generating a tinnitus sound. It’s VERY well-done, holy shit. Anyway, he makes a stable fire, and the place is soon covered in condensation, moistening the room and the soil successfully.

We get to day 54, and Mark’s planted leftover potatoes from the crew in order to grow them. And while he’s being mourned at a funeral on Earth, and in NASA, he’s seeing the fruits (or shoots) of his efforts.

Back on Earth, Mars Mission Director Vincent Kapoor (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is trying to convince Director Teddy to let him lobby for another Ares mission, despite the risk of bad press for the callousness of the proximity to Watney’s death. Meanwhile, satellite technician Mindy Park (Mackenzie Davis) looks down at the Ares III site, and realizes that the site has changed visually, meaning that Mark may actually be alive.

Shocked by this, she tells Kapoor, Teddy, and media director Annie Montrose (Kristen Wiig) about this, and they realize the absolute clusterfuck that this whole thing is. They can’t tell the other members of the Ares III crew about it, because it’d devastate them for the 10 months they have to get back to Earth, at the VERY least. They can’t tell the WORLD about this, because they just had a funeral for the guy, and they’d reveal that they left him stranded on Mars accidentally, destroying faith in the Mars Missions Program. And they can’t save Mark, who they’re sure will starve eventually. It’s a mess. And Kapoor also wonders what’s happening to Mark psychologically through all of this.

And yet, they reveal this to the world regardless, causing the clusterfuck reaction that they think it’s going to cause. But Mark’s busy on Mars, figuring out how to get to the site of the next Ares IV mission in 4 years, at the Schiaparelli crater about 50 days travel away. This is a struggle, as his Rover has only so much power and fuel, and he can only get more power by cutting out the heater is risking death by freezing. So, problems. However, he figures out a potential solution: radioactive isotopes! In a move that is, let’s face it, COMPLETELY INSANE, he digs up a radioactive generator from the ship in order to heat the ship.

On Earth, they try to figure out Mark’s moves, as well as how to resupply Ares IV sooner for Mark’s benefit. This is with the director of JPL, Bruce Ng (Benedict Wong), and the flight director of the ship Hermes, Mitch Henderson (Sean Bean), who insists that they tell the Ares II crew. They continue to monitor Mark, and note that he’s been travelling for 17 days in his Rover towards something. Kapoor figures it out, and flies to California.

See, Mark needs a way to contact NASA, and he believes that the way to do so is through Pathfinder, the first probe ever sent to Mars in 1997, lasting for 9 months since landing until they lost contact. Mark digs it up, and the people at JPL in California start their own efforts for contact. And despite communication being extremely rudimentary, initially limited to yes/no questions that use a still-frame camera, it fucking WORKS! WHOO!

To boost this communication hurdle, the two camps figure out a hexadecimal system for communication, allowing them to communicate using a circular table of numbers that represent an alphabet. That allows them to teach Mark to hack into the Rover, allowing it to piggyback off of its broadcast signal and send them messages via keyboard. Nice! Now that communication is reasonably possible, Mark’s able to ask how the crew is handling his death. But upon learning that they haven’t told him. He’s understandably a little goddamn enraged. And so, they FINALLY tell the Ares III crew about this.

The news breaks the crew, even though Mark continues to stress that he’s all right, and that it wasn’t their fault. Meanwhile, Mark’s able to survive for 912 days with his potato plants, and things improve with the help of technicians on Earth. They plan to launch a supply rocket to him in the next year, and things are looking fine! Unless, of course...something goes horribly HORRIBLY wrong.

Well...fuck. Good place to pause for Part Two, then?

[unintentionalgenius]

ok @ongreenergrasses tagged me in this and like, I’m here for it. No one actually follows me anymore unless they want to hear my opinions so leggo!

List 10 different female faves from 10 different fandoms, then tag 10 people! no particular order bc they’re different fandoms and also i have this weird complex around ranking people

1. Brienne of Tarth (ASOIAF) - perfect. flawless. not here for femininity all the better a character for it. Living her truth. Inspirational. A badass and has great comedic timing. What more could you ask for? No I do not know what happened to her in the last season of GOT.

2. Miranda Barlow (Black Sails) - a female character with a complex inner life??? I mean, Black Sails has so many to choose from, but I really think she’s interesting for her role as someone who was loved by two people who were the absolute love of each other’s life, and also (bonus) Max in her relationship with Ann and Jack is perhaps a foil or set up for a comparison between the two triads (and when did we last get two triads in a piece of media, with their own complexities??). Plus! She spends a lot of time being a character in her own right aside from her role as an oppositional force and erstwhile conscience for Flint.

3. Leia Organa (Star Wars) - Leia is a fucking badass and also a really interesting character! especially in the most recent trilogy, even if they fumbled the ending. She gets her happily ever after and then we see her later and honestly, in most of the ways that matter, she failed!!! Her happily-ever-after fell apart. How wild is that! But she is not A Failure she’s just a human who tried and learned that she couldn’t fix everything, but damn, she was going to keep on trying.

4. Tara Knowles (Sons of Anarchy) - this is Not a Great Show but it has the bones of a great show. Tara is such an interesting character and she’s SO angry and it’s beautiful. She has all this furious energy pent-up inside of her and also no matter what she does, she’s always a little bit of an outsider. She is both from Charming and not of Charming, because she could have gotten out. Who amongst us didn’t have a toxic teen relationship? Relatable. Incredibly morally ambiguous and I love it.

5. Rose Tyler - honestly I will fight anyone who says even one (1) bad thing about Rose. She is brave, and clever, and working class (even poor) and written in such a way that you cannot ignore this fact about her! She is not posh, she didn’t go to uni, she’s utterly ordinary and absolutely unique and worthy of love and who among us didn’t need to hear that in high school, amirite? 

6. Lydia Martin - I never try to write Lydia in Teen Wolf fic because even fictionally she intimidates me. Teen media when I was a kid would have never had a smart, popular, attractive math genius who simply got to be a character. She’s not nice and that’s ok! I also stopped watching teen wolf a long time ago so if some shit went down with her character later on we will just Ignore It. 

7. Basira Hussain (The Magnus Archives) - I love her. I love every woman in this entire show and there are so many to choose from, but Basira gets to make the most glorious mistakes, as a character, and has moments of incredible hypocrisy that I find fascinating. And she’s in love with Daisy Tonner and the way that love manifests for them both is ALSO so interesting. All cops are bastards and Basira does not even dispute that characterization, if anything she leans in.

8. Angharad "Harry" Crewe (The Blue Sword) - is there a Blue Sword fandom? There is now, I’m making it happen. This girl is who I literally modeled myself after as a kid. She’s a little tomboyish, a little weird, not quite conventionally attractive, and she gets magic??? and she’s funny? and she does what she feels is right even if it means her maybe-boyfriend will break up with her, or banish her? It’s a story about finding home with a people you never knew were yours and like Maybe There Is Some Resonance With My Life or whatever but man, she’s also just an excellent character. 

9. Mickle/Queen Augusta (The Westmark Trilogy) - once again I have to ask, is there a Westmark Trilogy fandom or am I inventing it? She honestly had the best of both worlds; raised as a princess, lost her memory and got to go gallivanting around, leads a whole-ass rebellion, falls in love with a pretty writer (slash potential war criminal??? he definitely has Grade School-Appropriate Trauma™️) who fought for her and then they’re also pro-democracy? I love it. I love her. I love how much they care about each other and also about justice and Doing The Right Thing for The People.

10. Furiosa (Mad Max Fury Road) - This movie was about Furiosa, first of all. (also as an aside? the visual language and storytelling was unparalleled.) This is an incredible character and I love her evolution over the course of the film. We get to see so many ways to be a woman and I love that! She has such trauma and she holds it in her own way - not the way we might be conditioned by media to think of. She is an action hero that usually only boys or unrealistically pretty girls get to be, but she’s not conventionally pretty while she’s doing it. Beyond just her physical heroism and bravery, though, she saves the wives and acts as emotional support, a first-level deprogramming, and how often do we get to see that kind of salvation playing out at multiple levels and then they get to save her in return? I’m crying now

I don’t think I even know 10 people on this hell site anymore but @ragequilt you have to have some opinions about this right???? Any other mutuals are more than welcome to pretend I tagged you if you want to do this thing

[abundantchewtoys]

HS Epi: Meat p17-18 reaction

I've realized how page 15 ended with the command "Close your eyes" and page 16 started with Rose talking with her eyes closed. :p

Rose talked about how she'd wake up after looking the demon on her chest into the eyes. She then proceeded to look Dirk straight in the eyes and fall under the spell or whatever it was.

If Dirk truly started influencing Rose and it wasn't just the narration being overly dramatic, then I think it started as she talked about caring about the pieces on the board.

I'm not as sold on the idea that Dirk could be turning into the post-victory end boss anymore. I mean, it's certainly plausible. It could even be that the remaining Reload B2 kids (minus Dirk himself) team up with John against him.

But I think the last paragraph on page 16 could also be interpreted differently. Maybe part of ascending to his ultimate self, for a Prince of Heart, is to "destroy" the boundaries that exist on what he sees as his "self". In that he learns how much of his qualities and flaws exist in other people too. If he can see into his heart, he might learn empathy and become a better person.

Okay, the last sentence seemed to show Dirk take over the narration, but it could also be the visual cue that the narration switched from 3rd person to Dirk's POV, if only for that sentence. It could also be taken to point towards Dirk's growing self-awareness: he's becoming aware of the fact he's a fictional character. In that case, what would it take for John to come to this understanding? To "understand what it all means"?

As for Dirk taking over the other people somehow, growing perhaps a hivemind... Eh. We've had confirmation that Jake looked into his eyes without a problem. Granted, that may have been before Dirk ascended to the god tiers.

Now, next page could stay with Dirk, but I hope it switches back to John. I expect him to undergo some dream sequence before awakening, hopefully still alive. And I hope Terezi will be there when he wakes up. Though it will be sad to see her reaction, if she's learned about Vriska.

==>

AAHHHHHHH he really took over the narration!!! ... Pony Pals Epilogue?

Well then. I... Okay, I wonder whether he'll stick to narrating proceedings on Earth C, or how far his self awareness has grown. DOES he know what Doc Scratch knew, Lord English... Reload Dirk?

"None of my friends have noticed it yet, but you have." He's acknowledging us, the readers. Dear god.

"Anyone paying attention could have guessed by now who’s really telling this story." ... Andrew Hussie? Does Dirk want to wrestle control of his life from the author?

"I’ve caught you leering at some pretty personal moments. Are you having fun being a voyeur?" I came to read a story and I'm honestly feeling so attacked right now. Also, I feel I'm being compared to Caliborn in this.

"Knowing their thoughts are transcribed by a third party, does it fill you with a sense of unease, of sickness, sensing that the observations made of their mental interiors may be tainted?" So, Dirk is calling us out on reading their story, as well as indicating to us that what we read about them, even their personal feelings, can be removed from the truth. But, it's not as if HE's going to want to be our narrator, right? Plus, his own POV is still not 'the' truth.

"I am specific. I have a name, an agenda, a vision. I am a monolith of concentrated narrative authority, relaying events to you, and swaying them as I see fit. Whereas you are pointedly nonspecific. You are the generalized, impotent witness to all this." Dirk is self agrandizing himself and describing the MSPA Reader here. He's actually started sounding a lot like Lil Hal, now that he's so convinced of his intellectual prowess. That's not a great evolution.

"I even have the ability to decide what “you” actually means. I can take the “you-ness” away from you, and put it inside another passive mark, such as John Egbert." Does he mean, like, right now, he can decide he's aiming this narration at John? Or... is it what's Blaperile telling me now, that this is supposed to indicate Dirk was the narrator for the entire epilogue up till now? If that's so, everything said in the narration, including the prompts, has just become that much more unreliable.

"So what makes John so special? The answer is something I’m sure you’ve suspected all along but would rather not face, which is: probably nothing. He isn’t special. He’s quite ordinary, I assure you. Boring, even, and getting less interesting by the minute as he’s forced to confront his absolute lack of heroic purpose except as a pawn to be manipulated by a fatalistic reality." Dear god, is John going to have to fight for control of the narration? As for the first thing Dirk says: well, it's true that John is supposed to represent the everyman, the guy that things happen to instead of that he makes them happen, the audience avatar. Now, if John learns about this fact, he might decide to do something against it, snap out of his stupor.

"Anyone can be endowed with this you-ness, if I think it achieves a certain goal." So, will we switch to other you's later on still, narrator guy?

"Even if the objective is merely to demonstrate the gambit’s potential, to reveal the effortlessness behind it. To make a show of who matters and who doesn’t, and even if they do matter, for how long and for what purpose, as dictated solely by the allocation of this faculty. You-ness can be stripped from the lowly Egbert just as easily as it was given, and then bestowed upon the mighty Serket, but even then only long enough to dismiss the vainglorious spotlight hog from the narrative forever. Good riddance." Note that he's saying the "you-ness" is not meant to imply importance to the story. He's saying the effect is used for show. But then this still IS a story, and showing events is part of telling a story. It's like he's trying to convince us he has control over the story, but his control is PART of the story, so yeah, he still hasn't escaped.

... Good to see Homestuck can still become even more meta, after all this time.

"No, in truth, the time has come to make my presence known in order to start bringing my plans to fruition. It’s time to get down to fucking business.

John needs to wake up." Wow. It's time for Dirk's masterpiece then, taking the biggest control he can ever have, weaving the biggest scheme. To what end, then?

Simply to confront John - in Dirk's eyes, a random character in the story, if one with a lot of focus inside the story - with his existence as a fictional character? Will he guide John to Andrew Hussie's ghost?

Also, will the narration even switch back to black ink, I wonder? If it does, though, we'll still be left with the eery knowledge that what we're reading is, even in the first person, narrated by Dirk.

I'm starting to get the distinct impression that Caliborn didn't just botch his maturation process, he also bodged his god tier process. He still took control of the narration, and "expanded" his consciousness through other means (soul sludge merge), and then took control of his story in the multiverse... only for Paradox Space to still damn him in the end.

Also, didn't John speak through the narration during one of the later Homosuck Acts? When he zapped into Caliborn's room? I wonder if he'll do that again some time quick.

Lastly, I wonder if this is why the epilogues are in text format. So that this thing with the narration works even better. Guess What Pumpkin and VIZ Media are publishing this as a novel.

It's a great use of the format Homestuck exists as on the web, making use of the site's template for good color contrast.

==>

Start of Epilogue Four.

"You wake up.

JOHN: wh-what?" ... Is John going to become aware of the change in narrative 'colour' from the start? Starting to speak in dialogue with it, becoming recalcitrant? ... Is Dirk going to start filling the shoes of WV, Terezi, Karkat and all those poor souls guiding John on his story?

"You finally process the true magnitude of what has happened. The Furthest Ring has been completely destroyed. And you’re all alone." Wow. So, uh, what now? And, what of all the universes inside the sessions in the Furthest Ring? How could they have been destroyed, if Universe C is contained somewhere in there?

"Well, you’re vomiting up everything in your stomach. Rest assured, it’s pretty gross" Well, uh, at least he's now finally gotten rid of all that uncooked meat filling his stomach. Seriously, that probably wasn't being digested all that well.

How long before John acknowledges something is wrong with the narration, I wonder?

"You seriously need to get it together. You look like absolute shit right now, my man. In fact, you really should strongly consider issuing an apology for the mess you’re making." And here we have the first instance of Dirk definitely abusing his power.

"JOHN: i’m... JOHN: i’m sorry." :/ What was even the point of making him do that. Just to upset the MSPA Reader, I suppose.

This is basically: what if Lil Hal was an exile.

"Everyone’s dead." Everybody's dead, Dave.

"Well, almost everyone.

But certainly the vast majority of what qualifies as “everyone” in your current frame of reference." John himself excluded, of course. But see, this implies there are more people around, still alive. ... Then again, the narration wouldn't be lying if there were also still dreambubble ghosts. They'd still be dead, after all.

"And most of your friends—Rose, Dave, absurd Cat Dave, and hundreds of ghosts" Not starring in this list: Jade, Meenah. Of course, unreliable narrator goes without saying at this point.

", who all valiantly contributed to a victory which you’re only now beginning to question the functional necessity of." Well, Rose couldn't see "beyond the story" yet when she sent John on this mission. Care to enlighten us, oh wise and omniscient narrator?

"JOHN: functional... necessity?

JOHN: that... that doesn’t sound like something i would think." Ahhhhhh... That feels good. It took John all of two minutes to figure out something was wrong. I'm honestly quite impressed he wasn't hornswaggled on some crazy MacGuffin hunt first.

"That’s because it’s not." Huh! I'd actually thought Dirk would lead with: 'Yes, it is.' Guess he realizes the jig is up!

"You’ve finally noticed.

No, not me. You go back to ignoring the fact that I’m the voice in your head. You noticed how it hurts when you breathe." Ah. So he just goes right back to forcing John to dance to his tune. Tssh.

"On the other hand, the tooth is poisoned." Uh, how? Why? Poison? ... Yet another way in which Lord English was OP'd.

"So you’re pretty much fucked either way, and that’s really all there is to say on the matter.

JOHN: sigh.

You sigh in painful resignation, and wonder what to do next." Dirk is trying to put John's REAL thoughts into a different context. He's basically replaced the narrative, so... Yeah, this really IS a callback to Pony Pals. God damnit. Who'd have thought that would be foreshadowing THIS.

"English is dead, so you suppose you can go home, right? It’s tempting. You consider zapping back to Earth C, being done with this nightmare for good, and never breathing a word of it to anyone ever again. But you can’t yet, can you?" He can't because he won't, or because you won't let him? Does John want to ensure the safety of Universe C, first? Or will he want to check on Terezi first, potentially (we wouldn't be able to tell) nudged into it by Dirk.

"Why not, you wonder? What’s the harm? You’re right, it would probably be a harmless decision, in the grand scheme of things." ... Don't tell me we'll have ANOTHER split path coming up.

"How about Jade though? She could still be out there somewhere, injured, alone, scared. And it’s your fault, isn’t it?" John turned his back on the body, so he's now unsure what happened to it. It's probably a red herring though, planted by Dirk.

... If it even IS Dirk. I mean, the narration could just as suredly still be coming from Andrew in-universe, and he'll go "tadaa! fooled you twice!" at some point...

"You decide that no matter how terrible you feel, you should look around first before you leave. You were the one who dragged her here. You owe her at least that much. Plus, there’s someone else on your mind, isn’t there?" ... I wonder if Dirk can only influence his thoughts in the Furthest Ring. Actually, I doubt it. Since, when you think about it... Jake fantasizing about Dirk is put into a different light entirely now. As were all the turns of phrases that were perhaps a little too sarcastic for the situation to warrant. I had a few times where I thought: the narration doesn't feel the same, but I put it up to the new format as well as the co-writers. Now, though...

"You proceed to wander for a long fucking time. Time passes differently here than it does for everyone else. Here, I’ll simulate it for you. I just left to go take a piss. Then I microwaved myself a hot pocket. Then I came back. In the time it took me to do that, you just spent hours drifting around the entire circumference of the black hole thinking sad-sack thoughts about the years of inaction that led you to this point, intermittently humming the Ghostbusters theme to yourself. You get so worked up about one of your GB freestyles that you almost miss it." Now Dirk's just showboating. On the other hand, I wouldn't mind hearing a couple of John's Ghostbusters freestyles.

"There. Eleven o’clock. Do you see it? It’s that tiny dot floating over there." Eleven, eh? So, what should I be betting on? Not Jade? Terezi perhaps? Or a random item from a dreambubble?

"You scramble to catch it before it drifts any closer to the event horizon. Got it. What the hell?" Huh, it's something very small? ... Not a firefly, is it? ... If so, in come the theories that it's actually Alternate Calliope.

"It feels familiar, but you want to make sure you’re not imagining it. A wallet. Your dad’s wallet. You chew your lip and press your fingers into the soft leather." What the-... Huh. Well, I was kind of hoping John would have a vision of his Dad, in his dream. This might lead up to something more! I'm reminded of Doomed John seeing a vision of his Dad in the dreambubbles.

So, the ACTUAL wallet ended up in Aradia's hands. John found it left for him on the battlefield, then CD? stole it, Liv Tyler took out the Tumor but gave it to him, CD? was killed by Bec Noir for killing Jade, and he stored the wallet into Lil' Cal. Then Lil' Cal crashed on Alternia with one of the doomed Aradiabots, leading to Aradia finding her frog temple and the Crosbytop. ... So, is there anything left of value in the wallet after all this time? A metric ton of shaving cream, a lighter with a spades symbol... Oh wait, but Spades Slick also got his hands on the Crosbytop, so did he steal the wallet back from Aradia? If so, then the wallet was last present in the B2 session... But if Aradia still had it on her, she took it with her into the Furthest Ring!

"Space is an infinitely large expanse and a wallet is a tiny, insignificant object. Sure, there have been crazier coincidences in the course of this wacky adventure you’ve been having for the past ten years, but this one feels very precisely aimed at your heart.

You take a deep breath, unfold the wallet, and open it." ... So it contains something captchalogued. Cause it sure won't be a Dad note, after all these years and having gone through all those hands, right? ... Right? Now I'm reminded of how Jake had part of his old home captchalogued.

Blaperile jokingly said: "I hope it isn't Aradia or Terezi captchalogued in there", but actually, if there's something to withstand the end of the Furthest Ring, it would be this wallet.

---

... Wow. At least Dirk's tenure as unreliable narrator is rooted in familiar grounds, Lil Hal genre influencing people. And I know I mustn't get my hopes up for ever getting more information about Dad, or seeing something from his youth... But here I am.

[village-skeptic]

on “having it both ways”: thinking about S2 and looking ahead to S3

So apparently once a year I end up latching on to Riverdale pre-season promo and having WAY TOO MUCH to say about it.

Image analysis, pop-culture riffing, S2 criticism, meditations on resistant reading, my own discomfort with “wrongfully accused” narratives in this particular historical moment, and some hopes on the literal eve of the S3 premiere, below the cut...

So, last week when this piece of promo dropped, the very first thing that I thought of was the visual reference to Chicago and the Cell-Block Tango.

(I didn’t do it! - but if I’d done it? - how could you tell me that I was wrong?)

HOW perfect is that homage? The red lighting, the raised arms? The promo still just FEELS like a snapshot from a Fosse dance routine. (A little more on legendary choreographer Bob Fosse here.)

It’s a defiant pose, right in the center of the frame, but a slightly vulnerable one at the same time. There’s nothing hidden here; everything’s on display. The pose draws the viewer’s eyes inescapably to the body - a muscled body, but one which here seems like a gymnast or dancer’s body: lithe figure, tapered waist, power that is channeled into performance.

(this is tasty; this is plenty; this is hungry work)

So, on a first pass, insofar as it puts this demonstrative male body on display, it’s a little bit of a subversive image, I think. And that’s well in line with the way that Riverdale so often courts the female (and/or gay male) gaze, and at its best does some really unusual stuff with masculinity. 

I thought about all of this - and then, silly me, I saw that this piece of promo was NOT a still, but is, instead, a short clip. 

Archie doing pull-ups on the prison bars, as another heavily muscled dude saunters behind him, reads to me like a completely different type of performance! To the degree that it invites the eye, it sends the message: don’t fuck with me. In motion, we have purely the pursuit of greater strength, the purging of weakness in favor of the means of self-protection. 

Instead of Chicago, my mind jumps to 3x01′s title source: Fortune and Men’s Eyes. Dominate or be dominated. 

Realistically, I’m willing to believe that the ambiguous interpretation here between “still” and clip is just a quirk of how it happened to be uploaded to Twitter by a social media intern. 

Still - the interpretative gulf between the still image and the image in motion got me thinking how often Riverdale seems to want to “have it both ways,” and what that does to the audience’s experience and expectations of the show.

For instance:

Other people have written at length about how Riverdale’s pursuit of aesthetic homage or plot contrivance has created character inconsistencies that occasionally baffle. Cheryl is alternately a tragic Gothic heroine and a lacquered, ruthless Mean Girl; Jughead is both a sensitive loner writer and also a bad-boy gang leader; Betty is both Betty and Dark Betty. (GOD.)

Other folks have discussed how the show needs to really play out the consequences of conflicts between the characters. It’s not that the show shouldn’t drop bombshells like the Bughead breakup(s) or the conflict between Betty and Veronica/Jughead and Archie, but it seems all too willing to reset back to milkshakes in a booth at Pop’s without doing enough work to explain WHY things are okay again. (See also: resolving major conflicts between characters literally with a song.)

The desire to “have it both ways” also really shows up in the show’s tendency to engage complicated issues (racism, sexism, colonialism, the prison-industrial complex) on a shallow level - thus getting credit for mentioning them, without really taking the time to explore them meaningfully or to explain the characters’ investment in them. 

The result of this, in terms of storytelling, is that you leave a lot of room for resistant (even combative) readings of the text to emerge. To name a few of my own:

frustration with Jughead’s acceptance of what feels like a suuuuper patriarchal role as “the Serpent Prince” (and later King)

the fact that it’s really hard to sympathize with Veronica throughout entire swathes of season 2

a profound opposition to a storyline that sexualizes Betty’s mental health issues in a really exploitative fashion

And then... there’s Archie.

In the “Cell Block Tango,” the murderesses of Chicago (bar one) get to justify their crimes. Conversely, as we open the third season of Riverdale, the audience knows that Archie’s being blamed for something he didn’t do. Despite bragging about it (!!) to a bunch of mobsters (!!!!), Archie is not guilty of the murder of Cassidy Bullock. 

...but he IS guilty of so! many! other! things! across Season 2. I’m sure I’m forgetting some, but aiding and abetting a criminal, covering up a murder, blowing up a car, and forming an extralegal vigilante militia group - TWICE - all come to mind. 

The last bits of S2 offer us a version of Archie’s amends-making that comes in the form of defending the Serpents, turning on Hiram, supporting his father, et cetera. And then the very last image of S2 - Archie being clapped in cuffs right at the moment that he’s supposed to be sworn into office - is meant to distress us.

But a season of watching Archie embrace fascism leaves some marks, y’all. And a not insignificant portion of the audience, still frustrated with the character’s choices, couldn’t help but say - well, he had it coming.

So, yeah. It’s been a few months between the close of S2 and the open of S3, and in most cases that would be enough time for me to sit with the story in and of itself, to consider more broadly where it had failed or succeeded, and to allow some of that “resistant reader” response to drain away.

But real talk, you guys: I’m finding it really hard right now, at this moment in American history, to connect emotionally with the story of a young man trying to fight the charges of which he has been wrongfully-yet-ever-so-plausibly accused.  

[Please note, I am NOT trying to say that RAS is somehow trying to weigh in explicitly on the SCOTUS debacle. The S2 finale laying the groundwork for this plot aired this spring, and S3E1 has (presumably?) been in the can for a while now. And, to its credit, Riverdale has in both seasons explicitly criticized a sexual culture that objectifies young women and reduces them to “points” (the football team’s playbook) and to prey (Nick St. Clair).]

But, for me personally, I can’t help looking at this plot and hearing echoes of “It's a very scary time for young men in America when you can be guilty of something you may not be guilty of.”

Here’s the interesting thing: I think RAS knows this, and I think the promo around this plot is partially designed to try to dispel these connections. 

(For me, at least, it’s having mixed results.)

(source)

For instance, I can’t look at this still (young man, formal suit intended to project good character and youthful vulnerability, sullen face, flanked by counsel) without thinking, “Wow, this feels....Brock Turner-y.” 

I don’t know if anyone’s written about courtroom photos and sketches as a genre of visual composition, but I feel like I’ve seen variations of the Riverdale still a million times, often printed on the front page of the local university newspaper, discussing the controversy over the conviction (or NON-conviction) of a promising young athlete accused of something awful that no one who knows him EVER would have suspected he would do. (Nice boy, nice family, so many extracurriculars, such good grades!)

Of course, there’s a major difference between the photos above: Archie’s defense team is entirely female. 

Obviously this makes sense because Mary Andrews and Sierra McCoy are both major supporting characters who are also lawyers - but it also makes sense in trying to dismantle some of the potential gut reactions to this visual framing. There’s some “innocence by association” going on here, I think. And after all, Archie IS innocent of this particular crime!

This still lands with mixed effect for me though, because any defense strategy that suggests the intentional composition of a visual tableau feels inherently cynical, even when the character is sympathetic or innocent. 

For instance: I just watched The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which features a scene where the main character shows up in the courtroom in full Upper West Side respectable regalia to try to get the obscenity charges against her dismissed - she fails and ends up having to plead guilty, because she mouths off at the judge. Anyone who’s familiar with Amy Sherman-Palladino’s work will recognize this bones of this plot point in the courtroom scene in Gilmore Girls: Rory’s grandparents’/lawyer’s attempt to portray her as a naive little angel backfires, and she ends up getting a ton of community service as penance for stealing a boat. It’s important to note that the characters are both guilty of their charges - although, as another favorite show of mine might note, “the situation’s a lot more nuanced than that.”)

(source | source)

Another way in which the pre-season promo is distancing Archie from both his actions last season, and the present context external to the show, is to emphasize his profound contrition. In this teaser from Riverdale 3x01, we get Archie declaring that “whatever happens to me in the courtroom on Tuesday - that is what I deserve.” This a statement of universal guilt and responsibility (one might say martyrdom?) that goes well beyond the scope of his actual infractions.

Now - I really, really appreciate that we’re getting a sad Archie rather than a mad Archie. And I want to acknowledge that he’s so definitely a kid here, trying hard to “man up” and to grapple with the fact that he screwed up big time and that there are consequences for his actions. After a season of doing the wrong thing over and over and OVER again, he’s trying to do the right thing. 

But here’s the thing: Fred responds to this confession of near-universal guilt with what (in this snippet) feels like a pair of universally-exculpatory statements: “You are a good kid. You got manipulated by a mobster.” (Mary is more nuanced: “You do not deserve to be framed for murder.”)

Archie does not deserve to be framed for murder, and he certainly did get manipulated by a mobster. In fact, I would like to formally start a petition to have Archie not fall under the control of an unscrupulous adult in S3!

However. 

Instead of accepting guilt for anything and everything and being immediately absolved for non-specific sins because of his inherent “goodness,” I really want to know that Archie understands what he actually DID do last season. He climbed wholeheartedly on board with the plan to Make Riverdale Great Again, and in that process, he did things that were NOT AT ALL commensurate with being “a good kid.” I think both the character and the show would benefit from a more explicit meditation on exactly why Hiram’s manipulation was so effective, and why Archie moved so quickly past being merely Hiram’s pawn, and voluntarily embraced the role of Hiram’s very ambitious accomplice. 

One of the specific preconditions of restorative justice is that the offender has to acknowledge their actions and the hurt that they caused. Reconciliation and vagueness are incompatible for so many reasons, but one of them is because a BIG part of learning from your mistakes is thinking precisely about what you did so that you can choose not to do it again.

I read a bunch of the new Archie comics over the break, and I think I now have a greater appreciation for the trope of Archie as a schlemiel. Despite his best intentions, the Archie archetype keeps making the same goofy, klutzy mistakes over and over again. This is fine, even funny, when it means that Archie just keeps accidentally ending up with a bucket on his head. Whoops! 

It is super not okay if it means that Archie just keeps finding himself supporting fascists. ...whoops?

(At present, my entire country is being “manipulated by mobsters.” Clearly, I have some feelings about this.)

I don’t actually know how to wrap all the loose ends of this analysis up meaningfully and coherently at the finish here - but then again, that probably puts me into good company with our showrunners. Optimistically, I’m going to hope that that’s intentional - that I’m judging in media res, and that plotlines and character arcs in S3 will weave together in a way that will surprise and delight me! 

But mostly, I’m going to reiterate my hope that S3 makes meaningful choices. That the people in charge don’t waste their actors’ time filming oodles and oodles of material that gets sliced and diced to ribbons. That they make choices EARLY about major plot points; that they stick to them; and that they let the rising action and falling action of your narrative reflect those choices, and the consequences that naturally accompany them. 

I hope that the people in charge of S3 will resist the ever-present temptation to “have it both ways” - which ultimately works out to really no definitive way at all. Telling a sturdy story is risky in a totally different way than courting controversy - but it’s so, so worth it. 

[lightsandlostbells]

Druck episode 1 reaction

I’m really enjoying Druck so far! My ideal remake would be to start with a new script and story, for sure, but this one seems very in line with Skam’s principles and style. I found myself looking forward to upcoming clips.

Clip 1 - Jonas gets on a soapbox

I really love that they revamped Jonas’ opening monologue to something that is apparently relevant to German teenagers and potentially lays out some of the themes covered in the show, and that it kept the rough, raw look of the visuals.

THEY LOOK. AGE APPROPRIATE. Thank Godddd

One of the things with Skam France and Skam Italia is that a lot of people reacted by saying, “wow, they’re all so beautiful” and internally I was like nnnnnnnoooOOOOO that’s not the point but I didn’t want to be a dick about that. 

Lol at the same song playing when Leonie walks across the yard being the same song in the Skam Italia trailer. According to Wikipedia, “Bad Girls” has also been used in Skins, Gossip Girl, and 90210. It is to teen drama shows what “Hallelujah” is to sad crying scenes.

Well I immediately bought this Isak (Matteo?) having a crush on Jonas, just saying.

As far as cutting to Matteo similar to how Skam France showed Lucas … I preferred this because it’s not giving away Matteo’s feelings. Lucas definitely had a vibe that ~Something More was up that the audience should suspect. This wouldn’t have pinged me, as a new viewer, that Matteo has a secret that Hanna doesn’t know. Like I could have bought he was just bored of watching his friends make out.

Clip 2 - Hanna and Jonas in the bedroom

So Hanna and Jonas have great chemistry so far! They definitely have that easy, established couple feeling and seem comfy with the physical affection.

Youth by Daughter is such a Skam song that I’m sort of shocked it hasn’t been used already.

I was hoping for another glimpse of Matteo but I will accept his love of memes.

Is the Hero Party Druck’s version of Russ? Sounds like. Is it a party where people dress up as superheroes?

Clip 3 - Amira’s introduction

Um, YES. Good job, Druck.

This scene was a brand new spin on an existing clip! This is really what I want to see - taking the old material and making it fresh and distinguishable.

So the theater kids were changed into a refugee welcome group, and of course they assumed Amira was a refugee. I liked that they established this specific commentary.

The girl from the club gives Amira a little smile after she explains the purpose of the group as if to be like “we help people like YOU” and Amira’s just like yep … not this shit again.

Amira! Loved her immediately. She and Hanna probably just did their homework in companionable silence after this encounter, but it’s already pretty cool that the Sana character is the first one of the girl squad established (other than Eva/Hanna).

There’s a sign for a party in the background, is that the Hero Party?

Also, I like Hanna making a self-deprecating joke about herself being the one who needs tutoring. 

But honestly, how lovely that Amira got to share this moment with Hanna and even make a joke about white Germans. Because you know plenty of white people Would Not Get It.

Aside from his cultural obtuseness, I’m kind of fond of that dude and his giant hair.

Clip 4 - Matteo gets a ticket to the love nest

Well this remake just came out and said what I thought was always implied, that the reason Jonas doesn’t want Matteo to be alone is because of his family. I don’t mind this dialogue being forward since “weird family” could pertain to a lot of things, not necessarily serious (I don’t know what the exact words imply in German). Like, his family could be really into hunting for cryptids. It’s vague enough not to take it too seriously.

Listen, while I love Hanna and Jonas so far and think they have terrific chemistry, I could totally ship Jonas and Matteo. Jonas just seems really fucking excited about Matteo coming with them.

Where the fuck did Matteo come from???? It was like he teleported. We saw right over Hanna’s shoulder before he appeared and no one was there.

Though I see he took a pic of them while they were chatting that he posted to IG, lmao.

I kinda like this casual loungey, come up and sling an arm over your shoulder Matteo. He definitely seems the most chill of the Isaks so far.

ALSO they did the whole thing of Matteo watching them leave, HOWEVER this is why it works for me here more than in Skam France: they don’t show his face. They don’t make it seem like he has a secret. I definitely think you can infer that, but I also think you can infer something more simple, such as how it’s symbolic of how he’s the third wheel in this relationship. I think OG Skam did that best by having Isak trail after them, but this wasn’t too OTT. 

So it looks like we’ll be getting the full cabin episode, not just a weekend?

Clip 5 - Party

The title card being for Monday is a pretty big mistake, though I saw that the official account responded to it and apologized.

Hanna singing as she’s getting dressed is a really nice touch. We all have our getting-ready-to-go-out anthems.

Mia is already feels more like Manon than Noora, in that she’s a got more of a softer, sweeter initial vibe. I did like that they showed her watching Hanna get dragged by Leonie and deciding to cheer her up. And that they had her clarify that she had to leave (for some unspecified reason) because it was always kinda funny that Noora made a dramatic first impression and then disappeared into the night, leaving Eva wondering “who is that mysterious yet sexy stranger...”

Vilde (Kiki?) giving an actual description of Sam makes sense, like damn, there could be a dozen Sams in that club. And having the mix-up still happen is a bonus.

But most importantly, obviously, is that Kiki thinks girl Sam is extremely hot. Look, one of these remakes has to deliver on gay Vilde. Don’t keep dangling the carrot and then taking it away. plz.

I LOVE Amira and this seems like a major change in characterization from Sana? Not that Sana was allergic to fun, but I have a hard time seeing her show up at parties without her squad. Amira is actually present at parties and dancing - alone, it looks like - which is something I wondered about Imane in Skam France. What made Imane want to get in on Daphne’s party? If they go with another “the girls are planning to throw a party” plotline as a way to do russ, then it’s a decent setup for Amira to actually be seen partying. But I really hope that they take this shift in characterization to greater depths and don’t just kind of adapt Sana’s dialogue and personality around Amira. I really want to see a distinct character develop, and this is a good start.

I instantly want to see more of girl Sam and I kinda love that she’s the character with the distinctive lipstick on this show.

Kiki being like “you both have the same name, you’re both black, we get it, super funny” and asking them to leave - damn, congrats on making the worst first impression of the Vildes? Even if I get that she’s upset at the moment.

Penetrator (?) Sam seems a bit dorkier and less like a douchebro. But maybe I just feel that way because he’s posing with his cat on Instagram.

Liked that they put in Hanna sitting in front of the mirror taking off the makeup, her hair messier, as a contrast to the fun sexy getting ready scene. Just some quiet reflection of the bummer kind. That’s always how it feels after a party that turned out to not be so fun. At attempt was made to be social … and the attempt had limited success.

Changing Hanna’s parent from a mom to a dad (assuming there’s only one parent around) is a small yet potentially interesting change. Especially because conventionally, relationships between daughters and mothers are considered to be tighter than relationships between daughters and fathers, though this is by no means universal. I’m quite excited to meet Hanna’s dad and see how the parent-child dynamic plays this time around.

General comments:

From what I can tell, some of the Druck actors are in their teens and some are in the 20-22 age range. Because overall these do seem to be younger, inexperienced actors, I’m more inclined to be lenient on their performances than the other remakes. I think this is fair - Skam France and Skam Italia cast older actors to play teenagers, and in the case of Skam France many of them had already been in movies and TV shows (not sure if it’s the same for Skam Italia), so I do have higher standards for their acting. If they are going to sacrifice authenticity, then it better be for the sake of talent, otherwise what’s the point?

I mentioned this in a Skam France post too but I find it distracting that the clips end with a title card, even though they might not be able to do anything about it. It’s just a little reminder that you are watching a TV show and it takes away from the immersive experience.

One thing I noticed on Instagram is that a lot of the characters seem to have pictures of them when they were babies/little kids. That’s pretty typical for people to post on social media, it was just common enough that it caught my eye. (Hanna/boy Sam/girl Sam/Kiki, if you want to look. Cuuute).

I saw some people thought Matteo was too obvious in his feelings for Jonas, but while I thought the chemistry was there, I personally didn’t feel that it was too distracting.

On that note, I’ve been thinking about whether it’s OK to show characters other than Hanna’s (Eva’s/Emma’s) POV and I think what generally works for me is:

a) does this shot reveal something that our main girl couldn’t pick up on from the rest of the context of the scene 

b) does this shot reveal something that the audience shouldn’t yet know 

c) is this shot taking over our main girl’s big emotional moment. 

If so, not a good idea. Basically I think what works for me is brevity and ambiguity.

The reception to Druck seems to be very positive so far, going off the tag’s content. I think the enthusiasm is support for the idea that many Skam fans aren’t 100% opposed to the remakes as long as they feel like the show captures the spirit of the original series.

However, it would have been interesting to see what the reception would have been if Druck premiered first - is it that Skam France was more polished than some people preferred, and Skam Italia had some aspects from the casting and the trailer that turned people off, that Druck seemed like a strong alternative? Or if Druck premiered first, would we be more cynical about it? (I think this could have been true to a degree, but there are also some changes, like Amira’s introduction, that might have intrigued the fandom.)

I am feeling good about this show but I’m also trying to keep my expectations in check, lmao. If I expect it to completely revamp the Skam S1 storyline I’ll probably be disappointed; however, what I hope for it is at least some minor changes in characterization that create distinct, consistent personalities and that they write the script forward from these changes rather than contorting the story to fit them, if that makes sense.

I think calling it Druck is in itself a good sign, in that it seems more indicative of wanting to create a clear identity outside of a Skam remake and appeal to German teenagers. “Skam” is not a word that means anything to French/Italian viewers unless they know the original show.

[olmopress]

Farticipatory culture!

week 7: Harry Jenkins, Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide, Introduction and Chapter 4

Shiiiit was reading Henry Jenkins boring. Oh my God. All those useless stories and that endless circumnavigation of issues. Man I understand you had to reach a certain wordcount to get someone to publish you but maaaaaaaaan I got so bored.

You are more than welcome to imagine that the stuff I liked about Mr. Jenkins is very little

BUT

I have to say we share a common interest in Star Wars. To honor that, I am unleashing the first FRANCHISE-THEMED post on this blog.

Yes kids! The visual content of this blog post will feature exclusively material from Star Wars!

If you like my idea you can contact me in private for donations. I would love to raise a little profit out of George Lucas’ copyrighted material because

SCREW HIM

So hit me up with your money, we shall use it to fund modern heroes fighting against the horrendous kebab imperialism of the Turkish fils de pute president.

OK here we go. Jerkin’ Mr. Jenkins has three concepts for us and

INCREDIBLY ENOUGH

none of them is particularly original. At times I fell almost like this guy is just a great affabulatore who probably got great grades in his college papers because he could babble for 2000 words without saying much of particular relevance.

BUT THIS IS JUST ME BEING NASTY

Sure.

Jenkins’ first and most important concept is that of convergence. We dumbasses who had to go through COM 220 in this university are already familiar with this word and associate it either with technological convergence or media ownership convergence. But just like that time in which the Buddha taught for 40 years straight just wake up one day and be

HOLD UP BRO IT WAS ALL A BIG EXPEDIENT TO PREPARE YOU FOR THE TRUTH OF THE

LOTUS SUTRA

Jenkins surprises us silly undergraduate with a sort of ULTIMATE MEANING of convergence. To him, convergence is neither solely about technology, nor solely about ownership. By convergence, he means

“the flow of content across ultiple media platforms, the cooperation between multiple media industries, and the migratory behavior of media audiences who will go almost anywhere in search of the kinds of entertainment experiences they want” (2)

Just the kind of definition I need the weekend before a midterm. Thanks Harry. So what I gather from this is that the converge he is talking about is essentially about content, or I mean comunque about themes and instances orbiting around a certain kind of content. Right? I guess. And so Jenkins focuses on how these kinds of contents are reproduced by and sought on different media.

Much of the rest of his introduction is Jenkins bustling with his own confused concepts to gain a degree of clarity of this stuff on convergence. Which in a way is fun to watch in itself. Because first he traces the supposedly linear history of the development of the idea – by the way quoting (and fortunately criticizing that JERK of Negroponte who believed that “monolithic empires of mass media are dissolving into an array of cottage industries” – and then he embarks on a frankly boring and useless story about this New Orleans Media Experience of 2003 about which honestly nobody gives a shit and even which even more honestly is just boring. Did I say that already? Oh sorry.

BUT IT’S TRUE

This story is infused (as frankly the rest of the stuff I have read) with a disgusting romantic notion of corporate behavior and aims, as if big media companies just couldn’t go on without including their audiences because they LOVE THEM.

FUCK NO HARRY THEY JUST WANT THEIR MONEY AND THEY’LL DO EVERYTHING IT TAKES TO SQUEEZE AS MUCH OF IT AS POSSIBLE FROM THEIR OUR POCKETS AND YOU FUCKING KNOW IT GODDAMNIT YOU TEACH AT USC IT’S NOT LIKE YOU WERE BORN YESTERDAY

I’m sorry. You may have noticed I have slight tendency in losing my temper at

MANAGERIAL CAPITALIST PIGS

No I mean with people who see things differently from me. But let us go on. By the way there is a moment in which Jenkins, talking about the way in which corporations were dealing with the emergence of convergence (I rhymed!), writes:

“The old paradigms were breaking down faster than the new ones were emerging, producing panic among those most invested in the status quo and curiosity in those who saw change as an opportunity” (7)

You what this reminds me? Look it up here. This guy first wrote it. See that part about the monsters? Does it remind you of anything? Am I implying that media giants especially of the internet are giving us a new fascism? Did you know that Charlemagne most probably didn’t want to be crowned emperor by Pope Leo III?

Unless you’re a historian of the Middle Ages, one of the answers for those last two questions is “Yes.”

Btw you should know that I decided I was heterosexual when I was 3 and went to see Phantom Menace and got acquainted with the looks of this lady up here.

Anyway. Back to convergence. Jenkins goes on and on and on and on about this talking about the different lifespans of delivery technologies and media, about his self-defined Black Box Fallacy (because to him, and he honestly has a point, while hardware diverges, content converges), about the fact that convergence is a process and not an endpoint, and about all sorts of things

UNTIL

He basically says that convergence is a top-down process as much as it is a bottom-up one. And at this point, Harry, you kinda lost me. You have used so many different and contrasting ways of defining what is it that you’re trying to define that I do not know anymore if I am reading you or fucking Spinoza. And I AM SORRY, you ain’t as cool as my lad Baruch.

So yeah I was left pretty much like this:

I think we should stick to the explanation I gave in the beginning. let us move to a second concept, which will be hopefully easier to define.

I wanna talk about collective intelligence because Jerkings only suggests it. So let me do the explanation know.

Collective intelligence was at work fo instance on the Game of Thrones’ subreddit who higitus figidus cracked the secret behind Jon Snow’s lineage YEARS before the thing was revealed in the series. Like in those beautiful communist revolutions we don’t do anymore, commoners pooled their wits and skills to fuck over the greedy and ugly masters who enslaved them. This is collective intelligence: to unionize cognitive processes and screw capital ownership.

OK maybe this was a little bit too political but you get the point right? It’s about people pooling resources and working together to solve problems or propose stuff. It’s actually quite cool. And it happens all the time on the internet. Because it’s easier to pool those cognitive resources over there.

DONE!

Let’s move to the last one.

The third point in Jenkins’ reading was participatory culture. His endless spiel about Star Wars fandom was at times interesting and times suicide-inducing. Potentially cool as a case study, but we don’t really need it for the purposes of this post. So.

The stuff we need to know is contained in the first few pages of the chapter. First of all, Jenkins rightly notes that while fandom as always existed, the internet has tipped the scales because it makes fan culture more visible. Which is in itself quite OK.

aaaaand here’s a beautiful example of Star Wars’ participatory culture.

He then distinguishes between interactivity and participation. To him, interactivity refers only to the fact that people get more feedback when they consume cultural products. Participation, he says, is deeper because it is basically in the consumer’s (I hate this word) hands: it is “open-ended” and not constrained by the decision of the designers of the original/official products. The rest of the chapter deals in ways in which companies address fan-generated content. Funnily enough, he distinguishes between prohibitionists (tight-ass douchebags who don’t want you to mess with their precious product) and collaborationists (other douchebags who instead see the staff you do as yet one more opportunity to steal time and labor from you). Nice, huh?

The funniest thing is that he chooses COLLABORATIONISTS: I mean really? You really wanna make me do that association between capitalism and fascism again? It was your choice huh.

A good example that Jenkins makes is that of game modders, who manipulate the code of videogames to construct personalized fantasies that might expand the universe of the original game, or maybe even take it to a completely new direction. Here’s an example De’Noantri:

I guess I broke my rule about Star Wars. Too bad. But I am the one who calls te shots here. I’m your lider maximo here. This is a READ ONLY blog. You shut up and read, comrade!

To reach a conclusion, the whole story of how LucasArt deals with fandom content is surely fascinating, but Jenkins repeatedly fails to look at a very important issue. When George Lucas in ANY way makes use of content created by fans, most of the times directly appropriating the copyright for it, he is

EXPLOITING

those silly fans. Instance: when the devs of Star Wars Galaxies sought fan advice for developing the game, did these fans got paid? Where are their rights? Where is the compensation for the time and labor they offered? Nowhere. And so they have been exploited, allowing George Lucas to save money on people he would have had to pay for the same services. But he had the fans he wanted to iNcLuDe… 

I mean you really thought I was not going to use this?

So the conclusion is:

FANS OF ALL NATIONS, UNIONIZE!

CLAIM YOUR SHARE OF PROFIT!

DEMAND COLLECTIVIZATION OF FRANCHISES!

DEMAND LIBERALIZATION OF FAN FICTION!

DEMAND THE FUTURE!

Here you can see a visual depiction of the fandom working class rising up against bourgeoise privilege.

Since I already broke the rule, culture time will be free this week too. This is a great Russian composer who certainly influenced Williams when composing Star Wars’ music. It is one of my favorites pieces of music ever so ENJOY!

Here instead you can see Caravaggio depicting me making it barely alive out of this week’s readings:

It happens every now and then. Let’s hope next it’ll be better.

auf Wiedersehen!

Image Sources: GIPHY.com, squillace.org, wikiart.org

[scuttleboat]

2 meta combo: Bellamy/baton + leadership themes after s4

I. Some disorganized thoughts on Bellamy and the hollow baton…

So I had a particular reading of the presence of the bottle prop in the end scene of 413 and didn’t think about it again afterwards, but this week I’ve read a lot of talk about what it means. So I decided to spill my reaction into one giant post. This is my general contribution to the broad discussion of the Baton as (one of several) symbolic prop for Bellamy’s character state. FYI it should go without saying that anything I write is in the context of being my opinion, but also I speak in declarative sentences a lot because I tend to believe my opinions pretty confidently.  To the point:  I don’t think the bottle is empty bc Bellamy is getting a fresh start.* The straightforward meaning is this: the bottle of liquor is drained when Bellamy gets to it because, as a symbol of power, it’s literally and metaphorically empty. Circumstances have rendered it sad and meaningless. A hollow consolation. It’s like… a really explicit piece of visual irony.

((* fyi, the positive hopeful element in that scene is not the bottle, it’s Raven’s steadfastness + Bellamy honoring Clarke’s memory through survival.))

Just going off of a lot of initial fandom reactions I’ve read on tumblr, some fans were so excited about him getting this baton at the finale that they missed that it was empty. And now that folks are discussing it being empty, there’s like this desire to see it still as a wholly good thing. To hold onto that excitement. Which I totally understand, because it seems like such a romantic idea. That he could inherit the thing that Jaha and all the Chancellors in history had. There’s appeal in that. But… he didn’t, and it’s not–emptiness is not a positive symbol in western media, guys. The bottle is empty because the Baton is a hollow dead object now. No more chancellors, no more Jaha, no more Ark ambitions of old. It represents a past dream that is out of sight of the current characters. He gets to a place where this potential symbol of leadership is in reach, and what’s it to him? This symbol that meant so much to Jaha has been reduced to a passing curiosity by a window. It’s not part of his future. Bellamy can’t preserve it and he can’t even drink it, just like he can’t act on the future of the rest of his people when he’s stuck up in space. His family is out of reach and the girl he loved is gone and the promise of a fresh start on Earth (written! right there on the bottle!) turned out to be an empty promise. They never had a chance… the world was gonna end in 8 months regardless of his and Clarke’s choices. This show is so fucking sad you guys. This is why I made myself cry writing about Bellamy in the Ark after I watched the finale.

The Baton is a piece of visual irony because the bottle now represents the hollowness (the ending) of the thing it used to represent in s1. They could have had Bellamy pick up any prop that had a positive and hopeful indication of his role, but they chose to give him the saddest and darkest prop they could. It’s marginally less depressing than a handgun or a photo. He picks it up but because it’s empty for him. (unlike the friend/family standing beside him, who together represent the true hope and the final image of the delinquents’ fortitude.)   That empty hollow bottle is the fragility of life and the tenuousness of survival in the face of a burning fireball of nature fucking you over (note: also a big whopping symbol visible in the same shot.) It’s the UNFAIRNESS of everything that has happened to these kids since the show started–they tried so hard and got this far and the bottle (the dream of Earth)–is *fucking empty*. They never had a chance on that world. It was always going to end.

[read a lot more below the cut, including meta #2.]

In terms of leadership this is the irony of the hollow Baton: Bellamy, who tried so hard to be a leader who was good and strong, and struggled to find his way, has finally has grown into a person who has a more balanced leadership style. This was foreshadowed in him letting go of Octavia and thematically cemented by him letting Clarke go in 413. Thus meaning he is finally “ready” by The 100’s morbid storytelling standards, finally balanced. Except now he’s faced with a situation where the ONLY thing he actually is in charge of is 6 people in a ghost-filled space bucket. Ding ding ding, it’s irony time! Whoo. XD …Meanwhile the world burns below and his love sacrificed herself…brings us to the other half of the irony, where i agree with pretty much the whole shipdom: they never got to have that drink. Because he didn’t carpe diem, didn’t open himself to the person he loves (thanks @velvet-tread). The universe is having one sick laugh at Bellamy Blake in 413, visually epitomized in that bottle.

I know my dramatic self has repeated this several times, but for real now ok— the Baton is literally empty bc it’s metaphorically empty. Drained of purpose. The old ways are no good, they’re surviving on their own, together. New generation. What matters here and now is that Bellamy and his friends will fight to stay alive as long as they can, even as hope burns away. They have each other and they have time so they’re going to stick together and try to survive. But what does the symbol of the Baton mean to that equation? To their future? Nothing–it’s empty. He’s holding it, accepting leadership, even as it’s a working like a visual pun.

ALL THAT BEING SAID---I do think it's fair to say that it being empty has little to no meaning aside from the fact that it was already drunk in an earlier episode and they needed to keep continuity. In that case, the only symbol that matters is the fact that it says "BATON" on it. Which is legit. BUT if we're going to speculate that its emptiness has meaning, then I'm going to say it definitely has a tragic and ironic meaning.

II. That age old leadership contest this fandom is obsessed with? After 4 seasons I think the point of The 100 is that it’s futile and nobody ‘wins’ bc it’s actually an endless struggle of self that C,B,K,A and J all wrestle with, where the “person” they’re competing with is their own failures until they individually learn to be wiser. That’s why the person who ended up in charge was the young interloper who wasn’t even a player til now….bc our main politically-driven characters aren’t in the story to win the leadership prize in the eyes of fandom, they’re in the story to grow.

I’m gonna go right to the explicit symbols of leadership in 413 and point out this: as of 413’s ending, Clarke’s *not* in charge of the future of their people and Bellamy is *not* in charge of the future of their people–Octavia is. While the show gave Clarke a heroic “death” and gave Bellamy friendship + an empty liquor bottle of used up dreams, Octavia was given the clothes / headpiece of the commander and stepped out to make a speech in front of the last of humanity. She has the support of the former leaders and the faith of the remaining majority. ((Whether you like Octavia as commander or not, that is what’s happening on the show right now. FWIW, I was hoping all season that it’d end with Indra.)) While Octavia is probably gonna be spending 6 years off screen going through what Clarke and Bellamy have gone through the last 4 seasons (i.e. emotional tests of being in power), Bellamy and Clarke both have a *reprieve* of leadership. AND ISN’T THAT KIND OF AMAZING? Bellamy only has to be strong and protective for six of his friends–that small team stuff is right up his wheelhouse. He doesn’t have to make decisions of mass death that cause him a season and a half of self-recrimination and doubt. Likewise, Clarke only has to be strong and protective for one person–she doesn’t have to make those mass death choices that cause her to break down crying or have horrific nightmares. She can love one person, unreservedly, without being torn apart by disparate loyalties.

One of the major themes for all the main characters on this show (except Octavia, who is on a different track) has been “How do I learn be a good leader?“ Well, I think 413 wrapped that up with a pretty bow–if the “bow” is the head/heart convo, Clarke’s choice to sacrifice herself, the Baton, and Octavia’s commander wardrobe. Honestly I could make a whole separate and much longer post about leadership as a journey for Clarke, Bellamy, Abby, Kane, and Jaha (guest starring Lexa and Roan as static roadmarks), but not today. I’ll just summarize and say that I think the last 4 seasons have been about the maturation process of Clarke and Bellamy’s leadership skills, starting as people who have the traits but not the wisdom/practice. Then pile on 4 seasons of triumphs and mistakes. By 413, Bellamy’s maturation process ends in letting go of attachment and Clarke’s maturation process ends in self sacrifice (foreshadowed by her taking the nightblood in 408).

I really really hope that the show uses the timeline to age up the characters in a way that the writers move on from this leadership question. That journey is done–Clarke, Bellamy, Kane, and Abby have all gone through a lot. When we meet them again, I don’t want to see them question their decisions every episode. Let them own their choices and move forward!! They’re grown-ups now omg. Give them all new dilemmas please.

If this is really a reboot for the show and for the characters then let’s tell a new story. “What will we do to survive?” is always gonna be the center of the series but I hope the writers approach it in a new way, that it’s not about the toll of constantly escalating power. That journey is done.  It’s been told, and by the end of s4 our favorites have all grown and changed as a result of it. When the survivors emerge from the bunker neither Clarke nor Bellamy will be in charge–so I hope the show takes this opportunity to try new things for their characters. For example, explore the drama of small group politics. Explore family in a way that isn’t just about conflict. Explore discovering love again when everything you used to understand about your loved one has changed. Explore new people and new alliances and new tests. Let’s see ADVENTURE again.

By s5, Clarke and Bellamy are free of the agonies of traditional leadership, now responsible only to their small family clusters. We’ve never seen them this separate from group obligation. I want to see what kind of people that reprieve has made them. Please @the100writers, show us the characters growing new directions.

[kiokubu]

MIIKA

Maybe try to take some aspects from his Persona 5 version because that seemed to really work well (if it can still work even without his backstory with Kazu, that remains to be seen) 

His talent doesn’t feel like it should be centered around service 

Need to find a balance between just how antagonistic he’s supposed to be versus slight sympathy but either way he needs to have his whiny bitch sides of his personality pushed back behind the scenes

There’s no way he hasn’t killed people,ever 

He’d probably be a killer, but maybe if he stops being such a whiny bitch with a deathwish, he’ll value his life enough to not. 

Maybe it didn’t need to be explicitly stated, but as per Finnish tradition, he is heavily against small talk. 

SKULL

Is hyposensitive to touch, leading to her to crave touch (and having a hard time keeping her hands off objects). She is often not aware of being touched or bumped unless it’s more forceful. 

When she was younger, would chew on things like pens and erasers a lot. She was also prone to wanting to rough play on the playground, not always very conscious of what others around her wanting, leading to her tackling and wrestling other kids and not really being cognizant of the fact that they felt attacked, not like they were playing. This did not help her socially.  

Really likes those squishy toys and has a lot of them laying around in her room/stuffed into her backpack. 

A lot of foods taste the same to her, unless if they are extreme in taste. This is why she likes extremely sugary foods and struggles with bland food, which tastes gross to her. 

Tends to run more than walk, runs up stairs taking two steps at a time, etc. 

She idealises strong protagonists who can be sassy but stoic and also who are heroic. She really wants a group of friends (or “comrades” or “companions”) who she could trust to fight with in the event of a zombie apocalypse. Wearing skimpy clothing is a part of this setup, too. She isn’t against other females but quietly prefers more male friends because she enjoys being a cute girl who likes these kind of games most girls aren’t into, and being the only girl in a group like that. It shouldn’t be exaggerated, but as a result of that, she may be a little lowkey bitchy towards any females who would get near her friend-group, viewing them as threats. 

Possibly grew up in South Florida as opposed to Virginia Beach, such as around the Miami area (or she could have lived in both at different points). 

Her murder plan would possibly be a little similar to Maizono’s, luring a guy who might be attracted to her somewhere isolated. I don’t know exactly how she’d kill them, but I like the idea that their corpse would be found in a pool, after having been in there for a few hours. Despite appearing like an idiot, it’d be nice if her case was actually pretty tricky to solve. During the trial, she would potentially try to throw the blame onto someone else, claiming something something video games. Once singled out as the culprit, she would start to get a lot more agitated, insisting over and over that it’s impossible that she did it. Towards the end after being cornered, she would start getting crying sprites and more or less be trying to justify her murder, even if only to herself, angrily claiming that that guy (the victim) didn’t actually care about her anyway, so who cares, he was probably just hoping she’d be gullible enough to show him her tits and have no idea what he actually wanted (worded less clunky), that he just thought she was some annoying weird freak like everyone else. She’d say that EVERYONE there just wants to get out of this place, even if she tries to say it’s a fun game, she just wants out, she wants out, she wants to go home, she wants to sleep in her own bed, she wants to see her father again (on that note, would be pretty susceptible to motive videos too). More out of a moment of panic than her actual feelings, she would claim that she wishes they all died, because she knows they all see her as the joke character anyway (paraphased), and basically starts projecting her years of memories of bullying on them. It’d be nice if someone said something nice to her before she died that could help calm her down a bit for her execution, tbh. 

Her background suffering socially should really be fleshed out and made more relevant, especially since years of severe bullying would change your character, so just a quick tour of things that happened to her: had her vita smashed, her ds stolen, she was asked out by a guy as a joke and laughed at by a group of people, generally mocked daily, experienced racist jokes and remarks, generally treated like she didn’t exist and excluded/deliberately ignored, and one time someone made a fake social media account with her name (and the icon being an unflattering picture they took without her noticing) and wrote embarrassing things under it and followed a bunch of people in the school so it would get around. (interestingly, she would definitely hold a grudge over these things and hate her bullies rather than forgive them, but would be sympathetic towards a pedophile who kidnapped her... stockholm syndrome-prone or something else?) 

Maybe this further explains her extreme loyalty to anyone who’s nice to her, even if they’re a serial killer (she may also have less empathy for non-comrades due to her past, further explaining why she’s so chill with it) 

Also likes visual stims, has those little clear wands filled with water and glitter and will play with them a lot whenever she isn’t gaming (she almost always has something in her hand) 

Maybe idolises Samantha Maxis from zombies (background lore, some little girl who was killed and now controls the zombies and something revenge) 

DAISUKE

He still might have some kind of yakuza ties I just don’t know how 

He possibly does a kind of martial art as a personal hobby? 

He’d possibly kill, he wouldn’t be motivated by anything on the outside though, so that kind of thing wouldn’t work. He’d be motivated by getting out just so he isn’t, you know, trapped in a killing game only. But he might not be willing to kill out of logic-- it’s not like they know the world is ended, so couldn’t they get in serious trouble with the law? And how can they know the mastermind will actually keep their word and let them go? So basically his skepticism would be what would keep him from going along with things. 

ICE HOCKEY

He’d be difficult to date because he’s bad with vulnerable feelings, and despises emotional weakness because it’s nothing something he’s ever really personally felt. So he’d basically suck at comforting a girl, being more likely to tell her it shouldn’t bother her and she should just get over it, with him genuinely thinking he’s handling the situation flawlessly. Because he’s extremely driven and has never really been prone to those negative feelings, he really just doesn’t get it, and that’s why he’d probably work best dating a fellow elite athlete, because he really wouldn’t have patience for a girl who doesn’t have his energy and drive. 

If Fuyumi wasn’t in the game, he would have possibly been driven to commit a murder because he’d be very disturbed by the possibility of falling behind as an ice hockey player and would not be able to tolerate just standing around and doing nothing. But since Fuyumi is in the game, he couldn’t have actually done that-- and once she dies, it shows that even without memories of them getting closer, he still valued her memory more than that. 

That said, he’s still really driven to get the fuck out of there, and back to the ice rink. So, he’d probably be a character more motivated to find a way out rather than just sitting around and accepting the situation. 

He has headphones and the only thing that plays through them is very energetic metal and rock. Loudly.

Likes tonkatsu a lot, and shogayaki. He doesn’t like weak bitch vegetable dishes because he needs MEAT to make him strong on the ice. Well it’s not that he’s literally like that, but it’s true he doesn’t really find vegetable-based dishes to really give him the energy he needs. 

Spellings for Shinya could be  心矢 (heart, arrow), 新哉 (new, start),  進弥 (move on, progress) or  伸弥 (extend, progress) 

One time maybe he did get tips from Makeup Artist. They got along unexpectedly well, considering. 

TSURU

Dissociates fairly often and will just draw a complete work of art in an hour while completely on a different plane of reality. You can get his attention it might just take a little bit. 

He was basically suicidal since like, 4 and would try to bang his head against walls and stuff and also wrap cords/wires around his neck and this continued on for a lot of his early childhood then it calmed down, but it was kind of concerning for a bit

In addition to being denied food there could have been some physical abuse at times, so he would get some bruises and if anyone asked he’d brush it off and claim he’s clumsy but if you pay attention he is really not clumsy at all 

Like I said, he’s probably borderline but he’s not aware of this and if anyone ever suggested the possibility he would not take it very well or even consider it because he doesn’t have any problems at all 

He probably didn’t betray Kaii over a single thing randomly, he probably slowly started to feel like Kaii was going to betray him over the course of weeks or months so it wasn’t quite “oh no they saw my sketchbook” 

Is remarkably very high functioning for being borderline, has one major difference against a main stereotype though, which is that he’s possibly aroace (not confirmed though, but either way, is grey-aroace or whatever), so he doesn’t have the whole “in a new relationship constantly that always ends dramatically and painfully” thing going on, but it is worth mentioning that he stockpiles friends like you’d stockpile supplies for the zombie apocalypse. Like he has a lot of backups, rather than talking to a single person too much. It’s kind of like trying to max out a strategy game. Anyway, rather than necessarily embodying the kind of “yandere girl(boy)friend” image that bpd usually gets in media, there’s more of a focus on a weak sense of identity, emotional outbursts, rage than comes and goes at times at random (often followed by emptiness), self-harm and suicide ideation. Also paranoia and at times potentially a weaker grasp over reality (since Maison’s probably not going to have this as much anymore anyway).

(Actually maybe that’s why he’s so resistant to going blind-- or one major reason-- because if he’s basing his entire identity around what he is as an artist, if he loses access to that then literally everything is empty from what he can see to what he feels. So that’s probably too much that couldn’t be brought back from. Similar situation with losing a limb, or at least, arms I guess)

RURI

Sensory issues mostly relate to sound and touch. She’s picky about bedding, unable to tolerate old and bumpy bedding, needing to to be a very particular fabric. Also doesn’t do well with new, stiff clothing, and is also very particular about fabrics here. She doesn’t always dress very well for the weather because she’s more concerned about these details than temperature. 

Hates having dirty hands-- isn’t terrified of germs, just really can’t stand the feeling. Is picky about hand wash because if it leaves her hands feeling dry, the feeling is distressing. 

It isn’t a constant, but has a habit of walking on her toes. 

Isn’t really a fast walker, gets overwhelmed and ends up taking breaks from walking like sitting on a bench for a bit frequently. 

Is sensitive to noise, and when combined with a lot of walking/going out/light/heat/stimulation in general, ends up with a severe headache towards the end of the day. 

Her favourite food is ginger snaps, and she has a particular brand she buys, with nothing else working. She has a few other foods (including more nutritious ones, fortunately) that she likes, but generally only likes a small number of the same exact foods and isn’t good about eating anything else. 

She possibly commissioned Savannah to make her a robotic version of a pet animal from her world (the Snowickle one). It now follows her around and, at a first glance, is very lifelike, until you hold it, or realise that she never buys food for it and that it sometimes needs its batteries recharged. 

If I had to write a situation where she was a killer, it would be self-defense gone genuinely wrong, as there’s no chance she would be willing to kill someone, or to risk being a culprit and getting executed. If she did accidentally kill someone under these circumstances, she would freak out very quickly after the fact and try her best to hide the corpse somewhere that would take longer to find. Although she wouldn’t want everyone else to die, she wouldn’t exactly volunteer up her life immediately either. Through the trial, she would act as she normally does, but be lying about details (such as claiming to have already forgotten who died and purposely suggesting things that suggests she forgot obvious details of the case). Her undoing would at least partially involve driving this too excess, acting excessively useless and clueless compared to normal. Once suspected as the culprit, she’d try to deny it, claiming that she couldn’t move a body, or have the strength to even injure someone else, etc, but would eventually admit to it (relatively) calmly for the situation, accepting her fate. She would try to take her execution with an expressionless face, telling herself to the then that perhaps her death on earth will be the portal back to her homeland. 

She almost withdrew out of school before going to Hope’s Peak because as her mother told her, there was “no point in her getting a high school education” anyway, and quietly this really bothered/hurt her, but at the time just trusted that it was probably true and that it shouldn’t bother her because of that. 

ATTORNEY 

Is a female now!

Possibly nationalities: Slovene, British, Japanese, Romanian, French 

Might take some traits from Assassin-- not the assassin part but like... whatever else 

Probably needs a more compelling backstory or something... something else to stand out 

MAKEUP ARTIST 

[davidcarterr]

Dolan Stearns Interview

Last Saturday saw Brixton's 'Public Service Announcement' taking place in the heart of Shoreditch, an exhibition featuring work from Brixton representatives Dolan Stearns and Brian Delatorre alongside London resident and illustrator Guarab Thakali. Alongside the range of visual stimulus on display – Guarab and Dolan’s illustration work and Brian’s photography offering up a variety of aesthetic inspiration to those of a creative bent – there was also a range of alcoholic stimulus on display behind the bar, with plenty of choice for the discerning drinker just visible through a heaving mob of skateboarders determined to make their Sunday session that little bit harder. I include this seemingly irrelevant titbit mostly to set the scene for there being only one interview from the night, with Dolan, rather than two or even three. Things were already getting blurry by this point and they were only going to get blurrier; luckily I was still holding it together enough to sit down with Dolan in a corner of the smoking area to discuss tattooing, fag packets, skinhead reggae and the similarities between necks and ballbags, amongst other things…

The Brixton Public Service Announcement show is a few legs deep now - how did the idea of doing a travelling art show come about? Where have you visited so far?

It came about with Brixton hitting me up to do art shows overseas - who's going to say no to that?! It's been fun so far, people getting to see my art in person; good vibes, free alcohol, no complaints there.

Which came first for you, skating or art?

I think artwork came first, learning how to draw in elementary school; then I started skating when I was six and it all kind of just fell into one.

Who are some of your major influences when it comes to drawing?

Oh man, there's a lot. None really come to mind really fast, but any good illustration works, painting, abstract stuff...just visual things really.

Outside of visual things, what gets you hyped to draw?

Boredom...but I'm always drawing. If I go get a beer somewhere I'll always have a little piece of paper or something to draw on. I've just always done it, I can't not draw. It doesn't matter what it is. Sometimes I'll try to draw and nothing will happen, but I still have fun - it uses up some energy, just like skating.

It seems as if you often experiment with drawing on different surfaces - cigarette packets etc - how does this playing with textures inspire you?

Well with cigarette packets, I just notice them everywhere. I picked one up one day to scribble on and draw a face and that was it. I like the plastic covering the front, framing the faces I draw. It's just trash, I find beauty in trash - drawing on it, painting on it, turning it into art.

And I guess you've already got the original artwork on there to kind of riff off of... [I then descend into a rambling question about whether cigarette packets here, with their purposefully stark imagery, would work better or worse with regards to use for art, which somehow Dolan deciphers.]

It's funny, because they have all the crazy sayings on them right? So if I found a bunch of those to draw on out here, I think that would be stuck in my mind. The creature I'd draw on it would probably go off of that. But in America, they are way more colourful. You find one on the ground that's been there a while, it's been stepped on a few times and got a nice patina on it, there's just something about it that looks cool.

How did your tattoo work come about and has it influenced the other side of your art, or vice versa?

Well the tattooing came about, I got really into the history of that and researching it, so with tattooing my art has definitely changed. Learning what to do and not do, it's taught me a lot...doing too many dots, blowing out the lines, thinking about how it'll heal up and look in ten or twenty years.

And I guess that feeds back into creating art with different textures, tattooing different areas of the body...

Oh yeah, and some are way harder than others. I feel like the stomach is one of the hardest spots to tattoo, it involves a lot of stretching. I'll go through a phase of doing a bunch of tattooing but no stomachs, then I'll get one and think "I don't even know if I remember how to do this anymore..."

The guy who did my neck said that's some of the easiest skin to tattoo...he said that and ballbags are very similar...ballbags and necks are the same skin.

[There was no real answer to this and I'm not sure that there could be, I'm only including it for a sense of what it's like being stuck in the corner with me as your interviewer on a Saturday night. Luckily I'm not yet inebriated enough to push this point any further.] Other than this exhibition with Brixton, have been commissioned to do work for many other skate companies?

Not really, just with my sponsors really - Indy, Mob, OJ's. For Indy to hit me up with that stuff, how could I say no to that? I mean fuck, I feel honoured that those guys would want my artwork. Brixton have hooked me up with a lot of stuff too.

Do you have any particular favourite, memorable board graphics that particularly stood out to you growing up?

Not really, I actually never paid much attention to that stuff. I do look back now at old boards and think yeah, so and so's graphic is sick, but it's totally different now. The old school graphics are one of a kind, now everything has been so washed out and so jocked that when you see a new board graphic you think you've probably seen it before. But yeah, even as a kid I don't remember one board graphic I particularly liked, I'd just get the boards and skate them. I guess I should have done, as I do art… [laughs]

Outside of skating and drawing, it seems from your couple of playlists for Jenkem and What Youth that your music tastes are pretty varied - what's been the soundtrack like for this trip so far?

It's been a lot of Jah...some Rasta vibes, very mellow. Lots of skinhead reggae, I'm really into that right now. It's really upbeat and positive, you put it on and immediately start jiving.

With the rise of social media apps such as Instagram offering up and instant gratification hit for the public when it comes to art (whether that be drawn, painted, photographed), do you find that things have become harder for an artist to make a living off what they do? Has it made things easier due to a readily available, far flung audience? Or does the answer lie somewhere between the two?

It's hard, I mean I've randomly found people on Instagram who are jocking my shit. They'll follow me, I'll check their page out and they're totally ripping it off. The comments will be people going "Oh this is sick, it's so original", and I’ll leave a similar comment just to fuck with them. It's hard to put anything out there without someone jocking it - but it is good and bad, you do reach a wider audience. I went through this Instagram phase a couple of months ago where I unfollowed a lot of pages, because I felt like it was brainwashing me into making a certain type of art. I come up with an idea, I think it's an original idea but maybe I've seen it three months ago on Instagram and I liked it. But it's definitely half and half, it is rad having a free platform for your work.

To finish up, where do you see yourself taking your art - a potential career, or more a hobby?

Oh yeah - it's kind of a joke though; I want to create fine art style works and sell them for loads of money, but entirely as a joke. That's my dream for when I get old, make fine art pieces and sell them to rich people. That's all that shit is, just a brush stroke on a canvas and then you can sell it for five grand. That's my goal, to sell out!

Interview by Jono Coote. Photos by Jerome Loughran.

Shop for all things Brixton HERE

Dolan Stearns Interview published first on https://medium.com/@LaderaSkateboar

[horrible-monstrosity]

17 We open with friendly neighborhood dumbass Akko studying studiously, sitting on a bench in a sunny grassy field which she ignores in favor of a massive stack of books like the bookworm Lottie only sort of is, while redhead side witch bitches about dropping out of school because she's just too cool. An... interesting entrance into the episode, to be sure.

Redhead turns herself into a dashing boys' school student. ..... Did the spell make her grow bollocks

"even though no one's asking you?" is a pretty weird way to ask someone about their dream. I don't think anyone asked redhead to become a broomdancer, or robots girl to become robots, or... anyone to do anything they just wanted to do. and again, she has already accomplished what she says she wants to do- the yeti, in the next episode robert girl, the fairy strike... this show does not know what it has done or what it's doing.

... Wait, are they really here to just fucking steal the grail from the school? why? I've already forgotten why they wanted it, and why petty theft by a couple of randos is so easily accepted as a method of getting it back. Are there no witch authorities who might have wanted in on this? Later redhead says it "belongs" to the guys' school as a way to deflect explaining how it works... shrugg

Have I mentioned yet that I like the supporting trio more than the main three? I could probably write a whole fucking essay on that. All three of them are straight-up archetypes... but that alone is enough to make them at least basically functional as characters. Because that's *why* archetypes end up as archetypes- it's a grouping of character tropes and traits that hits a chord with people. And that's why "cunning normal" was such a fucking retarded concept, Kiznaiverrrrrrr-

It's kinda weird she stays disguised even after getting caught... I guess this is actually consistent; it's been shown before you need to use another spell to transform back, meaning unlike most settings ontological inertia actually applies. but then later on the transformation seems to start slowly undoing itself for no reason anyway. How does this work? magic router?? why'd akko even take that?... whatever

we finally get some violence against witches (threatened but never put though because of course not), which doesn't explain anything but at least characterizes the guys as your entirely typical medieval-styled witch not-likers. The fact that this is what passes for an improvement in this fuckshow of a shitshow is just fucking sad. there are some actually tense and brutal scenes in there, some nice visual shots, like akko getting thrown on the table tied up and the distant side-shot of the guy getting hit by the armor... that aren't killed by wackyness! Amazding! ... Though it still doesn't quite work, probably because the show is still clearly too light-hearted to, say, actually use the torture devices. But them being pulled out isn't a wacky gag either aside from a bit of the reaction. what tone is this?

"y u no use ur magic on me??" "because there's no reception here dumbass the fuck do you think this works like"

Yet another interesting unaddressed plot point- magic was what got them into this mess and turned blong guy into an armored monster, and while a witch was the one who stopped it little to no magic was used in doing so, she basically just needed to smack him hard enough. It seems like the takeaway from this is that witches are perfectly fine people, but magic still needs to fucking die. hmm

by the way what happened to the wordfinding plot this episode

So clearly this was Croi boi testing her angery magicks, but I have to wonder... *why* is anger magic the strongest sort? I mean, it can basically only be arbitrary, but how convenient that her evil energy-having plan can't just go off by spreading feelings of sunshine and happiness.

18 "trained to catch every gost in 12 days, but the goal is one gost in one year"... This is literally, exactly, what Lottie says. What? Literally one minute in and like 20 seconds of dialogue and already this shit makes not a single lick of fucking sense.

akko trips and fucks things up again okay we fucking get i- why was that enpugh to breakm the fucking robort? akko's own body must be the most destructive object know to mankind.

We return to the generic wackey-qwackey humorisms the show had mostly shed in the last couple episodes, and it feels more forced than ever before. After all these thng I can't actually believe Akko's still this shit... and apparently the show itself doesn't either, since as soon as Akko finds something she can actually do it entirely stops. Once she starts working as a convincer/go-between/gopher, not a single thing gets broken. In other words, Trigger just abandoned her character development to churn out and force out more mediocre obligate humor. But at least it was only for, like, half of the episode.

on the other hand once she gets her shit back together the cards get brought back. That was always a kind of interesting little thing, that Akko knew some things even other witches didn't because of the fandom-ing that brought her to the school where she was otherwise so far behind everyone else. I mean, that just raises the question of why the other witches apparently never saw these cards and I feel like I asked exactly this many an episode ago so let's just move the fuck on again

isn't the ship from the OVA? it looks like the shiny rod... and like the same old vaguely eva-lagann looking shit. I forget what it was from Gainax that looked like that, but definitely it was something.

"I already know I won't be as good as Constance"... Man, when Akko's good, she's fucking good. She really isn't trampling over someone else with the conviction that she's always right about everything, she's just so excited she wants to draw a fucking robort. And then Candace loves it and is inspired to make it actually work. it's fucking cute man

gosts viral on social media Normies can't see gosts, but presumably Akko can. How is this actually determined? Rather, the deeper problem is that the line between witches and normies was never defined. There's some implication that it's hereditary, since everyone aside from Akko comes from a "witching family", but the very existence of Akko belies that. So if anyone can train to become a witch, how much training do you do before you become witchy enough to see gost? Actually, should people with latent potential be able to see gost? If Akko is bad at becoming a witch, logically there should be some people who would be better at it relative to her. Shouldn't there be some people in the crowd who can see gost as is? Also, do any males exist with any amount of witch potential, who could see ghosts on their own? If they had never called attention to it by doing the "gost can't see normie" thing, there'd be nothing to really question- you could assume witching is a skill like any other that people could aquire, that's often handed down through families like any other job or career, and that some people are just kind of terrible at. Buuuuut they had to get in this lame "muh on muh cell phone at tuh evuuuunnnt" joke and didn't think it through. Good work, Trigger, keep it up

how is many crow? how many gost We're shown each cube succing up at least one gost each, then multiple cubes forming one crow, but then there's a whole fucking lotta fucking crows. How many gosts were there? How many were left after the large amount that were already taken out? There's just an unmeasured infinite supply of gost somewhere offscreen to conveniently move in as needed. Trigger didn't think this through. And then a super-giant mega-crow shows up which must have used up even more gost. Great

and then the robort- OKAY TRIGGER WE GET IT YOU WUZ GAINAX ONCE CALM THE FUCK DOWN this is just so boring. YEAH, A FUCKING ROBOT, WE GET IT TRIGGER, YOU FUCKS HAVE FUCKING ISSUES. GAINAX-SENPAI WILL NEVER FUCKING NOTICE YOU, GET OVER IT. ... reactions from the peanut gallery are on point tho. akko even credits constantinople for her part in making this possible. she's a good kid. so good. too pure for this fucking show - the robort runs out of energy- WHY DID YOU NOT BRING A ROUTER YOU FUCKNAUTS THERE WAS ONE IN THE IMMEDIATELY PRECEEDING EPISODE WHY - it's a drill. it's a fucking drill. ........ i want to cry acid.

team cubes it blastign off againnnnnnfuck this gay earth

aww man akko doesn't even want to be thanked but compton gives her a training broom anyway. it's beautiful.

19 an old tradition and a new power... croix-was-write is written into the very fabric of reality in this show. good and then mom-diana fucking dies. LOL BYE BITCH.

why would you have the head-appointing ceremony randomly every few years rather than, like, when you need to appoint a new family head? it would even affect the exact same urgency, just have events come to a head so she needs to be pulled out of school and become family head now. why are they electing a baby teen as family head anyway? what age are these kids, anyway? akko looks like ten sometimes.

the second diana says "muh respekt for convention!!" you know she's gonna be treated as full of shit. it's over something we've never heard of and had no reason to assume, anyway. i don't even know "you know about the words?" you've blabbed them to everyone including the rival school that wants to execute you all, so why are you surprised?

...... LOL WHUT THE AUNT LITERALLY HAS GLOWING RED DEMON EYES WHAT THE FUCC?

.... Andrew is one of the best fucking characters in this shitshow of a show. The amount of fucks he's come to not give... Just invite the witch girl your father knows and hates to ride in your car squished up between him and yourself. And dad-man just can't fucking do anything about it. Holy shit lol and lol these british people sure fucking love soccer. boy i sure bet this isn't hammed-in foreshadowing for some fucking bullshit that's going to happen in the last episodes!!!! i'd fucking bet my lyfe on it !!!!!!

what fuck is diantha wearing We get another one of those nice moments that makes me hate the rest of the show. Akko, being energetic and people-oriented as always but somewhat more constrained due to the awkward and unfamiliar situation, tries to go for the teddy bear as an attempt to start some conversation with Diana... Diana yells at her not to touch it, and she actually does not touch it. Now go back and watch the robot episode again. HMMMMMMmmmmm Except it wasn't about the bear, it was about the box of Chariot cards, because of course Diantha actually likes Chariot, bet no one ever saw that twist comingHEY WAIT A MINUTE, didn't one of the earlier episodes hinge on Akko knowing something Diantha didn't because of the cards?? It can't be because Akko was the only one to autistically memorize them all, because Diantha is smurt character and should have remembered it at least somewhat just from reading it normally. kindness from diana, when the rest of the family and household is by akko's own statement even worse.

old lady yells at akko while unfitting music plays

[javodvarka]

By now, unless you’re living under a rock or incommunicado up on a space Ark, you’ve seen the season 5 trailer for The 100. And you can bet I have some impressions. So strap in, space cowboy.

I have a love/hate relationship with trailers because while it’s great to see new footage, the potential for spoiling something due to the Zapruder-like analysis we use to dissect every little frame really makes me hesitate to go in too deep. Over on Reddit, we picked apart the season 3 trailer until we kinda figured a lot of plot points out that took a bit of wind out of my sails. I guess I’m one of those people who like things to surprise me.

I’m not going to watch this trailer more than five times, which I know probably makes me a Bad FanTM, but I still want a sense of fresh wonder when I watch season 5 and not over-analyze a piece of media which I THINK is intentionally misleading in parts to begin with. Oh, there are some definite “I don’t think this shot really immediately follows the previous one, they just want us to THINK that it does.” We see you, JRoth and company.

Not falling for your shenanigans. Trying to play with our emotions and shit.

First Off, Can We Talk About How Gorge it All Looks?

Let me start out by saying the very first thing that popped into my mind…before the characters, the fighting, the conflict, the angst…I thought “goddamn, there are some really gorgeous shots in this trailer, they’ve really upped their cinematography game.”

I mean, look at this shit:

    LOOK AT IT.

I think the shot of the rover and Clarke on the cliff overlooking the forest is my favorite. That’s the one that got me to lean forward and say “oh hold up, they ain’t playin’, look at this!” But check out that desert sandstorm. Those space pods. That unique angle overlooking Clarke and the wreckage of Polis. There’s a real eye for scope here that I’ve never felt before save for perhaps Jaha and Murphy crossing the Dead Zone in season 2. Many of these shots are serving up all kinds barren earth realness. I can FEEL the sense of loneliness that must eat at Clarke as she explores what’s left of her little piece of earth. If you’re looking for a “show, don’t tell” example of what Clarke’s isolation must feel like…well dude it looks like season 5 is going to deliver visually.

Let me tell you, I’m not a very “let’s take in the scenery” person when it comes to my TV shows and movies. I love great visuals and balk at the overuse of CGI fuckery, but it’s not something that usually sparks off a “dude, did you SEE that?” thought in my brain. So that it’s the first thing that made an immediate impression to me is kind of interesting. And I’m digging it.

I Don’t Know What to Think About Octavia AT ALL and I’m Conflabberated and Conflicterated

Man, I’m so torn with Octavia.

Wait for it…

…………………wait for it……………………………

Where my Umbrugliaheads at??!!

Like, seriously I cannot decide where Octavia sits with me and the trailer does not clarify my position at all. Is she going dark or is she going to be one of the people we can depend on to do the right thing? I see her with Madi and I’m scared of what kind of influence she could exert over her, especially if O’s philosophy and methods diverge from Clarke’s. Octavia likes murder in the key of A and Clarke is more an E minor type of gal.

At times I’ve lamented over the lack of a friendship between Clarke and Octavia, and for obvious reasons their relationship has been chilly. One does not simply get over Clarke’s willingness to let you die in the TonDC bombing. I get the feeling that they only tolerate one another because of their respective relationships with Bellamy, but I REALLY want them to be friends. But now I’m like, what if it never happens the way I want? What if they’re just not MEANT to be friends? What if Octavia doesn’t travel down that “make good” track I desire for her? I have to be fine with that. Not my IP, not my creative endeavor, I’m just along for the wonderful ride.

I will tell you right the fuck now: I don’t trust Octavia one bit. Hells to the no. BUT I WANT TO. That’s my dilemma. And I kinda love the unease this instills in me.

Something that popped in my head about O and the bunker is this: Wonkru is a new thing. So what is the ruleset this new society lives by? Is this something Octavia will have to create? Is she capable of creating laws and rules and consequences for non-compliance after her experience up on the Ark? Her whole existence was pretty much defined by how punitive the Ark society was for just having more than one kid, so how exactly does a person raised and punished by that system create a system for life in essentially the same circumstances? Limited room, limited resources, close quarters, etc. Does she turn to Kane and Jaha for help? I think it’s obvious given their role in her life – and responsibility for some of her pain – that they exert some sort of influence over her. And that leads me to my SWAG (Sophisticated Wild Ass Guess) about O and Jaha.

I think Octavia kills Jaha while in the bunker. I know, this isn’t necessarily revolutionary as this has been speculated for a while now. But I think Jaha goads Octavia into killing him. Let me break it down: Jaha has a messiah complex, a need to save “his people.” Having failed spectacularly the first time with ALIE, guiding Octavia is his second chance.

At the same time, maybe Octavia is in a compromised position by being the leader of a majority Grounder coalition while having a lot of Skaikru’s old leadership in her ear. I think Grounders are going to grumble about this, cast doubt on Octavia’s commitment to ALL people, and Jaha will see sacrificing himself on her sword as a way to consolidate her power and remove any doubt that she’s committed to Wonkru. It moves Jaha’s great mission forward and maybe is a way, in his semi-twisted mind, makes up for his past sins, one of which being enforcing the laws that killed Octavia’s mom.

I’m excited by where O’s story could go. I feel she was kinda a throw-away plot-adjacent character until S4 and now seeing her come into prominence without really knowing what her priorities or intentions are is pretty exciting. But she also scares the poop outta me. And I think my fav part of the trailer was when she growled “choose.” I don’t know what’s happening there, but I’m PRETTY sure it’s a moment of badassery. And I’m smitten with female badasses.

Which makes a great segue to…

Truly Madly Deeply

So, while I’m watching the trailer, I’m quickly falling deeply in love with someone who got maybe less than 20 seconds of screen time: Charmaine Diyoza.

I kinda started sweating it because while she was cool and calm and collected and has a bit of swag, I’m also pretty certain she’s going to fuck our fam up something fierce. So I was like “damn, I better keep this under wraps because Diyoza has me SHOOK, but she’s bad news, can’t let people know I’m into her, right?”

Then I go online and EVERY FUCKING PERSON IS INTO DIYOZA. Well, those in my T100 twittersphere at least, which is curated carefully to only include the coolest yet weirdly deranged fans of this show who are into threesomes and cannibalism and alien theories and hurting one another with emotional gifs from all the emotional shows.

My shame washed away. There were others like me who loved this person who will hurt our beloved characters and we’re so here for it.

But I have to say, in order to make that strong an impression in only ~20 seconds of screen time, kudos on the casting of Ivana Milicevic as Diyoza.

I will declare it outright: I’m firmly on “Team Fuck Us Up, Diyoza.” Please play with every little emotion I have and suck out my soul until I’m a withered husk. I. AM. HERE. FOR. IT.

Also I kinda get the feeling that maybe Diyoza is a “been there, done that, stole the tee shirt” version of Clarke without all the emotion and sentimentality and complex moral conflict that has been Clarke’s brand since the jump. Diyoza is the “fuck it, let’s do it” future (bizarro) version of Clarke who seems waaaaaaaaaaaay more ruthless than our sweet baby Griffin. I am positively giddy at the thought. I love character parallels. And two strong women at cross purpose, neither totally in the right/wrong? Let the queens reign, baby, and let the bodies fall where they may.

Madi Is Kinda Awesome and This Is New For Me

You guys, I usually HATE kids in entertainment. They are the woooooooooooooorst, bizarrely written by adults who somehow forgot every interaction they’ve ever had with a child and instead write them as stupid proto-human beings with the agency of a jar of mayonnaise. Children, how do they work?

But everything I’ve seen so far has me excited as fuck to meet Madi. And am I here for mama bear grizzly Clarke?

If you know one thing about me it is this: I’m all about Clarke “I’m In Charge Now” Griffin. I’m not just here for it. I’ve bought land and am building a home for it. An underground pool for it. A fire pit? Fuck yeah. I’M HERE FOR IT, GONNA PAY PROPERTY TAXES FOR IT, GOING TO BE BURIED IN THE BACK YARD FOR IT, MY ASS GONNA HAUNT THIS LAND FOR IT.

Madi provides a great opportunity to give Clarke some insight into what a little shit children can be to their mothers and give her a new appreciation for Abby. Abby often maddeningly gets the Skyler White treatment from people on Reddit and I’ve gotten to the point of not being able to speak to those people without risk of banishment. I’m such an anger baby, and here comes my anger baby rant…

WE HATE WHEN THE REAL WORLD AND REAL WORLD SHIT WE DEAL WITH ON THE DAILY IS REFLECTED BACK AT US. Who doesn’t have some form of strife with their moms? Moms are sometimes overprotective and hypocritical and irrational AND GUESS THE FUCK WHAT SO ARE THEIR KIDS. We don’t have perfect moms and we are often shitbirds as their kids, so give mumsy a break. And maybe give her a ring.

This shit just gets me mad because some of it is driven by misogyny thinly veiled as “Abby is the worst because reasons.” And my tolerance for male bullshit, white bullshit, straight bullshit, entitled bullshit, regressive bullshit is quickly reaching nil. See, anger baby.

Abby is a very understandable character if you have any empathy for the woman who raised you, wiped your poopy butt, and was likely your primary caretaker your whole childhood. When Abby goes momma bear with Clarke, I get it. Now we’re going to see Clarke in Abby’s shoes and I wonder just how far – how “hypocritical” and “irrational” – she’ll go to protect Madi. And what will our reactions be?

I think a big theme of this season is going to be our own examination of our biases and perspectives in regards to the tables being turned – Clarke is now Abby. Skaikru are now Grounders. Eligius is now Skaikru. Charmaine is now Clarke. How will we stretch our perceptions of people who have motivations we’ve empathized with before? Or hated before? How willing will we be to accept behavior and rationale once the shoe is on the other foot and that once-understandable rationale is now wielded by a “bad” guy?

Alien Shit

You guys, there’s something rolling around in the abdomen of a man (is it MURPHY??!!) and if you know anything about anything, it’s either a sentient yam OR an alien chest burster. I don’t know how many people are freaking out about this, but instead of me trying to freak out in tandem and posit any theories, I will simply direct you to my ex-podcast partner and the Michael Jordan of GIFs: Jo over at May We Geek Again. Warning…she’s kinda really into her theory and passionate about it and like an Alien movie historian and…well…you know….

Enjoy the crazy: https://twitter.com/MayWeGeekAgain/status/974350151358779392

I will say that even the slight possibility of introducing some sort of parasite or Cordyceps or anything from space that becomes a huge threat on earth is exciting as fuck. Leaning hardcore into scifi horror is not something I would have EVER predicted after season 1 and 2, when I thought I knew the show’s brand. But man…if they do this…if they DO THE THING…I’m going to pee myself. And fair to say there will be much gleeful urination from other fans as well. You can use “gleeful urination” in your review quotes, CW.

Wrestling GIF quota met! Yay me! I’m aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawesome.

Quick Hits

Kane is getting into man-bun length hair and I can’t hate on it because I don’t hate man buns oh god there goes my street cred.

This is straight up Dances with Wolves, yo. Tatonka!

Where does O pick up the “love is weakness” line? Is there a world where she becomes a nightblood and takes the Flame?

I dunno how the Flame fits into this season, but I always feel awkward about it because Lexa is in there and Lexa…oof…still a gut punch. Miss you boo.

Adulting looks sooooooooo good on all these characters, especially the menfolk with facial hair like MEN. MANLY MEN DOING MANLY MEN THINGS.

Related: I know a fainting couch is an old-fashioned gendered bullshit thing, but Bellamy and Murphy with facial hair and aged up give me the vapors.

So many misleading cuts/editing in this trailer that it’s hard to really trust much about it. Is that Bellamy with the kobra kai leg sweep on Octavia? Is that Octavia that Bellamy is standing over? Who is anyone really fighting? Who are the fanatics? Who stands against Octavia? Is Zeke friendly? It’s all confusing and misdirecting.

I’m thinking Spacekru gets separated and two or more little groups get down to earth separately…I’d say some go with the Eligius crew and some with Raven.

And I think they get separated because Bellamy decides to only expose a couple of Spacekru’s number’s to the Eligius. He’s just keeping his people safe in a situation full of unknowns, which is prime head AND heart Bellamy.

I’m intrigued by this desert set. Is this shot in Vancouver? Is there some Canadian desert I’m unaware of? Why does some action seem to take place here, a location I would think is hostile to life. IS THERE A DESERT IN SASKATCHEWAN? Is it were all the Sasquatches live? Is Alpha Flight headquartered there?

YES, I MADE AN ALPHA FLIGHT REFERENCE.

The trailer is all things for all people:

Hello good space cleavage Echo!

I worry that I don’t get enough of Raven in this trailer. I want more of her each new season and I feel like I get less than what I need of my sweet, sweet Raven.

Is that a sonic weapon that McCreary is using? TIGHT. Just like Lucio! Except way more murdery.

Did y’all catch that scar across Diyoza’s throat? Could it be a burn from one of those electo-collars they slap on Clarke, or did someone try to cut her throat?

Related: “someone who survives a throat slitting = not to be fucked with” – Jo of MWGA. PREACH.

Speaking of that electro-collar – it’s serving up some major Lincoln-torture-parallels-from-season-1 realness. Lincoln was an unknown potential threat. Clarke is an unknown potential threat…

Is Jonathan is my favorite Fab 5er from the new Queer Eye series?

Kinda diggin’ McCreary’s long mohawk look…he’s serving up Miller from The Expanse realness. Okay, I really need to stop.

Oh lort, don’t even get me started about my fears about who is dying in the finale, because when the cast says they were all weeping, you know it’s a doozy and likely a major player. I think it’s Abby or Kane. But I fear it’s Raven. And if it’s Raven, I don’t know what I’ll do with myself.

Not particularly crazy about dialog getting repeated every season. A minor nitpick, but it’s feeling inorganic at this point.

How many people are in what I can only assume are cryosleep pods?

Where was serial killer Vinson? Did I miss him?

The Bunker’s hottest new club is Blood’s Sweet Faire. Featuring battling siblings. Blood. More blood. 90’s emo makeup. Kane in beard. Poor lighting. Depeche Mode almost inaudibly played so you’re like “is that Depeche Mode or is it in my head”? Microbrews.

I lament the lack of more Echo, Raven, Murphy, Emori, Monty, Niylah, Indra, Gaia, and Harper in the trailer. I realize there’s only so much you can show in a trailer, where there’s limited time to get the broad strokes of season 5 across, but I’m INVESTED in all these beautiful people.

Parting Thoughts

WHERE’S THE TRAILER?!

WHERE’S THE TRAILER?!

WHERE’S THE TRAILER?!

WHERE’S THE TRAILER?!

WHERE’S THE TRAILER?!

WHERE’S THE TRAILER?!

WHERE’S THE TRAILER?!

WHERE’S THE TRAILER?!

WHERE’S THE TRAILER?!

I know nothing about Canada

TWEET/RETWEET: If you enjoyed this review, could you do me a favor and share / retweet / like it on twitter? I hate to ask this because I hate asking anyone to do anything for me, but I’d really appreciate it.

SPOTIFY PLAYLIST OF THE 100 MUSIC!: Hey people who like sounds entering your ear holes! I have a Spotify playlist, which is music from and inspired by The 100. You can find it right here and marvel at my musical tastes. I keep it up to date with anything featured on the show or in promos.

SHIT YOU SHOULD BE WATCHING WHEN NOT WATCHING THE 100: 

These are a couple ICYMI shows that are excellent and you need to come flail with us on Twitter over these series:

The Expanse – a truly great sci fi series that looks freakin’ fantastic, has a great cast, contains some mind blowing moments, and boasts fuckin Chrisjen Avasarala who can rock a red furred cloak like a QUEEN. I swear all fealty to Chrisjen!

The Leftovers – likely the best TV show ever? IMHO, it has everything, including Carrie Coon, who somehow miraculously started “mainstream” acting as a woman in her 30s. She’s a revelation. This whole show is amazeballs. If you ever want to derail my day, just start tweeting Leftovers gifs at me and I’m ruint. RUINT.

There are some The 100 reviewers/recaps/writers you should absolutely be reading, and I offer them up for your enjoyment; I have no affiliation with any of them, save for being a fan:

Selina Wilken – a mix of passionate fandom and truly professional journalism.

Erin Brown – unfairly beautiful writing. Like seriously, stop being so good.

McKenzie Morrell – recapping her damn face off and great interviews with the cast!

Toni_watches – piss your goddamn pants funny photo recaps.

Jo Garfein – great fandom charity auctions.

Disclosure: this is my own indie site. This is on my time, my dime. Becho is endgame.

The 100 – Season 5 Trailer Impressions By now, unless you're living under a rock or incommunicado up on a space Ark, you've seen the season 5 trailer for…