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cinemaseeker · 2 years

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Multiple Verses on the Multiverse: Everything Everywhere All At Once in the Multiverse of Madness

*THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS AND EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE*

As we find ourselves living out the Darkest Timeline, it’s easy to understand why we’ve been gravitating toward media and movies about the Multiverse, specifically Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Everything Everywhere All at Once. Although these movies represent opposite ends of the Hollywood movie-making machine, the former being a big budget Marvel movie and the latter an original and outlandish indie film, they’ve both managed to touch upon something important we’ve been seeking in our present moment: the opportunity to explore not only different timelines where things are supposedly better, but also answer the question of what we would be like if we had made different choices throughout our lives. This critique will attempt to compare and contrast these two multiverse movies, which will inevitably find themselves in competition with each other, since apparently there can only be one. But instead of crowning a champion, my goal here is to shed some light on some of the meaningful parallels between these two movies, to offer two different paths to the same destination, a feat that would not be unwelcome in either of these cinematic universes. Like any story featuring the Multiverse, it can be quite daunting to figure out where to begin, where to find a proper starting point. After all, the possibilities are literally infinite. But I’ll do my best to find where some of these common threads merge or diverge.

Let’s get started.

Both of these movies use the Multiverse as a means to explore family dynamics and re-establish family ties. In EEAAO, despite all the fantastical hijinks and trippy visuals, it all boils down to a family trying to stay together while it is falling apart: Evelyn’s husband Waymond is seeking a divorce while their daughter Joy is trying to get her family, especially her mother, to accept her sexuality, and Evelyn is doing everything she can to keep the family business afloat while struggling with their taxes and the IRS. In Doctor Strange ITMOM, the core conflict is that Wanda is trying to use America Chavez’s power of creating portals to travel across the Multiverse and reunite with the children she created in WandaVision in order to have the family she’s always wanted.

Unfortunately, Wanda’s actions in her story color her as a villain, maybe an antihero at best, while Evelyn gets to be the hero of her own story, embracing the chance to break free from her mundane, everywoman existence and unlock her full potential as a hero, which is an incredible feat for any character, especially an older woman of color. Although Evelyn and Wanda are both mothers in their own right, Evelyn seems to get much more sympathy from her story than Wanda does in hers. After all, Evelyn gets to win and keep her family in the end, but Wanda (at least the main Wanda we follow throughout the movie) has to give up the thing she wants most and take herself out of the picture.

I wonder if this is because Evelyn is not as inherently powerful as Wanda. After all, Evelyn only gets to be a bad-ass when she blindly follows crazy instructions from Alpha Waymond, a stronger and cooler version of her own husband from another universe. But Wanda comes from a studio that has consistently struggled to include “strong female characters” in their movies in meaningful ways, when they even remember to include them at all.

It feels like Marvel is trying to punish Wanda for being so powerful by putting her in her place, by having the Darkhold’s influence over her strip her of any moral agency, by making her so monstrously powerful that she uncontrollably destroys anyone who stands in her way, driven by the socially acceptable motivation of maternal instinct (can you imagine if she did all this just for herself?), and whose goal can only be achieved through the subjugation of another female character, the symbolically if not-so-subtly named America Chavez. Wanda’s narrative has it set up that the only way to achieve her goal is not to work cooperatively with America, not to ask America for help that she would happily give, but to hunt this girl down, absorb her power and kill her in the process.

Are we starting to see the problem here? Would it be so horrible to have a powerful, morally complicated heroine who is still in control of her faculties and self-assured and confident in herself despite being imperfect? Is that really so much to ask for? Apparently so, according to Marvel movies. And yes, it has already been brought to my attention that having a Mexican-American character whose superpower is essentially crossing borders is definitely a misstep and should be seen as problematic at best and borderline racist at worst (emphasis on border).

On top of female representation and representation of minorities, each movie takes a swing at queer representation, specifically lesbian representation, and while EEAAO hits a solid homerun, Doctor Strange ITMOM manages to feebly take a base after several misses. Doctor Strange ITMOM does show that America has two moms, which is a noticeable step forward for a Marvel movie, but then they are briskly swept aside and never mentioned again, like minorities brought out for the official university photo as a show of representing diversity, so that Marvel can clear its conscious and check off a box just by doing the bare minimum and clearing the lowest bar. On the other hand, EEAAO has Joy, a main character who is a queer woman of color in a happy and healthy relationship that plays an important part in the story, and although she does become the main antagonist, we get to understand why she got there, we get to sympathize with her, and she gets to redeem herself in the end without having to change who she is as a person.

At the end of both movies, I was fascinated to find that both movies take advantage of imagery involving the third eye, albeit in radically different ways. With Doctor Strange, the third eye is a grotesque literal third eye that bulges from his forehead, a price to be paid for messing with the forces of the Darkhold (which is essentially the Necronomicon, which makes this movie a light Evil Dead reboot. I mean, it is directed by Sam Raimi after all, but I digress). In EEAAO, Evelyn’s third eye is a googly eye that she humorously adopts after embracing her husband’s philosophy of kindness and working to make the Multiverse a better place in order to combat the antagonist’s nihilism. At the end of the day, it is kindness that saves the world.

So after all of that discourse, here’s my bottom line: there can be more than one. This may sound shocking, but you are allowed to watch both of these movies and you are allowed to like them both equally, or unequally if you want. In our current climate of conflict and division, it can be easy to forget that we don’t have to live in extremes, that there is still a middle ground. My hope is that this critique will encourage conversation that will keep our minds open and keep us talking to each other.

After all, our clothes never wear as well the next day, and our hair never falls in quite the same way, but hopefully we’ll never run out of things to say.

#everything everywhere all at once #doctor strange #doctor strange and the multiverse of madness

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cinemacentral666 · 10 months

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Midnight Family (2019) & The Chambermaid (2018)

Movies #1,057 & 1,058 • TWO FOR TUESDAY

When applicable I've decided I'm gonna do a joint review, especially on these TWO FOR TUESDAYS. In this case, I watched two Mexican movies that came out within a year of each other and there's one interesting, if not explicit parallel: where Midnight Family is a documentary that strives to feel cinematic, The Chambermaid is a drama that strives for such realness that I mistook it for a doc when it began (in the sense that all/most slow burn cinema wants to achieve this effect on some level). I enjoyed the latter a little bit more, but both are solid to good.

Nothing much at all happens in The Chambermaid, a movie about a — you guessed it — hotel maid who works at a very upscaled establishment in Mexico City. But good lord does it capture the struggle and world-crushing pain that such a gig can induce. Gabriela Cartol in the titular lead is excellent and the film, by first time feature director Lila Avilés, is presented plainly but beautifully. The contrast between the clean, elegant rooms and the cold, behind-the-scenes depths of the hotel is stark and paints a picture by itself, without any words.

SCORE: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️¼

Midnight Family is also about a dead-end job, albeit one on a very different spectrum. It tells the story of a family who run a private ambulance business, also in Mexico City. It was an interesting parallel: seeing the street-level grime and then the metropolis from the heights of 40-story luxury. In a nutshell, that place/government is corrupt beyond belief. Probably beyond repair. We watch as they race competing emergency vehicles on route to the scene to deliver life-saving care that they struggle to get paid for. Just like the people they help, they barely have enough to get by.

SCORE: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️¼

Both films, as different as they are, left me with the same feeling: what the HELL is wrong with us (humans)?

#8.25 #7.25 #luke lorentzen director #lila avilés director #documentary #slow burn #drama #2019 #2018 #🇲🇽#gabriela cartol #agustina quinci #teresa sánchez #two for tuesday

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whileiamdying · 1 year

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No Bears review – Jafar Panahi’s piercingly self-aware study of film-making and fear

‘A profoundly humane endeavour’: Jafar Panahi behind the wheel in No Bears.

The Iranian director, who was imprisoned in July, crafts a complex meditation on artistic creativity and invisible borders

Mark Kermode, Observer film critic @KermodeMovie Sun 13 Nov 2022 | 03.00 EST

Earlier this year, the Iranian auteur Jafar Panahi was detained and ordered to serve a six-year prison sentence – the latest politically motivated attempt to silence an artist who has been banned from making movies since 2010. Despite the ban, Panahi has remained a creative thorn in the side of the Iranian authorities. His provocatively entitled This Is Not a Movie (2011) was smuggled out of Iran on a USB drive hidden inside a cake and premiered to great acclaim at Cannes. His next two features, Closed Curtain (2013) and Taxi Tehran (2015), earned him a Silver and Golden Bear respectively at the Berlin film festival, while 3 Faces (2018) won best screenplay at Cannes.

This latest stripped-down work from the world’s most quietly defiant cineaste has already (deservedly) picked up the special jury prize at Venice and the award for cinematic bravery at the Chicago international film festival. Meanwhile, in Miami, where the director was given the film festival’s Precious Gem award, an audio message recorded in prison found Panahi wryly declaring: “I wish that I could make films instead of receiving awards” because “I have dreams that go beyond all the awards in the world.” And what dreams they are!

Given the circumstances of its creation, it’s no surprise that Panahi’s recent output has returned obsessively and self-reflexively to the subject of film-making itself. Here, for example, he once again plays a version of himself – a film-maker directing his latest feature by remote control. His new movie is being shot in Turkey and presents a close-to-life account of a couple, Zara (Mina Kavani) and Bakhtiar (Bakhtiar Panjei), who are facing separation as they attempt to escape to a new life in Europe. Panahi, who cannot leave Iran, is directing them over the web, via a computer screen. But rather than doing so from Tehran, where he had a half-decent internet connection, he has instead rented a room in a remote village near the border, placing him physically closer to the action, but also conjuring a creative barrier as his phone signal constantly drops in and out in almost slapstick fashion.

"Panahi retains the wit and humility to question his art with remarkable candour and self-deprecation."

When assistant director Reza (Reza Heydari) visits Panahi, the pair take a surreally tinged night trip to the Turkish border (a haunting no man’s land peopled by smugglers in speeding vehicles), and he invites the film-maker to step across the invisible line that divides his country from its neighbour. But Panahi has become embroiled in his own domestic drama, his camera having inadvertently drawn him into a dispute (“there will be blood”) between two men, both of whom are attempting to claim the hand of a local girl. Meanwhile, the actors in Turkey are starting to doubt the integrity of their director, whose docudrama threatens to tear them apart in real life, creating two parallel love stories that eerily mirror and reflect each other’s sinister power struggles.

“What about the bears?” asks Panahi as he takes an evening walk to the outskirts of the village, en route to a meeting where he must answer the charge of having taken an incriminating photograph – a photograph he insists does not exist. “There are no bears,” replies his companion, who has previously assured this metropolitan incomer that while “town people have problems with authorities, we have problems with superstition”. It’s all just “nonsense, stories made up to scare us. Our fears empower others. No bears!”

It’s a cute titular exchange that pithily encapsulates the key themes of the drama: the conflation of modern authority and archaic superstition, the town-country divide, the power of storytelling, the oppressiveness of fear and the absurdity of dogma. These are intimate personal scenarios with wider political resonances that reverberate throughout Panahi’s filmography.

Yet No Bears is also a piercingly self-aware portrait of an artist who is not afraid to depict himself and his craft as aloof or insular. Despite all that he has faced, Panahi retains the wit and humility to hold himself accountable – to question his art with remarkable candour and self-deprecation. Filtering his immense contribution to cinema through a deceptively incidental lens, he once again reminds us that movie-making can be a profoundly humane endeavour; at once comedic, tragic and truthful.

#Iran #Cinema #Iranian CInema #The Guardian #Mark Kermode #Review #No Bears #جعفر پناهی #Jafar Panahi #Berlinale #خرس نیست #Reza Heydari #Bakhtiar Panjei #Mina Kavani #مینا خسروانی

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tomatograter · 3 years

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What are your Thots on jake’s pq route?

I already wrote some about it in this post where I discuss the problem with taking dirkjake as a literal parallel to tavris (Mainly, that it’s inaccurate to both situations and misrepresents the dynamics at play) but it’s been long enough since release that I feel like I can talk about it without that criticism being taken as a personal witch hunt. TL;DR: As a general rule of thumb I don’t cite Jake’s PQ as part of his characterization, and I think basing your Jakewriting on it will only lead you astray.

I liked a lot of the Pesterquest routes and the alphas were among some of my favorites, but I think when you play the four of them in sequence Jake’s really... stands as the odd one out. It’s almost as if he’s afforded way less sympathy from the get go for some indiscernible reason, or like MSPAR took a day to say ‘I can’t stand this kid in particular’ after dealing with waaaaaaaay more mindboggling troll customs or stupid dangerous situations that tested their patience and their limits. When it comes down to it, it’s mostly an issue of framing.

Let’s go with the “Just the Alpha routes” example, because I think that makes the overall context clearer and the response/reactions it gathered (or the lack thereof) easier to understand. The alpha kids were the last 4 Pesterquest episodes. They were also afforded entire volumes just for themselves, which cemented our expectations on “oh, they’re going to really dig into unexplored territory!” and for the most part, that’s what we got! It was really nice to see the internal mechanics of Jane as someone raised within a corporate echochamber, Roxy as a grieving, isolated kid, deprived of all human contact, and Dirk as a nerdy doomsday prepper haunted by private flashes of himself as a supervillain. It all works! Those are things the alpha kids were dealing with on the background of the broader Homestuck story, things we were only hinted at as the *larger* problems played out. It makes you understand their point of view. Except on Jake's route, where nothing about his life seems to be relevant at all?

With Jane we get discussions about HIC and her family, with Roxy beautiful passages about a mother they never met and growing up alone— Same for Dirk, who gets a whole brother zapped from an alternate timeline. But on Jake's route there's not even an expansive dialogue path dedicated to Grandma English, Skaianet, the rebellion, or the giant red ship that came and murdered her in the night and then bombed his house, leaving him trapped inside his only surviving tower. No understanding passage realizing that this kid has had to fend for himself in an island full of Actual Giant Alien Monsters trying to eat him alive, or that he cremated his guardian specifically to avoid attracting predators to the scent of fresh blood drying on her mutilated corpse at the age of an actual toddler. The text refuses to dig into any of the psychological implications or impact an environment like this could have on a kid, which is even weirder when you consider MSPAR has met and helped Vriska get out of a similar situation. The whole thing with Jane in the previous volume has just happened, even, while Jake's particularities go unremarked. He was just supposed to deal with it. And that's because a choice was made to portray all of Jake's problems in this route as sort of... single handedly Dirk's fault? Something he should have Just Dealt with?

There's not even a hint that Jake knows Hal exists. Which is important! Jake can pick out Hal from Dirk based on *verbal cues*, and the fact that he considers Hal a barrier between him and his "real friend" getting to communicate with one another is a whole point of contention (and even comedy) in the story proper. Instead of examining Jake's isolation, or grief, or how he literally locks himself in his room and plasters it with cinematic posters to pretend he's just the main lead of a wacky adventure movie in the face of the immense shitshow outside, we get brobot acting nonsensically and threatening to break into Jake's room to beat him up.

A general reminder on brobot: He was programmed to scout the jungle and deal with predators so Jake could a) Be allowed to safely leave his room (something he simply didn't do before age 13 out of sheer terror, and we know this because dirk and jake talk about it on his birthday conversation, when he first gets brobot) and

b) Learn how to defend himself in the case of a surprise attack, with different combat settings adjusted to his level. The brobot has a novice mode Jake feels patronized by, but pushes him up levels quickly enough. In Homestuck proper, the brobot only enters "stalking mode" after Hal gets pissy with Jake for finding him out, and forcefully switches the setting on to make Jake work for the Uranium inside it. When you take Hal out of the picture, this plotline makes no sense! Jake's route is set way before the Alphas even think of entering the game, so this particular event hasn't even happened. Jake goes on to text Roxy and she turns the stalking setting off remotely anyways, so even if brobot was programmed to murder Jake in his sleep, or jump him inside the safe zone of his room (he's not) he has literally no reason to be acting like that when he's been set to Baby Buff Up Mode.

(Brobot does end up spontaneously pulling himself apart to give Jake his reward after this)

Which brings me to my other problem with the general framing of this volume; the alpha kids don't feel present in Jake's life as friends at all. It's all "romantic options" and "shipping discourse" and MSPAR making these silly logic jumps to justify insisting on this line of query, and all it does is completely flatten out anything of interest having to do with Jake as a Person, to build up an image of Dirk as being suspicious and shady for his volume and more or less come to the conclusion that Jake sucks because he just Cant Choose Who To Date Between All His Friends! And that's why jake is just like tavros… and dirk is just like vriska! Or something.

And just as a reminder, here's Jake talking with Roxy so I don't have to explain why that feels like a weird choice to me. (click to zoom)

And then there's the endings. On the vriska ending, MSPAR just ends up weirdly angry at jake for being such a piss baby and not getting that he's tavros and dirk is vriska so he had to… uh… take all his anger out on this 13 year old alien girl he has never met and teach her a lesson to prepare to do the same on dirk, or something. And on the other ending Jake mentions his pen pal, is zapped to meet jade, they have some non-committal greetings and then a cosplay party where Jake insists that he totally likes Lara croft not because she's a femme fatale and he relates to that, because he's never ever in his life thought of anyone being interested on him. Or Something. He likes Lara croft for normal reasons only. He wears really tiny shorts and does sexy poses because he's not aware at all of how other people find him attractive. He's just too dumb to get this, or the shipping thing, or that he's tavros and Dirk is vriska (who the hell are these people?).

Jake feels like an afterthought in the grand scope of events. Sidelined on his own episode. This volume is busy with rehashing age old fandom arguments that have little to do with his character, because said arguments were started and maintained by bored teens engrossed on fighting online instead of analyzing Homestuck; we introduce vriska for no interesting reason at all (thank god at least Jake has enough decency to say he's not into hitting on 13-year-olds, because that would have been particularly rancid.) And aside from catchphrases and old slang sprinkled liberally into his dialogue like a fog making machine, none of the motivation for the character is there. What does he want? What does he fear? Why does he act like the way he does? What would accommodating him look like? What would helping him look like? We get this on Jane's volume, Roxy's volume, and Dirk's volume. To really heart-wrenching and dramatic results, too. You get to know who they are, where they live, what they want, what they fear, what might help them get better, but Jake is just sort of There. He's a burden. MSPAR either ends this volume berating him for not doing what they want or finding him weird and confusing and like they don't know each other at all, and the fact both of those were marked as dubiously bad ends in the game files speaks for itself, I think.

#jake english #pesterquest #vriska serket #jane crocker #roxy lalonde #dirk strider #meta

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laurelier · 2 years

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RGB reality: Our Flag Means Death x The Matrix

Back with more on color symbolism because I can’t stop thinking about it, there’s nothing in my head there is nothing behind my eyes rn but the ridiculous color work in OFMD and so today I’m reflecting a bit on red, blue, and green in the show’s visuals. @weirdgirlcore and others have already written at length about red, here, and blue, here, and this is going to take a lot of that work as reference points because I’d never have been able to come up with all of that on my own, lmao— but something I haven’t yet seen discussed directly (though that may just be due to a combination of my own laziness and tumblr’s subpar search mechanism) is the fact that each romantic pairing on the Revenge is made up of one red-coded and one blue-coded character.

And, like, I see red and blue and my brain goes straight to the Matrix red-pill-blue-pill scene*— bc that movie is a goldmine of cinematic allegorical philosophical personal identity-related concepts, it’s so rich. Red, blue, and green take up the most space in the color landscape of that film, and I think it’s really interesting to do a side-by-side with OFMD’s and The Matrix’s uses of these three colors, given a few posts I’ve seen about the parallels between OFMD and other well-known media— to start, Mad Max and Ed’s costume hi @notcuddles and here too @taititi (feat. @fuckyeahisawthat tags), as well as this on the role of the Pinocchio story by @sitzfleischh. So. This post focuses mostly on our canonical OFMD couples, exploring a little bit more what red, blue, and green might mean for them.

Under the cut— follow me down this lil rabbit hole and I’ll attempt to explain with some coherence, but to paraphrase Morpheus, you gotta see it for yourself.

*A little disclaimer: in doing research for this post I was made aware of the history of the “redpill” meme, and I hope it’s obvious but still want to be clear that nothing I am about to write in this meta has anything to do with the unfortunate co-opting of the symbol of the red pill by the fringe right.

Just a lil dash of color

Starting with the fact that all members of the Revenge’s crew feature red or blue somewhere in their costuming. Have this shot of them all looking mopey on the beach:

Roach said pose bitch.

And so much of the set design of the Revenge itself is red and blue, too, especially in Stede’s quarters— so, like, obvi these two colors take up a lot of space not just in Stede and Ed’s presentation (bc even there, they’re at times very subtle) but in the show at large.

Literally this room is so warm and red, this room is a heart, what is WRONG with the set designers

Which just sets the whole thing up as, like, a little universe of red-blue dichotomies: it positions the two colors as opposite, coexisting influences on OFMD’s world— and nowhere is that more operant than in the relationships between the characters.

Little lovebirds <3

On the actual ship, the most visually red/blue-coded couple is Lucius and Pete. The first time we see Pete, he’s in a greenish color, but I’ll kind of address that at the end— bc past the first episode of the show, he’s pretty reliably seen in blue.

Grumpy little grinch man does not like to sew.

As I’m looking at the blue-coded characters in that shot of the whole crew above, besides Stede, I’m seeing Buttons and Pete looking particularly ~blue. And I’m like, ok, well. Pete is less critical of/more enthusiastic about Traditionally Masculine Views of capital-P Piracy, like, as a construct, than a lot of other crewmembers, as evidenced by his stories about being a member of Blackbeard’s crew (real or not, have this interesting post by @avelera about the "Brown Peter" thing). In that little montage that he recounts to the crew about serving on Blackbeard’s ship, he makes himself into a Very Manly Ideal Version of Pete, and Blackbeard into something like a pirate god, when in reality both of them are far from that— which leads me to a working idea of what’s signaled by blue: a character who is susceptible to the allure of a set system of beliefs, an Idealized World, and who reaches for that Perfect Ideal to the detriment of their ability to exist as their real self. In the case of Pete, that’s the ~Mythos of Piracy.

Historical costuming accuracy aside, I think this sits really nicely with the fact that the British Navy wears blue. (And white, but that’s a diff conversation.) It’s a different shade than any worn by a crewmember of the Revenge, but. What better example of a repressive system of tradition and belief than a colonial, imperialistic navy?

On the other side of this is, of course, Lucius, who breaks with all of that— rather than requiring himself or others to fit into a pre-established standard, he favors emotional warmth and vulnerability; he has an ability to see people for who they really are and nurture the best in them as individuals. I agree, in short, with the many others who have theorized that Lucius captures red symbolism really well. He brings out so much softness in Pete, pulling away a bit of the carapace that years of trying to adhere to a Manly Man Pirate Standard has thrown over his soft little Pete heart, it makes me so <3.

The oranges above them while ~this~ happens make me want to go run a mile because literally yesterday I found @seriesfive post about love and oranges and OH GOD

After Lucius and Pete, there’s Olu and Jim— and the fun thing about these two is that both appear to be a pretty even mix of blue and red. Olu’s hat is pinkish red, but he’s got that gorgeous blue earring; Jim’s blue-coded (getting there in a second), but they’ve got a bit of red on their vest (you can see that when all their shit’s on the rock in ep 2 and Lucius catches them naked in the ocean, which, in hindsight, hello, this is an ocean-coded character.)

But there’s also this great shot of them at the end of ep 4 that I want to mention where you can see the very green handle of Jim’s dagger (we get a glimpse of it in ep 2 as well, coming back to that) and there’s Olu’s red hat and the rest of what they’re wearing is beige and it’s just so subtle and lovely.

Dagger at bottom left, that precious hat, the all time earring, Olu’s look of pure love, I hate all of this

Which means that, to Team Red, we can add Olu’s character traits: among other things, he represents genuine, effective leadership, because of his dependability, emotional openness, and loving nature. He is the member of the crew that just about everyone respects and trusts. He sees Jim with clear eyes, and tries to know them totally, in all that they are; he’s as much of a confidante for Stede as Lucius is, at the beginning. He is, in a word, The Best.

Teal!

With Jim, though, is where I think the symbolism of blue gets a little more layered— I, at least, didn’t really feel confident saying Jim was blue-coded until I heard them actually tell Olu that their favorite color is teal. So if blue signals a character who’s caught up in a rigid belief system, then the Logic that circumscribes Jim is that of revenge (the name of the ship, goodbye)— Nana explicitly instills the belief in Jim that they are only good for this Single Purpose, that they’re little more than a human weapon— and so just as Pete pressures himself to be a perfect pirate and fails, Jim pressures themself to be a perfect avenging assassin— and fails. Great time to link @sitzfleischh amazing post on the queer art of failure again yes linking it twice in one post because. Yes. Failure as a way for our characters to free themselves from toxic, narrow narratives about selfhood (and specifically masculinity), yes.

I loves me a thief

And if Olu is the red-coded character who supports and accompanies Jim on their arc, then Spanish Jackie is the red-coded character who, after listening with real understanding to them about their quest to avenge their family, actually convinces them to give it all up, saying:

“You can’t live like that! You got to get over it! You can’t end up like me... You don’t want that... All the revenge, and rage, and anger— it ages you, makes you boring.”

Spanish Jackie is maybe the most red-coded character on the show (it’s like, her and Evelyn, if we’re just looking at the percentage of a character’s body that’s covered in red at any given time). Her conversation with Jim is one of my favorite scenes— I think it’s so cool that it’s Jackie who finally convinces Jim to leave the revenge plot behind and live in a way that’s free of all that emotional baggage.

Also her wooden hand keeps me awake at night.

In short, Olu, Lucius, and Jackie are red-coded sources of wisdom and love: they show Jim, Stede, Pete, and Ed as well (<3) how to live better, in a way that nurtures them and helps them grow. (And really, Evelyn does the same for Mary, but, like, I don’t have space to get into that today because this post is already a book— it’s a similar dynamic, though, which I love so much. One more point for red as authenticity, self-liberation— bc Mary deserves that as much as anyone!!!).

Pirates of the rings

Finally, at long last (this post is SO long I am so sorry), we arrive at Stede and Ed, blue and red respectively. I think this way of seeing blue holds really well for Stede, because he's so bought into the Oceanic Pirate Lore thing— his whole deal is that he gives up his entire land-based life to pursue the one he’s always wanted, right, which on the surface just seems Really Gay And Great, and it is— but. There’s also this layer of self-deception to Stede’s decision to become a pirate; the fact that in his effort to become free, Stede still hasn’t shaken off the need to Become The Ideal— there’s a part of him that wants to be a perfect, almost cookie-cutter pirate, and one of his real chores, I imagine, will be accepting that he isn’t that— that that can't bring him any joy or fulfillment, because it isn't real.

Stede holds something of a one-dimensional view of himself, as, in their own ways, Pete and Jim do: Pete because of his need to adhere to Masculine Pirate Norms, Jim because they’ve never before thought of themself as good for anything besides enacting vengeance— and then there’s Stede, who has lived a whole life he never fit into, and is trying to learn about himself and mistakenly attempting to use the Established Framework of Pirate Legends and Myths to do so— he’s searching in all the wrong places, overlooking all the right (red) things.

Ok listen there are better shots of Stede’s ring in the show but this is where I really started to pay attention to the rings, so. Here’s Stede’s pretty blue-teal ring as he spies on Ed and Jack.

Ed, on the other hand, is the Pirate Ideal— his constructed appearance is, like, the definition of piracy. He holds his feelings in small hidden places on his body: the silk cloth, obviously, but also his little red ring which parallels Stede’s teal one.

Hello little ruby.

Ed’s red trajectory is one of accepting his emotionality: he is, of course, the one to first embrace how he feels about Stede, then open up to Stede in vulnerability, then once that blows up, he opens up to the crew, and it all goes haywire in the end but on the whole he’s so good at human connection, he has so much longing for it, I love him and his little red heart-on-his-finger so much.

Painfully aware rn that this is, like, such an aggressively long essay so if you’re still with me bless your soul and if your attention is wavering lemme just plug real quick that this next bit is the part that I’m real excited about and I WANTED to put it at the beginning bc I KNEW how long this would be and I couldn’t because all of ^^^^ that has to be laid out for this to make any sense, all this to say kindly bear with me, I think this is what really seals it—

Keanu Reeves gay pirate guest star when

Ok and now I am rubbing my hands together like a little squirrel because now!!! Now I get to talk directly about the symbolic compatibility happening with The Matrix here— and, like. I’m not arguing that it’s a reference, this is mostly just me holding the two up next to one another, but I do think that doing that casts OFMD in a fun light, so.

A little context on the movie, but I'll try to be brief: early on in The Matrix, our hero Neo begins to sink more and more into a creeping feeling that he is living in a dreamworld— he feels disillusioned with and disconnected from his life, for reasons he knows somewhere deep inside himself but can’t quite explain. He then finds himself on the verge of discovering what the “Matrix” actually is: a false reality that makes up the world he thought he knew, a computer simulation powered by the bodies and minds of comatose human beings on the outside. He discovers this upon meeting Morpheus, in the famous scene where Morpheus gives him a choice between taking a red pill— which will enable him to find out the truth and wake up into the world as it really is— and taking a blue pill— which will keep him safe, if still disoriented and unsatisfied, in the Matrix. Morpheus tells him:

“This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill—the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill—you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Remember: all I'm offering is the truth. Nothing more.”

There’s a whole other conversation to be had here about mirrors here, but.

The red pill, then, represents a willingness to face the realities of the world and of oneself in their fullness; the blue pill represents a choice to continue living by familiar frameworks and systems despite their hollowness. It resonates well, I think, with how red and blue are framed in OFMD: blue characters who move through the show guided by inflexible notions of how they’ve been told they Should Ideally Be; vs. red characters who see people As They Are, and truly accept and love them.

It is certainly worth mentioning here that the writers/directors of The Matrix have spoken about its being readable as a trans allegory: Lilly and Lana Wachowski are themselves trans, and in 2020 confirmed the influence of their experience on the movie. I myself am nonbinary, and watching this movie with a specifically trans lens, I was, like, hit in the chest a couple of times in the first bit— it is so very, very heavily saturated with themes of brave self-discovery, of unearthing parts of yourself you never dreamed you had within you, escaping a supposed Reality that just feels deeply wrong to you somehow, the very real fear and joy in all of that— and so many of these same themes guide many of the characters on OFMD, too: Stede, in leaving behind his old life; Ed, in transforming into a new version of himself, renaming himself (that moment is SO important to me); Jim, Pete, Lucius, all of them, all the embracing of self and others that the characters do as they fall in and out of love with one another over and over.

And finally, a word on green. Bc here’s the thing—

On the Revenge, notably (besides a few specific objects like Black Pete’s greenish vest in the first ep and Frenchie’s tie thing and Jim’s dagger etc etc) there is very little bright green. The main paint color of the ship itself is, like, a soft seafoam color, but for the purposes of this I’m saying I think that’s ~different, because past ep 1, bright or dark green seems to be reserved for land— especially as regards Stede and his marriage. When we see Stede in Barbados, it’s, like, the only time he consistently wears what I feel like is for-sure green, as in, I’m not looking at it and going hold on is that actually turquoise— his cravat at his wedding looks emerald, and his jacket/cravat in the scene directly following as he sits in his (green) living room with Mary are very decisive shades of green.

Also of note that Mary’s flowers are really green, too; this marriage is obvi a trap for her as well.

Green also comes up, unsurprisingly, when the crew is on land: in the forest at St. Augustine, and when they’re on the treasure hunt, for example, as well as with Calico Jack— but the instance that really gets me is, once again, on Barbados, with these lonely little plants right behind Stede and Mary’s very much not macabre wedding presents.

This makes me, like, honk laugh, I love this shot so much it is SO absurd

The last specific instance of That’s Definitely Green on the Revenge I’ll mention is in the lighthouse painting, just barely mixed in with the red there on the shore. Hi watercolor grass.

"What is it— a grain tower or something?”

Ok now the grand finale

I’m like, breaking out into a sweat typing this bc I was not even ten minutes into watching The Matrix the other day for this post when I was like, oh god— it’s green. The lighting, Neo’s clothes, the phones, the buildings, everything, down to the very code that makes it up the Matrix itself is green.

Literally those shots of green code are some of the opening shots of the movie. Neo also wears so much green early on in the Matrix, at the beginning before he chooses the red pill.

And my angsty little heart is having a genuine bona fide ball with this because in OFMD, green, to me, evokes Stede’s land-based familial obligations, the repression of his life, the isolation and spiritual decay that he feels in his Married State— which is emotionally so similar to how Neo feels, trapped in the Matrix. And thinking about how that little lighthouse painting is a confluence of blue and red and therefore of Stede and Ed, construct and reality, sea and emotion, and then there’s green right in the big middle of it makes me want to throw something— because, of course, even amidst all his self-discovery and the love he’s beginning to feel for Ed, the guilt and shame associated with Stede’s former life are still so present.

Bc just, like— just. If you put what the Matrix represents— believing lies about yourself that hollow you out, that clawing awful feeling of knowing you don’t and can’t fit in the world around you; a pervasive feeling of unreality, the influence of abusive, repressive social control— if you put that next to the moments in OFMD when green shows up most prominently— Stede’s wedding, the inside of Stede’s house, certain moments when the crew is on land having to face up to their lives pre-Revenge, the lighthouse painting— consider all that, and land as represented by green starts to look kind of like a Matrix, a fabricated simulation, a green world that Stede desperately wants to be free from and goes to great lengths to escape.

And the almost green-less Revenge’s little self-contained world is outside that of land, it’s literally a boat on the ocean— good time to mention that all the crewmembers on the Nebuchadnezzar, the spaceship thing in The Matrix, wear combinations of red and blue and beige, as the Revenge crew do, fun detail— so to come full circle with this, we can:

a) take Pete and his “I’m not fucking sewing, that’s women’s work” comment in the first ep: I think him wearing green while he’s still in this Toxically Masculine headspace works well here, given that toxic masculinity is a Huge part of the OFMD societal “Matrix”, if you will, that has so negatively impacted pretty much all of the crewmembers, and we can also—

b), take a good long look at the very bright, obvious green of the dagger that Jim uses before Lucius steals the Jiménez one back from Spanish Jackie.

Bout to lose my entire mind over this—

Like, I’m sorry, this is such a fun comparison because. The fact that Jim’s replacement dagger is green means that in each romantic pairing, we have an originally green-coded character (Stede, in his marriage to Mary; Jim, with this dagger; Pete, in his little green vest) who looks more and more visibly blue-coded as the limiting, restrictive rules that govern their worldviews and self-concepts become more and more apparent, both to themselves and to viewers. They start out, just as Neo did, caught in the green of the Matrix, not even knowing that their idea of reality isn’t real— but they feel restless and unsatisfied all the same; they then start, slowly and with the help of red-coded characters, to actively peel away the myths and calcified Requirements that have constrained them for their whole lives (toxic masculinity, revenge, lily-livered-little-rich-boy, etc.)— and begin to explore their actual selves— which is most obviously visually rendered, in my mind, when Stede makes the decision to go back to Ed, fakes his own death by dousing himself in pig’s blood while wearing that green suit.

What he does in that scene is literally an exit from the reality of Landed Life, like, everybody in the town just watched him die, so if we look at it through the Matrix lens— he took the red pill there, that’s what that was, it’s irreversible, he’s leaving the Matrix, he is covered in red now and he can’t ever go back— like, just. Have a side-by-side. Stede smearing blood all over his green outfit as he, once again, chooses to leave his suffocating land life behind? So that chromatically he reflects the green and red in the lighthouse painting? Don’t mind if I do.

There’s more to say about green while Stede’s back in Barbados at the end, like, when Mary wears it and what I think that means, but for your sake and mine, I’ll go ahead and pack it in here.

To finally conclude— really, this is all just another elaborate way to express the idea that being on the ship, together, represents a choice on the part of the (very textually LGBTQ) crew to split from the norms of being On Land because that world confines them as people, keeps them from truly seeing and accepting and celebrating themselves; they all, in their way, choose to leave behind false lives and be more of their real selves, guided by red-coded characters who directly represent a brave opening up to life, in all its glory and its gore.

Anyway. I don’t really feel as if anything I’m saying about the color work in OFMD is revolutionary here— no hot takes about what red or blue represent, and probably not green either— but. The Matrix parallels make me want to climb the walls, so I figured sharing is caring. This is the longest post on God's green earth so I will simply leave you with a little encouragement: if you made it all the way down here, thanks for reading, go forth and be red <3

#ofmd #ofmd meta #our flag means death #this........ is actually so extra but i had a Lot of fun writing it and so i am inflicting it upon you all. enjoy.#also those of you tagged in this absolute manifesto a) hello and thank you for your work! b) feel free to ignore if you so desire—#just giving credit where it's due!

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metvmorqhoses · 2 years

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Opinions on Ben Barnes' Dorian Gray?

The Picture of Dorian Gray is my favorite book amongst my favorite books.

It's the first book that really "showed me to myself" when I was but a child. It's the book that made me understand what a book really is. So I’m sure you understand the level of fondness I harbor for it, a fondness that prevents me from being too forgiving when it comes to cinematic adaptations.

And yet, even leaving aside my high expectations, every single movie I've ever seen has proven beyond disappointing and lacking, even more than usual. It’s very rare for movies to do justice to novels, but the depths of carelessness everyone seem to treat this particular adaptation with are really something else. The true nature of the book, its massage, its intent, its aesthetics even, are always completely amiss, or used and abused when slightly present.

The problems with The Picture’s movies are infinite and very nuanced, but to my dismay even the main, most important thing - the protagonist - is always miscast, misplayed and denaturalized.

Everyone always insists in portraying Dorian as some Victorian sort of Byronic hero, some dark haired libertine Casanova Don Juan (actually painting Dorian as they should paint Henry, but I digress), while he literally should be the incarnation of divine angelic beauty - a Lucifer before the fall (Oscar openly draws a parallel with Lucifer more than once in the novel). People cannot believe what they hear or see about Dorian because it literally doesn’t look like him, his beauty and youth are so pure and otherworldly that their minds just aren’t able to match such light with evil and vice.

Every fault that I have listed is basically what Dorian Gray is about as a movie. Overly-sexual, over-played, everyone an exaggerated bad boy (even Colin Firth’s Henry!), the plot adapted almost to an action/adventure movie, Oscar’s aphorisms thrown here and there as if they were meaningless sops, crass special effects making the portrait a rotting corpse worthy of a horror movie (worms! literal worms in the portrait! that looks like a zombie since minute one - while the corruption of the painting should be subtle, a barely visible cruel curve of the lips, a malignant spark in the eyes...) and Ben’s Dorian of course sadly riding this tide of wrongness from start to finish.

I don’t blame it on him to be honest, especially now that I have seen what he can actually do as an actor and the level of intelligence and commitment he puts in everything he does (he basically carried on his own shoulders both The Punisher and Shadow and Bone). I’m sure he would have gone the extra mile to deliver a very different and true to character Dorian if only given the chance (and even while not being the right-looking guy for the part). I blame the fault of that movie, once again, entirely on the production and the people that still believe impossible to actually adapt one of the greatest books of all time for the philosophical and artistic masterpiece that it is, believing that a bad boy, random sex and cheap gore are absolutely essential in order to make an adaptation of it digestible and cool.

An absolute disgrace.

#every new movie about the picture takes me a step nearer my villain origin story #someday i'll make a worthy one myself at this point #i love ben and idk why they are only giving him now the chance to actually shine #i believed for years he was a cheap actor because of dorian gray and prince caspian #the picture of dorian gray #oscar wilde #my favorite books #ben barnes #one and one thousand stories lis told #lucifer

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unpassive-viewer · 2 years

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Drunk Review of Into the Spiderverse

Tonight we’re eating cheese fondue and getting drunk kiddos, let’s do a deep dive (not that deep, I just finished a research paper and have no brain power left to spare) on Into the Spiderverse.

This movie, in the simplest terms, is a fucking masterpiece. I’ve seen it so many times I’ve lost count. I went into the theatre convinced it was just going to be another kid’s movie, and I ended up seeing it twice. It’s officially on the pedestal as one of my top 5 comfort movies, and I will talk about it to anyone who will listen (or pretend to).

Everything that I think about Spiderverse has already been said. The ambitious animation, the colour scheme, the character design, the repetition of themes and easter eggs... every part of this movie had love and care poured into it by the storyboard writers and animators. I was genuinely surprised to see something of this quality from a major production studio, especially considering the current theme of non-complex superhero origin stories (Shang-chi, you’re not included baby don’t worry). This was so out of the ordinary from what I’m used to, it was already set so far above just about every other Marvel and Marvel-affiliated movie that’s come out in the last 10 years.

In particular here, though, I want to talk about the character storyboards, the use of music/score in this film, and the colours. Colours seem like a very small thing to be concerned with when it comes to such an ambitious animation, but I’m genuinely obsessed with the way that the animators built scenery around the colour schemes of the characters.

First - the storyboards. Every character in this movie, despite their minimal exposition time, has an involved and important character arc. Peter B. decides he’s not afraid of having kids, Gwen decides she’s willing to try having friends, Nicholas Cage’s character who I can’t remember presently discovers colour to cut through his “morally grey” character. Even the smaller, non-spider characters are afforded genuine development. Olivia Octavius, or as her friends like to call her - Liv - is presented as a multidimensional character within an at first not incredibly obvious network of the Miles universe (Aunt May calls her Liv? Mary Jane has connections to Kingpin? Uncle Aaron works for Kingpin? Where does Miles’ Peter fall within all this? The background of this movie is incredibly complex, even though they don’t explain it in detail). I am in love with the character development that this film affords even the smallest of roles.

Secondary to the character development, but wholly related, is the theme of processing grief. I always admire films geared towards kids that deal with difficult themes like grief. I suppose you could say that’s what good animation is all about, telling the life lessons that we used to tell through fairy tales and old wives tales. I admire this film particularly for it’s appeal to kids that are nearing or in adolescence. Also, have you seen that tweet of the kid comparing himself to Miles, and the one about the bookstore employee who showed the kid Miles comics and he said something to the effect of “this superhero looks like me”? The entire movie was worth it literally just for those. Kids deserve that. Anyways. Even if you don’t internalize the “Kingpin wouldn’t process his grief and almost destroyed New York in the process vs. Miles seeking the support of his peers with similar experiences in order to heal” narrative as a kid (or an adult) it’s still an important conversation to have. It’s also incredibly artfully done.

Next! The iconic leap of faith scene! “It’s a leap of faith Miles - that’s all it is,”. As I said, I’ve seen the movie more times than I can count on my fingers - that scene still gives me goosebumps. The colour design is especially important in this scene - the whole of New York takes on Miles’ colour scheme. Every cinematic parallel of the first “leap of faith” scene, except in reverse. The “WOOOOOOO” going upwards instead of the “AAAHHHHHH” going down? Art. And oh my god, the breaking glass when he jumps? He’s still sticky, which means he’s still nervous. He’s not fearless, but he’s confident and that’s all that matters. ART. ART!! ART!!!!!

This segues into my next point - sound design. I recall reading something - couldn’t remember where if I tried - that the iconic “Sunflower” song was recorded as the film was nearing the end stages of its animation by the time the song was produced, so the intro (arguably the most important scene) was animated last. And still Post Malone was afforded his most popular song (I didn’t know that the song was made for the movie initially, I spent at least several minutes looking for the original). Every element of the score and soundtrack was expertly assembled. In particular I am continually impressed by the way that the score will blend the fight music with the most important character’s theme song. As for the leap of faith scene, that bridge couldn’t have been done better - “I like high chances that I might lose... I like tall buildings so I can leap off of them... I go hard no matter how dark it is,” that’s MILES BABY.

Since I’ve already kind of talked about my obsession with the colour palettes of this movie and I’m sufficiently drunk, I might end this review here. What I can say as a closing remark is that with absolute certainty, I learn something new about this film with every viewing. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t seen Into the Spiderverse yet, but if you haven’t I HIGHLY recommend it (an as we all know, I only consume quality cinema).

Got any thoughts about the movie? Let me know what you think. This is one of my favourite movies to discuss, if anyone has noticed something I haven’t, I am eager to hear it.

That’s all for now, pray that my hangover is not bad.

#movies #movie review #into the spider verse #miles morales #film #cinema #my writing

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nothingunrealistic · 2 years

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RIAN: Whoops. Someone’s down the Angel Heart rabbit hole.

WINSTON: I am, way down, and it is truly fucking with my sleep-wake homeostasis. When you watch it end to end, over and over again, it actually gets less clear. It starts to slither through your mind like a cinematic human centipede.

RIAN: You could, and I’m not just saying this because Mickey Rourke is, well, Mickey Rourke. Just stop watching.

WINSTON: Yeah, but I have to prove my theory that everyone is a Harry Angel or a Johnny Favorite.

RIAN: Ugh, some of us are Lisa Bonet trying to make the world forget Denise Huxtable existed.

[…]

RIAN: What was all that?

WINSTON: They’ve been living on borrowed time in another man’s memories.

RIAN: It’s just so much better when we parallel play.

—————

TAYLOR: Anyway, we can meet at my apartment at the open to organize ourselves against whatever grilling he’s going to give us.

WINSTON: We were gonna watch a movie.

TAYLOR: Angel Heart, obviously. You, too, Rian?

RIAN: I didn’t mean to get sucked into his insanity, but then I started watching, and it’s so weird and nihilistic, and I think maybe perfect. We’ve just about figured out what the fans mean. They seem to start spinning at the strangest times. But, yes, tomorrow. We’ll be there.

WINSTON: Obviously. We’re working.

—————

RIAN: I just can’t fall in love with someone I work with. And I know me, or at least I know me when this sort of situation happens, not that I’ve been in this sort of situation, but I’ve been in something where —

TAYLOR: It’s a smart choice.

WINSTON: See? I was right. Prince is Johnny Favorite. He actually knows who he is.

RIAN: You really don’t understand that movie. (Gasps) The fans. The fans are spinning when evil is present. Wow. I see it all now.

why was this not all the setup for rian hooking up with winston instead. it would have made a thousand times more sense than what we actually got

#like! we got a progression from them doing things separately to rian getting drawn into what winston's doing! the payoff is right there!#billions #6x10 #rian billions #winston billions #taylor mason #riawin

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fantasticallyfoolishidea · 4 years

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So, bath scenes. Amirite?

The Witcher fandom is quite blessed. Over the course one season, the showrunners decided to gift us with not one but two scenes of Henry Cavill, naked in a bathtub, two episodes in a ro-

Wait a minute.

Two back-to-back episodes featuring drawn out bath scenes that go on for 2-3 minutes each. That's a lot of time to dedicate to fanservice when you only have 8 episodes to get your point across. Unless, of course… No. They wouldn't. Or would they?

I re-watched these scenes more times than I care to admit. For science. They’re interesting for numerous of reasons (Henry Cavills’ pecs being only two of them). But you know what’s even more interesting? Some sexy, sexy cinematic and narrative parallels and contrasts.

(Obligatory linebreak for your protection. You thought I went overboard analysing Her Sweet Kiss? This is worse. If you’re on mobile – I apologise. Now’s the time to scroll fast. It’ll take longer than you’re expecting, trust me. I’m sorry.)

Bath in “Of Banquets, Bastards and Burials” Bath in “Bottled Appetites” Please excuse the terrible of the second clip. It’s the only one I could find that had the whole scene in it.

First things first,

the setting

The scene in “Of Banquets, Bastards and Burials” takes place in an inn. The room is dark. Throughout the scene you can hear chatter from the bar. Candles are the only visible light source, although, at the beginning of the scene you can see more light coming in through what’s presumably a window outside the shot. Due to the lighting, the majority of the room has a noticeably blue tint, except for the cabinets on each side of the room where most of the candles are placed. Apart from the cabinets, the bathtub Geralt is sitting in is the only area that’s properly illuminated.

The room itself seems big enough, although we only get to see the bathing area which is separated from the rest of the room by blue curtains, but due the way the scene is shot – frequent close ups of the actors, wider shots frequently partially blocked by the curtains – it appears smaller than it actually is. Geralt stands out against the background due to his skin appearing orange in the candle light; in wider shots he usually appears centred.

In contrast, Jaskier moves from one side of the room to the other a lot and doesn’t remain in either light source for long. Unlike Geralt’s skin, the colour of his clothes matches the background. This is somewhat unusual because in many of his scenes Jaskier and his colourful outfits tend to stick out like a sore thumb – the red outfit in “Rare Species” probably the most visually distracting out of the bunch – but in this scene, the exact opposite happens. Whenever Jaskier’s not the focus of the shot he frequently fades into the background or even gets obstructed by the curtains.

(While I’d love to add visual references for every single point I touch upon, honestly, the amount of editing that’d require is astronomical. Jokes on me though, because it already is. Watching the scenes should give you a better idea of what I’m talking about, though. Also, full disclosure, screenshots and gifs had their brightness an colours altered slightly for better visibility.)

Now, on the other hand, we have the room inside the mayor’s house, which – while also dimly lit by candlelight – appears open and spacious. Due to the candles, the room appears tinged only in colours on the orange/yellow spectrum. No curtains to obstruct parts of the shot, and unlike the inn, this room has got visible windows one of which sits behind Geralt. That window in particular lets in a stream of blue light that, in wider shots, often appears to frame either Geralt alone or both, Geralt and Yennefer. However, the blue light remains behind the characters, neither Geralt nor Yennefer are ever directly illuminated by it.

Why is she going on and on about the lighting you might ask? It’s because there’s basically a whole science to colour theory, colour grading, and the ways they’re used in visual media. It’s one of the reasons why, for example, Guillermo del Toro movies are always such goddamn feasts for the eyes. TV Tropes also has a page dedicated to it, if you wanna get a rough idea of what’s going on here.

Both bath scenes in the Witcher (2019) are gorgeous examples of colour grading and set design. You can tell that a whole lot of thought went into it. “Bottled Appetites” even takes it a step further, carrying the orange/blue colour scheme over into the next scene and directly contrasting the bed frame that’s bathed in amber light with the blue windows it’s framed by.

Fun fact, while colour grading can be used to give colours that certain “pop”, you can also achieve the exact opposite effect. See how washed out and grey Jaskier and his blue clothes appear on the orange bedding in this shot? It becomes even more apparent later on in the scene.

He might as well be one of the pillows for the way his clothes make your eyes just kinda slip over him. Honestly, I wanna marry whoever was in charge of doing colour correction on the Witcher. That person is a fucking artist. I’ll get back to the matter of colours and backgrounds in a minute. For now, let’s talk about

body positioning

Or in other words, yet another reason I’d sell my immortal soul to directors Alex Garcia Lopez and Charlotte Brändström.

One thing the scenes have in common (apart from the copious amounts of eye candy) is that Geralt remains mostly stationary at the centre throughout the scene. Jaskier moves around a lot. He dries his hands behind Geralt, moves in front of him to fiddle with the bath salts, sits down next to Geralt, sets Geralt’s mug down on the cabinet behind him and only stops his continuous back and forth motion when the conversation takes a turn for the serious and he settles down in front of Geralt.

Yennefer, on the other hand, starts off at Geralt’s right hand side, slightly to the back of him. She briefly lies down, stands up, and moves to Geralt’s left while taking off her gown. Same as the other scene, Yennefer settles down as the conversation is about to grow more serious. However, unlike Jaskier, Yennefer is far less restless, once she’s moved to Geralt’s left she settled down and doesn’t get up again.

What’s really interesting about this scene is that throughout the entirety of their interaction, Yennefer and Geralt never look at each other at the same time. They both alternate between staring off into the distance with varying degrees of wistfulness and/or melancholia and turning to look at the other. But their eyes never quite meet, not even when Geralt turns around in surprise after Yennefer says she won’t be taking any payment. The conversation ends with Geralt abruptly getting up and out of the tub and Yennefer turning around to watch him leave (dry up? get dressed? who knows what he’s getting up to in that moment). Notably, when the shot focuses on Yennefer alone in the tub, a significant portion of the room that previously appeared mostly orange suddenly is tinted almost all blue.

However, where eye contact is conspicuously absent in the scene in “Bottled Appetites”, it’s a vital component of the scene in “Of Banquets, Bastards and Burials”. Eye contact is a significant part of Geralt and Jaskiers communication. Mainly because Geralt spends a significant amount time sending glares Jaskier’s way with Jaskier paying him varying amounts of mind, even poking fun at his “scary face” when the opportunity presents itself. Jaskier is all over the place in every sense of the word. His attention is divided between Geralt, the bath, the banquet, etc. before it eventually turns back to Geralt and the whole cycle begins anew. The shift in conversation, from the banquet to Geralt, coincides with a shift in Jaskier’s behaviour. He stops moving around the room and his attention settles on Geralt. He then kneels down and holds Geralt’s gaze until Geralt abruptly switches the subject.

Look at the screencaps above. See how, even in a screencap, the lighting is capable of creating an entire visual narrative all by itself? Yennefer and Geralt are sitting in the water together with their backs to each other in a room full of orange light but their immediate surroundings are tinted blue. Jaskier and Geralt are facing each other directly but despite the orange light surrounding him Jaskier appears shadowed as he kneels in front of the tub while Geralt who is sitting inside the tub glows orange against a blue background.

There’s a metaphor hiding somewhere in that juxtaposition but I can’t quite put my finger on it yet.

edit 12/01/20: I actually got a submission from odense who elaborated on the blocking of the scenes from a theatrical perspective. Go read it for even more meta on the bath scenes.

Anyway, moving on. Next on my list is

the matter of service

What, no more Film Studies for Fandom 101, I hear you ask? Well. Originally, I wanted this part to be about the conversation as a whole but that would’ve gone on for too long (ha! too long, she says like that means anything) so I divided it.

Both scenes deal with the performance of service in one way or another. Jaskier is trying to convince Geralt to act as his bodyguard for a night, while Geralt asked Yennefer to break the djinn’s curse and they’re still settling the matter of payment.

In a way, you could look at both scenes as very, very unusual forms of negotiation. Jaskier may spend a lot of time talking about himself but his actions are almost all focused on Geralt. He douses him with water, “rubbed chamomile onto his lovely bottom” at some point (decide for yourself what you wanna make of that statement), prepares the bath salts for Geralt’s bath, and – also at some point – arranged for Geralt’s clothes to be washed. All throughout the scene, he’s performing a variety of services. He’s taking care of Geralt, whether Geralt likes it or not, and does so like it’s the most natural thing in the world, to the point where it just kinda comes across like more of Jaskier’s usual antics and theatrics.

Geralt may claim he needs no one and doesn’t want anyone needing him but there is some form of reciprocity in their relationship – big things like the shared adventures and the ballads about which made both of them famous in their own right, but then there are the little things like drawing your friend a bath, or watching his back at a banquet so he doesn’t get stabbed by a jealous husband, which Geralt eventually agrees to do despite all of his grumbling and glaring protests.

Which is one of the reasons “And yet... here we are.” is such a brilliant line. Just from this context, you could read it in a number of ways. Jaskier could be calling Geralt out on his bullshit like, e.g. “You might not like it, but yeah, you do need me and I need you.” or he could be asking him to make a decision, e.g. “I know you don’t like it but I really do need your help. What will you do?” or it could be an affirmation, e.g. “I know you didn’t want it but somehow we still ended up here.” etc., etc. And you might have guessed, there’s still more to come regarding this line. Later.

So while Jaskier’s scene is about getting Geralt to perform a service, Yennefer’s scene is about figuring out the cost of the service Geralt asked of her in the previous scenes. Where the first bath scene was about persuasion, this one is about payment. The initial negotiation has already happened, the service been rendered, what’s left to do is figure out the price. And Geralt already offered to pay whatever the price.

Since Geralt seems intent on honouring his promise, that creates a bit of a power imbalance between Yennefer and Geralt at the start of the scene because Yennefer could ask for whatever she wanted, Geralt even brings up that he’s worried about “having agreed to indentured servitude”. (That being said, he does not seem too bothered by current the situation or Yennefer’s company. Quite the opposite, he actually seems quite comfortable talking to her.)

Aside from the payment they haven’t agreed on yet, Geralt’s also got a second promise to make good on since he initially offered Yennefer to “indulge her curiosities” (take that however you will). It’s quite apparent that Geralt is a lot more forthcoming with his thoughts and emotions (actually, his words in general) with Yennefer than he is with Jaskier. In Yennefer’s scene, she and Geralt talk about equal amounts whereas in the other scene Jaskier mostly carries the conversation by himself while Geralt reacts.

However, Jaskier also reaches out where Yennefer keeps to herself. She occasionally teasingly bumps her back against Geralt’s as she’s washing herself but other than that she makes an effort to keep out of sight, even magically turning away a mirror to hide herself, whereas Jaskier touches, quite literally gets all up in Geralt’s “scary face” and just generally repeatedly puts himself in Geralt’s line of sight going so far as to kneel down until they’re at eye level.

Despite the matter of coin coming up repeatedly (mostly in the form of harmless teasing about brothels and prostitution, but also on a more serious way when Geralt accuses her of making a profit off the townspeople), Yennefer eventually decides not to ask Geralt for anything in return for saving Jaskier’s life, determining his “company and conversation payment enough”.

Interestingly, in the scene preceding the bath in “Of Banquets, Bastards and Burials” Jaskier also broaches the topic of coin as he’s setting up to ask Geralt for help. In a sense, Jaskier initially attempts to use that thing about reciprocity I brought up earlier to convince Geralt to do him a favour. He lectures Geralt on his role in making him famous and that he should be making money off their arrangement in an attempt to make the favour he’s about to ask off Geralt seem irrelevant in comparison, like “Look at everything I’ve done for you. Please do this tiny little thing for me.” Obviously, that approach doesn’t work. The (un)holy trinity of “food, women and wine, Geralt”, on the other hand, seems to do the trick. Or maybe it’s the bath and a heart-to-heart. Kind of like Geralt’s company and conversation were payment enough for Yennefer?

While we’re still on the matter of conversation, let’s talk about one of the components that make up part of the emotional core of the scenes. Let’s talk about

the matter of past and future

Geralt has lived a long, long life and its history is written on his body in a web of scars. What struck me is how differently the bath scenes deal with those scars.

With Yennefer, the scars are on full display. She notices and scrutinises them as someone seeing Geralt naked for the first time can be expected to. The scars on his shoulders and back are placed front and centre of the shot several times.

In contrast, with Jaskier, you, as a viewer, barely notice the scars. Most of the time they’re simply not visible to the camera. They’re never in the foreground of the shot and you never even get to see Geralt’s back. The scar on Geralt’s shoulder that Yennefer noticed could easily be mistaken for remnants of dead selkiemore. There’s only one moment that draws attention to the scarred shoulder and that’s when Jaskier pats it as he’s getting up to put away Geralt’s mug of ale.

Again, I feel like there’s a metaphor hiding somewhere in there but what do I know?

Back to the point. While Geralt and Yennefer are talking in the bathtub it immediately becomes obvious that they have a connection. They’ve both had unhappy childhoods, lived long lives and as Yennefer points out Geralt was “created by magic. Our magic.” They have an understanding that quickly let’s you forget that they’re virtual strangers at this point in the Witcher canon.

In the other scene, Jaskier and Geralt have known each other for quite a while already, yet the conversation seems to be restricted to superficial topics at first, mainly Jaskier’s prowess as bard and lover. However, Jaskier unwittingly steers the conversation in a more serious direction when he asks Geralt about retirement, what he wants to do when “all this... monster hunting nonsense” is over and done with.

So far, there’s a pattern in the show that when Jaskier talks to Geralt about serious matters, he starts making plans for the future. After the incident with the elves in Posada he promises to work hard to change Geralt’s reputation. In the infamous scene in “Rare Species” he’s trying to figure out what to do with his own future and offers Geralt to go to the coast with him. Here, in this scene, he’s trying to work out what Geralt wants from his future. Even if Geralt claims to want nothing.

At that point, Jaskier’s already made good on his promise to change the public tune about Geralt. The people in the beginning of the episode are talking about the White Wolf, not the Butcher of Blaviken, which makes for such an interesting parallel when paired with Yennefer’s comment about “Our magic”.

Yennefer’s magic created the Witcher; Jaskier’s song created the White Wolf.

Which, in all frankness, would be a good point to end this post but what’s the point of doing anything if you’re not gonna overdo it? I said the matter of past and future makes up part of the emotional core of the bath scenes. So there must be other parts of that supposed emotional core, right? Of course, there’s still

the matter of want and need

While discussing Geralt’s lack of retirement plan, Jaskier and Geralt keep tossing the word “want” back and forth. Jaskier tries to find out what Geralt wants; Geralt rebuffs him, he wants nothing; Jaskier turns it around on him by saying, well, maybe someone will want you. You could, of course, read that as your run-of-the-mill “just wait, the right person will come along (and that person might just so happen to be me – if you’re wearing shipping goggles)” shtick but the thing is, that’s the kind of reply you usually offer someone who’s bemoaning the fact that they’re single, the exact opposite of what Geralt is doing, and Jaskier strikes me as someone who’s emotionally intelligent enough to know that wouldn’t work on Geralt. I think Jaskier might be very literal when he’s saying “Maybe someone out there will want you.” As in, “even if you want nothing, maybe someone who wants you will come along (and that person might just so happen to be me – again, if you’re wearing shipping goggle).” But Geralt changes strategies and rebuffs him again, he needs no one. And the last thing he wants is someone needing him.

What’s interesting about this bit is the body language. I mentioned Jaskier and Geralt communicating a lot via eye contact. And Geralt is looking at Jaskier quite intently right up until Jaskier kneels down in front of him as he’s saying “Maybe someone out there will want you.” The camera cuts to Geralt and he’s looking off to the side while he says “I want no one.” Then, a pronounced pause follows before he turns to look Jaskier directly in the eye as he finishes, “And the last thing I want is someone needing me.” (I really want to say that this looks so much like he’s warning Jaskier to reconsider whatever he’s building up to say. But alas, that’s just fantasy.) The camera cuts away again and we see that Jaskier’s now looking down behind his clasped hands before looking up and answering “And yet... here we are.” Geralt acknowledges his answer with one of his famed “Hm”s. Then, he immediately changes the subject to the whereabouts of his clothes which Jaskier sent away to be washed.

In the other scene, Geralt and Yennefer breach the topic of “want” and “need” while talking about coin. Geralt claims she’s profiting off the political situation, whereas Yennefer claims she’s working in the interest of the people, “filling a need. Ever heard of it?” Which, yes, Geralt has, literally one episode ago, and he pulls a face that’s simply beyond words. (btw, kudos to Henry Cavill for cramming like five different emotions into one expression.)

Geralt and Jaskier had an entire conversation about how Geralt wants nothing and needs nobody. Jaskier even references that conversation when he yells at Geralt while they’re arguing over the djinn. “You always say you want nothing from life, so how was I supposed to know you wanted three wishes all to yourself!” he screams.

(Also, upon rewatching that scene, I literally just realised that Jaskier was drinking at the beginning of the scene. Combine that with the fact that he repeatedly brings up the Countess de Stael, and flat out states he’s currently heartbroken, and yeah, that explains a lot about his comparatively sour mood and short temper; also, why his speech comes across as much more chaotic than usual. Seriously, compare it to the way he speaks to Geralt after he’s gutted the selkiemore. He talks a lot in both – ok, Jaskier always does – but in the selkiemore scene, or basically any scene that isn’t the djinn scene, his diction is eloquent, artistic, florid; in the djinn scene, it’s all over the place, repetitive, and often bordering on the nonsensical. Frankly, you could probably make a whole post about that scene by itself. I’ll get back to that some other day.)

(Also, am I implying that Jaskier seems bitter over the fact that Geralt apparently keeps telling him he wants nothin from life? ...Yesn’t. Hard to pretend I’m not wearing shipping goggles when I’m literally almost 4000 words deep into a meta post. But remember, nothing but speculation!)

Anyway, and now there’s Yennefer broaching the subject, asking him if he’s ever heard of “filling a need”.

The conversation carries on until Geralt is blindsided by Yennefer telling him that his company and conversation are payment enough. He whirls around but Yennefer isn’t looking at him so he hurriedly gets out of the bath. In the next scene, he emerges with a new set of clothes he doesn’t like, which his companion from the previous scene procured for him. Now why does that feel familiar?

In conclusion...

honestly, I don’t even know where I was going with this originally. This started off as a joke but then things inevitably escalated and now I’m really tired and I wanna go to sleep. (Also, the whole djinn thing is giving me feels now which kinda puts a dampener on the humour in the episode. Jaskier’d already been having a bad day and things just. Keep. Getting. Worse. Ugh, my heart.) But I feel like this post needs a proper conclusion.

I feel like, in the context of these scenes Jaskier and Yennefer could be seen as foils to each other? They’re two of the few people Geralt lets close, very close, actually, since getting naked in front of someone is frequently equated with showing vulnerability to someone. In a lot of ways, Jaskier and Yennefer’s roles work in ways that are the exact opposite of that of the other. Jaskier tries to be seen where Yennefer wants to remain hidden, yet Jaskier gets obscured by the environment while Yennefer is exposed. Jaskier is asking Geralt for a favour, Yennefer did Geralt a favour; Jaskier insists on taking care of Geralt where Yennefer gives him space. Yennefer sees Geralt’s past, Jaskier his future. Jaskier touches the scar but doesn’t look, Yennefer looks but doesn’t touch. But both find a way to scratch at the emotional walls that Geralt’s put up and both times Geralt reacts by immediately trying to escape the situation. Both times, he ends up wearing clothes he doesn’t like in the following scene.

Speaking about nudity and emotional vulnerability, maybe that’s kind of part of the conclusion as well? Sorta? Especially, since Geralt seems to start looking for his clothes or for a way out of the tub the moment someone gets too close. Furthermore, afterwards, he never seems comfortable in the clothes he’s been given, which you could read as a metaphor of sorts, I guess? Like something inside Geralt getting knocked loose in the conversation with his companion and Geralt consequently having to arrange himself with an uncomfortable truth in the aftermath? Does that make sense? Have we finally reached the point where I’m getting too cerebral? Or did we sail past that point like 4000 words ago? God, my brain hurts.

#the witcher #the witcher netflix #geralt of rivia #yennefer of vengerberg #jaskier #geralt x jaskier #geraskier #geralt x yennefer #gerlion #fantastically foolish literary analysis #this might take the crown as dumbest idea i ever saw through #i have written college essays shorter than this #how do people 'enjoy' things casually?#i mean #if you haven't written at least half a thesis' worth of meta about a show #can you honestly say you've watched it?#somebody commented 'op your galaxy brain' on that post about Her Sweet Kiss #i've been trying to see how much further i can push it ever since #this is it #this is as far as my brain'll take me #now it's fried #just waiting to see how long it'll take for someone to go #'welp'#'looks like she's finally gone off her rocker'#'nothing we can do now'#god i miss livejournal #tumblr really isn't cut out for posts of this length #this might be the longest post i've ever written #i just realised that the fact that i can honestly say 'might be' is kind of concerning

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adamwatchesmovies · 2 years

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The Notebook (2004)

Detractors will call The Notebook clichéd and predictable. Fans (including myself) will embrace the familiar elements and point out the strong performances and the on-screen chemistry between the leads. You’ve seen some of what this romantic drama has to offer before but this movie pulls all of those elements together and hits it out of the park.

At a nursing home, Duke (James Garner) reads a story from his notebook to a fellow resident (Gena Rowlands). Set in the 1940s, it follows Noah Calhoun (Ryan Gosling) and Allie Hamilton (Rachel McAdams), the summer love affair that brings them together, their separation, and their insatiable longing while apart.

I’ll admit some of the big scenes feel a little forced. Passionate kisses in the rain, parallel stories with the nursing home patients and the couple in the notebook, unfulfilled love like the one here, are more cinematic than realistic… but they work. It's Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams. You want them to get together. When they’re next to each other, the sparks are tangible. Even when they argue, you can tell there’s something special present. When she catches his eyes, you remember what it was like when you met that special person. When he convinces her to go out with him, it’s like the first time your significant other said “Yes” to you. The film is unabashedly romantic and knows it. The objective is to make your heart swell and keep you guessing. Not whether or not they’ll get together, but how and when. It’s the meeting of your expectations and the payoff that makes this picture soar.

Sure Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling are treats for the eyes, but we all know we’ll eventually wind up as wrinkly old bags, which is why the film's wraparound story is so important. The Notebook assures us that life won’t end the minute you spot a grey hair. The period setting also helps bolster the romance. There’s something about the people of this time before. Their shyness, the way a first date’s climax might be the holding of hands or a single kiss. It asks you to be patient as the people involved slowly come together, going on many dates to truly discover themselves as a couple. Just like slasher films are best set before 1983 when cell phones came and ruined it all, romantic dramas get a solid boost by taking place in times we're nostalgic for; when seeing a woman’s ankle was scandalous and real men had to work with their hands out in the sun, their muscles glistening with sweat.

The picture resists the urge to introduce a villain, which is a relief. The obstacles are people who try their best and life, which often disagrees with our premade plans. In a world where people do wind up alone, where good guys lose in the end and some love goes unfulfilled, this couple’s passion is incendiary, a blazing testament to first love that ends on the perfect note.

Even the most cynical audience members - the kind who scoff at the idea of waiting for that one girl/guy for years - won’t be able to deny the picture's charms. When you’re in the mood for a sweet/sappy love story, you’ve gotta go with The Notebook. Nothing else will do. (On DVD, December 9, 2016)

#TheNotebook #movies #films #MovieReviews #FilmReviews #NickCassavetes #JeremyLeven #NicholasSparks #JanSardi #RyanGosling #RachelMcAdams #JamesGarner #GenaRowlands #JamesMarsden #KevinConnolly #SamShepard #JoanAllen #2004movies #2004films

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dr-nero-is-god · 3 years

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i felt the urge to riff on the hive streams for a little bit since discussion came up on the hive discord, namely, holding issue with the idea that the alpha stream is inconsistent in that it is about leadership when otto is the only leader, and that it’s also possible that the alphas are just kids with specialized skills, and not actually bonded by any particular unifying element.

and, in response, @vulpix-sinistre brought up a quote from the abridged hive fanfic, that goes something like: “there are four streams: main characters, stereotypical bullies, ?, and nerds.”

and i disagree with the first two ideas, but almost completely agree with the abridged fic quote. that is pretty much how the streams work, and it is IMPORTANT that that is how the streams work.

in the end, you may conclude that the streams system still doesn’t make sense. you won’t be like “well clearly dr. nero was just logically dividing the labor of his students to reflect a specialized training program” because it’s more complicated on that. i hate to do this to y’all, but a lot of everything streams-related requires an out-of-book explanation to get where you’re going, but i can promise that i will at least try to go

first, let’s think about why h.i.v.e. would have streams at all

on the one hand, it’s inescapable to consider that one primary reason that hive has streams is because harry potter had houses, and for the same reason that percy jackson had cabins, the 39 clues had branches, hunger games had sections (or counties, idk), divergent had factions, and so on and so on. the rise of fandom spaces on the internet was concurrent with a big ya/mg boom in the post-2005 world (after twilight was published), and within those fandom spaces it became important to identify with an aspect of the fantasy world as part of your personality. that became a very marketable thing for a while, and so separating children into streams would, to a publisher, seem like a pretty solid storytelling choice.

however! the alpha stream is not the same as gryffindor house. on the one hand, it seems easy to make an alpha/gryffindor and henchman/slytherin parallel, because one group is good (relatively) and one is bad (or at least antagonistic). but it doesn’t work because while slytherin has a reputation for constituents of poor moral character (which has been largely revised in fanon), being a henchman is where you go, according to the books, if you are unintelligent and burly. it’s not a really sexy stream, is what i’m trying to say. and though there are undoubtedly some readers who would look at the henchman stream and see themselves, i think the majority of readers would likely find the henchman stream a completely undesirable stream to be in.

and, given how little importance the role of streams have after the first book, i will go out on a limb and say that mark walden knows that the henchman stream is unsexy. we aren’t interested in the hopes and dreams and motivations of the henchman stream; as we learn in book two, the ideal henchman is weak-minded and easily led—so what dreams would they even have? this leads me to conclude that while mark walden might have sold h.i.v.e. on the “there are personality-based groups in the school!” idea, he had something completely else in mind when he started writing and that, I think, is actually far more interesting.

but really, why would h.i.v.e. have streams at all

a few things about mark walden: 1) he studied english lit in school, 2) he has a background as a video game producers, and 3) he likes james bond. i know the first two things because i have read his bio and i know the third thing because i have read his books in conjunction with seeing all the james bond films. so we will call 1-3 facts.

if you are wondering what a lit degree, video game production, and the james bond franchise all have in common, then let me connect those dots: all three of those things depend heavily on the study and understanding of repetitive structure in storytelling as an interpreter and creator of meaning. each one of these fields requires an understanding of how stories and words work to create meaning in order to be successful.

and, to quote mr. walden here directly (sourced from this here link):

“So, I was playing with this cat one day and it got me thinking that those old-school Bond villains always just seemed to appear out of thin air with very little back story and that got me thinking about how they became world- conquering megalomaniacs in the first place. It was only a short mental walk from there to HIVE.”

so, imagine you’re a writer trying to tell a story about a school for villains like those in james bond—you’ve studied storycraft and you have a lot of experience in a job finding believable and compelling obstacles for people to interact with in video games. you have noticed patterns. and you need to make those patterns work for you.

enter: streams

i have watched all the james bond movies (all of ‘em) (i mean it) (just not the unreleased one yet lol) and you know what?

there’s probably just about four kinds of villains in those movies.

henchmen include the likes of jaws, oddjob, and tee hee. often physically disabled in a cinematically interesting way, these guys are the muscles and the machines in every bond film. they are the ones who tail bond as he takes long train rides and who try to personally throw him into shark tanks. they are the hands and feet of their evil masters and they don’t have a lot of emotional depth or backstory.

politicians/financiers abound in the james bond franchise because he is a government employee who often hangs out with other government employees (he has no friends). these people are like colonel rosa klebb, georgi koskov, prince kamal khan. there are a lot more, as a matter of fact, because the whole point of james bond is that they are in the cold war and even people without titles have political and financial motivations for screwing around with stuff. these types of villains depend on being well and truly embedded in an existing infrastructure or hierarchy, somebody who worked their way up from being a foot soldier or clerk into a powerful leadership position that gives them a lot of state-sanctioned trust and authority.

technicians and inventors include folks like henry gupta and boris grishenko, who use technology as their primary weapon. they are often inventors or innovators and are really good at making high-tech stuff. however, i think this stream is also a direct result of the character Q, someone who is actually on James Bond’s team and who runs an entire department of people who test sometimes outlandish gadgets for Bond to use in the field. (but we love the gadgets. they are fun.) in other words, Bond arguably has a technical stream at his disposal in MI6, which means the idea isn’t necessarily evil, but, likewise, our James Bond School also needs Qs. it’s the rules. if you are familiar with Q from James Bond at all then you understand

and that leaves us with alphas... the “supervillains.” these are the famous ones. dr. no. mr. big. scaramanga. le chiffre. blofeld. max zorin. emilio largo. goldfinger. these are the ones with the master plan, the dreams to recreate the world as they see it, the passion to see their desires to fulfillment and the resources to make them happen. they are rich. they are fancy. they are larger than life. is it weird that karl stromberg tries to incite a nuclear war between Britain and the USSR so that a lot of people can die so that he can colonize the ocean? yes. but by god, it’s fancy and dramatic, and that’s what counts.

are there other kinds of villains? oh, definitely. lots more. but you have to understand, that those kinds of villains generally don’t appear in Bond. sometimes! but it’s not a staple. for example, not many people in the bond films are motivated by revenge because each movie is kind of designed to function as a one-shot. villains don’t come back and so there is no revenge. the villain who gets the most notable reprise, jaws, actually ends up finding his true love in space.

compare: every movie is going to have henchmen. every movie has government stooges making morally questionable decisions. (almost) every movie has Q, or some gadget stuff going on. and every movie has a big bad that has to be better than the last.

so that explains why the streams are what they are.

it was a jumping-off point for mark walden to figure out what this universe might look like and how different character types need to function. consider that while the core four are all alphas and are kind of insulated as a group, the teachers all kind of roughly align with one of these groups. colonel francisco, raven, and chief lewis are henchmen types, doing on-the-ground work to get stuff done. ms. tennenbaum and the contessa are political af, they are all about the corruption and infiltrating institutional power. ms. gonzales, ms. leon, and professor pike all have technical skills that help keep an organization moving forward. and over them all is the singular alpha, dr. nero, who is coordinating and monitoring it all for his own evil plan: to run a high school.

honestly, dr. nero’s hive idea operates just like a james bond villain plot! it works, or it does when pitching the idea. the problem is that the books continued after the pitch did, and with worldbuilding came some complications. namely, the fact that the megastructure of james bond villainy does not replicate well into a small friend group on which the narration focuses. so let’s return to the question presented at the beginning:

how can alphas really be alphas when not everyone on the field trip can be a mastermind?

i’m gonna give this to you in two ways. one, the way i personally interpret it as an in-universe explanation, given the background premises we have already established. and the other, why the stream system kind of ruins the structure it sets out to create.

so, for me, the alphas can be alphas because there is more to villainy than being a mastermind and there is more to being a mastermind than being in charge. as i think about it, this novelization is actually the backstory for every one of the students, who will go on to do great and scary things. they will manage big projects and come up with interesting ways to terrorize the British government, because that is what James Bond villains do (and James Bond does canonically exist in their universe). much like your actual teenage years, this is not the main event.

as students, the core four need to learn to do a little bit of everything. you gotta learn some lock-picking, that’s essential. everyone has to be able to climb a rock wall. it’s the rules. and everyone needs to be able to do some programming. that’s just the way school is. though everyone has a different personality and a different way of looking at the world, their education has to cover the basics because the fact of the matter is, none of them are villains yet. will they become one? that remains to be seen. but they are being given the tools to become the greatest villains if that is something they choose.

the main problem that remains when holding this attitude is that the specialized skills of otto and his friends might be better suited to other streams, in which case, what is an alpha anyways?

here’s the facts: if everyone were assigned to a stream by talent, then there wouldn’t be an alpha stream.

franz? political/financial stream.

nigel? laura? otto? technical stream.

shelby? wing? henchman stream.

you can debate me on the specifics of those assignments, but the point is this: all the other streams are based on hard skills. franz can manage a ledger and that is a financial skill. laura can build a computer from scratch and that is a technical skill. wing can do martial arts, and each martial art is a physical skill that can be taught and performed in a measurable level of proficiency.

the idea of being a “mastermind” is a much softer skill—which is to say, there’s no one recipe that will make it work. my manager at work has coached me by saying that leadership is often about having a “style,” and working at it that way. leadership requires interpersonal flexibility, being able to stay organized and to make important decisions rapidly, it is about being able to prioritize and delegate. and it’s very much open to interpretation, every day, all the time.

let me tell you something else about james bond: there is a lot of classism, racism, and sexism embedded into every aspect of those films, but that goes for double when it comes to the villains in the show. to vastly oversimplify that very concept, it shows up in the bond films like this: henchmen are working class folks, the villainous equivalent of “the help,” and the supervillains are (usually) rich and glamorous and powerful. henchmen are uneducated (read as: stupid) and ugly and poor. no one cares if they die. (there’s more complexities, as always, but this essay isn’t actually about james bond so we’ll fast forward through My Opinions to the end)

the problem with replicating james bond in your villain school universe is that some of the biases of the james bond universe get replicated in there, too. poor and uneducated folks get turned into disposable henchmen whose lives are irrelevant. people who are educated and talented get fast-tracked to a more glamorous and interesting stream that will catapult them to the top of the ladder as soon as they graduate. if you look at the dialect with which block and tackle are written, they are clearly meant to be seen as a different social class than otto, despite the fact that otto is coming from basically nothing. and we understand that when otto graduates, he will be able to do basically anything that he wants to at all.

so, if you’re asking why wing has a role in the alpha stream when he doesn’t seem as leader-y as otto, there’s a simple answer: because dr. nero believes that wing can be more.

the climax of book one is dr. nero explicitly telling otto, wing, laura, and shelby that they are in his school because he believes in them and he wants to see them grow. they are given an elite status other students do not have despite the fact that they have just literally tried to escape. as we see in the case of duncan cavendish, the main way to get on that highway to a guaranteed career is to convince him that you’ve “got it.” for those who are not believed in, there is no way to make up for the special grooming. you’re stuck with the stream you’re placed in, doomed (perhaps) to be a second-in-command at best.

is all this intentional? probably not. but it is implicit in the structure of the story and, alas, that’s the way it is.

all i can think to say in conclusion is that while the stream system tends to replicate some of the unfair and classist realities present in other media and the world we live in, i think part of the reason we read h.i.v.e. is because the alpha stream is so appealing. imagine! you are competent and you have a desirable, specialized skill as well as a proficiency in many general skills and you are certain you are going to do good things—and all because someone believes in you. to receive someone else’s support and confidence can be life-changing. the magic of h.i.v.e. is that yes—lives are changed and ordinary, boring people were elevated to the level of supervillains. we are only left to wonder, are they the only people who deserved that honor?

#meta #spoilers #streams #alpha #henchman #political/financial #technical stream #technical #james bond #hive #h.i.v.e.#higher institute of villainous education #the higher institute of villainous education #otto malpense #max nero #streams post #musings

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dappercritter · 3 years

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RANDOM THOUGHTS ON THE GVK TRAILER, BOYEEE:

OHOHOHfgghlghakdhglkjgfdlkhLFKCJDSogflHSGFOIHRSFKHGHHEHEHHEEHEHEHEHEHEHEEEEEEEEEEE

Right, so I’m excited

Well, starting with Godzilla since I am a huge Godzilla fanboy (a little known fact which I’m sure my follower base has been largely unaware up until now, I’m sure) I am both anxious and excited at the prospect of Godzilla taking on an antagonistic role, although I’m sure that’s only part of the story.

As many kaiju fans have pointed out, there are some definite Gamera 3 parallels where the once heroic guardian kaiju seemingly turning against humanity, likely because of an imbalance in nature and then another group in oppostion to him summons an old rival kaiju in an attempt to stop him. Fascinating. (Also watch Shusuke Kaneko’s Gamera trilogy, it slaps.)

Also, an antagonistic Monsterverse Godzilla who’s got it out for humanity is another concept we kaiju fans have long been waiting for, including me. But I’m very much wary of just where this will go. I’m hoping they don’t outright villify him just for the sake of justifying his conflict with Kong. (That and between Shin-Godzilla and the Godzilla Earth trilogy I feel like we got a decent antagonist godzilla fix.)

(Well maybe not decent in the Earth trilogy’s case.)

Although Mechagodzilla or not, I can definitely understand his reasons for going after humanity. (The COVID disaster, the ever present dangers of pollution, rampant corruption and amorality on every level of society, writing in hollywood these days, youtube ads...)

Now for Kong, I’m actually pleasantly surprised! Quite plesantly surprised! I love how much heart they’re putting into his portrayal and all the updates they’ve given him to stand a chance against Godzilla. Sure the ancient kaiju ax is cool, but I’m quite delighted by his new child friend/adoptive daughter. A welcome change of pace from kidnapping women that warms the heart.

I love the entire set-up of the aircraft carrier fight. The whole thing feels like it’s made of hype and it even feel surprisingly plausible. Everything from the sight of Kong in chains to how Godzilla’s whole entrance tips you off to something being wrong (e.g. him cutting through a ship with his plates, as opposed to casually dodging it). Also I know it’s supposed to be a reference to King Kong vs Godzilla (1962), but is anyone else reminded of Godzilla vs Mothra (1993)?

Kong making a dramatic jump off an aircraft carrier lives in my head rent free.

I admit, was actually critical of the whole concept of pitting Godzilla and Kong against each other in the first place. Even if their first fight was an awesome monster movie on it’s own, I always felt like Godzilla and Kong came from two different worlds. But here they not only feel like a worthy match for each other, but they feel even more like they belong in the same universe than before! There’s a greater sense of rivalry and mythology between those two that I absolutely dig.

I can’t see what’s inside that exploding mountain--MECHAGODZILLA?! IS THAT YOU??? HAVE YOU FINALLY COME TO PUT US OUT OF OUR MISERY?!

Where’s Mothra and Rodan? Just asking.

Actually where’s Behemoth, Scylla, and Methuselah? Again, just asking.

Loving that the human story involves kids getting stuff done. Seriously looking forward to Kong’s pal/daughter, Jia, and Madison and Firebrand Josh playing Godzilla’s advocate Godzilla 2000 style.

I don’t if that Japanese guy in the shadowy blue lab with Mechagodzilla? blueprints is Serizawa’s kid or not but if his own son is out to smear Godzilla’s name or worse, the possibilities are endless. Does he resent Godzilla for taking up most of his father’s time? Did he misunderstand his sacrifice? Does he oppose his father’s views of the beast--seeing him as a bigger threat than a protector? Or is he just an egotistical jerk with daddy issues? An easy puzzle to solve on day one?

I want to say more about the other human characters, but I feel like I don’t know enough to say much about them. Although I do look forward to how they handle conflicting organizations and debates on kaiju.

Hollow Earth. HOLLOW EARTH. HOLLOW EARTH! HOLLOW E

I love the warbats and the fight Kong’s going to have with them but why are they called that, especially when there’s actual bats in there?

Was I seeing things or was that the Super X over Kong’s shoulder when he touched the handprint?

On the cinematography:

Seriously though, as someone who thought KOTM looked fine as it was, I adore the new direction. Adam Wingard is doing us all a huge favour with daytime colours and vibrant colour palettes without colour correction.

Hearing the Space Odyssey music from the first Godzilla 2014 trailer gave me chills.

I did not expect to hear another rap song in a Godzilla trailer so soon nor did I expect it to work as well as it did. (Although it does pale in comparison to G2014′s cinematic homage, KOTM’s classical music, or anything Shin did.)

All in all, I’m quite excited to see what WB and Legendary has to offer us now that they got their release dates and such in order at long last. Even if it means this is the last of the Monsterverse films and my favourite kaiju might bite the dust.

#godzilla vs kong trailer #godzilla #king kong #godzilla vs kong #gvk #gvk 2021 #kaiju #giant monsters #movie monsters #monster movies #warner bros #ramblings of the critter #TEAM GODZILLA #just in case you were wondering

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thebladeblaster · 3 years

Text

What if SMT4 was in the Marvel Cinematic Universe au?

I know it’s a weird idea but I couldn’t get it out of my head and wrote the basic gist of it since I never think I’ll actually have the time to write this especially with college.

The SMT4 movies:

(Precedes Avengers) Phase 1

The Cobalt Samurai-Basically the events of the first part of the game all the way up till them seeing the Underground which instead of Tokyo is New York in the MCU. Most of the superfluous side quests are shown through montage (Ex. The side quests that are a part of the challenges Navarre gives them.). At the movies midpoint the events of Kiccigiori village would transpire. The events of Kiccigiori are expanded on and a big chuck of the movie. Flynn is given more of a character before the events of Kiccigiori he feels a bit homesick and thinks of what he left behind. We see what actually happens to Flynn’s parents in the movie rather than it being left ambiguous like the game. For the first time the others see a strange flicker of gold in Flynn’s eyes which becomes clearer and continues throughout the movies. The finale is the Minotaur fight and then them gazing upon New York.

(The beginning takes place before Avengers but the middle and latter parts are mostly after the Avengers) Phase 2

The Cobalt Samurai: The Black Samurai- They leave the sky tower which disappears behind them seemingly leaving them trapped in New York. They continue the journey while they are pursued by a Hydra agent named Medusa. Nozomi first appears in this movie and helps them adjust to life on Earth. Nanashi and Asahi have a cameo. We also hear about gods starting to return. The movie is road trip esk. On their way to find the Black Samurai they run into familiar faces like Xi Wangmu,

the Ring of Gaea, and even have a brush in with the Avengers. The Avengers being led by the Hydra controlled Shield are told that they are planning to destroy Earth and must be stopped. This is the movie’s climax afterwards Lillith is captured and they bring her back to Mikado. Sister Gabby uses her powers to allow them to return. The movie ends with them learning of her returning to life after being executed.

In between movies

After Flynn and Isabeau leave in Civil War they go around helping people across Earth. Isabeau notices a strange golden light flickering in Flynn’s eyes as he starts to gain people’s hopes. His perspective on things starts to change and he starts thinking of the people of Earth more and growing attached to them. He was so focused on the Black Samurai before he had mostly ignored everything else. Without her he’s finally letting himself be enthralled with Earth’s splendor. They actually meet Nanashi and Asahi who are just kids right now.

(Takes place in alongside Infinity War) Phase 3

The Cobalt Samurai: Divided We Fall- After Flynn, Jonathan and Walter get sucked into the reactor they end up traveling to 2 parallel New York’s one of chaos and law. The law one is a dystopia not unlike 1984. The chaos one is marvel zombies. In the alternate worlds they meet alternate versions of the Avengers and fight Lucifer and Merkabah in their respective worlds. After their defeat Jonathan and Walter start to feel strange before they are sucked into the world of the white. The white try to drive Flynn into despair by revealing everything to him and that no matter what choices he makes the world will suffer and he will die. He is nearly taken over before Jonathan and Walter snap him out of it, surprising the white that they are here when they weren’t in the other worlds. They are more surprised when the ghost of Navarre becomes visible and gives Flynn his support. Jonathan and Walter with Lucifer and Merkabah’s powers will Isabeau into being transported to the white realm who also knocks some sense into Flynn. Flynn’s fellows declare that they’ll stay by him and defeat their fates together. Hope starts to overflow within him and Masakado’s katana materializes in his hands simply called “The Godslayer Sword”. Together they all defeat the white and the movie ends with the samurai returning to a post-Infinity War Mikado.

The movies that are altered:

(In Iron Man 2 their presence is mentioned in the movie as the supposed “Angels from the Heavens”.)

Thor-Their is an extra scene with Odin talking to Matrieya and telling him that he is no longer a part of the Divine Powers. Thor overhears this and questions Odin who refuses to elaborate. Matrieya offers Thor to join them and Odin drives him away.

(They are not present but are referenced in Avengers)

Thor: The Dark World-(This movie sucks) So, instead the one trying to get the reality stone is Matrieya who Thor fights. Some of the members of the Divine Powers appear in this movie and Krishna is foreshadowed. Thor finds out earlier about his father’s shady past, but this time it involves the Divine Powers who helped Odin conquer the 9 realms.

Captain America: Winter Soldier-They actually run into each other during the movie and they reveal everything about Tayama and Lillith. They were looking for the ‘face of true evil’ that Lillith told them about. That evil is being done by Hydra who Tayama is a part of in this version. They agree to help out Cap and expose Hydra from within Shield. They find out about all the very messed up things Hydra have done and realize Hydra is the true evil.

(The messiah is mentioned in Guardians of the Galaxy)

Guardians of the Galaxy vol2-Ego is in league with the Divine Powers.

Avengers: Age of Ultron-A young Hallelujah appears in this movie alongside Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver. The samurai appear and fight the Ultron bots alongside the Avengers. Due to their meeting in their sequel they are acquainted with the Avengers. As things get hairy Nick Fury picks them up and has them join the fight. We find out that currently the were on their way back to Mikado to report to Shene Duke. In the end credits we see the archangels. Hallelujah doesn’t join the Avengers since he’s too young. Like Wanda and Pietro he gets his powers from being experimented on.

Captain America: Civil War-The samurai have completely split off now going their separate ways. We see a flashback of Jonathan and Flynn killing Lillith when Jonathan mentions it. They are dragged into the discussion at the beginning of the movie clearly not on speaking terms with each other especially after Walter hears that they killed Lillith. Isabeau awkwardly shuffled around feeling very nervous and out of place especially with all the tension. After the Sokova Accords are revealed Walter sides with Cap and Jonathan sides with Tony. Jonathan is surprised when Flynn doesn’t take a side simply not seeing it as their problem. Since it isn’t their world anyway. His head seems in the clouds after defeating Lillith and he walks out of the movie with Isabeau following behind them. From there the movie is the same, but with Walter and Jonathan included. They both start to question how they stand as those they favored flipped. Previously Jonathan would favor Cap and Walter would favor Tony. This whole conflict makes them realize things may not be as black and white as they thought.

(Flynn and Isabeau are referenced in Spider-Man: Homecoming. This is where it is revealed that they have been going around helping people.)

Thor: Ragnarok-Hella is a part of the Divine Powers and Shesha makes an appearance.

Avengers: Infinity War-Isabeau and Nozomi are in the movie on the Earth team. Isabeau reveals that her fellows have disappeared after going to the reactor. Flynn had convinced her to stay behind because she didn’t really have a stance in the conflict between Jonathan and Walter. Strangely, Flynn appears later in the movie but is acting awfully strange. Isabeau is transported to the white’s world right before the snap. After the snap he takes the gauntlet right off Thanos and Krishna reveals himself. Krishna explains that he allowed Thanos to do the snap on purpose to half the forces of law and chaos. His allies had been transported to another world when the snap happened; ‘Flynn’ even briefly disappeared before returning out of nowhere foreshadowing this. Flynn is revealed to be Shesha who fights Thanos. They are actually pretty even in power, but due to the Avengers wearing down Thanos before he gains the upper hand and defeats him. Krishna gives his salvation speech and Shesha flexes on everybody. He also mentions that his kalki, the true godslayer, will return to Earth.

Avengers: Endgame-Isabeau informs them of the snap. They actually appear after the time skip due to their trio back to Earth being wonky. After seeing even Mikado was ravaged Jonathan further questions his earlier values. We actually see Gaston who is fully grown to his age in Apocalypse. Many of their families were decimated or mostly gone after the snap. This whole thing brings the group even closer. Gaston joins them on their way back to New York. After arriving Toko appears trying to assassinate Flynn. The whole world thinking him and Shesha were the same and he betrayed them. Flynn defeats Toki and they try to convince her that it wasn’t Flynn who took the gauntlet. After her defeat Toki begrudgingly stands down and leaves, however claims she will kill Flynn one day which makes them nervous. They are also joined by Nozomi. Then they join up with the Marvel heroes who are wary at first, but Cap is able to realize that Flynn obviously wasn’t Shesha. They have to track down the Divine Powers who currently possess the stones. Krishna plans to use the stones to get to YHVH’s realm and have Flynn kill him. They fight the rest of the Divine Powers and it is revealed that Walter and Jonathan can transform into Lucifer and Merkabah. After their encounter in the other worlds an incomplete version of their power went into them. They fight Krishna and after seemingly winning Krishna slips into Flynn. Vishnu-Flynn is born and fights everyone after getting through to Flynn on the inside he breaks out and finishes Krishna. They take the infinity stones and restore everyone to normal. The samurai realize that there is a bigger threat and the universe is bigger than they imagined. Thus the samurai split again Flynn and Isabeau while Navarre and Walter depart to space while Jonathan returns to Mikado.

Spider-Man: Far From Home- Nanashi and Asahi are present. In the movie after one of the accidents Nanashi is revived by Dadga. It is also revealed Krishna is still alive and has only been sealed.

Pending waiting for more movies…

Demons shown:

Flynn-Centaur, Jack Frost, Minotaur,

Naga, Zu Tuen (you know the one I can’t spell) , Frost Ace, Cu Cualain (I can’t spell his name), Quetzalcoatl, , Cerberus, Tenkai, Shiva, Demonee-Ho, and Masakado

Isabeau-Napea, Pixie, Leane Sidne, Medusa, Xi Wangmu, Valkyrie, Isis, Jeanne D’ Arc, Pallas Athena, Lakshmi and Isanami

Jonathan-Angel (and the rest of the hierarchy), Master Dwarf, Theron, Apsaras, Ame No Uzume, Aniel, Orcus, Mastema, Metatron, Michael and Seraph

Walter-Liam Dherg, Gryphon, Oni, Ose, Pendragon, Seiryu, Asura,Orobas, Bishamonen, Samael, Lilith, Fafnir, Surt, Mara (would Disney even allow that?), Koga Saburo, Beelzebub, and Demiurge

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