#you have to grapple with the way race impacts his character to understand him | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

nayziiz · 10 months ago

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No Way | LN4

Summary: Lando Norris, an F1 driver for McLaren Racing, faces persistent attention on his single status. In an attempt to appease fans and quell rumours, his management suggests a fake relationship with a popular Portuguese model. However, Lando's PR manager, Natalie, disagrees, believing fans would see through the ploy. As an alternative, Lando's management notices the genuine bond between him and Natalie and proposes they feign a relationship for authenticity. Initially hesitant, they agree, given their existing friendship and professional connection. The fake relationship takes an unexpected turn as Lando and Natalie grapple with burgeoning real feelings, attempting unsuccessfully to conceal their growing emotions.

Pairing: Lando Norris x Original Character (Natalie)

Warnings: Mentions of physical and emotional abuse; SA; fluff

Masterlist

CHAPTER 6

As the Miami Grand Prix concludes with Lando securing P3 and Oscar landing at P5, the paddock begins to wind down, the ambient hum of activity softening as people prepare to leave. In the aftermath of the race, Lando retreats to his driver's room, where he remains since the podium celebration and the subsequent debriefing.

Observing from the sidelines, Natalie can't help but sense an underlying concern about Lando's emotional state. Despite securing a podium finish, the pressure to replicate the victory he achieved at Suzuka looms heavily. Natalie understands that the expectations and the desire for a subsequent win weigh on Lando, potentially affecting his motivation.

Compounding the challenge, their interactions have been limited, especially private moments that would allow her to gauge his emotional well-being. The presence of others has created a barrier, making it difficult for Natalie to discern the true depth of Lando's feelings. As someone invested in both his professional and personal life, she grapples with the delicate balance of offering support without overstepping boundaries, as she has done previously, eager to provide comfort in a moment where victory remains elusive.

“Where’s Lando?” Lando’s trainer, Jon asks.

“He’s still in his driver’s room.” Natalie explains. “I’ll take him back to the hotel. I think he’s just had a rough day and needs a minute.”

Natalie's response to Lando's trainer, Jon, is measured, reflecting her understanding of the situation. The acknowledgment of Lando needing a moment underscores her awareness of his emotional state and the potential impact of the race outcome on his mood. Natalie's readiness to offer support and take on the responsibility of accompanying him back to the hotel highlights her dual role—both as a professional figure in the paddock and as someone deeply invested in Lando's well-being. It's a subtle demonstration of her commitment to providing the space and support he might need in the aftermath of a challenging race day.

Natalie's steps lead her to Lando's driver's room, and with a composed three knocks, she signals her presence. A brief pause follows, and then the door opens, revealing Lando. Without saying a word, he invites her in, closing the door behind them. The atmosphere within the confined space holds a mix of lingering tension from the race and the unspoken understanding between them. As Lando packs up his belongings in the quiet aftermath of the race, Natalie gently breaks the silence.

“Everyone’s pretty much left for the day.” Natalie informs him, the low hum of their conversation filling the driver's room.

“That was not the result I wanted today.” He mumbles, expressing his disappointment.

“Of course not, but it’s still P3. It’s still decent points.” She says, hoping to shift the focus to the positive aspects of the day.

“But it’s not a race win.” Lando counters, the hunger for victory evident in his voice as he slings his backpack onto his back.

“I’ll drive you back to the hotel.” She says, changing the topic.

“You never drive, though.” He points out.

“Then today is your lucky day.” She jokes as she opens the door for them to leave.

The engine hums to life as Natalie starts the SUV, embarking on the journey from the venue to the hotel. Lando, taking the passenger seat, gazes out of the window, his attention briefly captured by the passing scenery. As they drive past fans, Lando acknowledges them with a wave, a gesture of appreciation for the unwavering support.

It's a rare sight—Natalie behind the wheel, steering them through the post-race ambiance. Lando, typically in control as the driver, now finds himself in the role of a passenger. His occasional glances outside and subtle adjustments in the seat reveal the discomfort of relinquishing control, a testament to his preference for being at the helm.

As Natalie navigates the automatic SUV through the streets, her initial nervousness stemming from the unfamiliarity of the vehicle begins to dissipate. The rhythm of the drive, once tense, gradually transforms into a more comfortable flow as they distance themselves from the crowds.

A few moments pass in silence until Natalie detects the sound of sniffling beside her. Concerned, she turns to find tears streaming down Lando's cheeks. Without uttering a word, she makes a spontaneous decision, steering the car down a quiet stretch of road and parking it. The hushed environment allows for a moment of privacy and introspection.

“What’re you doing?” Lucas asks her, confused as he wipes away some tears.

“I stopped so you could get out everything you need before you charge head first into the next crowd.” She gently explains.

Her words convey a deep understanding of the emotional toll racing can take, acknowledging the need for a moment of release and reflection.

In the cocoon of the parked car, Lando allows himself to release the pent-up emotions, finding solace in Natalie's understanding presence. The conflict within Natalie, torn between maintaining a professional demeanour and providing comfort, is palpable. Despite her internal struggle, she extends a hand to Lando's shoulder, offering a physical connection that becomes a lifeline for his grief.

As Natalie leans over, enveloping him under her arm and gently rubbing his back, Lando's tears flow freely. The vulnerability shared in this private moment bridges the gap between their professional roles, revealing the depth of their connection. His hand reaching for hers signifies a silent plea for continued support, anchouring him in the solace of their shared space.

The abrupt interruption of a sharp ringtone pierces the emotional silence. Natalie, with a quick response, answers her phone, momentarily shifting her focus away from the intimate scene within the car.

Natalie deftly navigates the delicate situation, responding to Charlotte's queries with a composed assurance that conceals the intimate scene within the car. As the call progresses, Natalie seizes the opportunity to divert attention away from Lando's emotional state, explaining that he's simply worn out after the race.

With a request to access the hotel through the basement, Natalie ensures a discreet entrance, shielding Lando from the prying eyes of fans and maintaining the facade of professionalism. Charlotte, understanding the need for privacy, agrees to coordinate with hotel security for the alternate entry. Natalie leans back in her seat once the call concludes and looks at Lando who seems to have calmed down.

“Thank you.” He whispers. Natalie smiles at him and squeezes his hand.

“Of course.” She whispers back.

“I think we can go now.” Lucas tells her.

“Are you sure? We can sit a bit longer if you want?” She assures him.

“Just a few more minutes.” He caves, his voice still shaky as he speaks.

Natalie nods, fully understanding the need to take a moment to gather his thoughts and emotions as she relaxes into her seat. A few moments of silence pass before he eventually nods at her and she starts the car. The car resumes its journey, now with the knowledge of an alternative entrance arranged by Charlotte. Natalie glances at Lando, who, though still recovering from the emotional release, appears to have found a measure of calmness.

The reciprocal exchange of comfort and vulnerability between Lando and Natalie creates a profound sense of trust and safety within the confines of the car. Natalie, recognizing the importance of providing a supportive space for Lando after the events in Shanghai, makes a conscious effort to offer him the comfort he might need.

Lando, in turn, experiences a unique sense of security with Natalie—one that goes beyond the surface-level interactions. He appreciates the fact that she not only acknowledges his emotions but actively encourages him to express them. The depth of their connection becomes evident as Natalie becomes the person Lando turns to when he needs to unveil his rawest emotions.

In this shared sanctuary, emotions are laid bare, fostering an environment where both individuals can be genuine and authentic with each other. The acknowledgment of this mutual trust and safety cements their bond, making it clear that Natalie is someone with whom Lando can truly be himself, free from the constraints of public expectations.

“Before we get out, I wanted to chat to you about something.” Natalie starts once she’s parked their rental vehicle in the basement parking lot. Lando shoots her a curious look. “I know you’re disappointed with your result today, those feelings are completely valid and normal. You’re allowed to be upset. From my point of view, you did great today. It wasn’t an easy race, yet you did the best you could in the position you were in. You could have retired the car, but you didn’t. There are still so many opportunities to try again and keep proving to me, to McLaren, to the fans, to yourself, that you are a great driver. Today, you get to take in the disappointment and anger. Tomorrow you use that as your biggest motivation.”

As Lando waits for Natalie at the hotel's basement entrance, he experiences a moment of profound realisation. A small smile graces his lips, masking the depth of emotions swirling within him. In that quiet moment, clarity settles in, and Lando recognizes a sentiment that surpasses the bounds of friendship or camaraderie.

For the first time, the realisation dawns on him, clear as day—he has fallen in love with her. It's a revelation that adds a new layer to their dynamic, colouring his interactions with her in a different light. The simple act of waiting for her and opening the door takes on a significance that transcends the ordinary. As he ushers her inside, Lando's heart flutters with a mix of emotions—joy, vulnerability, and a newfound understanding of the depth of his feelings.

“There’s a dinner party tomorrow night. Pretty much everyone is going to be there. Don’t you maybe want to come with me?” Lando asks Natalie as they step inside the elevator. “Lily and Oscar are going to be there, plus some of the other girlfriends. We haven’t really gone out as a couple since this whole thing started. Maybe this is a safe, comfortable place to do that.”

As the elevator carries them to their respective floors, the air is charged with a newfound sense of anticipation and a subtle shift in their dynamic. Lando's invitation lingers in the confined space, creating a momentary pause filled with unspoken possibilities.

“Sure, why not?” Natalie responds, the words carrying a subtle warmth and willingness

“Great.” Lando concludes, his smile now more pronounced, and a touch of relief apparent in his expression. The elevator doors open, and as they step out into the hallway, Lando's gaze momentarily drops to the floor, a small but contented smile playing on his lips. “I’ll meet you in your room at 7.”

- THE NEXT NIGHT -

There is a subtle yet firm knock on the door. As Natalie opens the door, a soft creak echoes in the hallway, revealing the anticipation that lingers in the air. The subtle yet firm knock had hinted at something significant about to unfold. Natalie's appearance speaks volumes about the occasion. Her choice of a modest black dress and low block heels exudes a sense of understated elegance, suggesting a careful consideration of the event's atmosphere.

Natalie's effort to doll herself up adds a touch of mystery, as if she's unveiling a different facet of herself for this particular moment. The balance struck in her appearance is noticeable - not overly done, but with just enough transformation to pique curiosity. The minimal makeup on her face complements her natural beauty, enhancing rather than overpowering her features.

As the door swings open, the scene unfolds to reveal Lando standing on the other side. His attire, a crisp white button-down shirt paired with tailored black slacks, mirrors a classic and timeless sense of style. The monochrome contrast between their outfits suggests a harmonious coordination, as if they are both attuned to a shared understanding of the significance of the occasion.

As Lando steps into the hotel room behind Natalie, his gaze lingers on her with an undeniable intensity. The way her black dress hugs her curves and gracefully flows with each movement seems to captivate him. Natalie can feel the weight of his gaze, causing her heart to quicken its pace. It's evident that the air is charged with a mixture of anticipation and unspoken tension.

Despite the allure of the moment, Natalie wrestles with a twinge of uncertainty. Being not only Lando's fake girlfriend but also his PR manager, the boundaries between personal and professional blur. The upcoming party, where couples are expected to attend, adds an additional layer of complexity to the situation.

Natalie grapples with conflicting emotions. While part of her revels in the attention and the thrill of the moment, another part questions the wisdom of attending the party as Lando's date. The dual roles she plays in his life—personal and professional—create a delicate balance that she must navigate. Amidst the internal turmoil, Natalie takes a deep breath, silently reminding herself to be authentic. This internal mantra becomes her anchor in the midst of the whirlwind of emotions.

“You look great, by the way.” Lando finally comments with a compliment.

Lando's appreciation for Natalie's appearance is evident in his gaze, and as he comments on her attire, a gentle smile forms on her lips. The black dress that elegantly drapes over her tanned skin seems to have caught his attention, and the subtle play of colours enhances the overall effect. The genuine appreciation in his eyes prompts a rush of heat to Natalie's cheeks, a telltale sign of the compliment's impact.

“Thank you.” She says and glances up, strands of hair cascading around her face. “You don’t look too bad yourself.”

“Not too bad? I’ve never looked better.” Lando teases, eliciting a hearty chuckle from Natalie.

“I’m ready when you are.” She tells him as her eyes sweep over his watch to check the time.

The atmosphere, once charged with anticipation and banter, shifts into a more decisive tone. Lando, acknowledging her words, nods in response, a silent affirmation that it's time to step into the next chapter of the evening.

In a subtle gesture, Lando invites Natalie to lead the way, gesturing for her to exit the room first. The chivalrous act is not lost on her, and with a gracious smile, she walks towards the door. The click of the latch echoes as Lando shuts the door behind them, sealing the room and leaving behind the private moments they shared.

The car comes to a halt outside the restaurant, marking the beginning of a new chapter in the evening. Lando, the consummate gentleman, opens his door and steps out, with Natalie gracefully following suit. As she emerges from the car, Lando extends a hand for her to grasp, a gesture that immediately establishes a connection between them.

Natalie's arm instinctively rises to clasp onto his bicep, creating a subtle yet intimate link as he leads her towards the entrance. The orchestrated choreography of their movements reflects the roles they play — the picture-perfect couple making a grand entrance into a glamorous event.

However, the transition from the confines of the car to the bustling scene outside exposes them to the glaring lights of cameras and the cacophony of photographers vying for Lando's attention. The flash bulbs flicker from all angles, capturing this moment of entrance into the public eye. Photographers shout for Lando to pose, adding an additional layer of pressure to the already charged atmosphere.

Natalie, suddenly feeling the weight of all eyes on them, keeps her head down, a sudden shyness overtaking her. The contrast between their private moments around the paddock, where they could hold hands freely, and this public spectacle becomes stark.

Inside the restaurant, Natalie deliberately lowers her arm, allowing it to hang beside her, creating a noticeable distance between her and Lando. Although he wishes she would continue holding onto him, he respects her need for space. Natalie, a ball of nerves, feels a mix of emotions, captivated by Lando in every way possible.

Not touching him becomes a strategy to maintain control over her swirling emotions. It's a self-imposed boundary in this intricate dance of roles and feelings. She reminds herself that this is a dangerous game, a delicate balancing act between the personal and the staged. As much as the public eye demands a convincing portrayal of a couple, she grapples with the complexities of her own feelings.

This evening marks the first time the rest of the grid will see them as a couple outside the paddock. The stakes are high, and the unknowns add an extra layer of uncertainty. Natalie hesitates to hold Lando's hand, fully aware of the clammy anxiety that lingers on her palms. The thought of exposing her vulnerability to the scrutinising eyes of the public and the racing world gives her pause.

As the overwhelming act of casual chit-chat and the gathering of a small group of drivers and their girlfriends engulfs Natalie, a wave of unexpected vulnerability crashes over her. Despite her usual confident and composed demeanour, the intensity of the moment becomes too much to bear. The public scrutiny, the unfamiliarity of being in the spotlight with Lando, and the weight of recent events—particularly the assault in Shanghai—create a perfect storm of emotions.

In a sudden, uncharacteristic move, Natalie finds herself pressed against Lando's side, seeking the reassurance of his touch. The physical proximity provides a momentary refuge from the chaos surrounding them. Her usual reserve gives way to a rare display of vulnerability, and in the shelter of Lando's presence, she finds a sense of security.

The assault in Shanghai, perhaps more impactful than she initially realised, has left a mark on her psyche. The unexpected need for comfort in this high-pressure situation hints at the deeper emotional toll of recent events. Lando, sensing her unspoken distress, offers a supportive presence, silently acknowledging the uncharted territory they find themselves navigating.

“You OK?” Lando leans down and whispers into her ear, attuned to Natalie's unspoken distress,

“I will be.” Natalie, steadying herself, assures him.

As if to reinforce her words, she grasps his hand, and he reciprocates by intertwining his fingers with hers. The tactile connection becomes a source of comfort and solidarity amid the chaos.

As Lando is enveloped by the enthusiastic greeting from Daniel Ricciardo, Natalie hesitates, uncertain of her place in this dynamic. She trails behind Lando as he seamlessly integrates into the driver clique, exchanging pleasantries with familiar faces like Carlos, Charles, and Pierre. Charles, spotting Natalie, breaks the ice with a warm inquiry.

“Natalie, how are you?” Charles asks, his friendly demeanour putting her at ease. The exchange extends into a small hug, a gesture that adds a touch of casualness to the formalities.

“I’m doing well, thank you. How are you?” She responds with a polite smile.

“I’m doing good.” He answers and smiles.

“Where’s Alexandra?” Natalie asks as she looks around and spots some familiar faces.

“She had to go back to Monaco for college.” Charles answers.

“Lies. The two are on some rocky terrain if you know what I mean.” Pierre interjects with an evil smile.

Natalie, caught off guard by the unexpected revelation, lets out a light chuckle, realising the banter among the drivers is not confined to the racetrack. The casual and candid nature of their interactions serves as a reminder that, despite the orchestrated nature of their public appearances, the racing world is also a community where personal dynamics play out in unexpected ways. Natalie, still finding her footing in this social setting, observes the banter with a mix of amusement and curiosity, recognizing that the public personas of the drivers often conceal a more complex reality.

As the banter continues among the drivers, Lando, perhaps unconsciously, snakes an arm around Natalie's waist, pulling her subtly closer. The unspoken gesture, an instinctive response to the casual camaraderie around them, creates a moment of shared intimacy.

Caught off guard by the unexpected closeness, Natalie turns to peer up at Lando, her eyes seeking an unspoken explanation or perhaps questioning if he wants to convey something specific. In that exchanged glance, there's a silent communication, a subtle acknowledgment of the complexities they navigate together, both in their fabricated relationship and the genuine connection that underlies it.

Despite the outward composure, Lando feels a twinge of discomfort witnessing how easily Natalie integrates with the other drivers. The banter and camaraderie she shares with them, including the casual exchanges and light touches, stir an unexpected feeling within him. It's a mix of possessiveness and vulnerability, an unfamiliar territory for Lando.

The sound of a tapping knife against a champagne flute echoes through the room, cutting through the buzz of conversation and drawing everyone's attention. Max, seizing the moment, becomes the focal point of the gathering. The subtle, rhythmic tapping serves as a signal for silence, creating a moment of anticipation.

“Good evening, everyone. Thank you for coming out tonight.” Max begins, his voice carrying across the room. The appreciation in his tone sets a positive and welcoming tone for the evening. “We’ll be heading in for dinner in a few minutes. If you could please make your way into the main dining hall. Thank you.”

As Natalie follows Lando into the main dining hall, they find their designated seats between Rebecca and Carlos on Lando's side, with Charles sitting on Natalie's side. The hum of chatter resumes as everyone settles down, and the ambiance of the elegant dining hall sets the stage for the next phase of the evening.

As meals are served, the room comes alive with a symphony of conversations and clinking cutlery. The atmosphere is a blend of socialising and the enjoyment of the delectable dishes. In the midst of the lively chatter, Charles takes a moment to lean over to Natalie.

“I visited South Africa back when I was still a young boy. I can’t remember much about it but I do remember my father taking me and my brothers to Robben Island. Do you miss it at all?” He asks.

“Oh, definitely. I’ve travelled a bit the last few years, and without a doubt, I’d say South Africa is the most beautiful place.” Her words carry a touch of nostalgia and affection for her homeland, revealing a deeper connection to the country that holds a special place in her heart.

As the evening progresses, Natalie and Charles find themselves engrossed in conversation, seamlessly navigating various topics until dessert is served. The genuine connection between them becomes evident as they share stories, exchange laughs, and connect over shared experiences.

However, Lando, observant of the developing rapport between Natalie and Charles, can't help but feel a twinge of discomfort. The subtle chemistry and camaraderie between the two do not escape his notice, causing a sense of unease to settle within him.

The dinner, meant to be a glamorous social affair, takes on a more complex tone for Lando as he grapples with the unexpected dynamics unfolding before him. The discomfort grows as he watches Natalie engage with Charles, and an undercurrent of tension simmers beneath the surface.

“Natalie.” Rebecca calls out from next to Carlos beside Lando.

Rebecca's call captures Natalie's attention, prompting her to lean slightly over Lando to hear the suggestion. In the process, she instinctively rests her hand on Lando's knee for support, a casual gesture that feels natural in the midst of the lively dinner conversation.

“We should meet up sometime and go play some paddle.” Rebecca suggests.

“Oh, that would be great. Although I’m not too good.” Natalie responds with enthusiasm.

“But Lando is a great teacher.” Carlos interjects with a chuckle.

As Natalie sits back, she removes her hand from Lando's knee, and a noticeable change in the atmosphere occurs. A cold shiver runs through Lando's body as he yearns for the warmth of her touch. The shifting dynamics at the dinner table catch his attention, but a conversation at the end of the table, involving Alex, Max, and George, draws him in.

Leaning back in his chair, Lando subtly rests his arm on the back of Natalie's chair. As she becomes engaged in the conversation, she leans back into her chair, only to be met with Lando's arm. Hesitating for a moment, Natalie contemplates leaning forward onto the table, but Lando's gentle touch on her exposed shoulder communicates a silent invitation. His thumb rubs against her skin, indicating that she is welcome to lean back. Though brief, his fingers linger for a few seconds before he withdraws them.

Natalie's heart races, and she finds herself no longer invested in the steak debate. Instead, her thoughts are consumed by the calmness that Lando's touch brought. Throughout the evening, she had battled with anxiety and the pressures of the social setting. Lando's touch becomes a grounding force, providing her a moment of security amidst the swirling complexities.

As the night progresses, couples gradually begin to depart from the table, heading back to their hotels for the evening.

“We might as well walk to the car?” Lando suggests. Natalie agrees, and they start strolling down the sidewalk together.

In the quieter atmosphere, away from the buzz of the event, Lando turns to Natalie.

“Did you have fun tonight?” He wonders as they continue to stroll towards their car.

The city street is now dimly lit, and the paparazzi, who were once a constant presence, have disappeared, leaving behind occasional camera flashes.

“I did. It was nice seeing everyone outside of the paddock just being themselves.” Natalie responds.

The sincerity in her voice reflects the genuine enjoyment she found in the evening. The shift from the glamour of the event to the calm of the nighttime stroll provides a moment of reflection for both of them, allowing a more personal and honest conversation to unfold. Lando, sensing a potential shift in dynamics, breaks the ice with a question.

“You and Charles seemed to get along quite well. Anything I should be worried about?” A subtle note of curiosity underlies his words.

“Oh, Charles, who has a girlfriend? You're not jealous, are you?” Natalie responds with a teasing tone.

“Would it be so bad if I was just a tiny bit?” Lando, not entirely dismissing the idea, counters with a mischievous smirk.

“He is cute. It must be the dimples.” Natalie continues to tease Lando, observing his reaction.

“I have dimples too.” Lando defensively quips, slightly offended by the implication. Natalie, with a mischievous glint in her eye, pokes Lando's cheek. His dimple immediately forms under her touch, and he can't help but smile at her.

“I never said who 'he' was.” Natalie adds, leaving room for interpretation and playfulness in their exchange.

The banter fades into a comfortable silence as Lando and Natalie reach the car. The quietude surrounds them, offering a moment of reprieve from the lively atmosphere of the evening. Lando, true to his courteous nature, extends a helping hand to assist Natalie into the safety of the vehicle.

As she settles into the car, the door closing behind her, a sense of calm descends upon the scene. The city lights outside cast a gentle glow on the car, creating a serene ambiance within the confines of the vehicle.

“You seem to be feeling better?” She inquires, directing the topic away from the events of the evening.

“I am feeling better. What you said yesterday really made me realise I’m just too in my head.” Lando admits.

“I think this is your season, honestly.” Natalie, exuding confidence, states.

“You reckon?” Lando laughs, a touch of genuine amusement in his voice.

“You have a fast car. You have the talent. Why not?” Natalie explains, emphasising the factors that contribute to Lando's potential for success.

“I think you’ve just become my favourite person.” Lando jokes as he starts the car.

The night air carries a sense of quiet as Lando walks Natalie back to her hotel room, which happens to be just a few doors down from his own. Natalie, reaching into her purse, retrieves the keycard and taps it against the keypad, expecting the door to open. However, it doesn't respond as anticipated. Perplexed, she tries again, but the door remains shut.

Lando, sensing her frustration, offers to give it a try. He takes the keycard from Natalie and taps it against the keypad, but the door continues to defy their attempts to unlock it. A bemused expression crosses both their faces as they face the unexpected challenge. The situation adds a touch of humour to the end of the night, and Lando can't help but chuckle.

“Well, it seems like the door has a mind of its own tonight.” He remarks, sharing a light moment with Natalie amidst the minor hiccup.

Natalie, undeterred by the door malfunction, takes a pragmatic approach.

“I’ll go down to reception and ask them to open it for me.” Natalie states as she turns to return to the elevator.

“Natalie.” Lando interjects, his use of her full name giving her goosebumps and causing her to stop in her tracks. “It’s late. Why don’t you just call them from my room?”

Lando leads Natalie to his hotel room, opening the door and inviting her inside. However, the scene that unfolds is unexpected—his room is noticeably messy. Clothes strewn about, items scattered, and a general disarray create an atmosphere that contrasts with the composed exterior Lando usually presents.

Natalie, momentarily taken aback by the sight, glances around the room.

“Quite the organised chaos you've got going on here, Lan.” A subtle smile crosses her face, as she remarks with a teasing tone.

“Sorry for the mess. I couldn’t decide what to wear.” Lando, acknowledging the state of his room, offers an apologetic explanation.

Natalie responds with a chuckle, understanding the dilemma that can arise when selecting the perfect outfit. Humoured by the disorder, Natalie heads for the landline and dials the reception number.

“Good evening, this is Natalie Feldt. I’m a guest in room 0422, but my keycard isn’t opening the door.” Natalie explains to the receptionist.

“We apologise for the inconvenience, Miss, but our technician will only be in at 8 tomorrow morning. We can set you up with a new room until then.” The receptionist explains, offering a solution to the door lock issue.

Natalie, faced with the delay in resolving the situation, sighs and holds the phone against her chest. In a whispered exchange with Lando, she shares the receptionist's response, the inconvenience adding another layer of unexpected events to the end of their night.

“Just stay here tonight.” Lando whispers to Natalie as a solution to the temporary inconvenience.

“Are you sure?” Natalie seeks confirmation from him.

“Of course.” He assures her, his tone conveying genuine warmth and consideration.

“That won’t be necessary, thank you.” She explains to the receptionist before ending the call.

Lando, ever the problem-solver, offers a thoughtful solution to Natalie's situation.

“You know, I’ve learnt to keep a spare set of clothes in my suitcase for you.” He reveals with a grin. Resourceful and prepared, he searches the room and soon finds a large shirt and sweatpants. “Here you go. Comfy and cosy.”

“I think I have more of your clothes in my suitcase than my own at this point.” Natalie concedes as she takes the clothes from him.

As Natalie takes the clothes from Lando, their fingers graze each other in a subtle yet palpable moment. The gentle touch adds an extra layer of intimacy to the exchange, a fleeting connection that lingers in the air as she heads for the bathroom.

Natalie returns from the bathroom to find Lando balled up under the covers, engrossed in his phone. Without much ado, she climbs into bed beside him, settling in for a night's rest. The comfortable familiarity between them permeates the room, and the soft glow of the phone screen provides a dim light as they prepare to call it a night.

Natalie wakes up in the pitch-black hotel room, aware of the stillness around her. Lando's deep breaths provide a rhythmic backdrop, and she can feel his warm breath on her back. As she turns slightly, she discovers Lando behind her, his curly head of hair almost buried in the pillow.

In a gentle and intimate embrace, Lando spoons her from behind. His arm rests on her hip, creating a sense of closeness and warmth. The quietude of the room is broken only by the soft sounds of their breathing, creating a tranquil moment in the middle of the night.

Natalie, still wrapped in the mystery of the night, can't recall exactly when she fell asleep or how they ended up in such close proximity. As she relaxes back onto the pillow, a deep sigh escapes her. A few moments later, she feels Lando pulling her even closer to him.

His face inches away from her neck, she becomes acutely aware of his warm breath on her exposed skin. The sensation sends a wave of goosebumps across her body. In the quiet darkness of the hotel room, Natalie, aware of the gentle touch between their hands, rests her hand next to Lando's on her waist. Slowly, their fingers touch, creating a connection that is both subtle and significant. However, she decides that's as far as she's willing to take it, stopping at the comforting touch.

The slight contact is a source of solace for Natalie. She feels safe, wrapped up in Lando's space and scent, an experience she hasn't had in a very long time. She wonders if the tension she imagines between them is real or just a product of her own emotions.

Meanwhile, Lando stirs, feeling her cold fingertips graze against his. He's awake enough to realise that Natalie is also awake. Rather than pulling away, she stays beside him in the bed and initiates a small physical touch, a gesture that sends his heart rate into overdrive. However, he decides to feign sleep, not wanting the moment to turn awkward and unsure of how to navigate the unspoken connection that lingers in the quiet room.

As Natalie stares at the bedside clock, she watches the minutes tick by, unable to fall back asleep. She senses that Lando is no longer in a deep sleep, and the realisation that any movement from her could wake him up lingers in her mind. Concerned about the potential awkwardness, she decides to rip her hand away from him, not wanting to give the impression of anything more than a casual touch.

Lando, feeling the absence of her hand, grows cold. He, too, caves in and withdraws his hand from her waist. His hand travels down her arm, searching for her hand again. Natalie holds her breath as he intertwines their fingers, a moment of tension and anticipation.

“It’s freezing.” Lando whispers, his voice and breath against her neck causing her to shiver. In response, she presses against him even further.

“It is.” She whispers in agreement, the shared moment suspended in the quiet room.

“It’s a lot warmer with you here.” Lando confesses, his voice soft and gentle.

As Natalie simply hums in response, a peaceful tranquillity settles in the room. Finally relaxing in Lando's embrace, the two of them drift into a shared slumber, wrapped up in each other

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Taglist: @noneofyourfbusinessworld @scopeiguess @tbsloneely

#f1 fanfic #f1 fic #f1 imagine #formula 1 #lando norris #lando norris fanfic #lando norris fic #lando norris smut #mclaren #mclaren f1 #lando norris x oc

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hellpupp · 2 years ago

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if i could convince all my friends, loved ones, and acquaintances to listen to One(1) piece of media that was formative for me, it would be Juno Steel and the Monster's Reflection parts 1-3.

it won't hit as hard without the context of the series up until that point, but it's still such a profound exploration of generational trauma, cycles of abuse, PTSD, and the ways we can understand the ones who hurt us as being complex individuals with a rich interior life. it even touches on how our memories are reshaped (sometimes even completely overwritten or erased) by the trauma we associate with them.

it forces us to grapple with the fact that most abusers aren't 2D cartoon villains who hurt others Because They're Evil- they usually had reasons for their behavior, but it does NOT try to say the existence of an explanation for their behavior absolves them of responsibility for it, nor does it try to say you have to forgive them.

i once saw someone tear the episodes to shreds bc they "humanized an abuser" and i've never seen someone look so directly at the point of a story & somehow completely miss it.

i've listened to the entire 3 part story probably 6 or more times, at least, and it's deeply emotionally impactful every time. it's been hugely cathartic.

anyway, if reading this makes you want to give the episodes a listen, here's a link:

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

PLEASE take the time to read over the content warnings.

if you'd like a very brief summary of the most important previous plot points the episodes touch on, so that you have a better understanding of the circumstances, check below the cut:

early in the series, the titular character, Juno Steel, reveals that he had an identical twin brother (named Benzaiten) who died many years ago.

juno almost never brings up his mother, but it's clear that they had a VERY bad relationship. it's implied early on that she may have tried to kill juno, once, & that she was somehow involved in benten's death. juno also blames himself for ben's death.

juno struggles with severe depression, low self-worth, and persistent passive suicidal ideation. he tends to self-sabotage his relationships, and attaches most of his self-worth to his ability to stop crime & Catch The Bad Guys. the likely reasons for this are revealed here.

in a previous season, in order to keep it out of the hands of a dangerous criminal, juno took an experimental drug which caused him to grow an organ that an extinct alien race once used to communicate telepathically. he overtaxes the organ, causing it to rupture inside of his body. because it had attached to his optical nerve, the rupture also destroyed his eye.

juno's main employer in this arc, ramses o'flaherty, "generously" supplied him with a highly advanced, experimental prototype cybernetic eye, called the "Theia Spectrum." it comes with an AI which can help juno do all sorts of neat stuff- he later finds out it also allows ramses to see whatever he sees, and to override juno's nervous system if he does something ramses doesn't want him to.

the eye can't be removed through conventional surgical methods, due to the fact that it's become closely entwined with his own nervous system. in the previous episode, juno has finished a job for a different employer (buddy aurinko), in exchange for being taken to a clinic that supposedly has methods to remove this kind of prosthetic safely. the first episode of Monster's Reflection opens on juno's arrival to the secret clinic, alongside the escort buddy has sent with him ("big guy")

#tpp #juno steel #the monster's reflection #if you're in a place to handle the TWs pleeeeease listen to these i promise it's SO fucking good #i weirdly associate these episodes w/ christmas bc i listened to them on a long plane ride home for xmas with my family one year

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lorenfangor · 3 years ago

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I heard that #40 was super homophobic :/ so I skipped it. But now your fic is making me want to give it a try. How problematic is it? Are the characters worth it?

Okay.

Let’s talk about #40.

The plot of The Other (a Marco POV) is that Marco sees an Andalite on a video tape sent in to some Unsolved Mysteries-esque TV show, and he assumes it’s Ax and hauls ass to save him from being captured. Ax, being Ax, has videotaped the show, and they pull it up and Tobias uses his hawk eyes to figure out that it’s not Ax, it’s another Andalite - one without a tailblade. Ax is appalled at the presence of this vecol (an Andalite word for a disabled person) and we find out that he and others of his species have deep ingrained prejudices against at least some kinds of disabled people.

Despite this, Marco and Ax go looking for the Andalite in question because he’s been spotted by national TV, and they meet a second one, named Gafinilan-Estrif-Valad. The vecol is Mertil-Iscar-Elmand, a former fighter pilot with a reputation and Gafinilan’s coded-gay life partner. The two of them have been on Earth since book 1; they crashed their fighters on the planet and have been trapped there thanks to the GalaxyTree going down. Gafinilan has adopted a human cover, a physics professor, and they’ve been living in secret ever since.

Thanks to that tape, Mertil has been captured by Visser Three, and he’s not morph-capable so he can’t escape. Gafinilan wants to trade the leader of the “Andalite Bandits” to the Yeerks to get his boyfriend back; he can’t fight to free Mertil because he’s terminally ill with a genetic disorder that will eventually kill him, and (it’s implied that) the Yeerks aren’t interested in disabled hosts, even disabled Andalite ones. Despite Ax’s ableism, the Animorphs agree to work with Gafinilan and free Mertil, and they’re successful. Marco ends the book talking about how there are all kinds of prejudices you’ll have to face and boxes that people will put you in, and you can’t necessarily escape them even if they’re reductive and inaccurate, but you can still live your life with pride.

So now that I’ve explained the plot, I’m gonna come out the gate saying that I love this book. I love it wholeheartedly, I love Marco’s narration, I love Ax having to deal with Andalite society’s ableism, I love these characters, and as a disabled lesbian I don’t find these disabled gays to be inherently Bad Rep.

that’s of course just my opinion and it doesn’t overshadow other issues that people might have? but at the same time, I don’t like the seemingly-common narrative that this book is all bad all the time, and I want to offer up a different read.To that end, I’m going to go point by point through some of the criticisms and common complaints that I’ve seen across the fandom over the years.

“Mertil and Gafinilan were put on a bus after one appearance because they were gay!”

this is one I’m going to have to disagree with hardcore. I talked about this yesterday, but in Animorphs there are a lot of characters or ideas that only get introduced once or twice and then get written off or dropped - in order off the top of my head, #11 (the Amazon trip), #16 (Fenestre and his cannibalism), #17 (the oatmeal), #18 (the hint of Yeerks doing genetic experiments in the hospital basement), #24/#39/#42 (the Helmacrons’ ability to detect morphing tech), #25 (the Venber), #28 (experiments with limiting brain function through drugs), #34 (the Hork-Bajir homeworld being retaken, the Ixcila procedure), #36 (the Nartec), #41 (Jake’s Bad Future Dream), and #44 (the Aboriginal people Cassie meets in Australia) all feature things that either seem to exist just for the sake of having a particular trope explored Animorphs-style or to feature an idea for One Single Book.

This is a series that’s episodic and has a very limited overall story arc because of how children’s literature in the 90s was structured - these books are closer to The Saddle Club, Sweet Valley High, Animal Ark, or The Baby-Sitters’ Club than they are to Harry Potter or A Series of Unfortunate Events. Mertil and Gafinilan don’t get to be in more than one book because they’re not established in the main cast or the supporting cast, I don’t think that it’s solely got anything to do with their being gay.

“Gafinilan has AIDS, this is a book about AIDS, and that’s homophobic!”

Okay, this is… hard. First, yes, Gafinilan does have a terminal illness. Yes, Gafinilan is gay. No, Soola’s Disease is not AIDS.

I have two responses to this, and I’ll attack them in order of their occurrence in my thought. First, there’s coded AIDS diseases all over genre fiction, especially genre fiction from that era, because the AIDS epidemic made a massive impact on public life and fundamentally changed both how the public perceived illness and queerness and how queer people themselves experienced it. I was too young to live through it, but my dad’s college roommate was out, and my dad himself has a lot of friends who he just ceases to talk about if the conversation gets past 1986 or so - this was devastating and it got examined in art for more reasons than “gay people all have AIDS”, and I dislike the implication that the only reason it could ever appear was as a tired stereotype or a message that Being Queer Means Death. Gafinilan is kind, fond of flowers, and fond of children - he’s multifaceted, and he’s got a terminal illness. Those kinds of people really exist, and they aren’t Bad Rep.

Second off, Soola’s Disease? Really isn’t AIDS. It’s a congenital genetic illness that develops over time, cannot be transmitted, and does not carry a serious stigma the way AIDS did. Gafinilan also has access to a cure - he could become a nothlit and no longer be afflicted by it, even if it’s considered somewhat dishonorable to go nothlit to escape that way. That’s not AIDS, and in fact at no point in my read and rereads did I assume that his having a terminal illness was supposed to be a commentary on homosexuality until I found out that other people were assuming it.

“Mertil losing his tail means he’s lost his masculinity, and that’s bad because he’s gay! That’s homophobic!”

so this is another one I’ve gotta hardcore disagree with, because while Mertil is one of two Very Obviously Queer Characters, he’s not the only character who loses something fundamental about himself, or even loses access to sexual and/or romantic capability in ways he was familiar with.

Tobias and Arbron both get ripped out of their ordinary normal lives by going nothlit in bad situations, and while they both wind up finding fulfillment and freedom despite that, it’s still traumatic, even more for Arbron I’d say than for Tobias. And on a psychological level, none of the main cast is left unmarked or free of trauma or free of deep change thanks to the bad things that have happened to them - they’re no less fundamentally altered than Mertil, even if it’s mental rather than physical. And yes, tail loss is equated with castration or emasculation, but that doesn’t automatically mean Mertil suffering it is tied to his homosexuality and therefore the takeaway we’re intended to have is “Being gay is tragic and makes you less of a man”. This is a series where bad shit happens to everyone, and enduring losses that take away things central to one’s self-conception or identity or body is just part of the story.

Also, frankly? Plenty of IRL disabled people have to grapple with a loss of sexual function, and again, they’re not Bad Rep just because they’re messy.

“Andalite society is confusingly written in this book, and the disability aspects are clearly just a coverup for the gay stuff!”

Andalite society is canonically sexist, a bit exceptionalist and prejudiced in their own favor, and pretty contradictory and often challenged internally on its own norms. In essence, it’s a pretty ordinary society, and they’re really realistic as sci-fi races go. It makes sense from that perspective that Andalites would tolerate scarring or a lost stalk eye or a lost skull eye, but not tolerate serious injuries that significantly impact your perceived quality of life. Ableism is like that - it’s not one-size-fits-all. I look at Ax’s reactions and I see a lot of my own family and friends’ behaviors - this vibes with my understanding of prejudice, you know?

“Mertil and Gafinilan have a tragic ending, which means the story is saying that being gay dooms you to tragedy!”

Mertil and Gafinilan have the best possible ending that they could ask for? They are victims of the war, they are suffering because of the war, they get the same cocktail of trauma and damage that every other soldier gets. But unlike Jake and Tobias and Marco, unlike Elfangor, unlike Aximili? Their ending comes in peace, in their own home. Gafinilan isn’t dying alone, he’s got the love of his life with him. Mertil isn’t going to be as isolated anymore, he’s got Marco for a friend. Animorphs is a tragedy, it’s not a happy story, it’s not something that guarantees a beautiful sunshine-and-roses ending for everyone, and I love tragedy, and so I will fight for this story. Yes, it hurts. Yes, it deserved better. But it’s not less meaningful just because it’s sad. Nobody is entitled to anything in this book, and it’s just as true for these two as it is for anyone else.

“It’s not cool that the only canonically gay characters in this series don’t get to be happy and trauma-free and unblemished Good Rep!”

This is one I can kind of understand, and I’ll give some ground to it, because it is sucky. The only thing I’ll say is that I stand by my argument that nothing that happens to Mertil and Gafinilan is unusual compared to what happens to the rest of the cast, and that their ending is way happier than Rachel and Tobias’s, or Jake and Cassie’s. But it’s a legitimate point of frustration, and the one argument I’ll say I agree has validity.

(Though, I also want to point out that I think there are plenty of equally queercoded characters in the story who aren’t Mertil and Gafinilan - Tobias, Rachel, Cassie, and Marco all get at least one or two moments that signal to me that they’re potentially LGBT+, not to mention Mr. Tidwell and Illim in #29 and their long-term domestic partnership. There’s no reason to assume that the only queer people here are those two aliens when Marco’s descriptions of Jake exist.)

“Marco uses slurs and reduces Gafinilan’s whole identity to his illness!”

Technically, yes, this is true, except putting it that way strips the whole passage of its context. Marco is discussing the boxes society puts you into, the ones you don’t have a choice about facing or escaping. He’s talking about negative stereotypes and reductive generalizations, he’s referring to them as bad things that you get inflicted upon you by an outside world or by friends who don’t know the whole story or the real you. The slurs he uses are real slurs that get thrown at people still, and they’re not okay, and the point is that they’re not okay but assholes are going to call you by them anyway. He ends by saying “you just have to learn to live with it”, and since this is coming from a fifteen-year-old Latino kid who we know is picked on by bullies for all sorts of reasons and who faces racism and homophobia? He knows what he’s talking about. He’s bitter about what’s been said and done, he’s not stating it like it’s a good thing.

Yes, absolutely, this speech is a product of its time, but it’s a product of its time that speaks of defiance and says “We aren’t what we’re said to be,” and in the year this was published? That’s a good message.

tl;dr The Other is good, actually, and Mertil and Gafinilan are incredible characters who deserve all the love they could possibly get.

#animorphs #animorphs meta #mertil/gafinilan #mertil #gafinilan #mertil-iscar-elmand #gafinilan-estrif-valad

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diveronarpg · 5 years ago

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Congratulations, JULIE! You’ve been accepted for the role of OBERON with an approved FC change to Oscar Isaac. Admin Rosey: I don't know how many times I said I was possessed when I wrote Oberon but I very much was. I think you have to be a little bit possessed to write him because that's the kind of person he is; you have to be all in with him or perish. I don't know what it is about these types of enigmatic, almost ethereal characters that you understand - they have one foot in heaven and one foot in hell - but you get them at their core, Julie. Thank you for bringing my most beautiful son to the dash. Please read over the checklist and send in your blog within 24 hours.

WELCOME TO THE MOB.

OUT OF CHARACTER

Alias | Julie

Age | 20

Preferred Pronouns | She/her

Activity Level | I mean, y’all know how it is. One draft a day usually does it for me, and at the bare minimum, I shoot for a few replies a week.

Timezone | MST

How did you find the rp? | I was perusing the ‘lsrpg’ tag, and the rest was history.

Current/Past RP Accounts | Lucien!

IN CHARACTER

Character | Oberon / Olivio Rivera -- with a fc change to Oscar Isaac, if it’s okay with you guys.

What drew you to this character? | There’s something about Olivio that makes him half-man half-hell, and that’s fascinating to me. I think, to a degree, he’s as human as the rest of us, with good parts and bad, but most people don’t show those parts so brazenly and manage to be half as discreet while doing it. This charm is pretty different from a character like Lucien’s, because it’s not a necessary charm. It’s not something he learned to do. It’s something he's always had in him for as long as he’s been -- it’s essential to the core of who he is as a person. There’s a dream-like quality to him that pulls you in and a nightmare-like quality that makes you take a step back when you get too close. He’s brutal in the way he orchestrates his own downfall just to get away from work he no longer has an interest in. He’s gentle with Theo, still grieving, because he knows they’re still working through something and it’s not entirely his place to poke and prod. Walking the thin line involved in this dichotomy is something that immediately caught my attention, and I’d love to explore both sides to him in the way Oberon deserves.

What is a future plot idea you have in mind for the character? |

1. I’d like to explore what Olivio has to sacrifice in order to ascend in the Capulets. He’s already lived a fair bit of his life without any of it really being impacted by the mobs of Verona, so his priorities and goals are likely pretty different from characters that have been here their entire lives. It’ll probably take a while before he builds relationships strongly enough in Verona that he has anything worth sacrificing, but as soon as he does, I’d like to yank them from under him, see how he fares -- if he’s worth becoming a soldier or an emissary in the way that Theodora thinks he can be. He’s strangely comfortable as an initiate, sitting at the bottom of the barrel, but how long is that comfort going to last him?

2. With Olivio, there’s definitely a two-faced element to him, in much the same way there’s a two-faced element to Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He’s brutal and gentle all in one, and I’d like to explore what dictates in him which part comes out where. He gets his work done and ties it off in a neat bow, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he shies away from the ugliest parts of himself. How does he fare in comparison to someone like Orpheus, a dead man, who had similar goals and aspirations as the Robin Hood of Verona but didn’t set out to become that sort of figurehead -- everyone remembers Orpheus. No one knows Olivio. I also think it’s entirely possible his two-faced nature could undermine his reputation and his overall climb towards a more concrete place in the Capulets, if he isn’t careful, and I’d love to see what the consequences are. It worked for him in Spain. It might not work for him here.

3. In the para sample, I allude a little to Olivio’s dream in the same way it’s alluded to in his biography -- this borderline fantastical dream of a better place, a better world, where the underdogs and the fantastical alike can come together and live in harmony. A place where he can taste honey in his mouth where there might have been blood. I’d like to explore Olivio’s past in reflection to his present. He’s had the same dream his entire life, worked towards it slowly but surely in his youth, and then he ended up sitting on top of an empire he didn’t expect to have and didn’t really want. He gets caught up in his own flaws, and it all crumbles apart right from underneath him, and I’d love to see if he’s doomed to repeat that in Verona or if things are really going to be different this time around.

Are you comfortable with killing off your character? | I think so! As long as it serves a purpose, I’m happy to dip my hands in angst.

IN DEPTH

TW: VIOLENCE, DEATH

Cesar’s face is so heavily caked with blood that Olivio doesn’t think he could see through the red if he wanted to. His right eye is swollen. He’s missing some teeth. His breath is coming out in wheezes from a few broken ribs, and Olivio -- in spite of his shape, in spite of being three years Cesar’s junior -- is out of breath. They’d grappled for the pistol for some time only for it to go flying under a table somewhere when Cesar kicked it up. Now, staring each other down in an empty backroom in El Valenciano, they’re catching their breath. They’re both drenched in the vibrant pink of overhead lights. It could be a painting, he thinks. Something right out of sleep. He’s had dreams like this before, and they usually don’t end quite so badly.

It makes sense in Olivio’s head that Cesar wouldn’t go down without a fight. That’s fine. He never has. But Cesar knows that Olivio’s never liked losing. Even in drills and races and training exercises, even in the field, neck-to-neck, rifle-to-rifle, Olivio never gave him the chance to get ahead. So those few months where Olivio was falling from grace, slipping from his throne? They must have felt like winning to Cesar. He must have not even realized that the game was rigged from the start.

That’s fine, too. Olivio was always the brain of the operation. Cesar served his purpose as the brawn, the Lancelot to his Arthur.

“You should’ve let me leave, a year ago. Otherwise we wouldn’t be here.” There’s a headache building at the back of his head. Stress or exhaustion. Both? He takes his own trembling hands and grapples for a glass of what looks like bourbon from one of the still-standing tables. Cesar watches him, licks his lips when Olivio swallows.

“No one leaves. You’ve never let anyone leave. You shouldn’t get the same luxury, Olivio.” Cesar spits the words out so angrily that Olivio’s almost convinced he believes them, but it’s still hard to hear him over the thrumming reverb of the music. Sweet dreams are made of this, who am I to disagree? Catchy. In this moment, in spite of the gore, Olivio thinks Cesar looks young again. Fuzzy around the edges, purple-pink-crimson, young. No more grey at the temples, crow’s feet around the edges. Just blood on his teeth, shifting from pink to blue in a moment’s notice.

“Where are you going to go?” Cesar asks, as he moves a few steps closer. He’s still holding the glass in a white-knuckled grip. His heart is going a million miles a minute. It’s not easy to kill a man with your bare hands, but he’s done it before. He’ll do it again. It feels right to do it this way, with his fists, rather than the barrel of a gun. He wraps his fingers in Cesar’s collar with his free hand and Cesar barely even jerks to meet the movement. He’s all dead weight. Olivio considers the question.

“I’ll go to Verona.”

“In Italy? Bah.” Cesar laughs, throat hoarse. Spittle paints Olivio’s face, but the disgust barely registers. “You always hated Italy -- shot down any business there every time.”

“I hear it’s nice this time of year.”

“You’re burning every bridge you have in Spain. When winter comes around there won’t be any coming back. This is it. You kill me and we’re done.” This feels right out of the pages of the novel. He wonders if maybe he should deliver some sort of dramatic monologue. Something about being brothers from the very beginning. Hold your head up! Moving on! “You’re going to regret it, and you won’t get to crawl back and apologize to me this time.”

Even Olivio’s two divorces weren’t this messy. Still, he leans in close. “It’s not my dream anymore. I’m just making sure it won’t be yours, either.” He searches Cesar’s face for something. Anything. An apology. An indication of guilt. A plea for mercy. The animal-like terror that comes into men moments before they die. They’d seen it a thousand times before, together, and they’d laughed about it over drinks. A shifting green light passes slowly over his eyes. The world goes seafoam.

Nothing. Just their shared breaths. Not even a do it. Olivio sighs. He lifts his hand holding the glass and brings it down. Cesar, to his credit, doesn’t scream. He just takes what he’s given and dies quietly, in the club they bought back when they thought they’d go somewhere bigger than Barcelona. Or maybe that was just him. It doesn’t take more than two minutes.

Olivio stands back, checks Cesar’s pulse, and then wipes his hands on his slacks, chest heaving.

The ‘ludes start to kick in just as he leaves the club, bloodied jacket in hand, a little later than he would have liked. The cleaners sweep in to wipe evidence away as soon as he’s stepped out of the room and towards the exit. Not a single employee looks at him as he leaves, and the people dancing on the floor hardly notice him. The doorman nods at him on his way out. The car waiting for Olivio at the curb takes him straight to the airport, and he barely has time to settle in his seat before he’s asleep. When he wakes, it’s to the sight of Verona and the river that runs right through it, the sun cresting overhead. He descends onto the tarmac cotton-mouthed, changed into clean clothes, and satisfied.

Cesar had been the last loose end. With his death everything in Spain has tied itself up into a neat bow. The ashes of whatever vision he and Cesar might have shared at some point would be gathered up and put into someone else’s hands. Marta’s, he hopes. She’d always been the most capable, in his mind. She’d been the one to tell him of Verona, originally, when she caught wind of what he was doing: razing everything he’d built. She’d been smart enough to stay loyal in the face of his personally orchestrated coup, and he let her live.

He just hopes she doesn’t take it for granted like he had. That she’ll lay out her own path and stick to it, instead of watching it build by itself and grow restless. Verona won’t be like that -- he’s sure of it. It has to be a new start, one he’ll be happy to die by.

In two days’ time --- and he doesn’t know this now, but he will look back at it and laugh --- he’ll kill an enemy of the Capulets in much the same way he killed Cesar, hooked on the sheer euphoria of his newfound love for the city, just outside a place achingly close to El Valenciano, and it won’t even get him in trouble. The Capulets will sweep him up before he has the time to come down from the high, and they’ll bring him into the fold without even knowing his name. He’ll start from the very bottom, and he’ll relish in it, because it’s been a long time since he had nothing.

What he does know: the Capulets are the key to this newfound dream of his, this new-and-shiny-glossy illusion, and Olivio Rivera will take whatever he can get in a city like this, so long as it means he doesn’t have to raze it to the ground.

Extras: [glass him] PLAYLIST / PINTEREST [cesar won’t remember this.]

#accepted #accepted: oberon

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snkpolls · 6 years ago

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SnK Chapter 114 Results

The chapter poll closed with 1081 responses. Thank you to everyone who participated!

RATE THE CHAPTER 1,038 responses

This arc continues to impress, with almost half of respondents giving it 5 stars, and only 3.5% giving it a highly negative rating. That said, the amount of 5 ratings is down 11.9% from last month, which itself was down 17% from 112.

That was an amazing way to conclude vol. 28, arguably making it the best volume of this arc so far. Not only Levi did get hoisted by his own petard, but it was a fantastic way to flesh out more Zeke as an actual character instead of a plot device meant to trigger the rumbling.

Amazing chapter. I was certain Zeke had his own goals, but I was not able to see it coming. I love where the story seems to be going.

Easily top 10 worst AOT chapters of all time

Excellent chapter. Expected nothing from Zeke's backstory and was pleasantly surprised to see how well it turned out. Also good job on leaving hints at his true motivations since RtS and making the whole thing come together in such a thematically impactful way.

This chapter has been just another in a rung of disappointing chapters that has taken characters like Eren and done so much damage to them I am concerned there is no recovery for them even if they begin to change in a better way.

One of the best chapters

This has to be my most favorite chapter of this series thus far! I absolutely loved finally getting some crucial insight on Zeke and learning about what has been secretly buried within his heart for the entirety of his life.

There was no Floch this chapter, therefore what a waste

Imho this is the best chapter we've had since 101

Not as exciting as the recent chapters

Not the most exciting chapter, but it wasn't boring either. We got to finally visit the source of Zeke's motivations and what his true mission is, which has been a mystery for a long time. Now we just need to know what Eren is thinking and why he treated his friends the way he did..

WHAT WAS THIS CHAPTER’S MOST MEMORABLE MOMENT? 1,057 responses

Garnering over ¼ of the votes, Zeke dramatically detonating the thunderspear made a huge impact on us readers, followed by 22.4% finding themselves grappling with Levi’s uncertain fate on the last page. Bringing up 3rd at 20.4% was Zeke and Xaver’s plan to commit eldian genocide through titan eugenics.

Oh god, I did not know fear until I saw Levi being blown away. I was cool with him dying fighting his comrades, but christ, I can't stand the thought of him being critically injured or something. Going out in a blaze of glory is one thing, but no longer being humanity's strongest soldier? That's honestly more painful for me

Zeke's childhood was sad - but we knew that. Doesn't justify genocide - even 'gentle' genocide via sterilization. It felt more like a way of getting pieces in place for the final showdown.

Levi loses his right arm like Erwin! Fuckyeah

Levi better be crippled. Tension in the story increased a lot with him being maimed.

Zeke, you're a cool guy, but that ""Cockblock all eldians"" plan? It ain't gonna happen. The world is a cruel place with or without titans.

WHAT WAS THE BEST REVEAL IN THIS CHAPTER? 1,054 responses

In a chapter full of infodrops, 65.2% found the reveal that the Founding titan can manipulate Eldian DNA to be the most fascinating among them. 15.5% chose the curtain being pulled back a bit on Zeke turning in his parents, revealing Xaver convinced him to. 12.1% chose the tie in to season 2’s ED, with the battle of Lago. 3.7% were taken aback with Xaver’s tragic backstory, selecting it as the best reveal, and 1.9% selecting his profession as a titan researcher. 1.6% of you were shocked to learn that Xaver was able to hide his Eldian status.

I really love the DNA manipulation reveal, it changes a lot of things and allows for a bunch of new theories.

This chapter hasn't changed much for me aside from the revelation that the FT can alter Eldian DNA.

Now we have more questions (like always happens) like if Kruger was involved with Xaver and the decision to turn in Zeke's parents.

There's more backstory for Xaver.

HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE REVEAL OF ZEKE’S PLAN? 1,060 responses

Zekerets revealed! Zeke’s master plan to end the world’s suffering through euthanizing the Eldian race was met to mostly mixed responses. 34.8% felt the reveal was alright and gave it a 3, with 32.2% bumping it up to a 4. 15.2% gave it the highest rating, and 17.9% voted unfavorably.

I think Zeke's motive fits his character and the stories themes perfectly. I can understand some people's disappointment expecting him to have some deus ex machina that'll solve all the stories problems and save the Eldians. But I find this far more realistic.

Zeke's ideology is classic "greater good" rhetoric.

Was hoping Zeke would be more morally gray rather than a blatant antagonist so I'm a little disappointed, but I also thought this was genuinely an amazing chapter. My heart broke for young Zeke.

This isn't freedom, neither salvation. This is giving up of his own people lives, because of his own view of the world.

It’s funny, Mikasa’s ‘this world is cruel...’ line is probably the one that best sums up the world of Shingeki. But whilst Mikasa can see the good in the world, Zeke only sees the cruelty, and determines that there is no need to live in a world where people are so endlessly cruel to Eldians. A world in which they are a mistake.

I also like the thematic continuity of how Zeke’s plan was revealed, and how it fit perfectly with what we’ve seen already of how characters discover that “the world is a cruel place”, and how their individual life experiences and relationships lead them to completely different conclusions. I much prefer this kind of big reveal that adds depth to the story & writing, as opposed to something completely sensationalist just for a shock factor

DO YOU THINK EREN IS AWARE OF ZEKE’S PLAN? 1,059 responses

At 52%, just over half of respondents believe that Zeke has let Eren in on his plan, while 16% are sure Eren is oblivious to it. The remaining respondents don't want to say for sure either way.

I think Eren is fully aware of Zeke's plan, but is only letting it go on until Eren gets closer to his own goal, whatever that may be.

I really hope Eren doesn't know Zeke's actual plan. I have a shred of hope left for him and if he agrees to genocide that's out the window

DO YOU THINK EREN AGREES/WILL AGREE WITH ZEKE’S PLAN? 1,056 responses

Over 76% of respondents agree that Eren hasn't gone totally off the deep end and will oppose Zeke's euthanasia plan. A small percentage feel Eren will see things the same as Zeke, while 16% remain uncertain either way. We can all probably agree we need to see his point of view soon, though.

Eren thoughts when?

Zeke as of now represents the perfect opposition to Eren's philosophy and the incoming conflict which will eventually push them to stand against each other is bound to be interesting.

Something is missing here. Zeke and Eren could do their "Eldian Euthanasia" right when they secretly met in Liberio. There has to be more to Zeke's plan.

With the conflicting plans almost confirmed, Jaegerbowl incoming?

I don't think Eren is double-crossing Zeke/only using him/intending to betray him. While I doubt Eren will agree to Zeke's plan, I think it'd be a bit too predictable and underwhelming if Isayama simply decided to do the brother vs brother route now, especially when we haven't seen them properly interact.

There'll be conflict, but maybe not in the way most of the fandom seems to be anticipating.

This chapter firmly confirms that unless Eren has agreed to go along with Zeke's plans, one of them is playing the other.

Eren is definitely either unaware of his bro's endgame or not truly on Zeke's side but pretending he is. I hope it's the latter because that would be so much more interesting to me than Eren being manipulated. I also think there's setup: Zeke projected on Eren literally the first time he ever saw him, thinks Eren is the only other person who understands, and seems like a deeply lonely person on the inside. The inevitable Yeager brothers clash will be awesome either way; they're total opposites. I am dying for Eren PoV soon, ugh.

WAS ZEKE’S CHOICE TO TURN IN HIS PARENTS JUSTIFIED? 1,049 responses

The vast majority (71.1%) agree with Zeke’s decision to report his parents to the Marleyan authorities. Most of those (59.1%) follow Zeke’s own logic: that it at least spared his grandparents and himself, while the remaining 12% simply believe that Grisha and Dina deserved what happened to them. In contrast, almost a quarter think Zeke should have instead tried a little bit harder to talk some sense into Grisha and Dina. Sadly, only 4.6% of respondents believe that he could have saved his parents.

I can't blame Zeke that he betrayed his parents. It was the best decision, to save the life of his grandparents and his own, cause they shouldn't be punished for the sins of Grisha and Dina.

He didn't have a choice. He was manipulated and was just an abused child. A better question, I think, should have been "Was Xaver justified in forcing Zeke to turn in his parents?"

Seriously, I don't feel sorry for Grisha and Dina. Zeke tries to warn them, but they don't listen to him and if you don't want to hear, then you have to be punished and take the consequences.

IN A SERIES FILLED WITH TRAGIC BACKSTORIES, WHERE DOES ZEKE’S RANK? 1,051 responses

Zeke finally got a chance to step up to the plate of tragic backstory, and hit a bit of a bunt. It did the job, but didn’t exceed the home runs hit by Reiner and some others. The majority, at 44.3% felt that while tragic, it doesn’t quite merit eradicating his entire race. Interestingly, the average rating of the chapter increases the more tragic you found Zeke’s childhood, finding the chapter to be more of a narrative success.

Bold of Isayama to think a sad backstory would make me stop wanting Zeke to get rekt.

Zeke's childhood wasn't as tragic as Reiner's. They both had to deal with a lot of problems, but Zeke at least had Xavier and grandparents who cared about him. They gave him love he needed.

I never thought it was possible to make me not hate Zeke Jaeger. But somehow now I barely hate him at all. We'll see how Season 3.2 changes that.

I did enjoy Zeke's backstory but I also found it kind of underwhelming. IDK

Zeke has been my favorite character for years now. Glad to see my instincts were right. He is not the villain people used to think he was.

He was always thought to be a 900 IQ mastermind, but in reality he was even less talented than Reiner was.

Zeke’s flashbacks were very well executed, with the perfect combination of tragic and disturbing, and just the right amount of the classic Isayama “grey morality” to stir up some debate. Each backstory reveal like this is an exercise in empathy, in which we are asked to sympathise with a character just enough to understand where they’re coming from and the suffering they’ve undergone. By having their resulting crimes/actions as bad as they are however (i.e. mass murder), the story does NOT require us to forgive or justify what they’ve done. Rather, it simply invites us to expand our perspective and see the bigger picture, that horrible individuals are both victims and perpetrators of horrible environments; basically, how bad people are made, not born.

Zeke did nothing wrong, he is just a sad little monkey.

TOM XAVER SAID THAT DINA AND GRISHA NEVER LOVED ZEKE. WHAT DO YOU THINK? 1,058 responses

Was Xaver being manipulative? Dramatic? Truthful? Luckily for Zeke, most of us (87.7%) do think that his parents at least loved him in some capacity. Unluckily for Zeke, almost a quarter believe that his parents loved him less than they loved their dreams of restoring their lost empire. Only 12.3% believe that Xaver’s words were honest, and that Grisha and Dina never loved their son - only seeing him as a tool to be used.

I think Dina did love Zeke, but loved the mission more. Grisha however, I think only ever saw him as their "savior", and never took the time to truly think of him as his son.

I used to believe that Zeke was some cruel psychopath. Now I see that he was just a sensitive, unloved child who was forced into some crazy plans of his trash parents. He never wanted to fight, that was not his nature.

Xaver telling Zeke "your parents never loved you" was incredibly manipulative but also (maybe) an attempt at making a bad situation less bad. If Xaver had said, "I know they love you but... " Zeke would have been consumed with guilt for condemning his parents to death. On the flip side, believing he was never loved likely added to the feeling of wishing he'd never been born, and thus the mess we are in.

WAS GRISHA WRONG TO VENTURE OUTSIDE THE WALLS? 1,056 responses

For all of Grisha’s flaws, most of us don’t quite blame him for what happened on that fateful day 37 years ago, when he dared to venture outside the internment zone walls with his little sister Faye. 40% defend him - arguing that he was just a child himself. Only 2.1% blame him, citing that things would have gone fine if he had just followed society’s rules. A little more than a third of us don’t believe that he was personally in the wrong, but that he should not have endangered his sister.

Zeke wasn't so wrong about what happen to Faye, Grisha's curiosity and carelessness cost's the life of his sister.

Grisha, Xaver, Zeke... none of them were ever special or any kind of masterminds but just normal people driven to extreme due to their awful lives.

WHO DO YOU THINK TURNED OUT MORE LIKE GRISHA? 1,048 responses

Unsurprisingly, 80% of respondents believe that Eren is the brother takes after Grisha the most. Heated and bold claims of striving for freedom surely had a part to play in that.

I don't know whether Eren or Zeke will turn out more like Grisha until we find out how they both turn out

I've been saying during months that Grisha destroyed both of his sons, and now we finally have the evidence. They've both taken opposite paths (being different or the same as him) and will end fighting each other, unless Levi manages to accomplish his promise somehow.

Grisha had never really screamed Eren quite as much as this chapter, which truly makes me think how unbelievable it is that Eren inherited his father's titan and his memories along with it, including the absolute regret he felt over how he handled things with the Eldian Restoration Movement and Zeke (read: putting his desire for freedom above people) and then became exactly like him. He literally learned nothing.

UP TO THIS POINT, WHO DO YOU FEEL IS/ARE THE WORST PARENT/PARENTAL FIGURE(S) IN THE SERIES? 1,046 responses

If this story has shown us anything, it’s that Isayama is marvelously skilled at creating problematic parent characters. Rod Reiss still wins the award for worst parent, but Grisha and Dina collectively come in second place after this chapter - with a quarter of respondents choosing them. Other (dis)honorable mentions go to Alma and Karina, who still managed to scrape up more than 15% of the vote each.

Grisha because he had a kid just to use as a tool TWICE!!!

Karina and Alma can share the title. :/

Let me pick more than one xD(Also Alma and Karina both suck)

There is a tie: Karina + Grisha/Dina + Alma + Rod.

They all have their faults as parents so it's hard to focus solely on one option.

They all sucked in their own way

Tom's wife

I don't know why people are letting Grisha's parents off the hook. They are just as awful at parenting as he was (who tells their grandson that his father was responsible for his aunt's gruesome murder? Also, they were pumping him full of just as much propaganda as his parents). Honestly though, that entire family was screwed from the beginning.

Everyone but Carla

Isayama: Worst parents? Worst childhood? Hold my beer. Now I wonder what did Isayama counter when he was young.

DO YOU THINK XAVER WAS A GOOD PERSON? 1,054 responses

Most of us felt positively about Mr. Xaver after seeing his backstory, with 65.4% feeling he had good interests at heart for Zeke. More of us are uncertain about his true motives, with 8.9% feeling he wasn’t genuine at all.

Xaver's doing that freaky "hide true emotions behind opaque glass lenses" thing that Zeke did a lot, giving me a concern

Definitely enjoy Zeke less as a villain now, but hope Kruger and Xaver keep on being creepy enough to make up for it.

It’s Xaver, not Xavier; spell it properly r/SnK!!!

Xaver is a kind and wise monky man, but with lots of secrets. Hoping to see more of him in the future.

Even though Xaver may be a schemer, he met Zeke by chance, so I believe in him.

About Tom Xaver...for me he looks friendly and I feel bad for him too, as he said that his wife killed their son and herself as she found out, that she has married an eldia. I guess, she doesn't want to take the consequences, cause it isn't allowed for marleyans to have a romantic relationship to an eldia. It was really sweet, that Xaver see's in Zeke his own son and was more a father figure to Zeke.

Zeke’s “watch this, Mr Xaver” is kind of sad; it’s obvious that Zeke respected him more than anyone else in his life...and he was just using Zeke. I wonder if Zeke realised that at any point during his adult life...

THE MONKEY TOY HAS MADE A REAPPEARANCE. DO YOU THINK THIS IS SIGNIFICANT? 1,053 responses

62% of us felt that Zeke’s cute monkey toy, featured prominently in both Grisha’s and Xaver’s memories, has some significance to the plot going forward.

I feel like the Monkey Toy is a plushie of the Beast Titan, like each of the seven Titans in Marley have toys based on them. Xaver's son and Zeke being shown to have them is probably done to show that, but I wouldn't be surprised it is used as delayed foreshadowing as a writing technique to foreshadow who Xaver and Zeke will turn into later on.

I'm glad to see that somebody else noticed the monkey toy; I was really excited that it showed up again.

DO YOU THINK XAVER WAS WORKING WITH KRUGER? 1,039 responses

The fandom is almost perfectly split with regard to Tom Xaver, and whether or not he was aligned with Eren Kruger. Half of us have donned our tin foil hats and are ready for the conspiracy to be unveiled, while the other half is more optimistic that Xaver was an authentic part of Zeke’s life - or at least independent from the Owl’s schemes.

Both Grisha and Zeke were groomed since childhood to inherit titan-shifting powers by Kruger and Xaver.

I don't know if Xaver is/was working together with Kruger and I kinda doubt that. Maybe Kruger used Xaver, cause he was a researcher from the titan-science about the information, but who knows? We don't have any proof of this.

If Xaver isn't the doctor who falsified Kruger's documents I will shit on my own head

WHICH TITAN DO YOU THINK IS THE “BEST” TITAN? 1,052 responses

A typo in the official translation lead to an interesting question: Which would be the best titan to inherit? The Warhammer titan wins out with its ability to create almost anything. The supposed ultimate titan, the Founding, came in second place, while the raging Attack Titan fought its way into third. The Armored Titan racked up 7.9%, the Female Titan got 6.9%, and the Beast Titan garnered 4.8% for best titan. The icon for the titans, the Colossal obtained 4.7% of the vote, with the Jaw titan following with 3.3%. The poor Cart Titan got a measly 2.1% of the vote.

Part of me wonders if an inherent trait of the beast titan is to create war? For the sake of conflict?

The whole Titan and World History is what I'm interested the most.

HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE FOLLOWING CHARACTERS AFTER THIS CHAPTER?

This more introspective chapter drastically changed opinions on a few characters, while others who had less focus were rather unchanged. The main character of the chapter, Zeke, saw his favorability increase a bit with his time in the spotlight. His parents weren’t as lucky, with Grisha tanking the hardest after we see him through Zeke’s young eyes. We also got to know Xaver for the first time, and the new info lead most to becoming fans of his. Magath, Eren, and Levi remained at about the same level, with Levi going up the most of the three in his time of peril.

I miss eren, I love zeke and grisha is a bastard

Levi is - as always - an arrogant midget who paid for his silliness, finally (he knows that a shifter can regenerate from the brain, and he still uses a single spear!). Historia will save all the Eldians asses from suicidal Zeke in the end - she has her agenda, but Eren is still a mystery to me. Grisha is the worst character and Dina truly disappoint me.

I get that Levi is the most popular character, but dear god am i tired of everything revolving around him. can we have one sequence of events without it being the Levi Drama Hour

Xaver good boi

I have to say, the Marley arc was a real turning point for how I felt about Zeke. He went from 'someone I love to hate and want to see suffer' to 'I can't believe I actually kinda like this guy'. Then his betrayal happened, and while I didn't go back to hating him as viscerally as before, I couldn't help but feel a bit bitter about the whole thing. But this chapter. This. Damn. Chapter. It was everything I could ever need to fall in love with his character. Don't get me wrong! He's still wrong, on so many different levels and I definitely do NOT want him to succeed with his plans! But I hope, in the end, he can find some peace for himself.

But is it Xaver or Xavier tho?

DOES ZEKE’S RATIONALE FOR KILLING PEOPLE HELP JUSTIFY IT? 1,050 responses

With all of his Zekerets seemingly revealed, Zeke attempts to explain why he’s snuffed out so many souls over the course of the story. Almost half of the fandom, at 46.6% understand what he’s saying, but don’t think it justifies his past actions. On the other hand, 41.5% don’t buy a single word coming out of his mouth.

Justification isn't the right word. It gives me a means of understanding his reasoning, and I sympathise more because of it. But racial cleansing is not justifiable, no matter how little you value your own life., but given his history, that is also understandable

At the end of the day he's no different than all the other people that built mountains of corpses to stand upon so everyone could hear them preach about peace.

His mindset and feelings of defeat are completely understandable but nothing ever justifies killing people the way he does.

His parents and Xaver made him this way. It can't be helped. I think he's lying to himself. He clearly enjoyed torturing people. It was like a game to him. I think he isn't sane.

There’s always a “reason” for what people do, but it doesn’t always justify their actions.

No. But, I understand where he is coming from, and it's just truly heartbreaking that this was the solution that he feels is best for all Eldians.

Aah man. This is probably one of the only times I understand an antagonist’s desire to destroy humanity/a race

Fuck him, he killed our precious Erwin

WHICH END GAME SCENARIO DO YOU THINK IS MOST LIKELY? 1,048 responses

At 62%, the majority of voters feel that the end game will be to free the Eldian people from the power of the titans. 13% feel that the titan power will remain, but that the rest of the world will learn to stop viewing them as monsters and 10% feel that Eldians will all die.

DNA will be the solution to remove curse

I can’t help but to draw parallels with the real world. I want more than anything for Marley to stop holding Eldians to the crimes of their ancestors and to talk with each other instead of further alienating each other.

WHICH IS THE LESSER OF TWO EVILS? 997 responses

The conundrum to end all conundrums. If peace doesn’t end up being on the table, one side has to go. Just over ¾ of the fandom, at 76% feel that bringing an end to the Eldians would be a lesser evil than wiping out the rest of the world.

I think at this point it's clear there's no 'good' way to solve the Eldians' problems, unfortunately.

Genocide can never be the lesser evil. Murder is never justified.

Neither Zeke nor Eren's plan qualify as the lesser of two evils, imo. The point is that they are both deeply flawed goals that bring a lot of misery. Neither are desirable outcomes.

I can't see either out of 'killing all Eldians' or 'killing the rest of the world' as the lesser of two evils, even if killing all Eldians is technically lesser in numbers terms. They're both just evil.

I actually find some comfort in the fact that Zeke sees no way out of this situation for the Eldians. He has no ultimate Zekeret plan, he genuinely believes the situation is impossible for them. Which is exactly how us fans feel since literally any possible solution that would either make any form of sense or wouldn't be massively unrealistic, or an overly optimistic stretch are non-existent right now.

Zeke knows that peace between humans and eldians is impossible and eldians will never be accepted in the world. Instead of crushing humans, he decided to remove the eldian race.

If I'm to choose between two evils, then I prefer not to choose at all. Fuck that, I'll find another way or die trying.

WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING DO YOU THINK ARE TRUE OF YMIR FRITZ? 1,029 responses

Ymir Fritz is the biggest mystery within the world of SNK, and for us as well. The only place most of the fandom seems to agree on her is that she’ll likely be important to the story’s ending, with 77.3%. 52.9% are putting the new info given this chapter about biological manipulation to use, theorizing she used that to create titans. 50.3% believe she came in contact with the source, whereas 21.7% think the devil was responsible. 34.3% believe PATHS are at play and she has, is, or will contact Eren. The majority of respondents don’t believe the ramblings of Grisha and the restorationists, with only 14.3% believing she was in fact a benevolent person. Interestingly, people who selected that she is benevolent, as well as those who think paths contact with Eren is likely, on average had every other option chosen far more as well.

Honestly, Ymir Fritz was probably just a girl that wanted to save her people and had no idea what she was doing.

The true History will be play a huge part about the end, I guess.

Another friend discussed the idea of maybe the beast titan being the organic source/devil that Ymir made contact with. Just fun ideas to throw around.

WHAT CONDITION DO YOU THINK LEVI IS IN PHYSICALLY? 1,052 responses

Captain Levi has made it through his fair share of death-defying ordeals, but this time he may not have escaped unscathed. 35.9% of respondents believe he’s done it once again, escaping with only minor injuries. 28.6% feel the captain is in more dire straits, losing both an arm and a leg. 24.5% feel he lost just an arm, similar to Commander Erwin. Only 4.8% feel the Captain has breathed his last.

He's been through worse. Not worried

Best case scenario he's missing just his right foot. Worst case (assuming he lives), Levi is half his original height.

He has Ackerhacks, he's fine

Hope he's dead. Too op

One thing I haven't seen anybody mention, Levi was holding a sword before the explosion. I think it's possible the dude might've been impaled by his blade, in which case he might be screwed.

He will probably fall into the river and be led somewhere by the stream. Maybe to end like Kenny with a last discussion or memory.

He’s not dead... yet

WHAT ARE YOU MOST HOPING TO SEE NEXT CHAPTER? 1,054 responses

With a whopping ¾ of respondents worried about Levi’s fate (followed by nearly 50% wondering what happened to Zeke), the majority of us are hoping Isayama doesn’t leave us on this cliffhanger for too long. Historia brings up 3rd, possibly based on the theory that she’ll find Levi and help him?

I wanna see Floch get jumped tbh I used to stan but I can’t anymore

I'm afraid that Isayama killed Levi

I'm just over here waiting to see what Reiner and friends are up to, probably getting the whereabouts of Annie and attempting to free her

At this point my pet theory is Historia somehow swooping in Valkyrie-style and making everything better. Hey, a girl can dream, right?

I don't think Levi is dead, he's a survivor! If any man can, Levi Ackerman can!

WHERE DO YOU PRIMARILY DISCUSS THE SERIES?

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS ON THE CHAPTER?

Chapter 112 - Zeke is using Eren. Chapter 113 - Zeke and Eren are working together. Chapter 114 - Eren is using Zeke. It's quite amazing how fast it changed.

What's the right, what's the truth, what to believe?

I was absolutely blown away by how artfully Xavier's back story was told. Those panels are haunting, and beautiful, and so well constructed. The kind of thing that will definitely stick with me for a long time. Isayama has become a truly amazing artist.

I have so much respect for Ymir. Despite having the shittiest childhood, she ended up being one of the most emotionally stable characters.

THE CHAPTER OF MY LIFE and Leave baby zeke alone you monsters *i meant you fandom*

At least Isyama knows how to make the final boss sympathetic. Even if his writing in most places leaves a little more to be desired, I am definitely enjoying the story for the story's sake.

Really miss Pieck…

[Levi] has a bruised ego, due to being so fucKING STUPID YOU DUMBFUCK WHY WOULD YOU GIVE THE ENEMY A BOMB

If you don't think Levi was remembering his choice in chapter 84 when Zeke said that stuff about saving the soldiers he killed you're wrong.

Should have gone for the head, Captain.

this chapter makes me feel like us readers have been caught in the final explosion, too. I see so many people who hated or disliked Zeke before, sympathize with him now.

I don't know how a person can stand and say one person deserves to die and I sure as hell don't know how one person can say whole nation deserves deaths. This is genocide, not euthanasia, but Hitler and Stalin would've approved this plan.

So, my dislike of Zeke aside, kid went through some shit. Every one only wanted to push their own ideas and agendas onto him to guarantee their own safety. He reminds me of Reiner, sans the rebellious parents. He went through just as much as Zeke did as a kid, but Reiner is racked with guilt over what he's been forced to do. Zeke hasn't shown any genuine sympathy; even Eren managed to look lifeless and affected by his self directed actions in Marley. And that kid LOVES killing people.

The fandom theories for his actions were setting people up for disappointment. This is a story about common people who are forced into abhorrent positions and have to make the best out of shitty circumstances.

I feel like Zeke's plan is perfectly valid if we take a step back and see the Eldian race as what it is. Each individual is an intelligent WOMD linked to a hivemind with limitless potential for change. Suddenly the Eldian people don't look as harmless. As readers however we've only been following from one perspective, and didn't fully get to see how terrifying the Eldian empire was.

[Zeke’s] whole plan sounds unbelivably stupid that even Hanji and Armin's "let's just talk lol" sounds more reasonable in comparison

As more chapters release, I'm struggling to fathom how Annie would become relevant to the plot line later on, or if ever.

The manga is reaching levels of depression I couldn’t think it was possible to reach inside me. Maybe it’s because of how long I follow AoT. This is a very tragic and sad story, Isayama is telling us, and I think it has more in store to come. Brace yourselves, my fellow soldiers....

If Levi is going down, let it be a glorious end, not like that. Just give him some satisfaction finally, no crippling please, he's suffered enough. Come on Yams, I believe in you :)

This chapter really tugged at my heartstrings. As a reader, being aware of and mourning Zeke's lost childhood doesn't excuse his behaviour as an adult, however, I'm really glad we finally got to hear Zeke's side of the story.

I'm really tired of Isayama using cliffhangers to stir people into a frenzy and this chapter was the worst of it. People wanting Zeke's spinal fluid to have gotten into Levi's wounds (I guess so he can turn into a titan), Levi having the ability to regenerate or turn into a freaking titan out of nowhere because Ackermans' powers do come from PATHS also. Really? All of that sounds horrible and I really hope none of it happens.

I was hoping for this chapter to not be as bad as the chapters normally are since Isayama married and shit bu holy fuck I was wrong. The happier this man the sadder we get.

Zeke should be a Final Fantasy villian instead of an SnK antagonist

Cool motive, still genocide.

im eating a cucumber

#snk 114 #snk chapter 114 #snk polls #snk poll results

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bioware-meta · 6 years ago

Text

Companion Study: Jacob Taylor

I know, I know. Jacob Taylor? You’re writing an essay about Jacob Taylor? It’s fairly uncontroversial that he’s the least interesting of Mass Effect 2’s otherwise stellar cast. Even the Shadow Broker doesn’t seem to think he’s very valuable (if you haven’t brought him along on Lair of the Shadow Broker, the difference between the comments on him and everyone else are astonishing). But that’s why I wanted to write about him – almost no one has. But I think there’s a lot of value in analyzing why this particular character fell flat with the majority of the player base, and if you’ll bear with me for a few paragraphs, I think you’ll agree.

While doing research for this essay, I discovered that Jacob Taylor was a pretty major character in a couple of the Mass Effect books. I grappled for a bit about whether or not to consider his actions and characterization in those books in my analysis here, but ultimately decided against it. For one thing, I don’t own and haven’t read the books, and there’s only so much insight you can get out of summaries. More importantly, though, I had no idea these books existed when I played ME2, and neither did most players. A video game series that prides itself on storytelling can’t rely on external media to support its story, so I will analyze Jacob Taylor in the form that the majority of the player base experienced him.

So, with the limits of this analysis established, let’s dive right in to the problem of Jacob Taylor. I want to briefly note what an honest-to-God shame it is that this character fell so flat. He’s one of the only people of color on Shepard’s squad, and one of the only significant black characters in the game. As a white person, it’s not my place to analyze Bioware’s issues with race in detail, but it felt important to touch on. He’s also a major contributor to fem!Shep’s lack of romance options. He’s a thoroughly unappealing option to most players anyway, but to also have him cheat on Shepard and break off their romance in ME3 is a real slap in the face to the few people who were interested. Having characters whose lives don’t revolve around the protagonist and whose romantic relationships don’t work out is an interesting idea, but it’s a problem that it only happens to female protagonists, who also have a romance option unavoidably die. M!Shep, on the other hand, can always steer their romances to happy endings. That’s a problem.

So what caused this character to fail so utterly? To understand that, let’s take a look at what the developers were hoping to achieve with this character. We’re introduced to Jacob Taylor as a friendly face in a confusing environment, a casual and collected man who offers up the truth of the situation to Shepard out of moral conviction. That’s a decent introduction. Between that and the first few conversations Shepard has with him on the Normandy, I think we can piece together pretty clearly what Jacob’s character is supposed to be. First and foremost, he’s supposed to be a sympathetic voice. He defends Shepard against Miranda, commiserates with them over Cerberus’s spotty track record, and talks about his service with the Alliance. He’s presented as the voice of reason relative to Miranda and TIM. He’s like Shepard, working with Cerberus because he doesn’t see a better option. And that’s the second thing – he’s like Shepard. He shares a similar career path and went through a similar arc of disillusionment and frustration. He’s supposed to be relatable. Third, he’s a good soldier. He’s dutiful, professional, shows great respect for the chain of command, and a solid combatant. And finally, he’s presented as a voice of reason. He frequently advocates for the “logical” and “morally upstanding” choices. His biases show through rarely. The information he provides to Shepard about the galaxy is meant to be very reliable.

However, this collection of traits fails to make him interesting, for a variety of reasons. Let’s examine why one at a time. He fails as a character sympathetic to Shepard primarily because he’s set up in opposition to Miranda’s fervent belief in Cerberus. The dichotomy between the two makes plenty of sense in the first mission – one pro-Cerberus, one anti. But this falls apart very quickly thereafter, because absolutely no one else you recruit likes Cerberus. The best you get is indifference from people like Zaeed and Kasumi, and far more often you get burning hatred. The deep vendettas of Jack and Tali against Cerberus burn brightly, and Jacob’s mild dislike for them fades out in comparison. This is especially bad for him because his character concept is grounded in the contrast between his reluctant partnership with Cerberus and Miranda’s conviction in their methods. It’s simply uninteresting when compared to the rivalry and outright hatred between Miranda and Jack.

His failure as a sympathetic ear for Shepard is, surprisingly, almost completely unrelated to why he fails as a target for Shepard’s empathy. This failure boils down primarily to a failure in the writing of his one-on-one conversations. He’s given a backstory that somewhat mirror’s Shepard’s, but there’s no emotion or color attached to it. We know very little about his feelings about his time with the Corsairs, or the names of his fellow servicemen, or any of the conflicts they engaged in, or the hardships they overcame. Compare to Garrus, who talks at length about the team of vigilantes he put together and the tight scrapes he fought his way out of and the burning sense of purpose that sustained him through his ordeals. Jacob was instead written to be almost completely impassive, private, cutting off any conversation as soon as it ventures anywhere potentially emotional. This can be interesting, done correctly. The majority of the companions begin somewhat emotionally closed-off. But Jacob never opens up. The writer’s attempted to make Jacob seem professional and controlled, but instead they robbed him of interiority. This is especially apparent with his personal mission, which fails to advance any central conflict in his personality or resolve an issue that has clearly been affecting him personally. Even the climax of that mission barely brings any of his emotions or character traits into the limelight, and when Shepard tries to dig into his feelings after the mission, Jacob completely shuts down that line of inquiry, never to be reopened.

Jacob isn’t helped by the fact that he’s also basically the most ordinary combatant to ever be a permanent member of Shepard’s squad. Mechanically, his powerset is very bland, with only Pull and Incendiary Ammo to start off with, and his unique power is functionally interchangeable with two other unique powers, simply extending the user’s shields. And within the game’s story, his abilities are just as ordinary. He’s not a vigilante sniper, a dying assassin, a genetic experiment, or a biotic engineered into the ultimate weapon. He’s just a security officer who happened to not die in the opening level. Simple competence as a combatant looks a lot less valuable when everyone else on the team was recruited because they were extraordinary. In ME1, Kaiden and Ashley had each other to bounce off of, keeping either from looking like the weakest link in a party consisting of fascinating alien experts, and by ME3 neither of them could be considered ordinary soldiers by any stretch of the imagination. But Jacob is just clearly the weakest link of ME2.

His final and weakest central character trait, acting as a general voice of reason, actually works the best out of any of these. It simply fails to be impactful because the previous three failed so significantly that the player has no real interest in him, so his opinion is unimpactful.

Having laid bare the flaws in Jacob’s character design, what have we learned? What was the primary factor that created such an uncompelling character, and how could he have been done better? In my opinion, the prime cause of the failure of Jacob Taylor comes from what role the writers wanted him to serve. They intended him to be Shepard’s number one, the friend and confidante that Shepard sees themself in. This was an ill-conceived idea for two reasons. First, there’s player behind the character of Shepard, and that means there is no one-size-fits-all most sympathetic best friend and supporter character. Everyone is going to see it differently. Second, this was a bad idea because there’s already a character returning from a previous game who had this effect on the majority of the player base with astonishing effectiveness, and that’s Garrus Vakarian. Other have written more and better than I could ever hope to on what makes Garrus such a great character, so I’ll leave that alone for now. Instead, let’s talk about what Jacob should have been, instead of trying to fight for Garrus’s role.

First, I would make Jacob a true believer in Cerberus. As it was, Miranda was the only one who really backed Cerberus – for good reason, the organization was completely mistrusted by outsiders. Making Jacob a true believer would go a long way towards making the presence of the shadowy group feel more immediate, rather than confined to Miranda’s room and TIM’s video calls. This would also open up more avenues to compare and contrast him with Miranda in ways that aren’t better filled by other characters. Preserve Jacob’s general friendliness and moral conviction but put him in control of it. Make him the honey to Miranda’s vinegar, doing his best to gain Shepard’s confidence and exert Cerberus’s agenda over them. Don’t necessarily make him good at it – he’s not a spy – but put that barrier of distrust up that justifies his emotional distance from Shepard. Make him a professional – but this time, he’s not working for Shepard, he’s working on Shepard.

Naturally, this substantially shifts the nature of his interactions with Shepard. Now Shepard has to not just assess him as a person, but try to shift his loyalties away from Cerberus, just as they must do with Miranda. Likewise, Jacob would have pressure to open up a little more, to try to earn Shepard’s trust through emotional intimacy. This allows us to maintain Jacob as a deeply private person while still letting the audience get to know him through those anecdotes and emotional drives that are so sorely missing from his actual conversations. I’d also consider moving him from the Corsairs to N7. This would shave off a bit of exposition on an element that never seemed to go anywhere, as we never directly interact with or are influenced by the Corsairs in the games. And of course, his personal mission needs to be much more grounded in his issues. We could even preserve most of the basic structure of the mission that appears in game if we provide some crucial background. Have Jacob early and often credit his father with his morality and dedication and, position his disappearance as something that Jacob blames the Alliance for. Don’t make this the inciting incident for Jacob’s defection, we should avoid reducing his morality to a product of his personal suffering, but certainly make it a bitter mark against the Alliance. This allows Jacob’s euphoria and subsequent disillusionment with his father’s survival to have a much more profound impact on his beliefs as it throws him into a crisis over whether his choices and moral compass have come from a worthwhile place – and with the previously established emotional intimacy between him and Shepard, the player can actually see this crisis, unlike in the actual game. I can see a few different trajectories that that could send his character on that could have a substantial impact on ME3, but that would basically be an essay in itself, so we’ll leave it alone for now.

Next, make him more than just an average soldier. Give the player a reason to think he’d be a good person to have on the team. Maybe instead of being station security, he could be a military expert there to evaluate Shepard’s mental faculties once the Project is finished. Or maybe he could be positioned by TIM to watch Shepard and assassinate them if they go off the rails. The specifics don’t necessarily matter – just present him as being someone who could be taken seriously as a choice for your team when you could pick an ancient asari warrior or the greatest master thief in the galaxy instead.

Finally, drop the only sane man angle entirely. ME2 is entirely about Shepard corralling dysfunctional superpowered idiots into a workable team. Let Jacob express strong opinions and clear biases for the player to consider and grapple with. Let some personality through the professionalism.

Maybe you disagree with me. Maybe you think Jacob Taylor is fine as is and I’m going on a ridiculous rant. Maybe you’re right. But to me, and to many others, Jacob Taylor failed as a companion, which is a damn shame, because there was so much that could’ve been done with him instead.

#mass effect #mass effect 2 #me2 #jacob taylor #bioware #meta #analysis #essay #companion essay

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xoruffitup · 6 years ago

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BlacKkKlansman: Double Consciousness & Extremist Identities

I saw BlacKkKlansman last night, and I’m still trying to properly breathe around the cold stone it left in my chest. I’ve been thinking about it constantly, and whenever that happens I always feel the need to write some sort of analysis to try to articulate why I’ve reacted so strongly to something. So, here’s my half-baked BlacKkKlansman review.

First things first, I’m white. Of course, that affects the way I view the world and whatever art/media I choose to consume. I fully recognize that my experience and takeaway from this film are likely very different from those of a viewer of color. And sure, I can say that I try to be progressive in how I live my life and I took college courses on race politics and minority marginalization, but at the end of the day, this is a film about black voices and black equality and those are topics I have no right to discourse on. So please, if something I write below seems misguided or uneducated, please let me know so I can self-examine and adjust.

First of all: The simple fact that this movie had such an effect on me as a white viewer. I was in a crowded movie theatre, with an audience of diverse age and race, and never in my life have I felt such a powerful moment of silent, unified shock when the credits started. The ending left every single person speechless. White privilege means that when I read news articles or books about institutionalized racism in our country, I have the option of closing the book, walking away and thinking about something else for a while. Not the case whatsoever with this movie - It didn’t discriminate in its devastating impact. While I’ve read about Black Power ideologies, there’s always an aspect of such movements that are designed not to be fully understood by those outside of it. These are not for me. This seems as intentional as it is justified. Black communities are excluded from so many mainstream ‘white’ narratives or locuses of power, these movements are the sole spaces that belong entirely to them and which they entirely control. They are designed to alienate, the same way these communities are alienated from so much else in society. However, BlacKkKlansman seemed accessible to a multitude of viewpoints and cultural/racial positions. The film does not strive to tell the audience how they should feel, but leaves elements of interpretation up to the viewer by presenting a chorus of voices, rather than a single one; By presenting multifaceted characters experiencing conflicts of identity - Rather than a single protagonist with a single political message. This is certainly not to say that a film is only good if it panders to the understanding of white viewers, but in this case I was impressed by the multiplicity of narratives and perspectives that were portrayed.

What’s so thought-provoking to me about the film was the decision to tell the story from the position of the undecided and conflicted center. By following Ron and Flip’s investigation, we watch each character grapple with the opposite sides of extremism. While Flip has to ingratiate himself with the Klan members who would revile his Jewish heritage, Ron has to spy on his own community at Black Student Union events as they call for war against the police. Both characters must play roles in order to pretend to fit into the groups they look like they should belong to. In Flip’s case, feeling threatened and despised by the Klan’s ideals makes him re-evaluate the meaning of the Jewish identity he never thought much about. For Ron, he feels torn between his loyalty to his people, and to his own hard-sought and prized work as a policeman (an institution equally reviled by Patrice and Klan members). Ron and Flip both wear masks, and their feelings of separation from “their” respective communities makes them each consider the conflicting identities within themselves.

Aptly, Patrice speaks to Ron in one scene about double consciousness. She questions whether it is possible to be both a black woman and American citizen. To her, putting her country first would be a betrayal to her black identity. In juxtaposition, the Klan members dress up their intolerance behind the values of “America first” (I can barely describe the chills that went through me when the Klan members all started chanting it.) Ron’s struggle throughout the film is exactly this - His determination to be both a black man and a police officer. He and Patrice disagree on whether it’s possible to change a corrupt system from within, and the movie leaves ambiguous how much Ron succeeds in this front. It’s crushingly infuriating when, towards the end of the film, Ron is himself detained and beaten by policemen who don’t believe he’s an undercover cop. But shortly thereafter, he enjoys a triumphant entry into the police station where all his white colleagues congratulate his work and embrace him. The scene when he calls David Duke to reveal his identity with his three colleagues giggling on either side of him is downright charming in its camaraderie and gaiety. It looks like acceptance; But tempered by the fact that all his hard work on the investigation was ultimately scrapped in the end.

These themes of double consciousness and ambiguity permeate the film, and lend to its impactful success. Split-screen parallels are presented between Klan and Black Power movement meetings - Certainly not to equate the two, but to show in stark, unmistakable terms that these are the polar opposite, yet intimately interrelated effects of racism. This is how distantly racism divides our country - And how it leads to beliefs on either side that people will kill for. Towards the climax, a Black Student Union meeting listens to the horrific history of a young black man being brutally lynched, while the Klan members cheer and applaud a scene in Birth Of A Nation depicting the hanging of a black man. Neither side exists without the other to perceive it as a threat - And both stand firm in their respective beliefs that their hatred of the other side is justified.

Yet, the film wasn’t the story of the Klan, nor of the Black liberation movement - It was the story of the two men caught in the middle, looking for footing on quickly-shrinking ground between the two sides, as their mutual hatred brings the two warring sides to an inevitable conflict. It is the same story of many modern viewers, wondering how in hell we’ve come to the present moment with “Black Lives Matter” on one side and Trump proclaiming “America First” on the other - with not an inch of common ground or even common perception between the two.

Although I hope most viewers would intuit which side is truly more justified in their grievances, a strength of the film was its balanced, rather than caricatured depiction of the Klan members; Who believe that yes, they live in a racist country - “An anti-white racist country.” The chilling brilliance in the depiction of David Duke was how harmlessly normal he first seems - Cheerfully spouting off phrases like “you’re darn tootin’“ on the phone to Ron and ending the conversation with a chipper “God bless white America!” This is exactly how ideologies of hate become disguised as civilized, mild-mannered “values.” David Duke has given up the flashy title of “Grand Dragon” for the more innocuous “National Director” (or something to that end). The first time he goes undercover, Flip is quickly admonished never to call the Klan “The Klan,” but rather “The Organization.” In a conversation between Ron and one of his superiors at the police station, it’s even discussed how a high-ranking Klansman might have the long-term goal of placing “one of their own” in the White House, after they’ve disguised their intolerance and bigotry under the empirical rationales of policy. It’s one of the most painful moments of the entire film.

Yet, while Flip has to endure the Klan members’ talk of killing black people, and Ron hears Kwame Ture speak about race wars with inevitability, another stroke of the film’s thoughtful genius is the choice of individual who actually enacts violence - Felix’s utterly apple pie looking housewife. She looks like the plump, harmless woman you wouldn’t want to be in line behind at the grocery store because she’s likely to have fifteen coupons. She is the last person you would expect on sight to leave a bomb at the house of a young black woman. And yet, this is another powerful message: How the vulnerable and susceptible can so easily become radicalized. I certainly don’t have sympathy for her because she’s an adult who made her own decisions; But I’m also aware of the way her Klansman husband manipulated her into becoming what she was, and it’s an extra layer of nuance I appreciated.

Finally, I’ll wrap this up on a personal, perhaps silly, note. There were multiple layers of this film that really disturbed me, and it’s taken me a good 24 hours to put my finger on this last one: I’m not sure I enjoyed Adam Driver as Flip. Don’t get me wrong here, I’m all over that shoulder gun holster look and he looked 500% finer in flannel than any man has a right to. Also, I’m not sure I would feel this same discomfort if he’d been played by a lesser-caliber actor, or one who I don’t have such an attachment to. But I realized that on an instinctive level, it upset me to see his face under a Klan hood, and to hear him say vile racist comments. Rationally, of course I know that A) He’s acting, and B) Even his character is acting, but Adam’s an utterly convincing actor, playing an undercover detective who’s very good at his job. Maybe both his and Flip’s performances were too good. I asked myself why it didn’t bother me the same way to hear Ron spout racist bullshit on the phone. Part of it is because he isn’t played by an actor I happen to deeply respect and admire, but there’s more to it than that. There’s a passage in the NYT review that got as close to my nebulous discomfort as anything I could express:

"The most shocking thing about Flip's (Adam Driver's undercover detective role) imposture is how easy it seems, how natural he looks and sounds. This unnerving authenticity is partly testament to Mr. Driver's ability to tuck one performance inside another, but it also testifies to a stark and discomforting truth. Maybe not everyone who is white is a racist, but racism is what makes us white.”

Adam’s performance as Flip is discomfiting because it shows how easily a white person can take up the mask of extreme bigotry and intolerance, and how easily they can be perceived as supporting a hate movement, regardless of their true internal ideologies. I know Flip doesn’t mean the things he’s saying, but he’s damn convincing because he looks the part. His whiteness paired with his words - regardless of whether they’re genuine - is powerful and terrible. And racism is what lends him the ability to put on that convincing mask. And if racism is what “makes us white,” Adam as Flip makes me wonder if I could do the same. If, for whatever reason, the situation was such that I had to convince someone I believed in these things... Would I surprise myself by finding that I’m capable of saying things equally terrible? Is this a role that every white person is capable of, at a certain subconscious level, because of systemic racism and implicit biases?

In conclusion: This movie has fucked up my life. It’s genius and I think I need to see it again. (If I can stomach it...)

#BlacKkKlansman #Adam Driver #John David Washington #Flip Zimmerman #Ron Stallworth

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arbitrarygreay · 6 years ago

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Soft Power (the play with a musical)

#soft power #soft power (musical)#david henry hwang #conrad ricamora #musical #jeanine tesori #leigh silverman #alyse alan louis #definitely deserves the actress tony if this makes it to broadway #sam pinkleton #category: musicals

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mailplate3-blog · 6 years ago

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The Messy Fourth Estate

(This post was originally posted on Medium.)

For the second time in a week, my phone buzzed with a New York Times alert, notifying me that another celebrity had died by suicide. My heart sank. I tuned into the Crisis Text Line Slack channel to see how many people were waiting for a counselor’s help. Volunteer crisis counselors were pouring in, but the queue kept growing.

Celebrity suicides trigger people who are already on edge to wonder whether or not they too should seek death. Since the Werther effect study, in 1974, countless studies have conclusively and repeatedly shown that how the news media reports on suicide matters. The World Health Organization has adetailed set of recommendations for journalists and news media organizations on how to responsibly report on suicide so as to not trigger copycats. Yet in the past few years, few news organizations have bothered to abide by them, even as recent data shows that the reporting on Robin Williams’ death triggered an additional 10 percent increase in suicide and a 32 percent increase in people copying his method of death. The recommendations aren’t hard to follow — they focus on how to convey important information without adding to the problem.

Crisis counselors at the Crisis Text Line are on the front lines. As a board member, I’m in awe of their commitment and their willingness to help those who desperately need support and can’t find it anywhere else. But it pains me to watch as elite media amplifiers make counselors’ lives more difficult under the guise of reporting the news or entertaining the public.

Through data, we can see the pain triggered by 13 Reasons Why and the New York Times. We see how salacious reporting on method prompts people to consider that pathway of self-injury. Our volunteer counselors are desperately trying to keep people alive and get them help, while for-profit companies reap in dollars and clicks. If we’re lucky, the outlets triggering unstable people write off their guilt by providing a link to our services, with no consideration of how much pain they’ve caused or the costs we must endure.

I want to believe in journalism. But my faith is waning.

I want to believe in journalism. I want to believe in the idealized mandate of the fourth estate. I want to trust that editors and journalists are doing their best to responsibly inform the public and help create a more perfect union.But my faith is waning.

Many Americans — especially conservative Americans — do not trust contemporary news organizations. This “crisis” is well-trod territory, but the focus on fact-checking, media literacy, and business models tends to obscure three features of the contemporary information landscape that I think are poorly understood:

Differences in worldview are being weaponized to polarize society.

We cannot trust organizations, institutions, or professions when they’re abstracted away from us.

Economic structures built on value extraction cannot enable healthy information ecosystems.

Let me begin by apologizing for the heady article, but the issues that we’re grappling with are too heady for a hot take. Please read this to challenge me, debate me, offer data to show that I’m wrong. I think we’ve got an ugly fight in front of us, and I think we need to get more sophisticated about our thinking, especially in a world where foreign policy is being boiled down to 140 characters.

1. Your Worldview Is Being Weaponized

I was a teenager when I showed up at a church wearing jeans and a T-shirt to see my friend perform in her choir. The pastor told me that I was not welcomebecause this was a house of God, and we must dress in a manner that honors Him. Not good at following rules, I responded flatly, “God made me naked. Should I strip now?” Needless to say, I did not get to see my friend sing.

Faith is an anchor for many people in the United States, but the norms that surround religious institutions are man-made, designed to help people make sense of the world in which we operate. Many religions encourage interrogation and questioning, but only within a well-established framework.Children learn those boundaries, just as they learn what is acceptable insecular society. They learn that talking about race is taboo and that questioning the existence of God may leave them ostracized.

Like many teenagers before and after me, I was obsessed with taboos and forbidden knowledge. I sought out the music Tipper Gore hated, read the books my school banned, and tried to get answers to any question that made adults gasp. Anonymously, I spent late nights engaged in conversations on Usenet, determined to push boundaries and make sense of adult hypocrisy.

Following a template learned in Model UN, I took on strong positions in order to debate and learn. Having already lost faith in the religious leaders in my community, I saw no reason to respect the dogma of any institution. And because I made a hobby out of proving teachers wrong, I had little patience for the so-called experts in my hometown. I was intellectually ravenous, but utterly impatient with, if not outright cruel to the adults around me. I rebelled against hierarchy and was determined to carve my own path at any cost.

I have an amazing amount of empathy for those who do not trust the institutions that elders have told them they must respect. Rage against the machine. We don’t need no education, no thought control. I’m also fully aware that you don’t garner trust in institutions through coercion or rational discussion. Instead, trust often emerges from extreme situations.

Many people have a moment where they wake up and feel like the world doesn’t really work like they once thought or like they were once told. That moment of cognitive reckoning is overwhelming. It can be triggered by any number of things — a breakup, a death, depression, a humiliating experience.Everything comes undone, and you feel like you’re in the middle of a tornado, unable to find the ground. This is the basis of countless literary classics, the crux of humanity. But it’s also a pivotal feature in how a society comes together to function.

Everyone needs solid ground, so that when your world has just been destabilized, what comes next matters. Who is the friend that picks you up and helps you put together the pieces? What institution — or its representatives — steps in to help you organize your thinking? What information do you grab onto in order to make sense of your experiences?

Contemporary propaganda isn’t about convincing someone to believe something, but convincing them to doubt what they think they know.

Countless organizations and movements exist to pick you up during your personal tornado and provide structure and a framework. Take a look at how Alcoholics Anonymous works. Other institutions and social bodies know how to trigger that instability and then help you find ground. Check out the dynamics underpinning military basic training. Organizations, movements, and institutions that can manipulate psychological tendencies toward a sociological end have significant power. Religious organizations, social movements, and educational institutions all play this role, whether or not they want to understand themselves as doing so.

Because there is power in defining a framework for people, there is good reason to be wary of any body that pulls people in when they are most vulnerable. Of course, that power is not inherently malevolent. There is fundamental goodness in providing structures to help those who are hurting make sense of the world around them. Where there be dragons is when these processes are weaponized, when these processes are designed to produce societal hatred alongside personal stability. After all, one of the fastest ways to bond people and help them find purpose is to offer up an enemy.

And here’s where we’re in a sticky spot right now. Many large institutions — government, the church, educational institutions, news organizations — are brazenly asserting their moral authority without grappling with their own shit.They’re ignoring those among them who are using hate as a tool, and they’re ignoring their own best practices and ethics, all to help feed a bottom line. Each of these institutions justifies itself by blaming someone or something to explain why they’re not actually that powerful, why they’re actually the victim. And so they’re all poised to be weaponized in a cultural war rooted in how we stabilize American insecurity.And if we’re completely honest with ourselves, what we’re really up against is how we collectively come to terms with a dying empire. But that’s a longer tangent.

Any teacher knows that it only takes a few students to completely disrupt a classroom. Forest fires spark easily under certain conditions, and the ripple effects are huge. As a child, when I raged against everyone and everything, it was my mother who held me into the night. When I was a teenager chatting my nights away on Usenet, the two people who most memorably picked me up and helped me find stable ground were a deployed soldier and a transgender woman, both of whom held me as I asked insane questions. They absorbed the impact and showed me a different way of thinking. They taught me the power of strangers counseling someone in crisis. As a college freshman, when I was spinning out of control, a computer science professor kept me solid and taught me how profoundly important a true mentor could be. Everyone needs someone to hold them when their world spins, whether that person be a friend, family, mentor, or stranger.

Fifteen years ago, when parents and the news media were panicking about online bullying, I saw a different risk. I saw countless kids crying out online in pain only to be ignored by those who preferred to prevent teachers from engaging with students online or to create laws punishing online bullies. We saw the suicides triggered as youth tried to make “It Gets Better” videos to find community, only to be further harassed at school. We saw teens studying the acts of Columbine shooters, seeking out community among those with hateful agendas and relishing the power of lashing out at those they perceived to be benefiting at their expense. But it all just seemed like a peculiar online phenomenon, proof that the internet was cruel. Too few of us tried to hold those youth who were unquestionably in pain.

Teens who are coming of age today are already ripe for instability. Their parents are stressed; even if they have jobs, nothing feels certain or stable. There doesn’t seem to be a path toward economic stability that doesn’t involve college, but there doesn’t seem to be a path toward college that doesn’t involve mind-bending debt. Opioids seem like a reasonable way to numb the pain in far too many communities. School doesn’t seem like a safe place, so teenagers look around and whisper among friends about who they believe to be the most likely shooter in their community. As Stephanie Georgopulos notes, the idea that any institution can offer security seems like a farce.

When I look around at who’s “holding” these youth, I can’t help but notice the presence of people with a hateful agenda. And they terrify me, in no small part because I remember an earlier incarnation.

In 1995, when I was trying to make sense of my sexuality, I turned to various online forums and asked a lot of idiotic questions. I was adopted by the aforementioned transgender woman and numerous other folks who heard me out, gave me pointers, and helped me think through what I felt. In 2001, when I tried to figure out what the next generation did, I realized thatstruggling youth were more likely to encounter a Christian gay “conversion therapy” group than a supportive queer peer. Queer folks were sick of being attacked by anti-LGBT groups, and so they had created safe spaces on private mailing lists that were hard for lost queer youth to find. And so it was that in their darkest hours, these youth were getting picked up by those with a hurtful agenda.

Teens who are trying to make sense of social issues aren’t finding progressive activists. They’re finding the so-called alt-right.

Fast-forward 15 years, and teens who are trying to make sense of social issues aren’t finding progressive activists willing to pick them up. They’re finding the so-called alt-right. I can’t tell you how many youth we’ve seen asking questions like I asked being rejected by people identifying with progressive social movements, only to find camaraderie among hate groups. What’s most striking is how many people with extreme ideas are willing to spend time engaging with folks who are in the tornado.

Spend time reading the comments below the YouTube videos of youth struggling to make sense of the world around them. You’ll quickly find comments by people who spend time in the manosphere or subscribe to white supremacist thinking. They are diving in and talking to these youth, offering a framework to make sense of the world, one rooted in deeply hateful ideas.These self-fashioned self-help actors are grooming people to see that their pain and confusion isn’t their fault, but the fault of feminists, immigrants, people of color. They’re helping them believe that the institutions they already distrust — the news media, Hollywood, government, school, even the church — are actually working to oppress them.

Most people who encounter these ideas won’t embrace them, but some will. Still, even those who don’t will never let go of the doubt that has been instilled in the institutions around them. It just takes a spark.

So how do we collectively make sense of the world around us? There isn’t one universal way of thinking, but even the act of constructing knowledge is becoming polarized. Responding to the uproar in the news media over “alternative facts,” Cory Doctorow noted:

We’re not living through a crisis about what is true, we’re living through a crisis about how we know whether something is true. We’re not disagreeing about facts, we’re disagreeing about epistemology. The “establishment” version of epistemology is, “We use evidence to arrive at the truth, vetted by independent verification (but trust us when we tell you that it’s all been independently verified by people who were properly skeptical and not the bosom buddies of the people they were supposed to be fact-checking).”

The “alternative facts” epistemological method goes like this: “The ‘independent’ experts who were supposed to be verifying the ‘evidence-based’ truth were actually in bed with the people they were supposed to be fact-checking. In the end, it’s all a matter of faith, then: you either have faith that ‘their’ experts are being truthful, or you have faith that we are. Ask your gut, what version feels more truthful?”

Doctorow creates these oppositional positions to make a point and to highlight that there is a war over epistemology, or the way in which we produce knowledge.

The reality is much messier, because what’s at stake isn’t simply about resolving two competing worldviews. Rather, what’s at stake is how there is no universal way of knowing, and we have reached a stage in our political climate where there is more power in seeding doubt, destabilizing knowledge, and encouraging others to distrust other systems of knowledge production.

Contemporary propaganda isn’t about convincing someone to believe something, but convincing them to doubt what they think they know. Andonce people’s assumptions have come undone, who is going to pick them up and help them create a coherent worldview?

2. You Can’t Trust Abstractions

Deeply committed to democratic governance, George Washington believed that a representative government could only work if the public knew their representatives. As a result, our Constitution states that each member of the House should represent no more than 30,000 constituents. When we stopped adding additional representatives to the House in 1913 (frozen at 435), each member represented roughly 225,000 constituents. Today, the ratio of congresspeople to constituents is more than 700,000:1. Most people will never meet their representative, and few feel as though Washington truly represents their interests. The democracy that we have is representational only in ideal, not in practice.

As our Founding Fathers knew, it’s hard to trust an institution when it feels inaccessible and abstract. All around us, institutions are increasingly divorced from the community in which they operate, with often devastating costs.Thanks to new models of law enforcement, police officers don’t typically come from the community they serve. In many poor communities, teachers also don’t come from the community in which they teach. The volunteer U.S. military hardly draws from all communities, and those who don’t know a solider are less likely to trust or respect the military.

Journalism can only function as the fourth estate when it serves as a tool to voice the concerns of the people and to inform those people of the issues that matter. Throughout the 20th century, communities of color challenged mainstream media’s limitations and highlighted that few newsrooms represented the diverse backgrounds of their audiences. As such, we saw the rise of ethnic media and a challenge to newsrooms to be smarter about their coverage. But let’s be real — even as news organizations articulate a commitment to the concerns of everyone, newsrooms have done a dreadful job of becoming more representative. Over the past decade, we’ve seen racial justice activists challenge newsrooms for their failure to cover Ferguson, Standing Rock, and other stories that affect communities of color.

Meanwhile, local journalism has nearly died. The success of local journalismdidn’t just matter because those media outlets reported the news, but because it meant that many more people were likely to know journalists. It’s easier to trust an institution when it has a human face that you know and respect. Andas fewer and fewer people know journalists, they trust the institution less and less. Meanwhile, the rise of social media, blogging, and new forms of talk radio has meant that countless individuals have stepped in to cover issues not being covered by mainstream news, often using a style and voice that is quite unlike that deployed by mainstream news media.

We’ve also seen the rise of celebrity news hosts. These hosts help push the boundaries of parasocial interactions, allowing the audience to feel deep affinity toward these individuals, as though they are true friends. Tabloid papers have long capitalized on people’s desire to feel close to celebrities by helping people feel like they know the royal family or the Kardashians. Talking heads capitalize on this, in no small part by how they communicate with their audiences. So, when people watch Rachel Maddow or listen to Alex Jones, they feel more connected to the message than they would when reading a news article. They begin to trust these people as though they are neighbors. They feel real.

No amount of drop-in journalism will make up for the loss of journalists within the fabric of local communities.

People want to be informed, but who they trust to inform them is rooted in social networks, not institutions. The trust of institutions stems from trust in people. The loss of the local paper means a loss of trusted journalists and a connection to the practices of the newsroom. As always, people turn to their social networks to get information, but what flows through those social networks is less and less likely to be mainstream news. But here’s where you also get an epistemological divide.

As Francesca Tripodi points out, many conservative Christians have developed a media literacy practice that emphasizes the “original” text rather than an intermediary. Tripodi points out that the same type of scriptural inference that Christians apply in Bible study is often also applied to reading the Constitution, tax reform bills, and Google results. This approach is radically different than the approach others take when they rely on intermediaries to interpret news for them.

As the institutional construction of news media becomes more and more proximately divorced from the vast majority of people in the United States, we can and should expect trust in news to decline. No amount of fact-checking will make up for a widespread feeling that coverage is biased. No amount of articulated ethical commitments will make up for the feeling that you are being fed clickbait headlines.

No amount of drop-in journalism will make up for the loss of journalists within the fabric of local communities. And while the population who believes that CNN and the New York Times are “fake news” are not demographically representative, the questionable tactics that news organizations use are bound to increase distrust among those who still have faith in them.

3. The Fourth Estate and Financialization Are Incompatible

If you’re still with me at this point, you’re probably deeply invested in scholarship or journalism. And, unless you’re one of my friends, you’re probably bursting at the seams to tell me that the reason journalism is all screwed up is because the internet screwed news media’s business model. So I want to ask a favor: Quiet that voice in your head, take a deep breath, and let me offer an alternative perspective.

There are many types of capitalism. After all, the only thing that defines capitalism is the private control of industry (as opposed to government control). Most Americans have been socialized into believing that all forms of capitalism are inherently good (which, by the way, was a propaganda project). But few are encouraged to untangle the different types of capitalism and different dynamics that unfold depending on which structure is operating.

I grew up in mom-and-pop America, where many people dreamed of becoming small business owners. The model was simple: Go to the bank and get a loan to open a store or a company. Pay back that loan at a reasonable interest rate — knowing that the bank was making money — until eventually you owned the company outright. Build up assets, grow your company, and create something of value that you could pass on to your children.

In the 1980s, franchises became all the rage. Wannabe entrepreneurs saw a less risky path to owning their own business. Rather than having to figure it out alone, you could open a franchise with a known brand and a clear process for running the business. In return, you had to pay some overhead to the parent company. Sure, there were rules to follow and you could only buy supplies from known suppliers and you didn’t actually have full control, but it kinda felt like you did. Like being an Uber driver, it was the illusion of entrepreneurship that was so appealing. And most new franchise owners didn’t know any better, nor were they able to read the writing on the wall when the water all around them started boiling their froggy self. I watched my mother nearly drown, and the scars are still visible all over her body.

I will never forget the U.S. Savings & Loan crisis, not because I understood it, but because it was when I first realized that my Richard Scarry impression of how banks worked was way wrong. Only two decades later did I learn to seethe FIRE industries (Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate) as extractive ones.They aren’t there to help mom-and-pop companies build responsible businesses, but to extract value from their naiveté. Like today’s post-college youth are learning, loans aren’t there to help you be smart, but to bend your will.

It doesn’t take a quasi-documentary to realize thatMcDonald’s is not a fast-food franchise; it’s a real estate business that uses a franchise structure to extract capital from naive entrepreneurs. Go talk to a wannabe restaurant owner in New York City and ask them what it takes to start a business these days. You can’t even get a bank loan or lease in 2018 without significant investor backing, which means that the system isn’t set up for you to build a business and pay back the bank, pay a reasonable rent, and develop a valuable asset.You are simply a pawn in a financialized game between your investors, the real estate companies, the insurance companies, and the bank, all of which want to extract as much value from your effort as possible. You’re just another brick in the wall.

Now let’s look at the local news ecosystem. Starting in the 1980s, savvy investors realized that many local newspapers owned prime real estate in the center of key towns. These prized assets would make for great condos and office rentals. Throughout the country, local news shops started getting eaten up by private equity and hedge funds — or consolidated by organizations controlled by the same forces. Media conglomerates sold off their newsrooms as they felt increased pressure to increase profits quarter over quarter.

Building a sustainable news business was hard enough when the news had a wealthy patron who valued the goals of the enterprise. But the finance industry doesn’t care about sustaining the news business; it wants a return on investment. And the extractive financiers who targeted the news business weren’t looking to keep the news alive. They wanted to extract as much value from those business as possible. Taking a page out of McDonald’s, they forced the newsrooms to sell their real estate. Often, news organizations had to rent from new landlords who wanted obscene sums, often forcing them to move out of their buildings. News outlets were forced to reduce staff, reproduce more junk content, sell more ads, and find countless ways to cut costs. Of course the news suffered — the goal was to push news outlets into bankruptcy or sell, especially if the companies had pensions or other costs that couldn’t be excised.

Yes, the fragmentation of the advertising industry due to the internet hastened this process. And let’s also be clear that business models in the news business have never been clean. But no amount of innovative new business models will make up for the fact that you can’t sustain responsible journalism within a business structure that requires newsrooms to make more money quarter over quarter to appease investors. This does not mean that you can’t build a sustainable news business, but if the news is beholden to investors trying to extract value, it’s going to impossible. And if news companies have no assets to rely on (such as their now-sold real estate), they are fundamentally unstable and likely to engage in unhealthy business practices out of economic desperation.

Untangling our country from this current version of capitalism is going to be as difficult as curbing our addiction to fossil fuels. I’m not sure it can be done, but as long as we look at companies and blame their business models without looking at the infrastructure in which they are embedded, we won’t even begin taking the first steps. Fundamentally, both the New York Times and Facebook are public companies, beholden to investors and desperate to increase their market cap. Employees in both organizations believe themselves to be doing something important for society.

Of course, journalists don’t get paid well, while Facebook’s employees can easily threaten to walk out if the stock doesn’t keep rising, since they’re also investors. But we also need to recognize that the vast majority of Americans have a stake in the stock market. Pension plans, endowments, and retirement plans all depend on stocks going up — and those public companies depend on big investors investing in them. Financial managers don’t invest in news organizations that are happy to be stable break-even businesses. Heck, even Facebook is in deep trouble if it can’t continue to increase ROI, whether through attracting new customers (advertisers and users), increasing revenue per user, or diversifying its businesses. At some point, it too will get desperate, because no business can increase ROI forever.

ROI capitalism isn’t the only version of capitalism out there. We take it for granted and tacitly accept its weaknesses by creating binaries, as though the only alternative is Cold War Soviet Union–styled communism. We’re all frogs in an ocean that’s quickly getting warmer. Two degrees will affect a lot more than oceanfront properties.

Reclaiming Trust

In my mind, we have a hard road ahead of us if we actually want to rebuild trust in American society and its key institutions (which, TBH, I’m not sure is everyone’s goal). There are three key higher-order next steps, all of which are at the scale of the New Deal.

Create a sustainable business structure for information intermediaries (like news organizations) that allows them to be profitable without the pressure of ROI. In the case of local journalism, this could involve subsidized rent, restrictions on types of investors or takeovers, or a smartly structured double bottom-line model. But the focus should be on strategically building news organizations as a national project to meet the needs of the fourth estate. It means moving away from a journalism model that is built on competition for scarce resources (ads, attention) to one that’s incentivized by societal benefits.

Actively and strategically rebuild the social networks of America.Create programs beyond the military that incentivize people from different walks of life to come together and achieve something great for this country. This could be connected to job training programs or rooted in community service, but it cannot be done through the government alone or, perhaps, at all. We need the private sector, religious organizations, and educational institutions to come together and commit to designing programs that knit together America while also providing the tools of opportunity.

Find new ways of holding those who are struggling. We don’t have a social safety net in America. For many, the church provides the only accessible net when folks are lost and struggling, but we need a lot more.We need to work together to build networks that can catch people when they’re falling. We’ve relied on volunteer labor for a long time in this domain—women, churches, volunteer civic organizations—but our current social configuration makes this extraordinarily difficult. We’re in the middle of an opiate crisis for a reason. We need to think smartly about how these structures or networks can be built and sustained so that we can collectively reach out to those who are falling through the cracks.

Fundamentally, we need to stop triggering one another because we’re facing our own perceived pain. This means we need to build large-scale cultural resilience. While we may be teaching our children “social-emotional learning”in the classroom, we also need to start taking responsibility at scale.Individually, we need to step back and empathize with others’ worldviews and reach out to support those who are struggling. But our institutions also have important work to do.

At the end of the day, if journalistic ethics means anything, newsrooms cannot justify creating spectacle out of their reporting on suicide or other topics just because they feel pressure to create clicks. They have the privilege of choosing what to amplify, and they should focus on what is beneficial. If they can’t operate by those values, they don’t deserve our trust. While I strongly believe that technology companies have a lot of important work to do to be socially beneficial, I hold news organizations to a higher standard because of their own articulated commitments and expectations that they serve as the fourth estate. And if they can’t operationalize ethical practices, I fear the society that must be knitted together to self-govern is bound to fragment even further.

Trust cannot be demanded. It’s only earned by being there at critical junctures when people are in crisis and need help. You don’t earn trust when things are going well; you earn trust by being a rock during a tornado. The winds are blowing really hard right now. Look around. Who is helping us find solid ground?

Source: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2018/06/20/the-messy-fourth-estate.html

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richmegavideo · 6 years ago

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Twenty Years Later, '10 Things I Hate About You' Is More Relevant Than You'd Expect

For me and all the other mid-80s millennials, 1999 didn’t signal the end of an era. It was the start of our definitive teenage years, rich with all the compulsive hormone-driven drama that would ultimately shape us into the adults we went on to become.

1999 was the year I started high school; the year that I got what was, at the time, a state-of-the-art three-CD player on which I blasted TLC’s FanMail, Backstreet Boys’ Millennium, and Sugar Ray’s 14:59 on endless loop. It’s also the blessed year that 10 Things I Hate About You was released.

I’m guessing many adolescent girls—and boys, for that matter—at the time could relate to at least one of the characters in 10 Things I Hate About You. There was quippy sidekick Michael (David Krumholtz), doe-eyed and floppy-haired new kid Cameron (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), effortlessly and often infuriatingly twee Bianca (Larisa Oleynik), the tragically underrated Mandella (Susan May Pratt), and of course, the mewling, rampallian wretch herself, Kat (Julia Stiles).

Like Kat, I existed on the fringes of my fairly affluent, mostly white public school’s society, although my banishment was less self-inflicted than hers. Yes, I haunted bookstores in my spare time and plastered my room with torn-out pages from Bust Magazine and dELiA*s catalogs, but I was neither thin, blond, or a voluntary member of any sports team. I couldn’t understand how someone who could effortlessly bare an enviably toned midriff be so bold as to snub male attention, which was the only type of attention I craved as a swarthy 13 year old who had yet to be kissed.

But her defiance of conventional feminine attitudes captivated me. The idea that one could subscribe to their own ideals rather than conform to anyone else’s expectations was a completely new concept in a time when teenage self-discovery was only just taking root. I did give a damn ‘bout my reputation… but maybe I didn’t have to.

In 1999, Kat’s brand of feminism seemed pretty extreme. But looking back on it 20 years later, it’s surprising how mainstream certain aspects of it now come across.

“Every time I watch this movie Kat seems more and more relatable,” explains Sarah Barson, co-host of Bad Feminist Film Club, a podcast that reviews movies through a feminist lens. “At the time this movie came out, I think Kat was supposed to be a super ‘out there’ radical feminist, but the stuff she talks about feels very relevant to modern conversations about pop culture and a woman's right, or even responsibility, to speak up and challenge social norms.”

But according to 10 Things I Hate About You writers Karen McCullah and Kirsten “Kiwi” Smith, Kat may have ended up differently if written for today’s audience.

“I think Kat would have to have a more extreme form of rebellion,” says Smith. “We’d have to dig her even further into a counter-culture, because in that era, it was all pretty simple.”

Rather than merely dreaming of playing in a riot grrrl band, Smith says Kat would’ve already been shredding on her pearly white Stratocaster, playing her angsty songs at different gigs. Had 10 Things been written in 2019, McCullah sees a version of Kat that’s more in touch with the activism of today’s teens.

“Like, kind of the Parkland student vibe, I think. We would add a little bit more of that,” she says. ”I think those kids are amazing, what they’re accomplishing. When I think of teenagers right now, that’s where my brain goes first.”

Smith agrees. “That’s a good point, yeah. When we wrote it, we were kind of in a freewheeling 90s bubble, not really thinking about the larger world around us. Now, as Karen pointed out, the experience of the youth is much different. They’re much more global in their thinking than we were.”

10 Things I Hate About You has its share of shortcomings, although it’s held up better over time than other teen flicks of previous eras, like Sixteen Candles. I’m willing to bet that a fresh audience today wouldn’t laugh quite as hard when Kat flashes her soccer coach to help Patrick (Heath Ledger) sneak out of detention—even with his swoon-worthy dimples—or let it slide when Bianca drops the R-word during an argument with Kat. And let's not forget how “nice guy” Cameron manipulated the entire love triangle just so he could have a shot with the younger Stratford sister. Oof.

Even so, the characters' relationships with one another and even their personal shortcomings hold up relatively authentically in a way that few other movies have been able to accomplish.

“The Craft was the perfect movie for any woman who felt disenfranchised, and Never Been Kissed really did stress the importance of self-confidence and self-acceptance, but 10 Things I Hate About You was about real characters to whom average women could relate,” says Dr. Randall Clark, author of At a Theater Or Drive-In Near You: The History, Culture, and Politics of the American Exploitation Film and associate professor of Communication and Media Studies at Clayton State University.

Dr. Clark’s students have expressed surprise that Kat was open about her sexual experience and yet managed to escape some of the consequences that society tends to heap upon young women who have sex at what they consider to be a young age.

“It was just a fact of her life,” he says, giving credit to the movie for being “not at all judgmental about her past.”

The filmmakers’ non-superficial portrayal of an unapologetic and (one-time) sexually active feminist was a groundbreaking achievement at a time when few other feature films even dared to explore the complexities of teen girl relationships. In the 90s, and to some extent today, feminism is often mistakenly equated with man-hating, an idea that both writers resoundingly reject.

“Feminists need love too!” laughs Smith.

Earlier teen-centric comedies like 1995’s Clueless helped lay the groundwork for 10 Things by weaving together real-life scenarios with tongue-in-cheek banter that managed to entertain, but also illuminate some of the basic pillars of modern-day feminism. The fact that both are remakes of classics— Clueless being a contemporary version of Jane Austen’s Emma and 10 Things I Hate About You being a modern adaptation of William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew—that revolve around young women with BIG personalities makes perfect sense. Women finding their place in the world, and being tamed by men, is by no means a novel idea.

But one thing that many of these iconic films of the late 90s and early 2000s lack is a sense of intersectionality. Bad Feminist Film Club co-host Kelly Kauffman cites Bring It On as one example of film from this era that addresses issues of race and class that other films—including 10 Things—shied away from.

“There's definitely some parts that haven't aged as well, but on a recent rewatch, I was struck by how the movie [Bring It On] touched on sensitive issues that most mainstream movies try to actively avoid,” says Kauffman.

10 Things I Hate About You may have helped shape the modern definition of “girl power” and inspired movies like Bend It Like Beckham to depict alternative stereotypes of femininity, but it’s not perfect. The one major theme I find particularly problematic upon rewatching is the apparent lack of understanding about consent throughout the film. Kat and Bianca’s father Walter (Larry Miller) doesn’t seem to grasp the concept that sex tends to occur between two people choosing to participate. His fears are clearly distorted for comic effect, but his misguided worldview holds his daughters hostage (as Bianca points out) rather than holding their partners accountable.

This concept extends to the prom scene when Bianca’s BFF-turned-nemesis Chastity (Gabrielle Union) smugly informs Bianca that pretty boy villain Joey (Andrew Keegan) “was gonna nail you tonight,” as though Bianca wouldn’t have had a choice in the matter. Then there’s the entire plot of the film’s inspiration: in The Taming of the Shrew, multiple men scheme and plot over who could obtain the most submissive, docile wife.

But the writers are adamant that the idea of “taming” doesn’t carry over to the film.

“I think at the end of the movie, you never get the sense that her character is going to be controlled by Patrick, in terms of Taming of The Shrew,” says McCullah. “Obviously, she’s not tamed and we don’t think Patrick is the type of guy who would want to control her. That’s why she likes him.” She goes on to call him an ally, or at least a prototype for one.

Seeing a privileged angry white girl like me grapple with trust, relationships, and finding herself inspired me to follow a more unconventional path in my own right. By the end of 1999, I had moved from Sugar Ray to crust punk, spiked my hair, and amassed a collection of ballpoint pen-decorated Chuck Taylors. I eventually dabbled in dating and going to art school, although I unfortunately never did start a band. But seeing someone chase her unorthodox dreams in a world designed to stifle misfits allowed me to dream outside the box in a way I'd never been shown before.

Compared to 2019, 1999 was a relative vacuum of women in media. “There were not a lot of female writing teams when we first started,” recalls Smith. “Now it seems like the appetite for female voices and female-fronted stories is ever-expanding."

Movies like Mad Max: Fury Road and Captain Marvel, with Brie Larson starring in Marvel’s first female-fronted superhero film, prove that we’ve come a long way with female representation. Both Smith and McCullah hope the trend continues, both in their future work, in the entertainment world at large, and with the resonating impact of 10 Things I Hate About You.

As McCullah says, “I hope it keeps inspiring young girls to be badasses and not let other people define them.”

Follow Beth Demmon on Twitter.

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#Hip Hop

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richmeganews · 6 years ago

Text

Twenty Years Later, '10 Things I Hate About You' Is More Relevant Than You'd Expect

In 1999, Kat’s brand of feminism seemed pretty extreme. But looking back on it 20 years later, it’s surprising how mainstream certain aspects of it now come across.

But according to 10 Things I Hate About You writers Karen McCullah and Kirsten “Kiwi” Smith, Kat may have ended up differently if written for today’s audience.

“I think Kat would have to have a more extreme form of rebellion,” says Smith. “We’d have to dig her even further into a counter-culture, because in that era, it was all pretty simple.”

Even so, the characters' relationships with one another and even their personal shortcomings hold up relatively authentically in a way that few other movies have been able to accomplish.

“It was just a fact of her life,” he says, giving credit to the movie for being “not at all judgmental about her past.”

“Feminists need love too!” laughs Smith.

But the writers are adamant that the idea of “taming” doesn’t carry over to the film.

As McCullah says, “I hope it keeps inspiring young girls to be badasses and not let other people define them.”

Follow Beth Demmon on Twitter.

The post Twenty Years Later, '10 Things I Hate About You' Is More Relevant Than You'd Expect appeared first on .

from WordPress http://www.richmeganews.com/twenty-years-later-10-things-i-hate-about-you-is-more-relevant-than-youd-expect/

#Breaking News

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