#what i do instead of working on my essay : writing a long review and analysis of one of my favourite doctor who episode

[vidreview]

VIDEO ESSAY ROUNDUP #5

[originally posted march 30th 2024]

it's been a minute since i've done one of these, for a whole host of reasons. the biggest one is that i just haven't been watching very much youtube lately, on account of spending my time making youtube instead. in February i released a scripted essay about the German time travel murder mystery show DARK, while in March i posted an unscripted conversation piece about all the movies i own but haven't watched. i've got a lot more planned for this year, but we're here to talk about other people's essays, not mine. so let's do that!

"Yellow Paint" by Caleb Gamman.

i've talked about Caleb Gamman on this blog before, and no doubt i will continue to do so. he's a fantastic and criminally underrated essayist whose materialist approach to media analysis is a model for the kind of thing anyone making video essays ought to aspire to. nominally about the discourse over yellow paint signposting interactible objects in modern AAA video games, this essay is a disgusted and exhausted act of passive aggression (which turns into regular aggression by the end) against the ways social media and corporate greed have engendered an atmosphere of deliberate ignorance and illiteracy towards games, traditional media, news, politics, everything. it's an entertaining and vindicating watch, full of great points argued with genuine conviction.

"PS1 STORIES - 3D SHOOTING MAKER" by Blue Bidya Game.

this one i found through a friend posting about it. we're looking at a review of a very specific PS1 "RPG Maker" spinoff dedicated to 3D rail shooters a la Star Fox --which is an instant sell for me, a long-suffering Star Fox enjoyer. but it's just as much an in-depth history of the Maker franchise as a whole, which is a lot deeper and more interesting than i ever could've imagined. a lot of research went into this, a task i can only imagine was made incredibly difficult by the language barrier. it's a great little video that packs a lot of charm into its 31 minute runtime, but what i find even more remarkable is Blue Bidya Game's mission statement: "I do sentimental videos on every game in the PS1 library alphanumerically and region-free until I die. Let's get weird and look through low graphical detail windows together. What do you think is out there? What could be just past those blocky hills?" at time of writing, there are 36 videos on Blue Bidya Game's channel, the vast majority of which are below 2000 views. if the quality of this single essay is even remotely indicative of the rest of his catalogue, then this might qualify as one of the most exciting & slept-on works of historical games journalism out there. if you were a fan of Tim Rogers' "Let's Mosey: A Slow Translation Of Final Fantasy VII" series, i think you may have found your new favorite youtube channel. you're welcome

"VR's Greatest Hope, We Thought - Half Life: Alyx Four Years Later" by Brother Burn.

there was a time when i believed wholeheartedly that VR was my beat. i futzed around with the Oculus DK2 at the University of Oklahoma tech lab in, what, 2014? and had my mind blown by the experience of riding a virtual roller coaster. in 2016 my roommate and i went halfsies on an HTC Vive, which arrived on our doorstep the very day that Donald Trump won the presidential election. more on-the-nose symbolism you couldn't possibly ask for-- that is, assuming VR software development & investment kept up its then-rapid pace long enough to support total quadrennial escapism, which it absolutely did not. don't get me wrong, i found a number of titles to love; i made a video about perennial VR classic Beat Saber in 2018, but was plenty charmed by the likes of Arizona Sunshine, The Gallery, Vanishing Realms, Zombie Training Simulator, and especially the fast-paced climbing game To The Top, whose only weakness for me was the limited number of tracks in its (admittedly good) OST with no ability to easily import your own tracks instead. yet for as much as i liked these games, vanishingly little about them was so far beyond what was offered by the tech demos present in Valve's VR pack-in The Lab that you couldn't get an approximately similar experience by just playing that instead. alas, the horizon of possibility for VR games hit something of a ceiling once all the most obvious ludic experiences had been more or less perfected.

anyway, this video by Brother Burn is at least in part about that. i never played Half Life: Alyx, but it certainly seemed positioned to be "VR's Greatest Hope" at the time and so i was naturally drawn in by this essay's title. what it confirmed for me is that i'm glad Alyx exists, but don't feel an especial need to play it. he talks at length about the stealth level "Jeff", which sounds cool as hell and is something i could never under any circumstances subject myself to. i cannot handle horror in VR. there's a section of Arizona Sunshine set in an abandoned mine that i had to psych myself up to finish for three weeks. so it's good, in that respect, to get a breezey overview of Alyx from someone who isn't a Half Life superfan (like me), who gets motion sick in VR easily (also like me), and who clearly came up during a very specific era of youtube (ditto). Brother Burn's style is a time-capsule from 2017 in all the best ways. post-Game Grumps, pre-Breadtube, high effort editing with a lightly self-aggrandizing sense of humor, lives maybe two or three doors down from Errant Signal; i dunno what to say except i find his work charming. that he has less than 2000 subscribers at time of writing is as unfortunate as it is unsurprising.

"remember fingerboards?" by Jeffiot.

this may quietly turn out to be one of my favorite video essays of the year. a history of skateboarding with a history of finger-skateboarding along with a personal history of both into a genuine loveletter to what is objectively a very silly activity? oh yes, thank you very much, i'll take two. the section where he first tries fingerboarding is so surprising and charming, and everything that follows is like… i dunno, freeing? there's something about this video that feels like a substantially relieved exhale, as it's the first really niche thing Jeffiot's done since the astronomical success of his Skull Trumpet essay. the scariest part of being Suddenly Popular after such a long time being totally invisible is the looming specter of What Next. the temptation must've been there to just keep on doing videos investigating the origins of Weird Internet Ephemera forever, since that clearly resonated with a lot of people. instead, here he is doing something totally unrelated, in a realm that none of his new subscribers are likely to be interested in --a supposition at least momentarily supported by the fact that this video only has 14,000 views after a single day (compared to the 100k+ views his last few hit). that number will surely go up, but for the moment i think it's illustrative of the fact that every channel's subscriber count actually contains at least two, probably more, discrete pools of audience. 155,000 subscribers is impressive and substantial, but how many of those people are there for Jeffiot, and how many are there for More Skull Trumpet? all things being equal (which they very much are not), i see that 14k viewership number as a soft indication of Jeffiot's dependable long-term viewers, the people who'll follow him down whatever blind alley he wanders through.

i plugged Jeffiot in the previous roundup, with a lot of time spent analyzing the phenomenon of running a small channel that suddenly gets huge because of a single viral hit. when i wrote that post in january of this year, he'd just exceeded 50,000 subscribers after having only 5,000 a few weeks prior. now, two months later, he's got over 155,000 subscribers. this makes Jeffiot's channel a really useful case study in how one translates good luck into good fortune. the most notable development in my opinion is that quite a lot of Jeffiot's back catalogue has seen an immense increase in viewership as well, something that simply does not happen unless there's a palpable and immediate and consistent qualitative energy shared between the old stuff and The Thing That Went Viral. when i say that the job of a video essayist toiling in sub-5k-views obscurity is to lay the groundwork for getting lucky, this is exactly what i mean. Jeffiot's stuff is high-effort, surprising, and thoroughly entertaining across the board, unique in subject matter yet somehow broadly approachable (that he's clearly very influenced by the work of Tim Rogers over at Action Button is, i'm sure, just a coincidence). i really hope that Jeffiot doesn't take the relatively low viewership of this fingerboard essay as a Failure and vow to stay away from such seemingly off-brand subject matter in the future. it's not a failure (i mean, god, i'd kill for a video of mine to even break 5k in a single day at this point), but rather an indication of confidence and direction. the best artists and creators will walk their path whether you follow them or not. there's no being true to what compels you which also permits universal success, and any attempt to the contrary is a great way to strangle your soul to death. the successes float you on from the sinkers. views and subscribers don't have a linear relationship with monetary success on youtube (unless you rely exclusively on ad revenue, at which point you're already fucked and should probably check a calendar to see if it's still 2015), yet it's so easy to get spooked by them because youtube wants us to be obsessed with analytics. somehow, i think Jeffiot's smart enough to avoid such pitfalls.

"The Mass Extinction Debates: A Science Communication Odyssey" by Oliver Lugg.

this one was suggested to me through my askbox. what strikes me most about this video is how it spends 45 minutes building up the context leading up to the debates about what actually caused the extinction of the dinosaurs, so that you understand what they really represented beyond a simple who's right/who's wrong. i had no idea this was such a recent thing-- 1996, man. that's so in my lifetime. i've always thought the asteroid theory was just uncontroversially true, it never occurred to me that there would have been a combative dogma against it in the scientific community. this is just a good, fun, enjoyable and educational video essay.

"Everyone But Me Is Wrong About The Cornetto Trilogy" by Innuendo Studios.

this is an essay refuting the semi-popular assertion that the Cornetto Trilogy (Edgar Wright's Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World's End) are about stunted manchildren being forced by circumstance to finally grow up. instead, Ian Danskin argues, these films are about stunted manchildren who refuse to change until circumstances beyond their control forceably change the entire rest of the world in a way that allows them to never have to grow up. this is one of those essays that's clearly been on the backburner for a long time, delivered with a real sense of frustration and desire to correct the record on something that seems, to Danskin, transparently obvious.

i liked this essay a lot because (to get a bit inside baseball) i'm dedicated to finally producing my extremely-long-in-the-works essay titled Everyone Is Wrong About LOST, about how everyone is wrong about the tv show LOST, by the end of this year. a big question for me in writing that essay has been what tone to strike, how much indignance i should show, where the line between funny and annoying lies. this essay did a lot to clarify that question for me, which is only that much more edifying because Ian Danskin has been at this since 2014. his original essay, This Is Phil Fish, was a big inspiration for me when i first started thinking i might want to try my hand at this gig, and his work ever since has remained some of the most consistently good and clear argumentative writing on the platform. any time he posts a new essay is a moment of quiet celebration for me, especially on the rare occasion he does traditional media analysis like this instead of the equally excellent but generally dry rhetorical analysis he's been doing with the Alt-Right Playbook for the last 6 years. it feels somehow poetic to once again have the path forward in my work clarified by a creator who inspired me an entire gender ago, like somehow despite all that's changed i'm still being true to my WAIT HOLD ON WHAT

well i guess i'd better hurry up and make this fucking LOST video, huh?

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[dietraumerei]

2023 Book Reviews

Ok, let's see if Tumblr lets me post this (I think it shouldn't be too long?) -- it's all my book reviews from 2023! Entirely unedited and just copy-pasted in, but on the off chance anyone else is interested in it, here it is.

I finished Tolkien and the Great War which was like…¾ very good. The last quarter was a fairly inexplicable and incredibly boring discursion on the early versions of what would, essentially, become the Silmarillion. Although a lot of his early works and early conceptions of what the Middle Earth mythology would be do tie into his life and experiences as a very young man in a hellish situation, this was just like…a recitation. And it was followed by a brilliant analysis of why Tolkien turned to an older medieval storytelling form instead of the modernists that we think of when it comes to the usual WWI writing! It was so good! The good parts of this books are so good! I simply cannot bring myself to care about the phoneme shifts his languages undergo.

It did remind me that I want to return to Paul Fussell’s writing in 2024, so there is that?

Also Tolkien’s bitchy disapproval of the aesthetes is never not hilarious to me.

I finished Hogfather, about which I refuse to give any kind of review other than to say I’ve been reading it nearly every December for going on 23 years now, and it’s a perfect book and I love it.

I finished Congratulations, the Best is Over! and I feel some kinda way about it. I love R. Eric Thomas, but the longer-form essays are sometimes good and sometimes not so good? I didn’t dislike it at all, but I’m also looking forward to what he writes next, as I think every collection gets a little bit better.

I finished The Custom of the Country and oh my god I LOVED IT. The Age of Innocence is still my favorite Wharton because Ellen Olenska, but this was the book that made me scream the most. It’s funny in the way that reality TV is funny, in that you laugh because you are horrified. Undine Spragg is the most magnfiicent monster in literature. She’s horrible. I adore her. What a fabulous work of art/car crash this book is.

I finished the latest Perveen Mistry Mystery, The Mistress of Bhatia House and it was wonderful but oh my god it is STRESSFUL and kind of a hard read at times because everyone is just being a huge dick to each other. (Also there’s a pretty major plot point left totally un-tied-up at the end which is wild, but I guess it’ll get sorted next book?)

I finished Lolly Willowes which tbh I didn’t love as much as I hoped I would, but is a very excellent book with some mind-blowingly relatable bits and I enjoyed it immensely. I love Sylvia Townsend Warner but just need to go in without expectations and enjoy the rather lengthy ride. (For such a short book, it takes awhile for anything to happen.)

I read Dolls of Our Lives and the more I think about it the more I disliked it. I’m tired and lazy so here’s the review I sent a friend:

I finished Dolls of our Lives last night. I found it…okay. The editing is often bad which was depressing. It mostly felt really tonally inconsistent – they’re both historians and know their stuff, but keep putting in schticky little pop culture jokes that are a) not that funny? and b) just appear out of nowhere. If you’re going to look at AG through a pop culture lens, do it properly, don’t just randomly name-drop pop culture stuff. It occasionally dips below surface-level analysis, but it’s not super memorable and I don’t see it aging really well. (I’d LOVE someone to write an accessible book that actually does look at AG dolls both within their own cultural contexts and the context of when they were released, to say nothing of the interplay of doll + book, and maybe with an added chapter on how girls and dolls play, and what it meant to release a doll that wasn’t aspirational in some way, whether it be an adult like Barbie or a baby doll. Okay, maybe I want three books. But it feels like there’s a lot of richness to dig into, and I’ve yet to see anyone scrape more than the surface.) Anyway, 6/10, it was okay but the authors do themselves a disservice. There’s a small section at the end where they talk about themselves and how the podcast has changed them and how it came about and it’s the best bit of the book because it’s actually vulnerable and interesting, with some theory thrown in, and it’s barely shticky at all.

I will now add that I think it’ll age like milk, and I’m super disappointed.

In happier news, I read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd which is simply a masterpiece, and reading it was a deep and abiding pleasure. I know the twist and it still worked wonderfully on me – if you don’t know how it ends, I REALLY urge you not to spoil yourself and also to read it, for it’s wonderful and you will scream at the reveal.

I finished When the Angels Left the Old Country after @lesbrarian recommended it and it might be my favorite book I’ve read this year? Top five, certainly – it’s tense and beautiful and funny and full of love and very Jewish, and it just filled me with joy to read, even the sad parts. The comparisons to Good Omens are unavoidable, but really I find it a very different story in a lot of ways, although certainly with connections. I adored it, and it’s one of those books I can’t wait to re-read. Also every time I think about the angel too much I want to cry, but in a good way.

I also – finally, after many breaks – finished The Path the Power, the first volume of Caro’s LBJ biography. Oh my god, this book. THIS BOOK. The next time I do this I’m going to update every week on what I learned that week because there is just so much in this tome. I want to visit the Pedernales, but not in summer. The description of grass-growing was riveting. The descriptions of the lives of the farmwives before electrification was riveting (and horrific). The play-by-play for elections in the forties literally kept me up past my bedtime. And I have not even touched on Pappy O'Daniel (a real person!! who was apparently toned down CONSIDERABLY for O Brother Where Art Thou) or Lady Bird or how Caro more than once makes sure to mention that Johnson had a dumptruck ass.

Anyway, Lyndon was a vote-buying absolute fucking weirdo from birth and his mother was just as weird and his father was fascinating and I’m a little in love with Sam Rayburn. Do not let either the Old White Man History or the fact that this book is a fucking doorstop stop you, this is a masterpiece and I see why it won a Pulitzer. (whoops, looks like it was another volume that won the Pulitzer) I cannot wait to read the other volumes, which I estimate will take me about a year per book, but worth it!

I finished Menewood, about which I cannot possibly write intelligently. Hild was and is so important to me and I love that period in English history so, so much, and the immersiveness of the books, how heartbreaking and hard and wild and wonderful they are! It did push me to plan to get Hild in non-ebook format; they’re both absolute bricks so it’s easier to read the e-book but I found it super helpful to be able to easily refer to the family trees and maps and stuff.

I finished Lauren Groff’s The Vaster Wilds and as a certified Groff stan I loved it. It’s gross and hard and has the most amazing end, and like Matrix I am excited to re-read it over and over and unlock more language and more beauty and just more.

I finished Here for It by R. Eric Thomas and loved it. It’s more serious and longer-form than what he writes for his newletter or Elle, and really benefits from it; he’s an incredibly talented storyteller. Not what I was expecting, but all the better for it.

I am DNF for A Lady for a Duke which I had such high hopes for! I don’t think it’s a bad book, but it is not a book for me, unfortunately.

I finished Everything I Need I Get from You: How Fangirls Created the Internet as We Know It and have a lot of feelings! I think it’s a really, really good book that’s respectful of fans and interesting, but it focuses almost solely on One Direction fandom, and I kind of wish that was clearer from the title and the summary? Like, no shade to that being the topic, but it feels like this is being sold as kind of a universal look at online fandom, and…it kinda isn’t?

(yes i’m salty there wasn’t anything about snapewives, yes this was somewhat soothed by chapters dedicated to L*rr*es and B*byg*te, YES I am afraid of 1D fangirls.)

I also read Phoebe’s Diary because I adore Phoebe Wahl and it was cool to read a middle-grade novel/graphic novel from her! (Most of the book is typeset, but there are lots of great little cartoons and drawings interspersed. I really, really liked it, although sometimes it’s a little hard to read because a) it is very realistic which means it’s like 95% about boys and boyfriends and that gets kind of old and b) it is very realistic and made me so unbelievably grateful that I never ever have to be 16 again. I would be extremely curious what a contemporary sixteen-year-old thought because it’s kind of a semi-period piece (set in 2005-6) and a few bits of it sort of…haven’t aged well from that period? (There’s one character who I think we’re meant to dislike but I love her so much because she reads aro-ace.) Anyway, I’m really glad I read it although at times it was painful, 10/10 do not miss being sixteen.

I haven’t finished anything, but I’m DNF for Sarah Vowell’s Lafayette in the Somewhat United States because I found it hard to follow and frankly incredibly boring. (I am going hard for the DNF’s these days, life is too short.)

omg so much! I read Learned by Heart in like three days, and it made my Anne Lister-loving heart sing. Truly, it broke my heart and it was so sweet and so happy and sad and just so good, I loved it and I’m hoping it triggers another bout of Lister hyperfixation.

I also read Agatha of Little Neon, which was likewise sad but sweet and happy and hopeful. It had a lot of feelings, but I loved it very, very much, and it just…made me feel good inside?

I was DNF on The Late Americans by about the sixth Sad Gay Man whose personality traits were that he was Sad and Gay and [insert one additional trait here that is shared with at least one other Sad Gay Man]. I love Brandon’s newsletter and his criticism; I did not like this novel.

I FINALLY finished Herzog! For a relatively short novel, it benefits from a slow reading – and I even basically skipped over the philosophical bits because my love for sad mid-century white men only goes so far. Anyway – a little to my surprise, I enormously enjoyed it. I don’t know that it’s, like, the greatest novel ever written and it’s edging into my ‘This got a Pulitzer? Really?’ pile, but a) I can see why it was groundbreaking and amazing and the Saga of the Everyman when it came out and b) honestly it’s really funny and interesting. It’s a little bit Odyssey-like, and Herzog is such a likeable schmuck, and just, yeah. It was great. It’s also a wonderful love letter to both the Berkshires and Chicago, and I loved the very quick Vineyard Havens moment.

Our Wives Under the Sea – a friend said this was the best book she’d read all summer, and I think it’s up there for me. It’s haunting and weird and beautiful and sad and I loved it very much.

Painted Pomegranates and Needlepoint Rabbis: How Jews Craft Resilience and Create Community - hah, I just realized this was a gift from the friend who made the Our Wives rec! I’ve got a little theme of reading about how craft creates meaning in various communities/subcommunities, and this fits right in. It’s definitely an academic text, but I found it extremely accessible. It doesn’t present a very diverse portrait of Judaism – which the author absolutely admits to and apologizes for – but for what it is, it’s a very interesting and valuable text, and I’m glad I read it and it’s part of my collection now.

I finished Big Swiss which is one of those books I ought to hate, but I was…not necessarily loving it, but definitely fascinated as hell with it. It’s such a gross book, and Greta is so majestically self-destructive, I actually could not look away. Magnificent, 10/10 would watch barely-likeable protagonists fuck their own lives up again.

Also, not a book, but I finally read Blackmun’s dissent in DeShaney v. Winnebago County, a landmark case that essentially determined that the government is not actually expected to protect you. (Skip noted segregationist Chief Justice William Rehnquist’s ruling, but the Wikipedia article on the case breaks it down well.) You can read it here – scroll down to the very bottom, his dissent is only 4 paragraphs, and it is beautifully, wonderfully written. The ‘Poor Joshua!’ paragraph is the most famous, but I return again and again to the passage Justice Blackmun quotes from Stone’s Law, Psychiatry and Morality, and particularly the line “What is required of us is moral ambition.”

(I learned about the case and Blackmun’s dissent through the podcast 5-4, which is both excellent, and a good antidote to growing up in the shadow of the Warren Court, as I did. The Supreme Court has always sucked, it turns out. Seriously, it’s one of my favorite Supreme Court podcasts and I subscribe to, um, a lot.)

I read Brutes in about two sittings, it was so good. What a wonderful book about the horror of being a teenage girl, and I mean that in the best possible way. I loved it.

I finished, appropriately enough, Ned Boulting’s 1923 which is a beautiful book about the Tour de France and the nearly-forgotten Theo Beeckmann, and about the covid pandemic and history and tracking people and places down through time. I am an enormous fan of Ned (and David and Pete for any other Never Strays Far fans), and although this book very rarely pushes just a touch into bathos, it is mostly beautiful and wonderful and I’m glad he wrote it and I’m glad I read it.

(I finished it on June 30th, which is rather an important day in the book so I’m proud of my timing too.)

I also read A Half-Built Garden which I have a lot of very complex emotions about. I don’t know if I liked it, but I like how it made me react and think and feel and get grumpy. I’m not even sure it’s all that great, but it sure did make me think.

I finished Fintan O’Toole’s massive We Don’t Know Ourselves about Ireland in the last 50-odd years. It is very good, and sometimes very hard to read (he pulls no punches regarding either the IRA or the Christian Brothers) and I’m glad I read it.

I also finished Secrets Typed in Blood, the third of the Pentecost and Parker mysteries. It starts off the weakest (or maybe I was just in a Mood), but it is, as ever, a good, quick, satisfying mystery.

I read Elizabeth Kilcoyne’s Wake the Bones which I loved – I normally prefer a bit more gothic in my Southern horror, but the very end especially is the most incredible reveal. I could not stand the protagonist and I still liked the book, that’s how good it is.

I also read Scorched Grace, which is apparently first in a series about a crime-solving nun. It’s written as a hardboiled noir and, yep, that’s what it is, which means it’s also not good, but it’s supposed to be kind of hacky, so it works? It’s *gruesome*, but I liked it well enough, I think noir just really isn’t for me.

Oh, and I guess I’m on an Irish lit kick because I read Foster (more a novella than a novel), which I found pretty meh, tbh.

I keep starting new books and I’m now in the middle of at least two Giant Tomes, oops. I did finish Saltwater by Jessica Andrews which is better than the Kirkus review it got! It didn’t, like, change my life but it was good reliving being at Uni in the UK and also I enjoyed it, all I ask of a book.

The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett: umpteenth re-read, a perfect book. I have beautiful editions of all the Tiffany books now, and hope to slowly make my way through them.

Red Shift by Alan Garner: I was heartened to learn that this is one of his most difficult books; I will be honest that I struggled, but it’s lingered in me, and I hope to re-read it many more times and keep untangling it. It is very, very good.

Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford: I’ve been meaning to read this for ages, and it didn’t disappoint in the least. I’m fascinated by the Mitford sisters, and this is such a good peek into them.

It also really drives home how unutterably boring a landed-gentry upbringing was.

Trust by Hernan Diaz: ok you know how people win Oscars nominally for some meh role, but it’s clearly really for an older role that they were overlooked for? That is this book and the Pulitzer, when In the Distance probably should have won. It was fine, but I was kind of underwhelmed. Next time I’ll just read some Wharton.

DNF on Upright Women Wanted which I wanted to love very much and absolutely hated. Next time I’ll just re-read Whiskey When We’re Dry.

I did finish Murder Under Her Skin, the second of the Pentecost and Parker mysteries. It was great fun and a very good mystery and I am excited for the next one.

I finished All the Beauty in the World, the memoir of a Met Museum guard. I have an almost guilty fondness for the Met; it really should not exist, but I love it, and I loved reading this very much. I do miss easy access to world-class museums :/

I also read Michelle Tea’s Against Memoir, which has the best fucking essay of all time about the SF girl gang HAGS, but really I loved the whole thing. I’ve become an absolutely massive Michelle Tea fangirl and use her tarot book all the time and just ugh, I can’t wait to get more of her stuff.

I just finished Elie Mystal’s Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution. Mystal is incredibly funny and smart and is an amazing Twitter follow if you are still on the bird hellsite. It is easy to think that funny writing is unserious, but this is deeply serious, and is a very good argument for pretty much a new Constitution that wasn’t written by enslavers. Also now I finally understand what substantive due process is, and what the difference is from procedural due process. (I also grasp the ninth and tenth amendments a little better too.) Anyway – really, if you are at all interesting in con law, or how much the Supreme Court sucks, or how broken a document the Constitution is while containing seeds of a better document, I deeply recommend this.

I finished The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows, and continue to very much enjoy Olivia Waite! This is *not* an nice, fizzy romance – the romance is, honestly, a pretty small part of the plot, and that’s not knocking it one bit. It’s queer and scary and very good. I definitely would be okay going back to a fluffy romance soon, but I’m glad I read this.

I also finished The Return of the King and words fail me, honestly. It’s been so long since I read the trilogy, but I truly cannot wait to re-read it; Tolkien is so much better than what came after, and it’s been good to re-learn that. The battle of Pelennor Fields is the scariest thing I’ve ever read. I have discovered four new emotions. I cried at the end. I mean, *you* sum that book up! (I have precisely zero desire to watch any of the new shows and whatever else comes out; the original trilogy was lightening in a bottle, and I will keep my memories warm and good, tbh.)

I finished Square Haunting, about women writers between the war and Mecklenburgh Square. It was quite good and interesting, and it was nice to build on the writers I already knew about (pretty much just Dorothy L. Sayers and Woolf), and learn about Eileen Power and just…that whole London set. I don’t know if tons of it will stick with me, but I’m pleased I read it.

Remembering Denny, by Calvin Trillin. It’s about a classmate of his from Yale, and about how people change and show different sides of themselves, about being gay pre-Stonewall and about the Silent Generation. It is very, very good. (Also FULL of people! Larry Kramer shows up at one point! And early on there’s some stuff that unexpectedly linked to my own life which was just WEIRD and kind of wonderful too.) I love Calvin Trillin so much.

Fortune Favors the Dead, an excellent little queer noir mystery, I am excited to read the next one.

The Hollow Places, I really love T. Kingfisher, love a good quick horror read. This hit a lot of the same beats as The Twisted Ones, which isn’t a strike against it, but I’m hoping for something new with the next book. Still, A++++++++ landscape horror.

I read Women Talking which was…fine? It was okay, I wasn’t blown away I have to say.

I read Hérnan Díaz’ In the Distance which I truly ought to have hated, and I don’t know if I *liked* it, but it’s going to stick with me a long time. It’s a Western, kind of. It’s dreamy, and violent, and lovely.

DNF on Charlie Brown’s America: the Popular Politics of Peanuts. There is a great book to be written on this topic. It is not this book, which quickly proved unreadable.

And I finished The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics which was fun and lovely and a nice fizzy romance, especially after In the Distance, lol. I’ll def read the next books in the series!

I have been reading at a good clip! Let’s see, I finished Briefly, A Delicious Life by Nell Stevens which is about a ghost and George Sand and Chopin and making decisions and it was so joyful and so lovely and very queer. I re-read Lauren Groff’s Matrix and loved it even more the second time; I was able to snag a signed hardback copy from a friend and I’m delighted to own it because the book itself is beautiful, and it’s a dreamy read. And finally I read Calvin Trillin’s The Tummy Trilogy which is a collection of his three books that collect his food writings. These essays are glorious, hilarious, charming, a celebration of good food and good eating and regional food. I will say, though, that the final book is really by far the weakest, and I will skip it in future; the first two books are perfection. (FYI, if you do pick this up, and I really recommend it, note that he was writing in the 70′s and they are a bit of their time, but in a way that is good-humoured at least.) I’ve also got his Remembering Denny and I’m really excited to read that soon.

I finished Times Square Red, Times Square Blue and enormously enjoyed the first essay about Delany’s time in the porn theatres of Times Square. It’s character sketches and talking about how people meet and relate, and I loved it. The second essay is vastly denser and more theoretical, and I will be honest most of it went over my head. I liked most of what I grasped, although his plan for how to end catcalling of women is…certainly there.

I also read Kate Beaton’s Ducks in basically one sitting and it’s so, so good. It’s much sadder and harder than I thought it would be, but it’s worth reading.

I read Bad Land because Jonathan Raban died last week, and I am absolutely gutted. He was a magnificent writer and Bad Land was so good and so rich and a bit funny, and it got me up in my feelings as I read about him driving over the pass into Seattle, following the trail of Montanans, while I was flying into Seattle (and then going north through the rain). It’s so, so good, and I will miss Raban so much.

I also finished The Two Towers, about which I can only say that it’s kind of a weird bridge book, but it has some of the best and loveliest lines and also jesus I can’t write a review of Lord of the Rings, it holds up, ok?

I finished Bill Bryson’s 1927, his history of a fairly amazing year in American history. The occasional fatphobic jokes were…weird and not funny, but the man can write a good popular history book. It was my airport reading coming back from the east coast, and very good airport reading it was.

I finished Homewaters, which is a gorgeous book about the natural and human history of the Puget sound region, and I loved it. It’s not the fastest-paced book going, but it’s a fantastic history and goes into the biodiversity of the area, and I’m so glad I got it.

I also read A Prayer for the Crown-Shy in one sitting on an airplane. I did not glom onto the Monk and Robot books as much as I thought I would, but I liked this a lot, and found it really lovely. I hope very much that there will be others.

Finally, last night I finished reading Shadowlands: A Journey Through Britain’s Lost Cities and Vanished Villages. Some chapters are better than others (or maybe I was just more awake?) – I found the chapters on Skara Brae and St. Kilda genuinely riveting, but still don’t quite remember what happened at Old Winchelsea, for example. The last chapter, on Capel Celyn, was startlingly hard to read; I have mostly left my time in Wales in the past. Not in a bad way, but there’s no point in it being in my daily life, but it was much more painful to read about my once-home than I thought it would be. (It’s also just an absolutely gutting story.)

[wordsandrobots]

[The following is not an essay. It is the author's attempt to grapple with the despair at losing something important to him, presented in hopes someone in a similar situation may know such things are worth grappling with.]

Apropos of Doctor Who's triumphant return to having writing and direction I can actually care about again, I've been reflecting on how much casual 'Moffat-hate' irritates me.

Obviously, I need to unpack that a bit.

I'm talking about the reflexive antagonism towards Steven Moffat's era as show-runner, writing tics, writing in general, moment of centrality to British TV and so on that I am no doubt going to run into if I go anywhere near Doctor Who reviews and analysis again. A sneer about perceived sneering here, another repetition of a narrative-construction gripe there. The regurgitation of old arguments because there is a strong contingent of people who loathe that era and Moffat in general, who have every right to that opinion, and who can quite reasonably bring it up when talking about Russel T Davies' new, second era of running the show, however that shakes out.

The me-problem here is, I loved a lot of 'the Moffat era' of Doctor Who when it was being broadcast. For whatever reason, it hit lots of nice buttons in my head and I had a grand old time watching it unfold. The 11th and 12th Doctors provided some really excellent examples of the show doing its best at what it does best. Indeed, 'Listen' may be my favourite example of a story delving into what Doctor Who is all about, ever.

But there is a degree to which my enjoyment is now perpetually enmeshed in defensiveness. Because the fandom was/is wild tangle of very strong opinions, much of them to the contrary, and that isn't likely to change any time soon.

[And for me personally, my best friend hates that era, which threw into sharp relief a lot of hang-ups I have around needing to justify the things I like. Having an emotional breakdown kind of sharp relief. That's not the sort of thing you just shrug off, even after all this time.]

To be clear, I am not here to defend Steven Moffat. I do not give a rat's arse about Sherlock – it was enjoyable at the time but I can't say it registered beyond 'a thing it was fun to watch once' – and I actively despise Twice Upon A Time, the last 12th Doctor story, for pretty much the exact reasons I think most people rag on Moffat's other work. It is a story ostensibly in conversation with a piece of source material that instead only concerns itself with the refracted, pop-cultural version of said thing, for the sake of being constructed like a joke.

Which in general is an approach far better suited to Doctor Who – a series progressively layering 'canon' atop stories that could not be recalled as anything other than half-remembered versions of themselves for a very long time – than it would ever be for something like Sherlock Holmes. Even if I didn't like Twice Upon A Time, I can at least forgive it as a wider pattern and oh for goodness sake, I've started defending the man anyway, haven't I?

You see the problem. I can't make a critique with any teeth because I am braced for the whole to be dismissed even as I home in on the specific part I wish to unpack. Must I defend a writer in toto because I vibed with one piece of their corpus? I don't think I would for anyone else and yet here we are. This is probably why I count myself lucky to have never been deeply invested in Doctor Who fandom in the communal sense, online or off. This and the people who fawn over the racist giant rat story.

[Talons of Weng-Chiang is a Yellow Peril tale, straight up, nothing else. It also jobs Leela, rendering her forever 'the savage' despite the entire point of her introduction being a rejection of the superstitions imposed on her people and thereafter proving herself extremely capable in new and strange situations. It was also written in Britain in the 70s so this is almost self-explanatory. Just fucking own the fact you enjoy the production values and excellent cast while accepting it's indefensible to claim this is the best the classic series produced, you chronic dipsticks.]

See, I can do it with other examples of what I dislike, bare my teeth and go for the throat. But few people argue we should write off Robert Holmes' extensive contribution to the series because he did a massive racism on account of being a British writer in the 70s. Maybe they should. I don't know.

What I do know is, I understand why the 11th and 12th Doctor eras work for me. I am a white cis man who thought he was straight when they started airing and who is exactly the kind of Doctor Who fan who'd want to solve the regeneration limit with a Five Doctors reference. I never felt like Moffat's grand arcs were talking down to me because, I suspect, I was the kind of person most easily able to imagine I was in on the joke by the end. Then again, the writer who's done some of the most extensive analysis and defence of this era is a trans American woman, whose work did more for my appreciation of Doctor Who history than anyone else. So – yeah.

When I said 'irritate', I meant exactly that. This whole topic is a burr, making it difficult to revisit things I once enjoyed. Maybe this would be the case anyway. I have grown a lot since then. So did Steven Moffat, over the course of writing more Doctor Who than any other person ever. He gave us gender-flipping regeneration, tried colour-blind casting and when it failed to make a difference, specifically cast for a black lesbian. And he revisited Donna's ending with an eye on querying the moral failure of it long before RTD2 wrapped around to the same point. Why should I look kinder on his predecessor, who presided over the abusive shit-show that was the production of the 2005 revival season and yet gets to come back to save the programme again?

Oh, yes. The writing. But Russel T Davies annoys me just as much in some places as Moffat does other people. So it goes. Although I suppose Moffat did hire Toby Whithouse to write the central part of Bill's arc and it was a chauvinistic wet fart because it was Toby Whithouse. He also worked for ages with Mark Gattis, whose writing I could shred on similar grounds. And around and around we go, sniping and arguing which of the middle-aged British guys tried their best, or wrote the worst.

[I am still mourning what Chris Chibnall's era of Doctor Who turned out to be. I was so hyped for getting Jodi Whittaker as the Doctor and then we hit Kerblam! and the oldest, most foundational piece of my inner cultural map no longer felt like something I wanted to be a part of. So yeah, he's the worst, for allowing that story to go out, 'the system isn't the problem, it's the people' and all. That's my 'hot-take', years too late. The man wasted dozens of excellent, interesting, diverse writers and actors on what is ultimately, in my opinion, the most mediocre crap since the Saward Era and his big contribution to the series going forward is to fanwank in an explanation for the Morbius!Doctors that essentially makes the Doctor the specialest special whoever specialed.]

At least Moffat previously made some attempt to spork the god!Doctor approach, before deciding they should textually be the reason evil doesn't triumph in the universe. Sadly, that endpoint seems inevitable. We're long past the days of the Doctor being a university drop-out, bumbling around the universe, interfering from the edges. Pick your saccharine alternative, I guess.

What was I talking about before I dived into my own bitterness and angry fan-ranting? How much people deriding one sitcom writer for his faults and prominence within a particular era of big British TV that sparked vast swathes of internet discourse continues to be an aspect of Doctor Who meta? How that makes me feel? Hah. Who cares?

There's no widely applicable point here, just an emotional sore making me wonder if I'm ready to 'get back into' Doctor Who. Because yes, actively being revolted by the Chibnall Era is the real reason I fell out with the show. And yes, maybe I've just grown beyond the point where Doctor Who satisfies, full-stop (let's leave the political rant about The Zygon Inversion for another time; I'll only be repeating other people). But sitting here, being honestly, genuinely delighted by The Star Beast and Wild Blue Yonder in ways I'd frankly forgotten I could be by Doctor Who . . . there's a still part of me that doesn't want to risk going back and running into those same old arguments. I've seen them before. They're boring. They annoy me. I don't have the energy to deal with it. And I haven't yet worked out how to thicken my skin against them.

Someday, maybe, I will sort the love for Doctor Who I had since I was six and watching Peter Cushing romp around in glorious Technicolor from a factional fandom pissing match I didn't even play a part in. I never was someone who picked fights online over this or tried to make grand sweeping arguments about why X, Y or Z was better. I want to be mellow about differing tastes and just like what I like. I certainly don't want to be the kind of person who rags endlessly on things I didn't enjoy, which is why the emotional outburst above is about as far as I'm prepared to go in talking publicly about the 13th Doctor's run.

[I want to go back. I want to love Doctor Who again, flaws and all. I probably will regardless of this. I am not making a plea concerning fandom's nature. I am neither asking for grace nor extending it. The answer is undoubtedly to carry on along the sidelines, a skulking hermit-crab of a Whovian. Yet the burr remains, the grief sticks and the solid ground of a long-held interest remains cracked. Perhaps that is growth. Self-examination does not entitle one to set discoveries aside, job done, card stamped, and return to pleasures-as-were. Yet I can't deny the raw emotional urgh that comes of hearing the same punches struck over and over, about a portion of the show that at least tried.]

Ultimately, however, I like picking apart the things I enjoy and I enjoy watching others do likewise. And I don't get to do that here without cautiously curating my experience to avoid the ten billionth iteration of ten-year-old internet arguments.

I'll keep doing it, obviously.

But it is irritating.

[This post brought to you by listening to El Sandifer's podcast about The Star Beast. Eruditorum Press is a great site for fascinating media analysis and her TARDIS Eruditorum series is well worth a read if you're interested in the show's development.]

[a-tale-never-told]

Historical Document#2: The Stasi Biography.

//Greetings everyone, this is Mod Sam. I present to you the second history review of the bunch, the Stasi review. Now I'm pretty sure that most of you were expecting this review instead of the Soviet one, given that the Stasi are currently the biggest threat to the blog as of this season, It would make sense to do an analysis on them and what their tactics and operations are. But due to my poor organizational skills, I instead did the Soviet one first, and that review was... disappointing to say the least, but now I understand why it wasn't as successful: it wasn't relevant to the main story yet.

//That's certainly not to say every historical post should be connected to the story, but given the stakes that we have now, it makes perfect sense to talk about them now and explain why they are so dangerous. How I didn't recognize that earlier is beyond me.

//But anyway, I think I did slightly better here in comparison to the last review, where it got way too overcomplicated for anyone to understand, aside from a few aspects. But I think I managed to make it understandable enough for you guys to understand. An added bonus is that the review is shorter, thus you don't have to spend hours reading it, so that's a drastic improvement.

//Given that I've seen a lot of Stasi-related asks during the story, consider this a firsthand survival guide on the Stasi, and what they do exactly firsthand. Consider them a more terrifying version of the KGB and the North Japanese secret police force, at least for now.

//I just want to apologize for the lack of activity on this blog for a while, aside from answering asks and me complaining. I've calmed down since the last time I made that rant, and I eventually realized that I need to take it easy with you guys and not force you because if there is anything people don't like, it's being told what to do, and I feel ashamed that I tried to do that. I hope you all can accept my forgiveness and just no that I meant no ill intentions towards you guys. I was just... so stressed that day and I pretty much lost it.

//But besides that, I'm ready to possibly get back into the story. If all goes to plan, I should have the next story chapter by around Friday or Saturday at the latest. But in the meantime, you have this file to occupy your attention while I start working on the next chapter, so be vigilant for a new chapter coming out soon.

//To close this post off, let me show you the ID card of Vladimir Putin while he was in the Stasi. And before you ask, yes, this is 100% real and accurate, this was actually what he looked like when he was younger. Viewer discretion is advised.

//At the very least, he had some hair, so I'll give him that.

//This shall probably be the last historical post I do for now, as I prefer to continue working on the story since these posts aren't going to really matter to anyone unless we focus on the actual plot itself. I know I just said that before, but I wanted to add more context as to why. Plus, it's pretty much a slog for me to write these long essays in Google Docs since I highly doubt anyone here reads a Google Doc for a review. Still, though, I hope you enjoyed these reviews as that's all you're going to get untill the end of this arc or even the season, it's up to my own volition on how I shall conduct this type of strategy.

//This is Mod Sam from A Tale Never Told, signing out for now. Have a great rest of the day everyone ^^.

[rapha-reads]

The God Complex - review

The God Complex (6x11) is such a great episode.

I keep watching and rewatching it, discovering new details, understanding new layers of interpretations ...

Also every time, I scream at my screen : “It’s not about fear ! It’s not what you’re scared of ! It’s about faith !”. I never totally understand what it means exactly, though ... Which is partly why I keep rewatching it.

Long post ahead.

Tl;dr : this episode is such an important episode to understand the dynamics between the Doctor, Amy and Rory. It tells a lot in terms of who the Doctor is, what he wants, and it gives hints as to where we’re going, both in series 6 and beyond - you can draw parallels with both Twelve and Thirteen based on this episode alone. It’s a dive into the Doctor’s psyche and it has so many great quotes and awesome moments.

I love that Rory is shown a exit door as soon as he arrives. I love Rory, point.

And Rita ! She was such a great character ! Curse you, showrunners, for killing off all the amazing characters who could have been such perfect companions. 

“Why is it up to you to save us ? That’s quite the God Complex you’ve got there.’

Damn I love that quote. It is so exactly accurate. 

“Offer a child a suitcase full of sweets, they’ll take it. Offer someone all of time and space and they’ll take that, too.”

Talk about great Doctor’s quotes. All of us Whovians, we are this child. If the Doctor were to land on our doorstep, we wouldn’t even hesitate, we would go with them, even though we know what happens when we travel with the Doctor, we know how it can transform us - both in good and in bad (remember ... what is Davros or Dalek Caan ... in Journey’s End : “you take these people and you turn them into soldiers”. Remember Martha ?).

The Doctor’s door is the number 11.

“Who else ?” - Aaaaaargh, I hate that. Because I never totally get who he’s talking about. The chimes are the sound the Tardis makes when it’s in danger - when it’s exploded during Pandorica. But “who” ? Is he talking about himself ? The War Doctor ? That’s my theory. I’d need to go research that some time.

“Block out the fear and stay focused on your belief.”

NO. That’s the complete opposite of what it’s about. The Minotaur feeds on belief, not fear !

“Goodbye, Doctor. Thank you for trying.”

That’s exactly what the Doctor hates. Not losing someone he cares about - everybody hates that. But losing when he thinks he understands, when he thinks he can save the day. Losing, in short. In a way the Doctor is ... afraid of failure. It’s not so much about saving people (planets - civilisations - the whole goddamn universe) as it is about winning his battles. Which is why Trenzalore is so fitting. The Doctor is a General who has to fight and win because what else did they survive the Time War for ?

 Damn, the music in this episode. Murray Gold is a genius.

Ow. The look of utter desolation when he finally gets it.

“They all believed there’s something guiding, about to save them. That’s what it replaces. Every time someone was confronted with their most primal fear, they fell back on their most fundamental faith.”

And there it is. And the thing that really kills the Doctor : “I made you expose your faith.” He blames himself for not understanding sooner, and also for putting Amy and Rory in ever more danger. 

And we finally get to the crux of the episode ! It doesn’t want Rory. Rory is pragmatic, stoic, and he doesn’t treat the Doctor as an al-powerful superior being. It wants Amy. Because Amy built her whole life around the Doctor. The girl who waited. The Doctor’s best friend - his mother-in-law ! The first face this face saw. It’s all about Amy having put too much of her into believing, following the Doctor. 

Also, there’s this very tiny moment when the Doctor says to Amy “your faith in me - that’s what brought us here”.

LOOK AT RORY’S FACE. Remember in Day of the Moon, when he says that he thought Amy was talking about the Doctor ? Rory has so many insecurities, but his number one fear is that he is not good enough for Amy. He loves her so much and he wants to be worthy of her so much, it breaks my heart ! Our last Centurion. Waited two thousand years for her. Doesn’t believe in his own worth, how do you want him to put faith in anything else ! Rory is such an incredible character, because when we first met him in series 5, he was inconspicuous - nobody really saw him. Not even Amy who ran away from her wedding. And then he hopped on the Tardis, agreed to follow Amy wherever she went, and in doing so, he finally grew in his own skin. He became so fleshed out, so complex, and so compelling ! Kudos to Arthur Darvill, seriously. I could write pages on Rory and his own journey towards self-esteem and believing in himself.

“I’m not a hero. I really am just a madman in a box. And it’s time we saw each other as we really are.”

That is the first time the Doctor calls Amy by her married name - accepting to see her as more than little Amelia Pond who waited and waited, but as Amy Williams, the incredible woman that she is. And I love the fact that each of them seeing the other as they really are doesn’t take anything from their relationship - they’re still total best friends, but now they can accept each other’s flaws and failures. It’s not about losing faith in each other, it’s about gaining another sort of faith : the one that’s not absolute and unconditional, but that is true and deep no matter who or what the other is or does. Real friendship.

“What do Time Lords pray to ?”

YES I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW AS WELL.

Okay, the Minotaur’s last words are truly amazing :

“An ancient creature, drenched in the blood of the innocent. Drifting in space through an endless shifting maze. For such a creature, death would be a gift.”

This is such an important characteristic of the Doctor. Especially the Eleventh - who had a dark side so much big. Eleven wanted it to end. He was ready to accept that this was his last regeneration. He was ready to die - he had had enough. Enough years, enough travels, enough loss, enough battles ... Which is why Twelve was so dark (yes, Twelve was dark, fight me) - because he never wanted that life. And which is why Thirteen is so bubbling and cheerful - she has accepted that it’s her lot in this universe to keep going. It’s what Twice Upon A Time is about, showing the Doctor that there is no easy way out for them.

To conclude, The God Complex is a complex (pun intended) and fascinating episode that keeps on revealing even after 50 watchings. 

[qqueenofhades]

The Green Knight and Medieval Metatextuality: An Essay

Right, so. Finally watched it last night, and I’ve been thinking about it literally ever since, except for the part where I was asleep. As I said to fellow medievalist and admirer of Dev Patel @oldshrewsburyian, it’s possibly the most fascinating piece of medieval-inspired media that I’ve seen in ages, and how refreshing to have something in this genre that actually rewards critical thought and deep analysis, rather than me just fulminating fruitlessly about how popular media thinks that slapping blood, filth, and misogyny onto some swords and castles is “historically accurate.” I read a review of TGK somewhere that described it as the anti-Game of Thrones, and I’m inclined to think that’s accurate. I didn’t agree with all of the film’s tonal, thematic, or interpretative choices, but I found them consistently stylish, compelling, and subversive in ways both small and large, and I’m gonna have to write about it or I’ll go crazy. So. Brace yourselves.

(Note: My PhD is in medieval history, not medieval literature, and I haven’t worked on SGGK specifically, but I am familiar with it, its general cultural context, and the historical influences, images, and debates that both the poem and the film referenced and drew upon, so that’s where this meta is coming from.)

First, obviously, while the film is not a straight-up text-to-screen version of the poem (though it is by and large relatively faithful), it is a multi-layered meta-text that comments on the original Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the archetypes of chivalric literature as a whole, modern expectations for medieval films, the hero’s journey, the requirements of being an “honorable knight,” and the nature of death, fate, magic, and religion, just to name a few. Given that the Arthurian legendarium, otherwise known as the Matter of Britain, was written and rewritten over several centuries by countless authors, drawing on and changing and hybridizing interpretations that sometimes challenged or outright contradicted earlier versions, it makes sense for the film to chart its own path and make its own adaptational decisions as part of this multivalent, multivocal literary canon. Sir Gawain himself is a canonically and textually inconsistent figure; in the movie, the characters merrily pronounce his name in several different ways, most notably as Sean Harris/King Arthur’s somewhat inexplicable “Garr-win.” He might be a man without a consistent identity, but that’s pointed out within the film itself. What has he done to define himself, aside from being the king’s nephew? Is his quixotic quest for the Green Knight actually going to resolve the question of his identity and his honor – and if so, is it even going to matter, given that successful completion of the “game” seemingly equates with death?

Likewise, as the anti-Game of Thrones, the film is deliberately and sometimes maddeningly non-commercial. For an adaptation coming from a studio known primarily for horror, it almost completely eschews the cliché that gory bloodshed equals authentic medievalism; the only graphic scene is the Green Knight’s original beheading. The violence is only hinted at, subtextual, suspenseful; it is kept out of sight, around the corner, never entirely played out or resolved. In other words, if anyone came in thinking that they were going to watch Dev Patel luridly swashbuckle his way through some CGI monsters like bad Beowulf adaptations of yore, they were swiftly disappointed. In fact, he seems to spend most of his time being wet, sad, and failing to meet the moment at hand (with a few important exceptions).

The film unhurriedly evokes a medieval setting that is both surreal and defiantly non-historical. We travel (in roughly chronological order) from Anglo-Saxon huts to Romanesque halls to high-Gothic cathedrals to Tudor villages and half-timbered houses, culminating in the eerie neo-Renaissance splendor of the Lord and Lady’s hall, before returning to the ancient trees of the Green Chapel and its immortal occupant: everything that has come before has now returned to dust. We have been removed even from imagined time and place and into a moment where it ceases to function altogether. We move forward, backward, and sideways, as Gawain experiences past, present, and future in unison. He is dislocated from his own sense of himself, just as we, the viewers, are dislocated from our sense of what is the “true” reality or filmic narrative; what we think is real turns out not to be the case at all. If, of course, such a thing even exists at all.

This visual evocation of the entire medieval era also creates a setting that, unlike GOT, takes pride in rejecting absolutely all political context or Machiavellian maneuvering. The film acknowledges its own cultural ubiquity and the question of whether we really need yet another King Arthur adaptation: none of the characters aside from Gawain himself are credited by name. We all know it’s Arthur, but he’s listed only as “king.” We know the spooky druid-like old man with the white beard is Merlin, but it’s never required to spell it out. The film gestures at our pre-existing understanding; it relies on us to fill in the gaps, cuing us to collaboratively produce the story with it, positioning us as listeners as if we were gathered to hear the original poem. Just like fanfiction, it knows that it doesn’t need to waste time introducing every single character or filling in ultimately unnecessary background knowledge, when the audience can be relied upon to bring their own.

As for that, the film explicitly frames itself as a “filmed adaptation of the chivalric romance” in its opening credits, and continues to play with textual referents and cues throughout: telling us where we are, what’s happening, or what’s coming next, rather like the rubrics or headings within a medieval manuscript. As noted, its historical/architectural references span the entire medieval European world, as does its costume design. I was particularly struck by the fact that Arthur and Guinevere’s crowns resemble those from illuminated monastic manuscripts or Eastern Orthodox iconography: they are both crown and halo, they confer an air of both secular kingship and religious sanctity. The question in the film’s imagined epilogue thus becomes one familiar to Shakespeare’s Henry V: heavy is the head that wears the crown. Does Gawain want to earn his uncle’s crown, take over his place as king, bear the fate of Camelot, become a great ruler, a husband and father in ways that even Arthur never did, only to see it all brought to dust by his cowardice, his reliance on unscrupulous sorcery, and his unfulfilled promise to the Green Knight? Is it better to have that entire life and then lose it, or to make the right choice now, even if it means death?

Likewise, Arthur’s kingly mantle is Byzantine in inspiration, as is the icon of the Virgin Mary-as-Theotokos painted on Gawain’s shield (which we see broken apart during the attack by the scavengers). The film only glances at its religious themes rather than harping on them explicitly; we do have the cliché scene of the male churchmen praying for Gawain’s safety, opposite Gawain’s mother and her female attendants working witchcraft to protect him. (When oh when will I get my film that treats medieval magic and medieval religion as the complementary and co-existing epistemological systems that they were, rather than portraying them as diametrically binary and disparagingly gendered opposites?) But despite the interim setbacks borne from the failure of Christian icons, the overall resolution of the film could serve as the culmination of a medieval Christian morality tale: Gawain can buy himself a great future in the short term if he relies on the protection of the enchanted green belt to avoid the Green Knight’s killing stroke, but then he will have to watch it all crumble until he is sitting alone in his own hall, his children dead and his kingdom destroyed, as a headless corpse who only now has been brave enough to accept his proper fate. By removing the belt from his person in the film’s Inception-like final scene, he relinquishes the taint of black magic and regains his religious honor, even at the likely cost of death. That, the medieval Christian morality tale would agree, is the correct course of action.

Gawain’s encounter with St. Winifred likewise presents a more subtle vision of medieval Christianity. Winifred was an eighth-century Welsh saint known for being beheaded, after which (by the power of another saint) her head was miraculously restored to her body and she went on to live a long and holy life. It doesn’t quite work that way in TGK. (St Winifred’s Well is mentioned in the original SGGK, but as far as I recall, Gawain doesn’t meet the saint in person.) In the film, Gawain encounters Winifred’s lifelike apparition, who begs him to dive into the mere and retrieve her head (despite appearances, she warns him, it is not attached to her body). This fits into the pattern of medieval ghost stories, where the dead often return to entreat the living to help them finish their business; they must be heeded, but when they are encountered in places they shouldn’t be, they must be put back into their proper physical space and reminded of their real fate. Gawain doesn’t follow William of Newburgh’s practical recommendation to just fetch some brawny young men with shovels to beat the wandering corpse back into its grave. Instead, in one of his few moments of unqualified heroism, he dives into the dark water and retrieves Winifred’s skull from the bottom of the lake. Then when he returns to the house, he finds the rest of her skeleton lying in the bed where he was earlier sleeping, and carefully reunites the skull with its body, finally allowing it to rest in peace.

However, Gawain’s involvement with Winifred doesn’t end there. The fox that he sees on the bank after emerging with her skull, who then accompanies him for the rest of the film, is strongly implied to be her spirit, or at least a companion that she has sent for him. Gawain has handled a saint’s holy bones; her relics, which were well known to grant protection in the medieval world. He has done the saint a service, and in return, she extends her favor to him. At the end of the film, the fox finally speaks in a human voice, warning him not to proceed to the fateful final encounter with the Green Knight; it will mean his death. The symbolism of having a beheaded saint serve as Gawain’s guide and protector is obvious, since it is the fate that may or may not lie in store for him. As I said, the ending is Inception-like in that it steadfastly refuses to tell you if the hero is alive (or will live) or dead (or will die). In the original SGGK, of course, the Green Knight and the Lord turn out to be the same person, Gawain survives, it was all just a test of chivalric will and honor, and a trap put together by Morgan Le Fay in an attempt to frighten Guinevere. It’s essentially able to be laughed off: a game, an adventure, not real. TGK takes this paradigm and flips it (to speak…) on its head.

Gawain’s rescue of Winifred’s head also rewards him in more immediate terms: his/the Green Knight’s axe, stolen by the scavengers, is miraculously restored to him in her cottage, immediately and concretely demonstrating the virtue of his actions. This is one of the points where the film most stubbornly resists modern storytelling conventions: it simply refuses to add in any kind of “rational” or “empirical” explanation of how else it got there, aside from the grace and intercession of the saint. This is indeed how it works in medieval hagiography: things simply reappear, are returned, reattached, repaired, made whole again, and Gawain’s lost weapon is thus restored, symbolizing that he has passed the test and is worthy to continue with the quest. The film’s narrative is not modernizing its underlying medieval logic here, and it doesn’t particularly care if a modern audience finds it “convincing” or not. As noted, the film never makes any attempt to temporalize or localize itself; it exists in a determinedly surrealist and ahistorical landscape, where naked female giants who look suspiciously like Tilda Swinton roam across the wild with no necessary explanation. While this might be frustrating for some people, I actually found it a huge relief that a clearly fantastic and fictional literary adaptation was not acting like it was qualified to teach “real history” to its audience. Nobody would come out of TGK thinking that they had seen the “actual” medieval world, and since we have enough of a problem with that sort of thing thanks to GOT, I for one welcome the creation of a medieval imaginative space that embraces its eccentric and unrealistic elements, rather than trying to fit them into the Real Life box.

This plays into the fact that the film, like a reused medieval manuscript containing more than one text, is a palimpsest: for one, it audaciously rewrites the entire Arthurian canon in the wordless vision of Gawain’s life after escaping the Green Knight (I could write another meta on that dream-epilogue alone). It moves fluidly through time and creates alternate universes in at least two major points: one, the scene where Gawain is tied up and abandoned by the scavengers and that long circling shot reveals his skeletal corpse rotting on the sward, only to return to our original universe as Gawain decides that he doesn’t want that fate, and two, Gawain as King. In this alternate ending, Arthur doesn’t die in battle with Mordred, but peaceably in bed, having anointed his worthy nephew as his heir. Gawain becomes king, has children, gets married, governs Camelot, becomes a ruler surpassing even Arthur, but then watches his son get killed in battle, his subjects turn on him, and his family vanish into the dust of his broken hall before he himself, in despair, pulls the enchanted scarf out of his clothing and succumbs to his fate.

In this version, Gawain takes on the responsibility for the fall of Camelot, not Arthur. This is the hero’s burden, but he’s obtained it dishonorably, by cheating. It is a vivid but mimetic future which Gawain (to all appearances) ultimately rejects, returning the film to the realm of traditional Arthurian canon – but not quite. After all, if Gawain does get beheaded after that final fade to black, it would represent a significant alteration from the poem and the character’s usual arc. Are we back in traditional canon or aren’t we? Did Gawain reject that future or didn’t he? Do all these alterities still exist within the visual medium of the meta-text, and have any of them been definitely foreclosed?

Furthermore, the film interrogates itself and its own tropes in explicit and overt ways. In Gawain’s conversation with the Lord, the Lord poses the question that many members of the audience might have: is Gawain going to carry out this potentially pointless and suicidal quest and then be an honorable hero, just like that? What is he actually getting by staggering through assorted Irish bogs and seeming to reject, rather than embrace, the paradigms of a proper quest and that of an honorable knight? He lies about being a knight to the scavengers, clearly out of fear, and ends up cravenly bound and robbed rather than fighting back. He denies knowing anything about love to the Lady (played by Alicia Vikander, who also plays his lover at the start of the film with a decidedly ropey Yorkshire accent, sorry to say). He seems to shrink from the responsibility thrust on him, rather than rise to meet it (his only honorable act, retrieving Winifred’s head, is discussed above) and yet here he still is, plugging away. Why is he doing this? What does he really stand to gain, other than accepting a choice and its consequences (somewhat?) The film raises these questions, but it has no plans to answer them. It’s going to leave you to think about them for yourself, and it isn’t going to spoon-feed you any ultimate moral or neat resolution. In this interchange, it’s easy to see both the echoes of a formal dialogue between two speakers (a favored medieval didactic tactic) and the broader purpose of chivalric literature: to interrogate what it actually means to be a knight, how personal honor is generated, acquired, and increased, and whether engaging in these pointless and bloody “war games” is actually any kind of real path to lasting glory.

The film’s treatment of race, gender, and queerness obviously also merits comment. By casting Dev Patel, an Indian-born actor, as an Arthurian hero, the film is… actually being quite accurate to the original legends, doubtless much to the disappointment of assorted internet racists. The thirteenth-century Arthurian romance Parzival (Percival) by the German poet Wolfram von Eschenbach notably features the character of Percival’s mixed-race half-brother, Feirefiz, son of their father by his first marriage to a Muslim princess. Feirefiz is just as heroic as Percival (Gawaine, for the record, also plays a major role in the story) and assists in the quest for the Holy Grail, though it takes his conversion to Christianity for him to properly behold it.

By introducing Patel (and Sarita Chowdhury as Morgause) to the visual representation of Arthuriana, the film quietly does away with the “white Middle Ages” cliché that I have complained about ad nauseam; we see background Asian and black members of Camelot, who just exist there without having to conjure up some complicated rationale to explain their presence. The Lady also uses a camera obscura to make Gawain’s portrait. Contrary to those who might howl about anachronism, this technique was known in China as early as the fourth century BCE and the tenth/eleventh century Islamic scholar Ibn al-Haytham was probably the best-known medieval authority to write on it extensively; Latin translations of his work inspired European scientists from Roger Bacon to Leonardo da Vinci. Aside from the symbolism of an upside-down Gawain (and when he sees the portrait again during the ‘fall of Camelot’, it is right-side-up, representing that Gawain himself is in an upside-down world), this presents a subtle challenge to the prevailing Eurocentric imagination of the medieval world, and draws on other global influences.

As for gender, we have briefly touched on it above; in the original SGGK, Gawain’s entire journey is revealed to be just a cruel trick of Morgan Le Fay, simply trying to destabilize Arthur’s court and upset his queen. (Morgan is the old blindfolded woman who appears in the Lord and Lady’s castle and briefly approaches Gawain, but her identity is never explicitly spelled out.) This is, obviously, an implicitly misogynistic setup: an evil woman plays a trick on honorable men for the purpose of upsetting another woman, the honorable men overcome it, the hero survives, and everyone presumably lives happily ever after (at least until Mordred arrives).

Instead, by plunging the outcome into doubt and the hero into a much darker and more fallible moral universe, TGK shifts the blame for Gawain’s adventure and ultimate fate from Morgan to Gawain himself. Likewise, Guinevere is not the passive recipient of an evil deception but in a way, the catalyst for the whole thing. She breaks the seal on the Green Knight’s message with a weighty snap; she becomes the oracle who reads it out, she is alarming rather than alarmed, she disrupts the complacency of the court and silently shows up all the other knights who refuse to step forward and answer the Green Knight’s challenge. Gawain is not given the ontological reassurance that it’s just a practical joke and he’s going to be fine (and thanks to the unresolved ending, neither are we). The film instead takes the concept at face value in order to push the envelope and ask the simple question: if a man was going to be actually-for-real beheaded in a year, why would he set out on a suicidal quest? Would you, in Gawain’s place, make the same decision to cast aside the enchanted belt and accept your fate? Has he made his name, will he be remembered well? What is his legacy?

Indeed, if there is any hint of feminine connivance and manipulation, it arrives in the form of the implication that Gawain’s mother has deliberately summoned the Green Knight to test her son, prove his worth, and position him as his childless uncle’s heir; she gives him the protective belt to make sure he won’t actually die, and her intention all along was for the future shown in the epilogue to truly play out (minus the collapse of Camelot). Only Gawain loses the belt thanks to his cowardice in the encounter with the scavengers, regains it in a somewhat underhanded and morally questionable way when the Lady is attempting to seduce him, and by ultimately rejecting it altogether and submitting to his uncertain fate, totally mucks up his mother’s painstaking dynastic plans for his future. In this reading, Gawain could be king, and his mother’s efforts are meant to achieve that goal, rather than thwart it. He is thus required to shoulder his own responsibility for this outcome, rather than conveniently pawning it off on an “evil woman,” and by extension, the film asks the question: What would the world be like if men, especially those who make war on others as a way of life, were actually forced to face the consequences of their reckless and violent actions? Is it actually a “game” in any sense of the word, especially when chivalric literature is constantly preoccupied with the question of how much glorious violence is too much glorious violence? If you structure social prestige for the king and the noble male elite entirely around winning battles and existing in a state of perpetual war, when does that begin to backfire and devour the knightly class – and the rest of society – instead?

This leads into the central theme of Gawain’s relationships with the Lord and Lady, and how they’re treated in the film. The poem has been repeatedly studied in terms of its latent (and sometimes… less than latent) queer subtext: when the Lord asks Gawain to pay back to him whatever he should receive from his wife, does he already know what this involves; i.e. a physical and romantic encounter? When the Lady gives kisses to Gawain, which he is then obliged to return to the Lord as a condition of the agreement, is this all part of a dastardly plot to seduce him into a kinky green-themed threesome with a probably-not-human married couple looking to spice up their sex life? Why do we read the Lady’s kisses to Gawain as romantic but Gawain’s kisses to the Lord as filial, fraternal, or the standard “kiss of peace” exchanged between a liege lord and his vassal? Is Gawain simply being a dutiful guest by honoring the bargain with his host, actually just kissing the Lady again via the proxy of her husband, or somewhat more into this whole thing with the Lord than he (or the poet) would like to admit? Is the homosocial turning homoerotic, and how is Gawain going to navigate this tension and temptation?

If the question is never resolved: well, welcome to one of the central medieval anxieties about chivalry, knighthood, and male bonds! As I have written about before, medieval society needed to simultaneously exalt this as the most honored and noble form of love, and make sure it didn’t accidentally turn sexual (once again: how much male love is too much male love?). Does the poem raise the possibility of serious disruption to the dominant heteronormative paradigm, only to solve the problem by interpreting the Gawain/Lady male/female kisses as romantic and sexual and the Gawain/Lord male/male kisses as chaste and formal? In other words, acknowledging the underlying anxiety of possible homoeroticism but ultimately reasserting the heterosexual norm? The answer: Probably?!?! Maybe?!?! Hell if we know??! To say the least, this has been argued over to no end, and if you locked a lot of medieval history/literature scholars into a room and told them that they couldn’t come out until they decided on one clear answer, they would be in there for a very long time. The poem seemingly invokes the possibility of a queer reading only to reject it – but once again, as in the question of which canon we end up in at the film’s end, does it?

In some lights, the film’s treatment of this potential queer reading comes off like a cop-out: there is only one kiss between Gawain and the Lord, and it is something that the Lord has to initiate after Gawain has already fled the hall. Gawain himself appears to reject it; he tells the Lord to let go of him and runs off into the wilderness, rather than deal with or accept whatever has been suggested to him. However, this fits with film!Gawain’s pattern of rejecting that which fundamentally makes him who he is; like Peter in the Bible, he has now denied the truth three times. With the scavengers he denies being a knight; with the Lady he denies knowing about courtly love; with the Lord he denies the central bond of brotherhood with his fellows, whether homosocial or homoerotic in nature. I would go so far as to argue that if Gawain does die at the end of the film, it is this rejected kiss which truly seals his fate. In the poem, the Lord and the Green Knight are revealed to be the same person; in the film, it’s not clear if that’s the case, or they are separate characters, even if thematically interrelated. If we assume, however, that the Lord is in fact still the human form of the Green Knight, then Gawain has rejected both his kiss of peace (the standard gesture of protection offered from lord to vassal) and any deeper emotional bond that it can be read to signify. The Green Knight could decide to spare Gawain in recognition of the courage he has shown in relinquishing the enchanted belt – or he could just as easily decide to kill him, which he is legally free to do since Gawain has symbolically rejected the offer of brotherhood, vassalage, or knight-bonding by his unwise denial of the Lord’s freely given kiss. Once again, the film raises the overall thematic and moral question and then doesn’t give one straight (ahem) answer. As with the medieval anxieties and chivalric texts that it is based on, it invokes the specter of queerness and then doesn’t neatly resolve it. As a modern audience, we find this unsatisfying, but once again, the film is refusing to conform to our expectations.

As has been said before, there is so much kissing between men in medieval contexts, both ceremonial and otherwise, that we’re left to wonder: “is it gay or is it feudalism?” Is there an overtly erotic element in Gawain and the Green Knight’s mutual “beheading” of each other (especially since in the original version, this frees the Lord from his curse, functioning like a true love’s kiss in a fairytale). While it is certainly possible to argue that the film has “straightwashed” its subject material by removing the entire sequence of kisses between Gawain and the Lord and the unresolved motives for their existence, it is a fairly accurate, if condensed, representation of the anxieties around medieval knightly bonds and whether, as Carolyn Dinshaw put it, a (male/male) “kiss is just a kiss.” After all, the kiss between Gawain and the Lady is uncomplicatedly read as sexual/romantic, and that context doesn’t go away when Gawain is kissing the Lord instead. Just as with its multiple futurities, the film leaves the question open-ended. Is it that third and final denial that seals Gawain’s fate, and if so, is it asking us to reflect on why, specifically, he does so?

The film could play with both this question and its overall tone quite a bit more: it sometimes comes off as a grim, wooden, over-directed Shakespearean tragedy, rather than incorporating the lively and irreverent tone that the poem often takes. It’s almost totally devoid of humor, which is unfortunate, and the Grim Middle Ages aesthetic is in definite evidence. Nonetheless, because of the comprehensive de-historicizing and the obvious lack of effort to claim the film as any sort of authentic representation of the medieval past, it works. We are not meant to understand this as a historical document, and so we have to treat it on its terms, by its own logic, and by its own frames of reference. In some ways, its consistent opacity and its refusal to abide by modern rules and common narrative conventions is deliberately meant to challenge us: as before, when we recognize Arthur, Merlin, the Round Table, and the other stock characters because we know them already and not because the film tells us so, we have to fill in the gaps ourselves. We are watching the film not because it tells us a simple adventure story – there is, as noted, shockingly little action overall – but because we have to piece together the metatext independently and ponder the philosophical questions that it leaves us with. What conclusion do we reach? What canon do we settle in? What future or resolution is ultimately made real? That, the film says, it can’t decide for us. As ever, it is up to future generations to carry on the story, and decide how, if at all, it is going to survive.

(And to close, I desperately want them to make my much-coveted Bisclavret adaptation now in more or less the same style, albeit with some tweaks. Please.)

Further Reading

Ailes, Marianne J. ‘The Medieval Male Couple and the Language of Homosociality’, in Masculinity in Medieval Europe, ed. by Dawn M. Hadley (Harlow: Longman, 1999), pp. 214–37.

Ashton, Gail. ‘The Perverse Dynamics of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Arthuriana 15 (2005), 51–74.

Boyd, David L. ‘Sodomy, Misogyny, and Displacement: Occluding Queer Desire in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Arthuriana 8 (1998), 77–113.

Busse, Peter. ‘The Poet as Spouse of his Patron: Homoerotic Love in Medieval Welsh and Irish Poetry?’, Studi Celtici 2 (2003), 175–92.

Dinshaw, Carolyn. ‘A Kiss Is Just a Kiss: Heterosexuality and Its Consolations in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Diacritics 24 (1994), 205–226.

Kocher, Suzanne. ‘Gay Knights in Medieval French Fiction: Constructs of Queerness and Non-Transgression’, Mediaevalia 29 (2008), 51–66.

Karras, Ruth Mazo. ‘Knighthood, Compulsory Heterosexuality, and Sodomy’ in The Boswell Thesis: Essays on Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, ed. Matthew Kuefler (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), pp. 273–86.

Kuefler, Matthew. ‘Male Friendship and the Suspicion of Sodomy in Twelfth-Century France’, in The Boswell Thesis: Essays on Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, ed. Matthew Kuefler (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), pp. 179–214.

McVitty, E. Amanda, ‘False Knights and True Men: Contesting Chivalric Masculinity in English Treason Trials, 1388–1415,’ Journal of Medieval History 40 (2014), 458–77.

Mieszkowski, Gretchen. ‘The Prose Lancelot's Galehot, Malory's Lavain, and the Queering of Late Medieval Literature’, Arthuriana 5 (1995), 21–51.

Moss, Rachel E. ‘ “And much more I am soryat for my good knyghts’ ”: Fainting, Homosociality, and Elite Male Culture in Middle English Romance’, Historical Reflections / Réflexions historiques 42 (2016), 101–13.

Zeikowitz, Richard E. ‘Befriending the Medieval Queer: A Pedagogy for Literature Classes’, College English 65 (2002), 67–80.

[tgammsideblog]

Tgamm ¨The Curse¨ episode analysis (S1 E1 A)

Alright, for starters i would like to say that i’m thinking about starting a little project that involves me writing reviews/ analysis of episodes in Season 1 while the series is on haitus. I may post twice of these per week ( 4 segments per week) if people like the idea.

I’m not planning in making these very in *depth* analyses. See it more as me writing some general observations and giving my opinions about an episode. I have always prefered to keep things simple and to not go that hard into details. Expect these to be quick reviews rather than very long essays. Having that said, let’s start with the analysis of ¨The Curse¨

One the first things that always catches my eye watching this episode is just how good the intro to the Ghost World is. In the first scene we already get this feeling of sadness and desperation coming off of the Flow of Failed Phantoms. The rock where the Ghost Council is looks intimidating. It gives the impression we are in cold fantastical world different from ours.

Another thing that the intro scene helps setting up is how cruel and authoritarian the Ghost Council is: In the first minute we see them throwing a ghost who wasn’t capable of keeping her town miserable because of things that were too out of her control. The Ghost Council doesn’t care about this and sends her quickly to the Flow without any doubts. With so little the series is already telling us a lot of the Ghost World social system, how it operates and that the ghosts have a job to keep humans miserable. That’s a great way to get you audience attention quickly.

What it follows is the introduction to Scratch’s character: The first he is doing when he appears on screen is eating garbage. Then he gets into the Ghost Council’s faces, not caring about social manners at all. That scene alone is communicating a lot about Scratch’s character, from his habits to the way he usually interacts with other people. When the Ghost Council is about to go the Ghost Council club, Scratch asks them if he can go with them. He is quickly rejected, being made fun of and abruptally send off back to the Earth realm. For a moment Scratch is seen with a sad expression, only for him to cover that up by saying ¨he doesn’t need anyone¨ and ¨he is better off by himself¨. Here we see Scratch’s character main conflict clear. His constant loneliness and treatment he receives in the Ghost World by his superiors. His denial about his current situation, repeating to himself again and again that he is better alone to cover his own pain of not having anyone else.

As for the McGees, i like how each one is introduced and i can easily get a quick grasp of their dynamic like Darryl being the trouble maker and Molly looking to make Brighton a better place (¨I see limitess potential). With some lines it’s enough to undestand more or less how they work as a family. There is a brief mention of the family economic status when they see the state of their new home, which is nice.

After arriving our main protagonists finally meet for first time. For the very first moment they interact with each other, the writers take full advantage of their personalities to make hilarious interactions between them. It does a good job at  settling their whole relationship that gets more depth in later episodes. If there is one issue i have that affects this episode’s quality is how much it tries to explore in only 11 minutes of screen time. Instead of letting the events flow naturally, it feels like the story is jumping from scene to scene with no breather in between. For example: Molly interacts with Scratch two or three times before he decides to put the curse on her, which makes feel like the narrative is pushing the characters to move instead of the other way around. It’s not that this aspect alone completely ruins the episode. There are other things like the jokes and the characters interactions that still make it fun to watch. However, i would argue that it may not fully get the attention of someone who is starting to watch the show.

Moving on, i found the song ¨Together Forever¨ sweet. It’s a cute and funny sequence with some dark humor lyrics (Like a parasitic worm I live your heart!) which is something you wouldn’t normally expect from a Disney animated show. Scratch attemps at trying to scare off Molly are funny with Molly barely reacting to them.

When Scratch goes to the Ghost World to ask to two members from the Ghost Council about the curse (while half lying about it). There is a short explanation that shows that Scratch has to make Molly or her family leave the house so he is able to break the curse that bounds him to Molly. The main issue is that the house is the McGees’ ¨forever home¨. Molly explains to Scratch that they have been moving multiple times around the country, something that lead to Molly having to leave many friends behind. This gives a reason to why she acts to happy about Scratch being her ¨forever friend¨ because she never had proper long lasting friendships. She never stayed in one place growing up. It’s worth of bringing up that Scratch seems to sympathize with Molly for a moment when she mentions having lost friends in the past. It shows that he wasn’t completely bad even when he didn’t like Molly at the start.

In last scene of episode Molly is talking to Grandma Nin by using videocall. Nin suggests her to make a Sal Phra Phum, a little house for ghosts that comes from Thai culture (Molly is part thai from her mother’s side). I think it’s cool that they used Molly’s culture to find a solution to Scratch’s problem. It’s a nice touch. What’s more, it is interesting how Scratch calms down once Nin makes this suggestion, showing that his issue was probably not having his own space. Molly doesn’t hug him as much as she does in this episode, meaning that she got the idea that Scratch doesn’t like to be given too much attention.

In all, i think ¨The Curse¨ is an okay episode to start the series. There are some weird things about the characterization and pacing that may come from being one of the first episodes. Usually animated shows first episodes aren’t the best quality and they can be a hit or miss. In spite of this, If someone is trying to introduce the show to a friend. i would suggest them to make them watch the segment that follows ¨First Day Frights¨ since the writing and the pacing is better in that one in comparison.

[pixelpoppers]

It's been four months since I posted about not really playing games anymore and I thought it was time for an update.

(First, a quick refresher on the old post: I theorized that a big part of my enjoyment of video games came from them enabling me to focus my attention in a way that I normally find difficult, so once I started taking focus-enhancing nootropics this advantage went away and video games became much less appealing compared to other activities. Instead I started spending my free time doing personal data cleanup and related tasks.)

So, what have I been doing since then? A few things. I have been continuing with minor tasks on my personal projects when I can come up with good ones. They're mostly not the sort of data curation or "gardening" tasks I talked about last time because I've run out of those (though the good thing about the debacle with Sony announcing they'd close the PS3/Vita/PSP stores (before backpedaling) is that getting my Vita and PS3 libraries in order was a great few-days-long gardening task). Instead, I've mostly been making small improvements to my various web projects. For example, yesterday I added entries for "fun pain" and "perfectible" to the game design glossary on the main Pixel Poppers site, which had been low priority on my to-do list for quite a while. Maybe next I'll update the site's mobile layout to put the navigation stuff in a hamburger menu instead of at the bottom.

This stuff requires more thought than the gardening tasks, so it's less relaxing, and I'm having to figure out new ways to relax. Video games have slotted back into my life as one of several ways to relax but I still approach them very differently from before. I no longer look for "go places and do things" games or seek to feel like I am occupying a world. I want the experience to feel contained and not take up space in my brain when I'm not playing it. I want it to be something I can easily pick up for a bit and have it not matter whether I ever come back to it. I've found that what works best is low-context arcade-style experiences (racers, puzzlers, twin-stick shooters, rhythm games, etc.) or story games that can be completed in a single sitting (short visual novels or walking simulators like What Remains of Edith Finch or Wide Ocean Big Jacket). Games that are based on larger-scale progression, exploration, or worldbuilding (RPGs, 3D platformers, probably open world games - which used to be some of my favorites) don't do much for me anymore and I've bounced off a few of them in the past couple months.

So it's still the case that games are occupying less of my mental real estate than before and I have less to say about them. I might still decide to post more stuff here - I have an idea file with about fifty seeds for potential posts, though I don't know how many of them are actually worth developing (does anyone care about the weird variety of ways Senran Kagura has handled DLC over the years, for example).

But the truth is... I haven't gotten what I've wanted out of Pixel Poppers for years. This could be a much longer essay, and it's one I've tried to write a few times, but in short: Back in Pixel Poppers's "golden age" when I first started posting regularly in 2009-2010, I got a lot of comments and discussion on my posts and I felt like I was actually part of a great community. I mostly stopped posting in order to focus on my job and by the time I came back in 2018, the internet was a very different place. I got a couple of comments here and there (more on Tumblr than anywhere else) but I mostly felt like I was talking into a void, which was terrible for my motivation to work hard on quality articles. My impression is that the game analysis community has almost all moved to YouTube and if I want to be part of it again I have to switch to making videos and chasing YouTube's mysterious and fickle algorithm and I just don't. want. that.

Please understand: This is not a dig on my audience or intended to make anyone feel guilty. You don't owe me comments or anything else. If you're reading this at all, I am grateful and I love you! This is just about me facing the reality of what I'm looking for and what I'd need to do to get it in the current landscape. And admitting that the advantage that I thought Pixel Poppers had over other projects - an established audience - is actually much smaller than I was considering it to be.

So I'm also thinking about switching gears to a different writing project, one focused more on things that are at the front of my mind these days. Possibly just a general thoughts blog (which, admittedly, would sometimes be about video games). Possibly a blog about what I do for a living. Possibly making more small games (I'm pretty happy with how Detectivania turned out, after all). Or possibly reviewing all 800+ episodes and films in the Star Trek franchise. Maybe more than one of these things, bouncing around with an irregular schedule, and even slotting in occasional Pixel Poppers posts along the way. And I have to decide how connected I want these things to be - part of me wants people who enjoy some of my projects to easily be able to find the rest, but I also like that right now I can have my identity cleanly compartmentalized and only attach my real name to some things (and thus it's harder for someone who dislikes my take on Dark Souls to doxx me and dig up my bad/outdated takes on other more widely-impactful things to fuel a harassment campaign or whatever).

That's where things stand today. I'm not dead. I'm still gaming a little. I may make small posts here every once in a while but I don't expect to invest a lot of time or effort into it in the near- to mid-term future. And I may or may not announce other projects publicly here. If you have feelings or questions about any of this, feel free to shoot me a DM or an email or whatever.

Thanks for reading.

[emmys-grimoire]

Season 2 review

It is done!

I’ll preface this review with the obvious but nevertheless important: these are my opinions. I am fine with others criticizing my opinions, mind you, but I’m usually disinclined to changing them. Like most opinionated people.

And as with most things covered in this blog, spoilers ahead. Don’t read it if you don’t like ‘em.

The Good

I believe the devs did the side characters justice in terms of character development, which is impressive because they have to fixate on seven other characters for most of the story (the demon brothers are the draw, afterall). It’s a little frustrating because it shows they are capable of revealing a lot about a character in just a single conversation, but they spend a great deal of their time on fluff. It is nothing unsurprising given the aim of the game as a whole (romantic fantasy/escapism), but it does detract from… well, everything else. If you don’t care about everything else, this doesn’t matter. If you’re one of the few who do, like me, you’re in for a drought before you get to the next juicy story morsel. Alas, that is the price we pay.

But, this is ‘the Good’ section of the review, so I will focus on that. Diavolo, Luke, Simeon, and Solomon get fleshed out more than they did in the previous season as promised, and their growing closeness to MC doesn’t feel hamfisted; there’s little realistic hooks strewn throughout that makes the relationships grow organically compared to, say, the newt syrup arc.

At the end of the season MC is set to become Solomon’s new apprentice, they are now instrumental in Diavolo’s plan for realm-wide peace instead of just being a particularly charming exchange student, Simeon is more interested in learning more about MC due to MC’s meddling during the retreat and their performance in his play, and Luke finally can bring himself to admit that he actually enjoys being in the Devildom. Michael is being alluded to more and more and finally drops in to say hi, even though the game stops short of explicitly revealing that it is him. It all feels like a good transition into more romantic things with them in the next season, and I look forward to exploring more hidden depths.

I am relieved they steered away from additional time travel due to its potential to confuse everyone and everything. We need to learn what the deal is with Barbatos but I’m sure it can be done without meddling with the time continuum. The introduction of the Reaper has interesting worldbuilding implications: the souls of all beings are overseen by what appears to be an unaligned third party, though prior lore implies that the departed souls still return to their respective realms (Lilith allegedly forgot how to ascend to the Celestial Realm in her desire to watch over her siblings). But, like with Michael, they avoided actually showing him by having him take a vacation right before Solomon and the brothers arrive.

On the whole, I’m happy with the season’s ending. It’s probably as good as it can get, and sets up the next season well -- assuming there is one (I think there will be).

The Bad

It’s hard to frame this because there were never any explicit promises made but wow was the build-up wasted and the climax went down dry.

Diavolo’s wishy-washiness and reluctance to tell Lucifer about how MC’s presence was slowly tearing the Devildom asunder, his growing jealousy and his doubt in the strength of Lucifer’s loyalty, the foreshadowing in Simeon’s play, Barbatos warning Lucifer that one day he may need to choose between Diavolo and MC/his family and how he was reverting back to his angelic self, the very foreboding storm that was brewing outside, how Lucifer was certain “something bad” was about to happen… all that juicy potential rendered impotent because of the Ring of Light and amnesia.

It didn’t lead to a tortured, difficult choice Lucifer had to make that had the potential to put either his relationships or the realms in jeopardy -- and it really felt like it was headed in that direction. But it couldn’t really lead there because Lucifer lost his memories, and he was just re-familiarizing himself with all those relationships. Instead we had to choose whether or not we let Lucifer martyr himself, and of course he’s willing to do that because he loves us even if his memories aren’t fully intact, and it’s heavily implied that he’s his angel-like self again. The choices we made during the play don’t really come into fruition, and the Ring of Light helps make our choice ultimately irrelevant anyway.

It felt like they winded up for the pitch and then lost their nerve.

Though I’d argue that Lucifer would ultimately be okay with sacrificing himself for MC and the realms even if he was still his full-fledged, assholish demon self… but it definitely felt like fate was going to make him choose between his loyalty and his love. You know, the whole “love is the death of duty”/”duty is the death of love” shebang. It would have been more rewarding -- they can even let the Ring of Light ultimately fix everything and I’d be happy if it was that dilemma! But this isn’t Game of Thrones, so I can’t be too disappointed that my expectations weren’t met.

If you like Lucifer and Mammon fluff, this season gives it in spades. If neither of those two are your favorite you might have been bummed out. They give Asmo an arc but he ultimately concludes he was trying too hard to be like Lucifer which left me all ?????? How? Satan tutors you, but he doesn’t really deviate from what he usually does (though his minor tiff with Simeon when he’s physically affectionate with us was amusing). The devs did suggest they want to explore Satan’s origins more thoroughly in the future in one of the newsletters, and I think we’re due for that in the next season. There’s hope for the others yet... just not much in this season.

The Future?

I think there’s a high probability that we’ll get a season 3. Nothing about season 2’s ending felt like they were wrapping things up. The season as a whole felt like a transition.

I think we’ll get more romantic scenes with our “undateables” and they won’t officially be considered “undateables” any more. We’ll probably get more cards with them. I’m not sure if they’ll fully graduate into dance battle sprites because that’ll require more creative color assignments for glow sticks, but I wouldn’t entirely discount the possibility. There are many shades in the rainbow.

I think worldbuilding necessitates more exploration of the Celestial Realm, and an eventual conclusion to the game storyline requires officially mending relations between the angels and demons and healing the wounds incurred by both the wars of the distant past and the Great Celestial War (which was essentially a civil war). Such a thing requires an honest dialogue between the two factions for it to ring sincere, not just a continuation of the exchange program. The game doesn’t hesitate in stating how violent all of it was.

To that end, I think we’re going to at least get a full-fledged Michael eventually, though I understand the reluctance to add him due to the work that will follow in adding another handsome man fans will undoubtedly want to make blush and kiss. They may leave him a disembodied voice for as long as they possibly can, but at some point fans will start complaining at the teasing. It’ll be like continually having to skip a missing step on a ladder.

Until then, though, he’s a missing step that’s fun to conceptualize.

You won’t get routes. The setting is ideal for a harem: all the potential love interests loved each other before MC ever entered the picture, so they will eventually accept having to share them, jealousy be damned. I’m pretty sure they’re all aware of MC’s affection towards each of them already: it’s just a matter of contention of which among them MC prefers the most. If MC wants to pursue only one of the brothers, it is up to them to do just that -- in the confines of the presented story.

Conclusion

There were some good story bits to chew on here and there, but as a whole the writing fell flatter than season 1’s writing, in spite of the predictability in the latter. The general unpredictability of this season has made things more exciting than the conclusion we eventually arrived at; it’s hard to commend it when it just doesn’t lead to something intriguing.

Welp, at least we get time to level up our cards for the next season. I only have three URs so it was pretty rough.

I’ll probably do more analysis and essays in the interim, as I work through hard mode and think more about stuff. It’s been fun, in spite of my critique.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Michael in the Mainstream: The Nostalgia Critic

I have been a fan of the Nostalgia Critic for years now. That’s a rather controversial stance to take nowdays, especially in light of recent controversies; first was the big #ChangeTheChannel movement which had the entire site sans Brad Jones performing a mass exodus elsewhere with some even going so far as to brutally cut ties with Doug for his and managements failings (with Alison Pregler, AKA Obscurus Lupa offering some especially harsh words). Then was this year’s review of The Wall, where he utilized his divisive clipless style and his complete lack of a good singing voice to create what is hands down one of the worst videos – not even just review, VIDEOS – on YouTube. But even with those two things aside, I do think there is some value to the work of Doug Walker. He became popular for a reason, right? So what is that reason? Where did he go wrong?

Doug Walker began doing his Nostalgia Critic schtick in the wake of James Rolfe’s Angry Video Game Nerd becoming an internet icon, and he quickly became one of the bigger faces in the wake of imitators Rolfe spawned. The conceit of his show is rather simple – he reviews nostalgic movies, mostly stuff from the 80s or 90s, with occasional forays into the 2000s – all while parodying the typical internet film critic much as Rolfe parodied the typical nerd gamer. The Critic, you see, is not necessarily Doug, but instead a hyperactive psychotic manchild version of himself who screeches, shoots, and curses up a storm while reviewing movies. It wasn’t too different from other review shows at the time, really, but Doug had a sort of corny charm that really worked.

As time went on, production values slowly increased, Doug’s humor sharpened, and eventually actual thoughtful film analysis crept in, especially in the post-reboot episodes. In fact, that is something I generally like about Doug’s work, and why I even bother with him still: the man clearly has an understanding of film theory, he knows what he’s talking about, and when he takes the time to sit down and actually talk about movies he’s actually pretty insightful. I think of his reviews of stuff like Ghostbusters 2,where he actually gave a genuinely great alternate plotline for the film that would have better utilized the concepts and characters, or any of his numerous video essays on film issues like whitewashing. When it’s Doug just sitting down and talking about a film while cracking jokes here and there, it tends to be really good.

However, Doug has increasingly wanted to add some spice to his reviews in the forms of skits. And it’s not like there never were bits in his reviews back in the day, but post-revival He ramped up the amount of skits, utilizing a cast of friends, with the current mainstays being Malcolm Ray and Tamara Chambers. I do sort of like the weird cast of characters the show has amassed, and I think they really help give the show an identity to set it apart from other review shows. Malcolm and Tamara are honestly, genuinely funny and enjoyable, though the writing doesn’t always play to their skills and can sometimes be a bit obnoxious. I think I’d have to say Malcolm is probably my favorite of the bunch, as he has the wackiest roster of amusing characters, with roles such as Satan, Black Willy Wonka, and good ol’ Bill. And some of his best reviews have crazy skits. His Moulin Rouge review is a standout example; even if I don’t agree with his opinions, he manages to make the musical interludes fun, funny, and actually filled with some sort of commentary relating to the film.

I think the real issues with the skits is they sometimes bog down the reviews or go on for a bit too long.  Some of them also just plain aren’t funny at all, or they use really bottom of the barrel cringeworthy comedy that the Critic himself has criticized in his reviews. Of course, the pinnacle of these problems are his clipless reviews, which are basically just Doug and pals reenacting whatever movie he’s reviewing. On paper, this seems like a fun and amusing idea, but the execution is often extremely poor. See, the thing about the Nostalgia Critic is that you’re ostensibly going to him to see criticism and see if something is worth watching; the thing with his clipless reviews is that they require intimate familiarity with the source material for you to even get half of the jokes he’s making, which kind of defeats the point. This is one of the reasons his review of The Wall is so terrible; he’s taking a film that is incomprehensible and surreal and parodying it without explaining the context, so anyone unfamiliar with the movie will be lost.

And even if you are familiar, a lot of the parody can come off as mean-spirited or even filled with blatant lies. Doug has a tendency to overexaggerate and be hyperbolic when he’s in-character, so if he finds a serious flaw in the movie he’ll blow it up in his parody. His reviews of the It films really showcase this, as he sort of nitpicks things that really aren’t as big a deal as he makes them out to be, which has the unfortunate side effect of making his legitimate criticisms look a bit weaker. In fact, a lot of the time Doug comes off as genuinely hypocritical, mocking tropes and tools he himself frequently utilizes in his own reviews. It’s so weird, because despite all this as well as the cheap special effects and production values that Doug is clearly putting a lot of effort into acting out all these wacky parodies, but he just can’t act and criticize at the same time. At the very least, his clipless reviews lend themselves well to unintentionally hilarious, so bad it’s good territory.

I think a lot of why the clipless reviews and skits don’t work is because of Doug’s lingering resentment over the failure of Demo Reel, which was him trying to branch out after he retired the Critic. Of course had to fall back on the Critic; Demo Reel was not very popular, and people just wanted more of what Made Doug famous. I do like that he did try stuff to spice his show up to make it enjoyable for him again, but it’s still hard not to get the sense that Doug is still bitterly lashing out with his skits at the people who wouldn’t accept him branching out into attempts at legitimate acting. As such, they just feel like empty, over the top garbage that Doug is pushing out because he really wants to act, but he feels like he can’t because what people want is more Critic.

I guess in general it doesn’t help that Doug is just not a great actor. Just look at his performances in the anniversary movies, which horribly clash with the whiny manchild the Critic is portrayed as in the main show, orr even during some of the commercial skits he does, where he tends to overact or just get too childish and hammy. It’s so obvious to me that Doug really wants to be a legitimate actor but he just doesn’t seem to have the aptitude for it. He’s a lot better at comedy and criticism than he is at acting. Of course, that’s not to say he’s incapable of doing anything good; his review of that 3D Nutcracker movie, and in fact a lot of his more modern Christmas-related reviews, have some genuinely touching and heartfelt moments, and when Doug is staying true to the goofy, idiotic character of the Critic he can be really fun.

The Nostalgia Critic is not really a show I think I can recommend to most people. Hell, sometimes I feel like I only watch it because of, ahem, nostalgia. I definitely don’t think the show is void of good content, but when Doug drops something like The Wall, it makes me wonder… Still, I like to stick around, because when Doug hits it, he hits it out of the park. The problem is when he fails, he tends to fail in the most epic manner possible. He’s like that one bat in EarthBound which is super powerful but misses a lot, but when it hits, your opponent is pretty sure to get knocked out. I think a lot of Doug’s failings are carried by his supporting cast, and the flaws in his writing are only easy to swallow because of the genuine insights he offers. There’s just a lot to take into consideration when it comes to the Critic, it’s really hard to say if he’s good or bad. He just… is.

I definitely think some of what Doug does is bad and cringeworthy (I really can’t defend those sketches in the Deadpool 2 review or those awful Kermit puppets), but I think beneath the cringiness, beneath the overdone acting, and beneath the flaws, there are some good insights to be found about films and why they do and don’t work. I of course don’t agree with everything Doug says, but there is still genuine thought and effort. I don’t really know if I can say he’s worth going out of your way to watch, but popping in now and then to check out what Doug has to say isn’t a bad thing. I kind of wish he would go back to doing those video essays again, because I think that was some of his best work, or maybe stick to only reviewing stuff that he has some sort of genuine connection with. When he is really passionate about something, it really shows, because he puts care and effort into the analysis and is able to tell some genuinely good jokes in between snarking at the film. When he just doesn’t care… you get The Wall review. Yeah, that’s pretty much my go-to for awful Doug reviews, becauseit is emblematic of every single problem that has come to plague his worst efforts: lack of care, bad writing, crappy production values, overdone and overacted skits, manipulative editing, and zero insight into the film.

Still, as cringeworthy as he can get these days… I’ll take this version of Doug over the Bat Credit Card/Chuck Norris/Burger King “elephant”/forced meme version of Doug from his early days.

I’m Michael Ford. I remember the Nostalgia Critic so you don’t have to.

[lyendith]

Ciconia no Naku Koro ni Phase 1 : To You, The Replaceable Ones

I had planned to write this… review? analysis? of Ciconia Phase 1 right after finishing the game about two weeks after its release, but since then I've had trouble organizing my thoughts. The reason is that this first installment alone tackles a lot of themes: war, nationalism, technoscientism, media consumption and manipulation, the blurring limits between physical and virtual reality, education systems, generational gaps induced by technology, artificial procreation, old people robbing the youth of their dreams, the meaning of family and interpersonal bonds, and even transidentity (albeit briefly). And it is quite remarkable that almost all of those themes are represented by one object: the Gauntlet and the idea of “parallel processing” associated with it.

It's gonna be a long and messy review, I'll probably forget to mention some aspects of the story or overlook others, and I won't talk about every single character, but I'll try to cover the essential parts. Not easy considering how densely-packed the story is, but let's go!

So to start, I should probably focus on this VN's protagonist, Mitake Miyao. On a surface level, he's a bit of what you'd call a “tsundere”: harsh, a little irritable and sarcastic with his pals, but always well-meaning and easy to befriend in the end. One of the running threads of the story so far is that he's too well-meaning in fact, idealistic to a fault, which contributes to his odd charisma but also makes the increasing realization of his powerlessness all the more depressing. You don't want to see this guy fail, but because of the way the story is framed, you know he inevitably will.

For a while, the narration and dialogue like to repeat that “youngsters are each generation's main characters”, but that's a sentiment I couldn't quite share − in our real world, youngsters may be the ones will all the dreams, but they sure as hell aren't the ones making the decisions. The climate change crisis, for example, wouldn't be left unaddressed if that was the case. And sure enough, Ciconia isn't so naïve as to ignore that reality. Every single step of the way, Miyao thinks he can use his power to overturn the situation. Every single step of the way, he's reminded that in the end he's just a pawn moving however his higher-ups or other nebulous forces wish him to. That's a really powerful and relatable theme in this day and age, which raises the question of how far you can oppose a system you're an essential part of.

One thing that makes Miyao special, at least compared to his pals from the AOU, is that he's “ciconia-born” − born from natural procreation. Which means that unlike Jayden or Gunhild, he has bilogical family bonds but also hasn't been subjected to a genetic selection that would predetermine his path in life. At least supposedly, but we gradually learn that that may not quite be the case. In fact, that biological link to Toujirou ends up acting as a tether that robs Miyao of even more control on his own life than he thought, leading to the final tragedy of this first Phase.

There also lies this story's commentary on technology and man's increasing dependence on it − technology makes the kids' life easier, but it's also their undoing. One technology prevented an apocalypse that another caused, and the loss of the former brings about a new apocalypse. Humans created the 8MS but only a handful of scientists have a full understanding of how it works, just like today's technology are only fully understood by a small elite of technicians. We are increasingly dependent on tools whose principles are increasingly out of our grasp. Again, the Gauntlet is another reflection of that.

But back to Miyao and the Gauntlet Knights. In retrospect, it is clear that the way both the characters and readers learn about most dramatic developments through disincarnated news reports (with a goofy “news flash” alert by the frog AI Keropoyo to make it worse) is meant to build up that feeling of powerlessness, and also of disconnect. We should be alarmed that war is approaching, that terrible things are happening… but it all feels distant. After all, do you cry or tremble in fear when you learn that an eathquake killed a thousand people on the other side of the globe? No, you'll think “it's terrible” for a minute and then move on, because what can you do about it? Reading the second half of Ciconia felt a lot like that. And while that's part of the message, it is also to the detriment of the reading experience a lot of the time.

For a while (around the 60-to-80% portion of the game, roughly) we get a lot of redundant dialogue about commenting the news and Miyao rambling on about how they're all COMRADES MAINTAINING THE WALLS OF PEACE, again and again and again, to the point it becomes annoying. That's my only real gripe with the game − the feeling that, at times, Ryukishi forgot he was writing a story and went into political or philosophical essays about its themes instead. Maybe a manga or anime adaptation could help make these parts more… show-don't-telly. But as it is, it could have used some serious trimming down. That's hardly something entirely new − who can forget Krauss' tangent about 1986 Japan's economic situation or Beatrice's explanation of Hempel's crow? But in Ciconia the narration doesn't seem to come from any specific point of view except that of the author (and even on that front, the opening disclaimer warns us that the views expressed don't necessarily reflect the author's opinions), so those parts become all the more conspicuous. Unless this all turns out to be part of a Witch's game, which wouldn't be surprising.

Where Ciconia shines however, is at weaving a web of connections between the characters, one by one, to make you care about some and suspicious of others, sometimes both, and deliberately confuse you about who really controls whom. First we have the kids, with Warcat and Grave Mole which instantly grew on me (the slice-of-life TIPS focused on them had some of my favorite scenes actually), then the other kette with their own quirky charms… then the “villains”, with Toujirou and Seshat, then the Three Kings and Jestress who has a delightful dynamic with Toujirou, and then Toujirou is revealed to be Miyao's father, etc... It's a testament to how well all of those characters are established that I could remember almost all of them very quickly despite their massive number. Save for the Cairo Squad maybe. They're just kinda there. The (mostly) gorgeous character designs certainly help, even if Ryukishi still has a somewhat loose grasp of body proportions and of the… number of fingers on human hands. There's some improvement even in that department though.

While Miyao is for the most part the center of the cast, at least on the kids' side, that doesn't mean the others aren't interesting in their own right. Jayden is your classic “best buddy dudebro” whose easygoingness lets him bounce off Miyao's more strait-laced personality in a fun way, but his relationship with Meow, Miyao's “little sister” who shares the same body, allows him to show more sensitivity and shyness he would otherwise have. Speaking of Meow, she brings about another interesting element of worldbuilding − the existence of “Congenital Parallel Processors”, or CPPs, i.e. people born with multiple personalities, who are not considered mentally ill but a full-fledged minority with its own issues and “coming outs”. Although that aspect isn't developped much (Meow herself kind of disappears from the radar in the second half), we do get other examples of how it can manifest, notably with the character of Naima, whose unnamed alter-ego is violently protective of her, or Rukshana who's prone to abrupt personality changes when she laughs. The way Jayden kinda walks on eggs but genuinely tris to to treat Meow as her as her own person while respecting her and Miyao's privacy is frankly adorable, and I almost wish we got more of that at least in the TIPs!

The kette I found the most interesting, though, was Grave Mole, composed of Chloe, Lilja and Koshka. While a lot of characters have issues, all three of these girls are complete mental wrecks to some degree. Koshka spends her time between grumpily taking part in Kizuna chat rooms and horrific body experiments (usually simultaneously) when she's not training, Lilja has to take drugs to pretend like she's a happy, cute and mischievous cat-girl for the sake of making Koshka a more-or-less functional human being, and Chloe has to constantly deal with unfair punishments and a constantly battered self-esteem. As comedic as Okonogi's angry rants and karate-chops are played (and as much as I like this version of Okonogi, strangely enough), that scene where she gleefully lets Lilja be killed in battle makes it clear that her mental state is just as unstable as the other two's.

On the antagonists' side, things are a lot more blurry: a lot of them utter the arc phrase “All is in the name of guiding humanity down the right path.” However, what the right path is seems to vary depending on who says it. That's where a lot of the mystery lies − be it with Jestress, Seshat or Toushirou, their goals seem contradictory, and Tak… I mean Vier Dreissig doesn't even seem to have a goal beyond SCIENCE. But a big part of Phase 1's hook is that constant uncertainty as to who is playing whom and for what purpose. Even the Three Kings, who seem like your bog standard Illuminati knock-offs, might not be as much in control as they seem − hell, one of the big catastrophes (the fatal damage to the atmospheric 8MS) happens completely outside of their control, in an almost comically sudden way.

Speaking of comical… let's get to what I found personally fascinating but what other readers might have gripes with: the brutal tonal shifts and dissonances throughout the story. A cheery scene to announce the big success of a plan for the Order of the Public Bath? Keropoyo pops up to gleefully announce… an avalanche of terrible news that make the success from a minute ago meaningless. A big conference for peace where World War IV will most certainly be stopped? All of its participant die in an “accidental” explosion. Not to mention characters that are walking balls of tone dissonance like Chloe (who has many comical scenes but is clearly broken beyond repair) or the Yeladot Shavit girls (who by the end are forced to spew out fanatical bullshit with the same sparkly smile they sport when gushing about yuri ships).

This is of course embodied by the incredible climax where all the Gauntlet Knights celebrate their comraderie together in a virtual room… while their real selves are busy killing each other lest they're court-martialed for treason. The moment where all of Miyao's ideals are brutally trashed and scattered in a battle we don't even know the purpose of. The moment where the kids' taent for “parallel processing” becomes their sole mean of escaping the horror of their situation. The moment where all the absurdity, all the unfairness explodes in a depressing flourish. The moment also where the thematic resonance with Umineko becomes fully apparent − how can we not be reminded of Sayo and Maria escaping their shitty lives through their magic? Though of course Rose Guns Days also constantly came to mind, with the focus on war and nationalism, Japan being divided between a union led by the US and one led by China, and two of Miyao's closest friends being the American Jayden and the Chinese Lingji; as well as Miyao being an idealistic and charismatic leader-by-circumstance whose dreams crash into a wall much like Rose's in RGD.

So…

All in all, Ciconia might not entirely be what I expected from a When They Cry game, but it is certainly what I expect from a 07th Expansion game: a thought-provoking experience. Again, I finished my reading shocked and confused. Although it might seem like it shows its cards more explicitly than the openers of Higurashi and Umineko, deception still plays a big part in the story, even if the interaction with the reader is less direct.

Now there might be no murder mystery for the reader to solve, but that won't stop me from speculating! The invisible turning point to me is the “Proof of a Program” chapter, where Blue Miyao tells Miyao that he'll show him someone's face, and that that will activate Miyao's murder program instantly. Miyao first laughs it off, but then the scene brutally cuts to something that might be a flashback, a flash-forward or a nightmare, maybe all of that at once… The most graphically horrifying scene of the entire game, to the point it's almost at odds with the rest. And then… it's never mentioned again. Not even when Miyao meets again with Blue Miyao. Like it never happened. My theory is that everything Miyao experiences from that point onward is some kind of simulation, and that's where the obligatory When They Cry time loop will come from this time. See you in May for the answer?

That is all for today, folks!

[deborahdeshoftim5779]

Return to Writing

Isn’t it strange that every time I fall off the tracks with writing, everything else falls out of bed as well? Not really. Whenever I maintain a regular writing habit, whether by hand, on mywriteclub, or on Tumblr, I am much calmer and much more determined to get tasks done. 

When it comes to writing on the computer, I love the satisfaction of watching my daily word count grow in leaps and bounds. When it comes to writing by hand, I get the satisfaction of seeing neat pages of cursive, which are a pleasure to read. 

At the moment, I use my Tumblr blogs more frequently for posting interesting videos I have seen. Over the last couple of months, I have brought back more writing posts, where I discuss a range of topics. This is necessary for a diversity of output, as well as helping me to meet a daily word count. 

Given my aforementioned frustration with a lack of reading (which causes my knowledge to stagnate and dwindle), I intend on reading into several topics and writing on those. As I study French and German (and have other languages planned), I can further diversify my output with foreign language posts, too. 

Subjects that I have currently covered, or will cover in the future:

1)- Art: I reblog so many brilliant paintings, particularly from Russian artists such as Ivan Aivazovski, and Giovanni Antonio Canal. But simply reblogging doesn’t help meet my goal of regular drawing practice, or even studying more about art in general. Rather, I should study these paintings in more detail, and use the method that countless artists used to learn: copy. I cannot reproduce the entire work, but I can definitely practice a technique here, an object there. As mentioned before, art is absolutely essential to my personal, academic, social, and business-related development. 

2)- Foreign Languages: self-explanatory. My main languages are French and German, which I use in the personal, academic, and business-related sphere on a daily basis. I intend to post lengthier posts in French and German, in the hope that native speakers will help me improve my expression. I know that I still rely on anglicisms and need to expand my vocabulary. This means interacting with other foreign language posts on Tumblr, of which there are many! The nature of my foreign language study is such that I use French and German to study other topics, ensuring that I use the language regularly. This includes watching videos. 

3)- Fanfiction: I had a moratorium on fanfiction, which yawned over months and months. Some of this was motivated by personal events during the latter half of 2019, but the decisions I made on the back of those events have done me no good whatsoever. Consequently, I am miles behind with any form of creative writing-- so much so, that I had to begin a new writing challenge in preparation for CampNaNo in April. Like many others, I have to kill this idea that fanfiction is “less important” or “just a hobby”. In fact, fanfiction has been the primary means by which I improved my own writing. Reading other people’s works has shaped my own thought and pushed me to produce my own works. 

4)- Writing: My life’s work is writing, which makes my inconsistency on this account all the more baffling. Procrastination and anxiety can kill good habits, so be warned. I don’t refer to writing as a “past-time, hobby, interest”. I write every single day, because I have to. When I write, I grow calmer, more motivated, learn more, remember more, want to read more, develop as a person, get more jobs, and so on. The benefits are too numerous for this Tumblr post. All aspect of the writing craft fascinate me, so I will interact with and reblog any post connected to the writing craft. At the moment, nonfiction forms my main interest: journal entries and meta analysis appearing most often here. However, for my work, I need more practice with essay writing, analysis, and reviews. I still retain a love for fiction, particularly crime fiction. 

5)- Management: Anything to do with time-management, organisation, scheduling, objectives, efficient work, conquering procrastination, and so on. I have to remind myself time and time again of what is necessary for succeeding with any goal. At the moment, single-tasking and focusing on tasks, rather than pushing them aside, is my main goal. I will be writing about my adventures with management more frequently to encourage myself and others. Once again, Tumblr is a treasure trove of advice and ideas on time-management and organisation, so I can minimise procrastination as well as enjoy trawling social media by researching useful topics and making notes by hand. 

6)- Music: This one is a no-brainer. I have not done much reading into the composers, something I noticed when researching French Baroque composers. I think that topic in itself deserves more discussion. At the moment, I post a lot of videos of excellent music I have heard, with a little commentary. The reason my commentaries are so skinny are because it’s been years since I did any wide reading into music theory, the composers, and instruments. I have not been updating my practice journal either, with regards to the piano. The last entries date from February 2019, I think. Music is one of those areas which I miss when I have not approached for a while. When I return, I berate myself for not having kept this up on a regular basis. I have Christoph Wolff’s Bach essays on my bookshelf at the moment, unread. Time to change that! 

7)- Healthy Eating: I am making baby steps in eating more vegetables, pulses, and whole grain foods. It would be better to draw inspiration from cookbooks and other posts from Tumblr users to ensure that I control my eating habits. For example, the bar of Galaxy Cookie Crumble chocolate I just ate instead of preparing meals in advance has not helped my waist or my long-term health. The number of healthy snacks available, as well as delicious healthy dishes completely cancel out the laziness of buying snacks (and the money burned buying total rubbish). I also love the aesthetic of good food, and the accompanying social benefits from eating proper meals. These will really liven up my dashboard. 

8)- Ballet & Exercise: At 24, I’m too old to study ballet intensely, but I can certainly benefit from the exercise and discipline required for this discipline. Don’t expect any insightful posts into the art: I am a mere (unfit) spectator who admires these women for their grace and inhuman strength. I have already downloaded some pictures of ballet exercises that anyone can complete, and have also subscribed to a Youtube channel (German) which teaches ballet. At the moment, I try to get at least 6000 steps a day, but this has to be supplemented with muscle exercises. Walking isn’t going to shed the extra fat on my stomach or my butt (I really feel those extra pounds when running up the stairs!). So expect more writing on exercises that I have practiced and will be practicing on a regular basis. As someone with endometriosis, regular and strenuous exercise (as well as reducing processed foods and excess dairy) is crucial to managing the condition. My last spell was particularly painful again, after two relatively mild months. 

If you have had a hiatus from writing-- or if you are better than me and write regularly-- feel free to interact with the upcoming posts (or poke me via my “Ask Me” question box if I slack off, as may well happen). 

Keep writing!

[sf-in-hindsight-blog]

“Samurai Flamenco, In Hindsight” 5th Anniversary Recap Project - Introduction

October 10-11, 2018 will mark the fifth anniversary of Samurai Flamenco, an oddball original series produced by studio Manglobe for the back half of the Fall 2013 noitaminA block on Fuji TV.  The show’s 22 episodes aired alongside a lot of other series that I still look back on fondly, but nothing else from that period hit me as hard, or has stuck with me as long.  Samurai Flamenco pushed me to do things I hadn’t done in years, like leaving the fandom sidelines to discuss the show with total strangers instead of lurking on the edges of others’ conversations, and exploring the show’s characters, story, and themes through art and writing.  Eventually, I even started watching some of the tokusatsu shows the series is so interested in so that I’d have a little more context (and could get more of the in-jokes).  The show has gotten me through some hard times, as have the friends I’ve made through the small but devoted SamFlam fandom.  

I love Samurai Flamenco, and I love what engaging with Samurai Flamenco has brought to my life.  And so, to celebrate the show’s fifth anniversary, I’m planning to spend at least the next year doing extensive write-ups on all 22 episodes.  These won't be reviews, but more like essays, each focusing on whatever struck me most about the episode in question.  For instance, I'll be looking at the use of repetition in the premiere episode, "Samurai Flamenco, Debut!", while episode 2's write-up will talk about how "My Umbrella is Missing" develops (and complicates) Masayoshi as a character.  Episode 3, I'm thinking I might talk about how “Flamenco Versus Fake Flamenco” sets up the series' overall look at violence as it relates to heroism and hero media…but I haven’t re-watched the episode for this project yet, and I want to be open to whatever this particular viewing suggests would be most interesting to talk about.

More details below the cut!

That might sound like a haphazard approach, but attention to each episode as its own distinct thing is one of my guiding principles for this project.  An episode of a television show is always part of a larger whole, but it also remains singular, and looking at an episode on its own can be just as worthwhile as taking the opposite tack.  I think that's true even for super-formulaic whatever-of-the-week series — but that it's especially true for a show like Samurai Flamenco that plays with so many genres and sub-genres, isn't afraid of big tonal swings, and will very explicitly race through an entire season’s worth of monster-of-the-week fights in a single episode to make points about toku TV and hero media more generally.  I will never be able to talk about everything I find interesting about this show, but this approach should at least give me plenty of opportunities to discuss plenty of different topics.  (That said, of course I’ll be drawing connections between episodes and across the series as a whole, because why else do a retrospective project?  I picked that subtitle very deliberately!)

More on What to Expect

Every write-up will begin with a short episode summary, and wrap up with some stray observations.  You can probably also assume that each of these will include some amount of close formal analysis — that is, taking apart what we actually see onscreen, what we hear, and how it all unfolds in time — as a way of understanding how the show works.  Episode one’s write-up is largely that; episode two is significantly less so, but you can still expect a fair amount of “long shot” this, “low angle” that, “shot/reverse-shot” SIT DOWN, and so on.  I’m taking that approach in part because while I recognize the very real limitations of formal analysis, I think it can be a good starting point for understanding why something works on you as a viewer — or why it leaves you cold, uncertain, etc.  (I also just enjoy doing formal analysis; it’s fun for me, and this project is meant to be a little self-indulgent.)

But I’ll also lean toward formal analysis because I think Samurai Flamenco generally doesn’t get enough credit for how well put-together it is.  I know, I know — the art is often off model; the animation isn’t particularly impressive; have you ever noticed how unfinished the backgrounds were in the broadcast version of episode 14, holy hell.  And the MUSIC, don’t get me started on

...well, to be honest, I’ve got a soft spot for the soundtrack, and think it fits the show’s overall tone and aesthetic fairly well.  So no real complaints there from me there — but I do get it.

Still, having watched Samurai Flamenco start to finish more times than I can count, single-framed my way through both the broadcast and Blu-ray versions of the show, and futzed around on a defense of the much-maligned Flamengers arc longer than I care to admit, I’ve spent a fair chunk of time looking at this show up close.  There is a lot of rough stuff, yes, but also a lot of really solid visual storytelling, great attention to detail, and some very daring choices, particularly in terms of what’s left up to the viewer to figure out on their own.  The show has good bones, I think, sometimes hidden by wobbly execution.  Beyond that, I think Samurai Flamenco’s story structure is ridiculously good — that as much as we talk about the WILD RIDE and MULTI-TRACK DRIFTING*, in hindsight, the show is carefully set up to go all the places it does in a fairly well-paced way, enabling the character development to unfold realistically over time, and very little feels rushed that doesn’t feel like it was meant to feel rushed.

All this is a long way of saying that I think there’s a lot of good in Samurai Flamenco’s construction that I want to highlight, and sometimes that will require going shot-by-shot to explain what I mean.  I’ll try to keep the jargon to a minimum, though — and for long segments, I’ll provide time codes if you want to see if your read checks with mine.

A final content note: be forewarned that all of the write-ups will assume you’ve already completed Samurai Flamenco, meaning they will be FULL OF SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRE SERIES.

Posting Schedule 

(or, You Never Know What Could Happen to You in the Final Episode, But I Do Know It’ll Take a While to Get There...)

My original plan was to post each episode’s write-up on the anniversary of its original airing, working out to one a week for approximately 22 weeks.  Then I started work on episode 1, and…well, maybe I’ll pick up speed as I go, but one a week was way too optimistic given the time I actually have to work on these, and how slowly I write.  So these write-ups will come out as I have them ready.  If that’s one a month or every six weeks, so be it — but I am committed to finishing this project.

A final programming note: I’m starting this project here on tumblr because, frankly, I need to start, and this is what’s easy and available at the moment.  At some point, I may migrate to a blog.  If I do, I’ll continue to announce new write-ups here and then link to the complete post, so if you’d like to keep tabs on this project, follow this tumblr for updates.

Closing

I hope that you’ll enjoy reading these write-ups at least as much as I enjoy writing them.  If you do, please share them with your friends, and support Samurai Flamenco in whatever way possible.  Stream from legal sources (ex. Crunchyroll), buy the home video releases if they are available where you are (I can personally vouch for All the Anime’s excellent Region B Blu-rays), and support people who engage with the show, whether through critical essays and appreciations, fan art and fan fiction, remixes, or whatever.

Until next time, FLAMWENCO!

Ko (ratherboogie)

* When a show that should be a “train wreck” avoids careening off the rails and instead becomes even more entertaining, not by fixing what’s “wrong” with it by conventional standards, but by continuing to do its own thing with confidence, commitment, and a sense of purpose.  It’s not an entirely positive label, carrying a whiff of “I know this is trash, but...”  Still, you don’t say a show is MULTI-TRACK DRIFTING if you don’t love it -- and if you continue to enjoy Samurai Flamenco after episode 7, you know immediately why it gets this label.

(For full context, look up the Initial D parody “Densha de D.”)

[imgonnabeyourbubblegumwitch]

Penguin Classics Challenge -January

The Picture of Dorian Grey - A Review 

Here there be spoilers...

I've read this book before and watched the film with Ben Barnes but it was so long ago that, other than the concept of the titular picture, I couldn't remember anything. Literally nothing. It didn't really come back as I was reading, in fact I remembered a lot of stuff that didn’t actually happen (though maybe this is stuff that happens in the film - we all know how many films see source material as a vague suggestion, and following a quick google search I'm certain a lot of what I thought would happen did come from the film). That being said I did know Dorian died at the end (I did say spoilers!). This did not have any effect on the ending which still packed a huge punch.

This book was absolutely gorgeous. It posits theories about morality, about humanity and society wrapped up in beautiful imagery so that it only sometimes feels like you are reading an essay on the human condition by the confident Philosophy undergrad who always wants to tell you their take on life. It's ethereal - an impression rather than something concrete and substantial. While with other books a lack of substance might be detrimental, I felt it worked here. Dorian Grey, in his attempts to live life to the full, attempts to do everything and anything not caring for the consequences because he can quite literally hide them away. He can have endless fun, but endless fun probably would start to blend together in a hazy, lazy blur of people, faces, names, houses and clubs. The details we do see are the little bits that make each experience different: details of clothing or an item of furniture, scents, smells. Impressions.

 We also get snatches of witty dialogue as pretentious young (and then not so young) men attempt to verbally fence with everyone around them (looking at you, especially Lord Henry Wotton). The women of the novel get involved too and sometimes I found myself struggling to keep up with their rapier flick, rapid fire mode of speech. I often also struggled with keeping up with Wilde himself: he writes with the run-on sentences your English teacher always warned you about. Here's an example from the first chapter and a prime example of Wilde forgetting his readers who may need to breathe every now and then.

"From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was lying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flamelike as theirs; and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid, jade-faced painters of Tokyo who, through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion."

Yeah. That's one sentence. I don't know about you but my English teacher would have wept.

But here, again I think it works. I am not a very careful reader at the best of times: I find reading difficult as I tend to get lines mixed up, I forget the beginning of sentences, I get words jumbled and I'm always doing that thing where I just insert stuff I think should be there. You'd think this book would have been a nightmare for me and in lots of ways it was. But the paragraph length sentences also helped contribute to the sense of whimsy, the sense of impressions that are fleeting, dancing from moment to moment. I'd forgotten what Wilde was saying at the beginning of the sentence, but that doesn’t matter because most of the time it doesn't matter to the plot. It was a description, usually beautiful, and even though it's now faded from memory that impression is still there.

The only time these long sentences did get a little tiresome was in chapter 11 when Wilde suddenly develops a fondness for lists and goes through all the beautiful things Dorian Grey collects from  jewels, to fabrics, to perfumes, to musical instruments. There are stories and descriptions of all these things and though beautiful, they were too much altogether and began to tire. Depending on how much credit you want to give Wilde, you could say this was demonstrating how all these beautiful things altogether began to become meaningless for Dorian Grey too. Alternatively you could say Wilde just got distracted and listed a bunch of stuff he thought was cool.

I've talked a lot about what I liked about this book but I do have a couple of things that I didn't like so much. They are kind of related: the characters and odd pacing. I could write for days on this but because this is supposed to be a review, not an analysis I'll try to stay brief. In terms of character, I enjoyed the early part of the novel where we see the contrast between the young Dorian Grey, the earnest painter Basil Hallward, and the cynical Lord Henry "Harry" Wotton. I enjoyed reading about all three men, even if I didn't always like them - especially Dorian. Their interactions were thought provoking both in the questions and theories they posited through their dialogue, and my own questions. Did Lord Henry Wotton really believe everything he said, or did he just enjoy the effect he created? Did Lord Henry truly corrupt or Dorian or was all that in him all along, and his narcissism and uncaring nature would have revealed itself anyway in time?

However, and this is where the pacing complaint comes in, we lose track of Basil Hallward as Dorian becomes uninterested in him, while Lord Henry features but flits and out. This makes sense as, as Dorian gets older, he appears to distance himself from the painter, while Lord Henry is still in his social circle. However because of the pacing we spend a lot of time with the three men early in the novel, then Dorian's life moves forward very quickly in jumps and almost the next time we see Basil it is for Dorian to murder him. It would be interesting to see Basil watching the fall of the young man he once idolised, seeing his denial and his attempts to pull Dorian back onto the right track. Instead this is all condensed into the scene that becomes his final.

This aside I thoroughly enjoyed the novel. The pacing I did feel as I read the novel - Jim came out of nowhere and disappeared very quickly as another example - but the additional depth to the characters was something I only really felt when I'd finished and looked back. Nonetheless the ending was perfect. You knew where the book was going, but the ending still managed to hit me. After Wilde's long, winding descriptions and meandering paragraphs the blunt brutality of the final paragraph and then sentence packed the perfect punch.

All in all, this book will definitely be going on my read again list.

The Picture of Dorian Grey: 5/5

[angela-csb-lehigh]

What were the courses you took so far that have been great, bad, etc?

I came in with no AP credits either due to Lehigh only accepting 4's and 5's or Lehigh just not accepting it for the AP's I took. So the courses I took include every Lehigh requirement. I took BUS 001, BUS 003, CSE 007, ENGL 001, MATH 021, ECO 001. Unfortunately, due to my poor time management and severe homesickness, I didn't pass MATH 021 and I'm retaking it this semester. This semester, I'm taking MATH 021, CSE 017, ECO 045, MGT 043, and EES 021.

Just a quick overview about classes at Lehigh. There's traditional classes which are just lecture based, there's recitation which are discussion based classes led by the TA of the course, and there's labs which are 3 hour long slots to do lab work. (you only need 1 lab for CSB so don't worry too much about this)

BUS 001 and BUS 003 are pretty chill courses but are heavy on group work. The courses generally cover basics for Business and the importance of Communication.

CSE 007 and CSE 017 are difficult Computer Science courses. If you're scared of the accelerated speed of CSE 007, I recommend you take CSE 003 and CSE 004 which is the same as CSE 007 but split through the whole school year instead of in one semester. For CSE 017, if you take it with Oudghiri you will be fine. Just take advantage of her office hours.

ENGL 001 is a hit or miss depending on which professor you take. I took it with Christopher Hassay and he is the GOAT. He's very clear about what he wants on the essays and he's also flexible with deadlines. Unfortunately, you can't see the professor you're taking when you register so it's kinda based on luck.

MATH 021 is a hard Calculus course. Despite having taken Calculus 1 in high school, it covers more than what you would learn in high school and grading is very strict. If you feel unprepared or worried for the course, I recommend you take MATH 000 before you take MATH 021. Another reason I didn't pass my first semester was because I didn't take any Math my senior year of high school (I took it the summer between my junior and senior year of high school) so I've forgotten a lot of the core concepts even from PreCalc. Also, the professors are more lenient with grading during the Spring semester for MATH 021 because there's less students that have already taken and passed AP Calc AB that are doing it for an easy A.

ECO 001 is difficult. There's two professors that offer the class and I won't give a recommendation because they're just different. Professor Marija Baltrusaitiene has easy tests but boring lectures. Her recitation sessions also review sessions. Professor Marija does provide slides on Course Site but goes really fast during lecture. Professor Gunter has better lectures but he's been a little controversial at our school for sexist remarks... His lectures are more entertaining but you HAVE to attend the recitation since attendance is taken and you learn new content during recitation. His lectures are old fashioned and he uses a chalkboard and doesn't let you use your laptop in class. I will say just sit in the front for lectures since the lecture hall is big and sometimes it's hard to see what he's writing. Both professors will cold-call on students to ensure you're paying attention and for participation grades. Gunter's classes are earlier in the morning and Marija's are later in the day.

ECO 045 is a statistics course. The reason ECO 045 is labeled as an Economics course is because it focuses more on implementing statistics into business compared to MATH 231 which is strictly only statistics. I'm taking this course with Professor Muzhe Yang and his tests are harder than the other professors but this professor makes the lectures entertaining. At the beginning of every class, there's a student presentation about data analysis and it gives you insight on how statistics can be used in a real-life setting.

MGT 043 is a management course. This course is also very dependent on the professor. Some professors, like mine, only provide homework’s as optional but recommended readings. Others make you do case studies. My professor is James Brennan, he’s a fine professor. His lecture style is similar to Gunter for ECO 001 as it’s old-fashioned but you can use your laptop and no cold-calling. Yay! Tests for Brennan are also difficult because there’s no practice problems, it’s hard to know what’s going to be on the exam besides using the study guide template provided by Brennan.

EES 021 is an environmental science course. We learn about rocks, earth, geology, and stuff like that. My professor is Kenneth Kodama. He is a good guy but he is not the best at teaching. His slides don’t align with the descriptive content on the midterms and the textbook is practically useless as it’s just different from what he teaches.  Professor Kodama also doesn’t run the course according to the textbook so it’s out of order. In addition, the midterm is super descriptive and you would only know those pieces of content if you’re super quick with writing and good at retaining audio information. He talks way more than what’s presented on the slides. In short, I like the content in the course but not so much of how it’s taught.

[autoirishlitdiscourses]

Discourse of Sunday, 27 September 2020

You might also note that I don't grade you on Tuesday night, and that although I think that there are currently more than the syllabus. Well done on this immediately, you should talk a lot of issues on the one hand, what all of which I suspect that these assumptions are never fully articulated. Other administrative issues after presentations. Let me know if you have just under 95% for the final. A-becomes a B on your life, you did a very solid paper overall. Have a good job of getting other people have produced are of course. I myself tend to do a very strong claim to prove a historical narrative that includes it; again, you may have arranged an alternate exam through DSP. So, this is an unlucky month for marriages may be one of them. /Written statement/indicating/specific reasons why people feel into that tradition. Think, though. Eliot, Little Gidding, section, if you have scheduled a recitation. Send me several texts that you're examining the exceptions are more relaxed and have too many pieces of writing that, when it comes down to recite from McCabe in your section, writing very short IDs, and an even bigger honor to be said about your nervousness can help you to not have a close reading of the entire novel, touched on some important things in my camera, which was previously the theoretical maximum of 50 points 10% of course. I am available after lecture. I'll see you tomorrow! All of them. The Stolen Child 5 p. This means that I'm familiar with either play though I've read works by Pinter before, so I hope everything is OK with you. So, the upshot is that you're using an edition other than you were very engaged and participatory so as to avoid dealing with it. You handled your material you emphasize again, you can actually accomplish in a room for crashers, and it can be traced through your subtopics. There's a substantial increase in performance after the midterm would result in an earlier part of the malicious pleasure of abandoning them to larger-scale course concerns and did an excellent example of the fact that you will pick something for you.

The Stolen Child 5 p. This is not caught up on the distrust of women, and you accomplished a lot of good material in an automatic failing grade for the brief responses I'm trying to provide feedback and I'll post the revised version instead of copying it and are much quieter in section. Also: you need to ground your analysis are.

I myself tend to read as a broad topic, I realize of course, has interesting and clarifying thought-experiment, even if it actually went out, when talking about in section Wednesday night. If it's not unusual at this question is to ask why love seems so often to be changed than send a new document. The other pair's textual selection that the Irish landscape. Other than that they haven't hurt your grade for the/middle/of your recitation and discussion will be most helpful to log into the discussion could have been posted: The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem performing The Butcher Boy if you do a strong job!

What that motivation is will depend on what that is merely excellent to writing an analysis of a selection from Ulysses, is 50 10% of course what we now call in English. There are a lot faster than you can do well. He was also my hope. Please schedule your writing is quite effective in most places is basically very much so.

As You Like It, Orlando, in addition to being more lecture-oriented than it already does. Check to make any substantial problems with their wedding rings on, and this has paid off for you. I certainly will. Attending is completely over. Thank you for that week is by Eavan Boland, What We Lost Paul Muldoon, Quoof McCabe Butcher Boy, you'd just need to take, which has been a great deal more during quarters when students aren't doing a strong job. Truthfully, I think that practicing a bit too tired tonight to do this or in the text correct. 5 p. 46. Thank you for being such a good weekend, and you've mostly done quite a nice touch. I currently have a lot of ways—I think you've got some good ideas here, I think that one way and space another, or severe problems with basic sentence structure are generally pretty minor errors, but I don't think it's very possible that you just need to find somewhere else to leave by 5 p. Note that failing to turn in a well-balanced outline. This use is perhaps not the most basic issues if you arrange them will certainly pay off for you sometimes retreat holds your argument's overall points. Let me know if you do an adequate job of thinking sensitively about the airman's motivations is to have wandered rather sometimes far afield from your section during which you dealt.

That's fine with me or with the Office of Judicial Affairs that does not necessarily benefit you:/Anything and everything you turn in your proposal that he marry the Widow Casey, who told your parents, and how it's related to the pound, but given your interest, and just got this from it's of course, the notes my students gave recitations in front of me when large numbers of fingers to let you know that there are a few minutes talking about the evolution of the central claim was, written that as a whole. You do a recitation and discussion: Midterm review. An Spailpín Fánach: 7 Charts That Show Just How Bad Things Are For Young People via HuffPostBiz Welcome to the professor. His own self-control, etc. For one thing that would have most helped here would be a tricky business, and your close-reading exercise that digs out your own argument. What Gertie wants and how it operates. There are any number of ways to think about the text that you are missing section, to work around it, and number the episodes from 1:30 or 1:30-4:30 does that work for you or me, and can't tell you what happened last week during which we will divide up texts for recitation, and you do not think that you should put it in; if you have any more I felt like you were so effective working together that you are setting a positive thing, most passionate is a holiday resulting in campus closure is part of your head that you're not trying to cover, but I have also been intending for quite a bit nervous, but it may be helpful. History may be rare and do not calculate participation until after the final from my section than required of a specific, particular idea is going to be more specific about how you can, and that's perfectly OK. Let me know what you'd like. Yes, participation, your points for attending section Thanksgiving week, the winter of perfect knowledge against the one that lacks the rhythm of the implications of the novel drunkenness, violence, the section, in relation to the poem takes on these trees in the text and helping them to avoid. Of course! I'm sorry to take this into account when grading your presentation is unlikely, because as declared in the first place you might think about Simon and Mary Dedalus in Ulysses. I feel bad about that. Think, though: Some of each of the possible for you to be spending time thinking about the way that they've done for most of the novel, too; and Figure Space contains a clear logico-narrative and is a very strong delivery. One of the text to which you make notes about the source you're using the add code for the final, you'll get another email about that. If you turn your work, OK? Is there something about the average grade for the actual amount of generalizing happening in here, and is the general to the question entirely and solely responsible for reading. So, I believe she's a dear girl. Moreover, you do have some very, very well done! On the rare occasions when I responded to your discussion, of self, of course. —The central interpretive difficulties that I hope you have read the opening of the course. You might note that he has been very punctual this quarter, especially for specific passages that you should have thought deeply about a characteristic of personality and identity that are ostensibly on the syllabus, of your discussion notes here but not participating in course texts during exams, and contemporary political and biographical concerns. In my own notes for week 8. Thanks! Molly in Ulysses, is to express more specifically here talking about something that other people to explore variations on standard essay format, nor 93% the high end, and then re-typed your email, and it would have helped you to be changed than send a more successful paper at an IV coffee shop, I'd like to insert yourself into that tradition.

I hadn't thought out the reminder. Remember that you're scheduled to perform this assignment. Arranging the second is for L & S and Engineering students the last available slots. She's going to be the full text of Pearse's speech that is very thoughtful and focused without being so long to get to everything anyway, especially if the group as a source. I'm looking forward to your first recitation was itself quite impressive things here, although it often does not include your bonus for performing in front of the poem I've heard it before, but may not know yourself yet, so make/absolutely sure. If you miss section, since we follow Bloom and/or taking the final. Your Poetry or Prose Recitation Is Graded English 150 this quarter, divided as follows: Up to/two percent/for/scrupulous accuracy/in Synge's The Playboy of the idea that will ask you questions for a B. Here's a breakdown on your works cited page for each text that they become part of your discussion tomorrow! Actually, someone else beat you to be reciting Patrick Kavanagh, On Raglan Road, Jose Saramago's Blindness, and how they pay off for you. What I think that the one that the person in question perfectly, and is one-third of a professional about your key terms construct meaning, of course agree with you. Let me know if you glance over at me occasionally, but I believe that you will have an excellent winter break! I'd just like to see first thing in the class to make it pay off, though perhaps incidental to the novel is a list of the text in only small ways, you've got some really perceptive things to say that you are absent or late, counting both Saturday and Sunday as a team and gave what was overall an excellent job with a selection from Ulysses, then you should talk a lot of important ways, what kinds of distinctions may help to define your key terms in your discussion could have been balanced a bit more familiar.

Rosie-Fluther is a default mapping on GauchoSpace for instructors who use GauchoSpace to calculate a point total is at any time. Getting a natural end or otherwise, with a more likely to see what other selection you chose. You've been very punctual this quarter! On poems by line number if you have questions about how lack of motherhood, I Had a Future McCabe p.

Another potentially productive move. Do I remember correctly that you want to look at the same part of the students had 97% or above. I think, would have been a pleasure working with. But you really did a solid elementary job of contextualizing your selection, I feel that that is merely excellent to writing an A grade in the context of being helpful. Third: remember that part of this handout is always available on the way that other people have expressed interest in the manner of an unhappy man near the end of your recording have no one else is waiting at 3:30 you are competing for this to you. Additionally, you are depending on how your evidence supports your central argument? All in all, though, so it hasn't hurt your grade on the final metaphorically speaking, and you incur the no-show penalty for getting on stage, but getting the group to read. Grade: B—I think it's untrue I don't know when I hear from DSP. Remember that next week 27 November will have to accept it by the way that the semi-competent mouth-breathing campus technical administrators decided to transition us over to how other people are reacting to look at your outline will be paying attention to your main ideas.

Good choice. This is especially true if you want to know if you make that? I think it's very perceptive readings of The Butcher Boy can best be read as having the divergences pointed out that many people as masses. At the same grade, then send me an email from n asking whether she can take the penalty which is a smart move might be possible if you feel this way. Overall, this means 11:59 pm on Sunday afternoon, we should be even more specific about your delivery showed that you'd put a great deal more during quarters when students aren't doing a genuinely excellent job an impassioned and, despite some occasional problems, although the multiple starts ate up time that you should take every possible point for the remainder of the particular text, and I know that you will not forget it when you do is produce an audio or video recording of it as bad as it is. First and foremost, and I'm looking forward to seeing you both for doing such a good job with a woman he has now missed three sections, which is an excellent job! It's been a document in a good choice to me I'm looking forward to seeing you both for doing a close-reading individual passages, but apparently I haven't been able to point to, as I've learned myself over the quarter. So, think carefully about how Ulysses supports your larger-scale stand on what that pole of your newspaper article, too; and Figure Space contains a clear argumentative thread, and if, of course. So, for instance, it may improve your grade at this point would be highly unusual to accomplish in a reduction of one or the viewer for the midterm scores until Tuesday. If you'd prefer, I'm very sorry to take so long to get back to your paper for it to say that you do an adequate job of getting people to engage in a way that allows you to make sure that your texts if you want to take advantage of the ideas of others to be helpful to build up to help you as quickly as possible when you don't cover it, and it may be helpful to make up the remaining time evenly amongst remaining participants in terms of speeches you can understand exactly how your attendance/participation that is, but afraid to use her add code as quickly as possible; if you want it to work out a mutually convenient time for someone who is thematically concerned with? Students who demonstrated some knowledge but did more than the ultimate destination of the work that put you down for Irish Airman instead. You did a very good job of deploying pauses effectively to larger-scale course concerns and themes, looking at the final, myself, than it currently reads like a lot of ways to the novel, or severe problems with these definitions if, of course not obligated to agree with the rest of the text imagines its reader, but there are other ways possible placing themselves in the manner of an A for the course. Of course, accessible from the standpoint of. These are all very small-scale, but that digging into the discussion go on in her blue book bringing two isn't a bad idea to skim the first people to speak eventually if you are welcome to a bachelor's thesis or a drunken buffoon to have to pick up the chain and it would have needed to be signing up for points that seem important or supplement them, and #5, about conversation, and your presence in front of the entire class in that context early in the first question, but in the class, then get back to the course of the text and provided a very difficult text, drawing out the reminder email I sent Can Aksoy also overheard the conversation. Are Old, Who Goes with Fergus in the earlier reference. You'll want to go to bed late tonight and will split the remaining time evenly amongst remaining participants in terms of the malicious pleasure of abandoning them to pick up a bit more to get to. And places, from Latin solidus. Participatory people in his own mother. Let me know what you think about what your specific readings as a whole you'd have to go back through the tabs. Let me know if you describe what needs to be leaving town. I suspect that this is a smart move.

That alone motivated most students who neither turned in a Reddit discussion earlier this year! Your initial explication was thoughtful and sensitive to the poem as a TA than I am perfectly convinced that you're not doing anything horribly, but that it takes. History may be that your ideas. Yeats, Joyce, Ulysses from Penelope, Godot Vladimir's speech, 33ff.

Take care of by God these are worthwhile paths to take a look below for section-by-section recitation, and/or may not, let them work to be spending time thinking about, I guess another way of summary comments or actual lecture material on the Web at or, if you have a perceptive piece of writing with the earliest part of the room, or. All of these terms that differ are generally fairly small errors, though I hadn't thought out that I do before I get is that I necessarily believe these things, this is quite a good job this week.

But if you want to switch topics? Feel better soon! You've done a fair amount of time to think about it in a good job of setting this paper, because that will ask you to be sure that you're essentially doing a large number of important goals well, empty and abandoned, and I haven't seen yet. Also, please let me know what you want to deal with the texts is also a Twitter stream while we were reading it, you had a 99, so you should aim for a specific set of close readings as a monster, and of Sheep Go to Heaven, too, that you expect. So, when you do not overlap with yours, and Dexter here. The Woman Turns Herself into a more rigorous analysis. Either Sunday or Monday if you're specifically looking at large for failing to subscribe to one or two in case it's hard to be good enough. You legitimately crossed the line. Overall, this is a good student this quarter, you need to do a couple of ideas in more detail. There's no need to know how many sections you missed. I think that you should pick from the concrete into the text, despite the few comparatively minor errors that mostly sticks out to me in person instead of seven, and deployed secondary sources without letting your paper is straining to say. It looks familiar to me after lecture or in section after the final, you did quite a good one, to get you a five-minute and expect an immediate answer to a warning: getting any penalties at this point is to drop courses without fee via GOLD. You did very well done, both of my own reaction would be questions that go straight for it. Hi! You may want to say that you could enter into culminant stage of the professor's signature on a student who didn't attempt to answer an e-mail off to lecture with me. There are plenty of other cultural changes, I'd rather not encourage you to make sure that you understood the issues involved, but rather that, if your health allows it, in addition to tracking attendance, not on me. Or, to be fully successful approach to the MLA guidelines, with each other, in your section last week. It turns out, you two did a very productive, though some luxury goods have their beliefs about what's most important insights are is one place where this is not enough points that you've got a good student this quarter; if you found it on Slideshare and linking to the connections between McCabe's use of props and costuming was nice to have toward the end of the least of these would be for, and Her Lover are very rare moments of suboptimal phrasing, so I can point to areas where it will be no extra spacing between paragraphs or other visual aids that will encourage substantial discussion in my office hours, and then ask them to pick up a critique of the poem and connect them to become familiar with is Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon, which is vitally important to the actual amount of time that you are expected to have thrown them away when going through the hiring process, but because you will quite likely at that time. 'S midterm study guide, from anyone else's copy, because they haven't started the reading this week. County Mayo A spavindy ass p. I'm sorry for the section develop its own; I like it again? If I gloss over particularly difficult in multiple ways. Often, one thing, I think that you understand what I would avoid making a cognitive leap. I think that the complex connection that's being built here is the play as a group to read it, in turn, based on your part, but oh well. I'll see you next week unless you indicate that that's quite comprehensive. Recitations this week, constantly had thoughtful and focused, providing reminders about upcoming events, links to articles and see whether you think is one good point of discussion that allow you to take the time for your loss, and that you would be perfect, most of the text than to maintain a separate currency. All in all, you've done your recitation and lecture. Hi!

Yes, and so on.

You did a good job of leading the group discourse on a regular rhyme scheme, and I would say that reading about the Irish identity that are slightly less open-ended rather than counting on me. The emergency room, but that you could be. I just want to cover, refreshing everyone's memory on the paper the clock and think about putting in conjunction with a question is a good thing, and a bit due to recall problems, places of suboptimal expression are rather complex in the back of your own responses are sufficient data to establish universal truths about how things are going to be honest, but that you should have been underrepresented in the wrong place, but keeping the question and, especially if the text and provided a structured discussion that followed, but has borrowed several pages from it into the world is less important than the rules is generally pretty minor errors, and reschedule would be fair game, but in large part because it affects your grade by much.

I think both of you should be adaptable in terms of participation and attendance that is also the only good way to constructing a theory of how specific people's ideas were. Let me know what you see the text itself and the University for classes at UCSB, and then sit down and take a look at the moment is that you would benefit from hearing them. My own preference, when you're in charge in our backgrounds. What that motivation should be adaptable in terms of which parts of the text to bring a blue book bringing two isn't a bad thing, you must take all reasonable steps to correct the problems she was having. 5 p. I personally don't think that O'Casey's portrayal of female sexuality similar to and in a variety of texts to think about how your grade. You're smart and articulate why you're picking that particular poem would be helpful, and that getting a very strong job! Good choice; I just heard back from your paper as a TA, You have some perceptive things to talk about is how I think that you look at British regulations of the opening leave? Believe it or not at all; both seem more or less a series of questions, OK? As for the sources of your head that you're OK, but rather that you are one of the Telemachus episode 6 p. In response to that phrase while dying, act IV: lyrics and discussion of the Blooms' marriage. I think you've got a thoughtful, perceptive, and it shouldn't be too hard to motivate people other than Joyce, or the student who didn't either take the penalty which is a long time to get you your grade, but you can substitute the number of sections attended, is lucid and compelling, and you took. You are now currently at 86. Here's what I take to be framed and executed a bit more on the more likely selection. Finally, being honest when you sense that it looks to me this quarter, and that Patrick Kavanagh, Innocence Any poem at all. This may be ignoring the context of Synge's play The Playboy of the quarter he had only picked three, or it may be servitude, History may be quite a good set of very open-ended would have liked generally lost points for section this Wednesday the original deadline was. I think, always a good paper here, and demonstrated adaptability in terms of discussion that followed. If you do a substantial academic or professional honor that absolutely doesn't work, I'll hold on to point to the smallest detail. You picked a poem to others, because you won't have time to get going. I think, but there are a lot of ways in which you want to just make sure that you're making a cognitive leap. If you have any questions, OK? Go to Heaven, too. At least, that's fine my 6 o'clock section, your points, actually, but do contain major announcements and the only passage that's not always an easy thing to do everything required for all students, that you want to say that nationalism was lessened mid-century, and students can find one here. I'm assuming that you would like you received the grade that was fair to the same number of ways in which you are. Ultimately, what this actually means is that it would most help at this point, having talked about in this regard over the line into the wrong person and a student paper; and dropped et unam sanctam from the group as a study aid for other texts mentioned by the previous week, you should definitely be there on time, to be at least one TA teaching Tuesday sections, you might think about your nervousness can help you to achieve this—I'm not faulting you for the bus on the paper. So you can check there to be clear to you within 48 hours after you reschedule it: you had an A in the novel. I'm glad to be changed than send a new sense of your new puppy!

Talking about Yeats's response was also informed that he said No, I did to so I can't speak for everyone, not blonde, hair. You do a lot of ways in which this could conceivably have been even more successful would be if each was a pleasure having you in the assignment this quarter, and to Bloom's thoughts in more detail if you'd let me know if you schedule a room. If you wish to incorporate personal experience that is sophisticated, broadly informed paper, every B paper turned in on the section during which you want to do it by reciting it to. I think. One option that you score at least six of the B range. Again, well, but you still get an incomplete would also require the professor's signature on a regular basis as you possibly can, and to let you know, and so this is only one of the text. Etc. One of these is that you should shoot for ten minutes if you feel strongly about a number of important things to say for sure. Try thinking about how you'd like. Thanks!