#When you deal with human characters nothing is black vs white and the minute you claim it is

[poisonheiress]

Someone needs to say it: The "Heaven is actually bad" plot line that Hazbin is based around is useless when you spend more then 2 minutes thinking about Vivzie's Hell and her characters.

Besides it being much too early for this idea, the revelation that Heaven or at least the beings running it aren't good people has little to no impact when the people who are being harmed by this are all horrible people. Stay with me here. None of these people are people who were unfairly brought into hell and we are never ever introduced to someone who was either. Why should we care that Heaven is "evil" and blocking redemption when all the sinners in hell we see are the worst of the worst who would have never gotten in even if it was fair.

For the "Heaven is bad" plot line to actually work, you need people who were just one sin away from Heaven, who would've gotten into Heaven if circumstance hadn't forced them down a path that stole it from them. You need characters who aren't comedic villains but land in the middle of morally grey. Those who deserved to be in Heaven but because Heaven refused to consider their circumstances, they were tossed to burn with people much worse than them. Those are the people who should be your main cast cause those are the people who would actually be impacted by Heaven being bad/ Heaven lying.

Angel dust, for all his trauma, was still part of the mafia and likely had killed people before (showing to almost take joy in it). Husk became an overlord and gambled souls, so he had to have had blood on his hands before hell. Alastor is a serial killer, and the list goes on and on. Sure, these characters are (somewhat) interesting, but they don't make for good characters to have when the key plot line is that Heaven is a scam. Even if that fact is true, none of them were ever going to get there in the first place and this is something we also se in every single background sinner shown in Hell too. They were never close to getting there, so why would they or we care that Heaven is bad when all sinners are shown to be horrific people who are at best in the dark grey area of morality.

If you look at it from the "angel's are unfairly killing sinners" route, it still doesn't work. If the angels are killing them, what makes it different then the sinner on sinner violence that hell is full off? Why is them dying by angels this bad thing when they are just as likely if not 10x times more likely to get knifed in the back by other sinners in hell the other 364 days, especially when everyone here apparently is just as horrible as the next person. You cannot condemn the angels for killing demons and then make a joke of out sinners killing each other and never show sinners who doesn't want to kill people. Life either matters or it doesn't and when the main cast doesn't even show a care for life (outside of Charlie's who's entire flaw is her naivety), why should the audience.

On top of that, Vivzie's whole overpopulation aspect and the Heaven plot line would connect better if she actually had people like those I mentioned above, people who stole to survive but got tossed out cause stealing is technically wrong, people who killed another to protect someone else but were still sent to hell because even though they saved that person's life that person wasn't supposed to be saved, people who passively engaged in sins but never really did anything harmful under them. This would add into how Hell is so overpopulated and highlight why its so important that Heaven is evil/ why Charlie's plan isn't just a naive pathetic fever dream.

In the end, Vivzie should have never made Heaven the central plot of this show nor tried to assign this blatant good vs evil to that conflict. Neither her characters nor her writing choices are able to respond to this conflict in a way that will end or even tell the story in a satisfactory manner.

#anti hazbin hotel #hazbin hotel critical #vivziepop critical #spindlehorse critical #spindlehorse criticism #also I am not just talking out my ass for this #I had/have this same problem in one of my original works #where I had to make the relationship between Heaven and God and cambion a lot more complex then just oh this side bad this side good #and thats what you have to do as a fucking writer is ask the hard question and be ready to scrap characters and ideas to answer them #When you deal with human characters nothing is black vs white and the minute you claim it is #you have failed

[silverducks]

Game of Thrones - Jaime Lannister

A rambling character study of Jaime Lannister from Game of Thrones.

Part 1a – Jaime’s Character Arc

This post is going to look at my thoughts on exactly how I see Jaime’s character arc in Game of Thrones, based on just the show. But it’s also to set up my future posts where I explain why I find it so darn hard to understand why he had the ending they gave him. At least beside the obvious - because the writers wanted to.

Yeah I know; I’m late to the GoT train wreck of a final series. But I have a lot of thoughts and hence why I’m here typing away.

(And this is where I start to really go all English Lit exam analysis on you, so a warning for anyone who actually might be reading this post, LOL!)

My Intro to this series of posts btw, is here.

So, spoilers be below.

Ok, so to help explain why Jaime’s ending makes no sense, I firstly need to explain what exactly his character arc is in the show, or at least how I perceive it. As mentioned in a previous post on honour vs loyalty, for Jaime I see his character arc being about two, interconnected things – redemption and identity.

In series 1 and 2, he’s not a nice character – he’s a self-righteous, proud, full of himself, snob. He’s arrogant and cocky and says pretty cruel, snide things to characters we do like. And as we see him through the PoV of characters like *Mr Honourable Eddard Stark, Jaime is pretty despicable to say the least. And that is before we even get started on the whole pushing a boy out of a window because he caught Jaime having sex with his own twin sister. Oh and just as an FYI, Jaime is also called the Kingslayer because he killed the King he was sworn to protect. So yeah, most people watching the show don’t like him at the start, and neither do most of the other show characters we do like.

And from a story telling perspective, Jaime’s character can either get worse, better or stay the same as the show goes on. And in this story, he gets better, with a few slip ups along the way, and it’s fascinating and glorious!!

Like, I can think of nothing that even comes close to the amazing way Jaime Lannister’s character develops in Game of Thrones and how we as a viewer change in our perception of him.

But that only makes his ending so much more frustrating and disappointing…

Before I start rambling away though, just as a point to note; I’m using terms like good and better person and right and wrong quite loosely here. Obviously the world, even in a fictional world, isn’t all that simple. As that would be a whole other massive thematic and philosophical thesis, and it’s not really that relevant, just take the “general” meaning of the ideas, but with the understanding I know it’s a bit more complicated. Where I think it does become more relevant, I’ll expand on the ideas in that particular context. If I sound a bit flippant at times, it’s because of the whole black vs white vs grey, and how there are “rules” in storytelling that wouldn’t necessary apply to our own, real life reality. There are things that we need to take into account when we analyse characters in stories vs actual, real people. And on a side note, this is one of my favourite things about Game of Thrones, the complexity and moral ambiguity of both its characters and its story themes. But yeah, that’s a whole thesis in its own right.)

Redemption Arc

So, redemption. In order for us to start to like this character, and see him as a good guy, he has to go through a redemption arc. Like pretty much rule number 1 of storytelling. That means we have to watch him and believe in him becoming a better person. Conversations like the whole oath vs oath issue, or his chat with his father about his nicknames in series 1 makes us take notice of a character, maybe even be more invested in a character and their shades of grey, but it’s not really redemption. And considering how far in debt he is in the good vs bad guy department, he has a lot of work to do.

And my goodness, he does it. Like, I mean, this guys’ redemption arc is astonishing! He goes through so much, rethinks and challenges everything he once thought/knew about himself and his world, faces all his past wrongs and bad character traits and becomes not even a better person, but a hero! He goes from a bad villain who kills kings and pushes kids from windows, to becoming one of the main heroes we’re rooting for by the end of the story.

(A quick disclaimer here, like I’m not saying Jaime is ever, or ever will be perfect, heck, he’s human and this is Game of Thrones and Jaime’s more messed up than most. But when you think back from where he started and where he’s been, it sure is impressive – if we ignore his actual ending that is, LOL!)

And his glorious redemption arc all pretty much starts around the time he starts his fun road trip with Brienne in series 3.

So, just to give a few of his finer redemption points (and just remember his series 1 and 2 actions and our opinion of him in contrast):

He stops Brienne from being raped and gets his hand cut off for the trouble (Ouch! But suffering, especially from doing something good, gives lots of redemption points.)

He risks his life to save Brienne from being mauled to death by a bear. Like, he’s recently lost his sword fighting hand and has no weapon, but he jumps in the bear pit anyway and puts himself between the bear and Brienne. He then helps Brienne out of the bear pit first and then only just makes it out alive himself. Oh and if that wasn’t enough, he basically tells the bad guys that he’s leaving with Brienne, or they will have to kill him. Like he says this to the guy who not so long ago chopped his hand off. (Just think on that one a minute ok.)

He keeps to his promise/oath to Catelyn Stark and continues to help her daughters by giving Brienne a priceless sword and some stunning armour so she can find and help them. (This also helps Brienne, because he knows she’s not safe in Kings Landing, and gives her a purpose, because he knows that’s what she needs.)

Firstly offers to sacrifice his own life needs and goals and those vows he’s now starting to hold more dear to save his brother. When said brother then screws up that opportunity, Jaime then also helps said brother escape from being killed, going against his sister and father, who want his brother dead. (Yeah, the Lannisters are an interesting family… And you wonder why Jaime is a little messed up?)

Takes RiverRun without any bloodshed. (Like pulls off the perfect bluff in GoT siege history so that he can make sure his army succeeds, but no one is killed. (I don’t count the Blackfish, who chose to fight to the death rather than escape/get taken prisoner.)

Joins the fight for the battle against the dead, even if it also means renouncing his entire house and lineage and putting himself at the mercy and judgement of pretty much all his enemies and all he has wronged. (One of which has a habit of roasting her enemies alive with Dragon fire)

Oh and also risks his life in above mentioned battle against the dead.

A pretty impressive list imho, lots of redemption points there and that’s not even including everything else he does. Following the general storytelling themes of forgiveness and redemption, Jaime basically ticks all the boxes by all the good deeds he’s now done. And that’s one of the major reasons why we as viewers now love him so much as a character.

But that’s not all, of course. As we discover also in series 3 (a pretty important series for our Jaime), it’s not even just about him doing good things, but we realise as an audience we’ve (intentionally by the show) completely misunderstood him! Yes, he did kill the King he was sworn to protect, but only because said King was mad and was about to blow up the entire capital city where hundreds of thousands of innocent people live. And not only did he do this incredible honourable thing, but because it did go against his vow as a Kings Guard, he’s ever since been derided as the Kingslayer, Oathbreaker, Man without honour. A horrible set of nicknames that he’s borne, because he doesn’t think people would care or understand anyway. (Of course, I want to add in here that it’s partly the negative trait of pride too, thinking himself as the Lannister Lion, above having to explain himself to the sheep.)

Anyway, all this has worn him down a lot over the years and it’s messed him up good and proper. It kinda makes your own initial dislike of Jaime through *Mr Honourable Eddard Stark’s eyes seem a little unfair. Especially when the guy was barely more than a kid at the time (16 or 17 I think). And his defence mechanism to deal with this is one of the reason’s he is so cocky and arrogant – he uses his dry, often cruel humour, to mask that he does actually still care. In fact, it’s worked so well, I think at the start of the show, Jaime believes it himself; that he is a horrible, hateful person. But he did have that honour inside of him once; he did care and try to do what was right. And when you think back to his scenes in series 1 and 2, they take on new meaning now. He’s no longer such an evil arrogant, cocky knight we all pretty much immediately hated.

And as this revelation happens around the same time as he starts doing all those good deeds, it all helps work together to make us re-evaluate Jaime and grow to love him and become invested in his redemption arc even more.

(*I feel the need to add a disclaimer here, I do like Ned Stark a lot as a character. But it is interesting that as the show goes on, he almost does the opposite to Jaime – we see he actually isn’t always as good as we thought, that perhaps honour tripped into bitterness and prejudice a few times. That perhaps Ned, as much as we like him, is less full white and more speckled in shades of grey after all...(which makes him a more interesting and nuanced character imho, so rather than undermine him, it makes him more human.))

And when I rethink Jaime’s scene with Robb Stark when he’s captured, where he gives Robb the choice of ending the war if Robb can beat him in single combat, well, it adds even more depth to his character. Of course, Jaime knew he would likely win, as did Robb, so Robb refused. And as a viewer who was all Stark=Good, Lannister=Evil (except Tyrion) at the time, I was glad Robb wasn’t stupid or arrogant enough, like the Kingslayer Mr Jaime Lannister, to fall for that.

But then I remember the parallel in series 6, when Jon Snow (Stark=Good) gives exactly the same choice to Ramsay Bolton (Bolton=Spawn of Satan). Ramsay can either fight Jon in single combat, or they can all send their troops to die in their war. And as a viewer now, NOW! I think Ramsay is weak and awful for not agreeing (because he knows he can’t win too) and so sending all these soldiers to an early grave. Which is like 100% opposite for pretty much the same scenario of its series 2 counterpart. Of course, we HATE Ramsay and he has no, I mean literary NO! redeeming qualities, unlike Jaime, who we never, ever hated in the same way. But it does make you think about the whole idea of perception as well as actual deeds here. And that actually Jaime, you could argue, was doing the honourable thing by asking Robb for single combat, to spare the lives of both of their armies… I mean, obviously he wants to win the war, but maybe, he also wanted to spare as many lives as he could, too – like Jon in the series 6 equivalent. Maybe not so arrogant a request from our Jaime after all…

And another point to add in here, which further adds up to Jaime’s redemption arc, is Lady Brienne of Tarth. Yes, I’ve saved her to last for a reason, as she is, imho, THE catalyst for this amazing change we see in Jaime. If you’ll notice, a lot of Jaime’s good deeds involve Brienne and start happening around the time the two characters meet. And that very fact further proves that Jaime was and can be a better person.

He does not like her at first and she’s not quite your typical maiden. Not only is she a “beast” (to quote Jaime), but she’s a fighter, full of honour, self-sacrifice and steadfast in her purpose, and more than a match for him. Oh and she’s also his captor, dragging him to Kings Landing with a rope around his hands so they can trade him for the Stark girls.

So yeah, not the most cordial of first meetings. He pokes fun at her, trying to get her to snap, to prove she’s not as good as she seems. But she doesn’t, because she is that person, she is true to herself and not pretending. Unlike so many people Jaime knows, she is genuine.  

And he’s impressed by her skill and courage as a fighter as well. She is able to best him in the sword fight (granted when his hands are tied and he’s been sat in a cage for over a year, but he is like renowned for being one of the best sword fighters in the entire realm). Also when she fought the men who had murdered the women they found hung along the road – both as justice and to give the murdered woman a proper burial. She isn’t all talk, she can, and does fight. I bet Jaime wasn’t expecting that! And as sword fights are his thing, what he pretty much defines himself by and is most proud of, that’s a pretty big for tick from Jaime for Brienne right there.

Basically, she is a) an honourable person b) sticks to her oaths c) also able to fight (and therefore protect people) and d) refuses to let him get the better of her. The perfect, chivalrous embodiment of a brave, honourable Knight. A true Knight in all but name, whilst Jaime is now a Knight in nothing but name.

Now, I’ll discuss this more in the identity arc bit, but basically all this challenges Jaime, makes him rethink his own bitter images of himself and his world. She reminds him of his younger self, when he wanted to be that honourable Knight. And seeing this reflection of his younger, naïve and less world weary version of himself in Brienne, it helps to trigger this change in Jaime. It makes him remember who he once was, what he once stood for and believed in; that ideal that Jaime once believed is actually possible - of the brave, worthy Knight people sing songs about. And it started to make him want to be that person again. And this in turn, makes him want to start to do the right thing, to start to put honour first, which paves the way for his redemption arc very nicely.

I won’t talk too much more about Brienne here, because I think her relationship with and influence on Jaime deserves its own post. But I do think it is the specific personality of Brienne, together with the very fact that she is an ugly, “beast” of a woman, that triggers Jaime’s arc in just the right way and enables it to be so profound.

One last note on his redemption – I’ve said before it was partly his Lannister Lion pride that caused some of his suffering in relation to his nicknames. And indeed part of his arrogance is because he does think he’s better than everyone else (although not to the extent we first thought). He is the Lannister’s golden son after all and the Lannisters are basically the most powerful and wealthiest House in Westeros. It is a bad trait, yeah. But even this, even this! gets sorted out in series 8. From my list of redemption points, see the second to last point above – he faces judgement. Like a guy who had too much pride to admit he actually killed a King to help save hundreds of thousands of lives, actually, of his own volition, faces his enemies to be judged and to atone for what he has done wrong. Yeah, he also offers excuses at said trail, but if I’m honest, they do sound quite genuine to me. Is it any worse than what your typical soldier would do in a time of war? Fight in a battle and kill people? Try to capture the person (Ned) who’s wife captured your brother to avert a war? And we already know now he was justified in his killing of the mad King.

So, all in all, with this new insight into Jaime’s character, especially also seeing him through the increasingly positive eyes of Brienne (more on that later), who we know really is good and honourable, we have both a better understanding of his past actions, see his ongoing internal struggles and conflicts as he strives to do what is right and along with all his good deeds as the show goes on, we see him slowly (with lots of unfortunate set backs as well) become a better person. So come series 8, his redemption arc up to THAT scene, is glorious and basically complete.

And then there’s his identity arc. The other side of his character development, which is just as important for me and very much interconnected with his redemption.

(Like, seriously, there’s so much going on with this character that I could write essays, no a whole thesis I bet! I seriously can’t wait until I get to read him and Brienne’s chapters in the books and discover even more sides and shades to this character.)

But I’ve rambled on for far longer than I intended on his redemption arc, so I’ll save his identity arc for another day. (And hopefully it won’t be as long). Then we can get into the fun stuff like that hand he lost, that famous bath scene and his, how to put this, interesting relationship with his sister…

#If you were brave enough to get this far #Thanks for reading #And hope this made sense #Just my rambling thoughts #Yeah, I have a lot

#Game of Thrones #Jaime Lannister #Brienne x Jaime

[charliejrogers]

The Trial of the Chicago 7 (Or, Sorkin’s attempt to show you how nothing has changed in 52 years)

If you know anything about Aaron Sorkin, the much-acclaimed writer/creator of television shows like The West Wing, The Newsroom, you know that subtlety is not his strong suit. So, I was rather hesitant going into his newest film, The Trial of the Chicago 7, the infamous trial of eight gentlemen accused of conspiracy to incite violence/rioting in Chicago during the notorious 1968 DNC riots. Without diving too deep into the history, August 1968 was not Chicago’s finest hour. When the protesters chanted as a warning to the police, “The Whole World Is Watching!”, they weren’t wrong. Years ahead of the 24-hour news cycle, people all across America (and across the world) were glued to the TV watching the Chicago police beat the ever-living snot out of young folks protesting the Democratic Party’s decision to support the ever-controversial war in Vietnam. The film’s subject matter is sure to draw parallels to and resonate strongly with both the protests and civil unrest that took place this past summer following the death of George Floyd and countless other Black folk at the hands of police. So despite it’s appropriate timeliness, I was hesitant to watch this movie because I really wasn’t interested in watching Aaron Sorkin (who not only wrote but directed this film) try to mansplain to me that the trial of the Chicago 7 was all about injustice! Without knowing anything else about the trial beforehand (and I really didn’t), I already knew it’s a famous case of injustice. I wanted to watch the movie to learn about the people, the humans involved, and the nuance of the situation.

The film gets off to a rough start in the nuance department. After an effective montage introducing us to six of the eight members of the Chicago 7 (we’ll get to why there’s that numerical discrepancy), we meet the character who will be the lead prosecutor of the case: a straight-laced, clean-cut lawyer played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. In an attempt to plant the seed early on that the eponymous trial is a sham, the first real scene of the film sees Gordon-Levitt meeting with Nixon’s newly appointment Attorney General John Mitchell who is pissed off that the prior AG didn’t resign from the office until an hour before Mitchell was confirmed. As retaliation, and in line with history’s understanding of Nixon’s pathologic paranoia, Mitchell decides to re-open the case exploring whether there was any conspiracy to incite riots in Chicago 1968. As JGL explains, this was something which Johnson’s AG as well as prior FBI investigations already decided did was not a viable case. The conversation that ensues is a little too on-the-nose. JGL shares his concerns that he doesn’t believe that the Chicago 7 are actually guilty, but Mitchell tells JGL, “then imagine how impressed I’ll be when you get a conviction.”

Of course, this conversation is largely a Sorkin invention, as is the weird decision to try to humanize the prosecutor played by Gordon-Levitt. I say "weird" because the film doesn’t do anything with it. We don’t get a real sense beyond that initial scene that JGL feels guilt or remorse for being a cog in the Nixon machine. The beginning of the film sets him up to be a similar character to David Schwimmer’s fascinating turn as Robert Kardashian in The People vs. O.J. Simpson. But in the end, it’s clear that Sorkin uses him just as a way in the beginning of the film to provide the thesis statement for the film, as if he were writing this script as a college term paper. This bothers me so much because it makes a late-film surprise appearance by Michael Keaton as Johnson’s AG lose a good deal of its impact. It would have been so much better if we as the audience came to the same revelation about the political origin of the trial at the same time that the defense lawyers did.

Sorkin’s lack of subtlety reared its ugly head in a few key moments that caused me to audibly groan while watching this film. Towards the end of the film, one of the more dramatic defendants, the merry prankster hippie Abbie Hoffman (played very well by Sacha Baron Cohen), is on the stand and is asked a particularly difficult question by the prosecution. He pauses. The prosecution asks what’s taking so long. Hoffman responds in a serious tone that runs opposite of his usual character, “Sorry, I’ve never been on trial for my thoughts before.” The film then slowly fades to black. I half-expected to hear the famous Law & Order “chun-chunn” sound next. That’s how cheesy and self-righteous the scene was.

The film’s ending too, where the defendants read off a list of all the fallen soldiers from Vietnam prior to their sentencing, felt a little too Hollywood to be believable… and indeed it didn’t happen that way. Elsewhere in the film, one of the more “prim and proper” defendants, the young head of the Students for a Democratic Society Thomas Hayden played by Eddie Redmayne, reflexively stands in honor of the judge’s exit as is court custom, forgetting that he and the rest of the defendants agreed not to stand. That’s not the bad part. The bad part comes later when Redmayne’s character travels to someone’s home and the Black maid who answers the door says to him, “I heard you were the only one to stand for the judge,” and then the camera just sorta lingers on her disappointment. We get it! The judge is a bad dude! Let’s move on!

Seriously, let’s move on. For all my griping, this is a very good movie. Those instances where Sorkin’s moral heavy-handedness is plain to see are so glaring because for the most part, the movie does a fantastic job of addressing the film’s (sadly still) politically controversial themes (police brutality, the culpability of protesters in starting riots, systemic racism, etc.) with a good deal of nuance. This mostly happens when Sorkin just sticks to the facts of the case, like when dealing with the whole saga of Bobby Seale, the eighth and only Black man of the Chicago 7. The day before the trial begins, Seale's lawyer required emergent surgery. Seale’s motion to have the trial postponed till he receive proper counsel is denied, as is his request to represent himself. Therefore, on trial without counsel, he frequently interrupts the court arguing about the unconstitutional nature of his trial, until the judge, played to chilling perfection by Frank Langella, becomes fed up with the interruptions and orders that Seale be bound, gagged, and chained to his chair. It’s a crazy powerful and uncomfortable scene, among the most haunting images I’ve seen in cinema. Finally, Seale’s case is determined to be a mistrial, changing the number of defendants from eight to seven. Hence, the Chicago 7.

But, the most inspired sequence of the film comes late in the movie when the defense gets wind of the prosecution’s plan to play a recording from the night of the riots where the prim and proper Tom Hayden can be (arguably) heard urging hundreds of listeners to “let blood flow all over the city.” Tom still believes that he would do well on the witness stand, but his defense lawyer (Mark Rylance as William Kuntsler) insists on showing him why this would be a bad idea. The ensuing scene sees Rylance role play the part of the prosecution cross-examining Hayden while the film intercuts scenes of a flashback of the actual events. the “truth” of that night, significantly muddies the water for this case. It by no means proves that the Chicago 7 are guilty of a conspiracy, but it certainly highlights the more human aspect of their situation. How is one expected to keep their calm when their best friend is beaten? And to what degree are people to be held responsible for decisions made in the heat of the moment?

The movie also has also interesting commentary on who should be the “face” or progressive politics, even today: the well-to-do and respectable Hayden or the in-your-face hippie comedian Hoffman? It’s an interesting question that never seems fully explored or resolved. Sorkin seems to land in the camp that Hayden’s respectability merely maintains status quo whereas Hoffman’s flagrant anti-establishment views is required for real change. But I don’t know how much of that is me just loving Cohen’s performance as Hoffman and finding Redmayne’s Hayden to be (appropriately) insufferably pretentious. Sorkin certainly gives Cohen the better lines.

Overall, this is a movie held up by its two primary strengths: its cast and its film structure. Aside from general inconsistencies of the script’s tone and the notable weakness I mentioned previously about overplaying the political motivation for the trial in the film's first 5 minutes, the film is nearly perfectly structured. We are sort of dropped in medias res into the trial and only get the facts of those few days shown to us in carefully placed flashbacks that help to flesh out the drama of the trial. It helps maintain pacing in what could have been a drag of a legal drama. 

But really, it’s the cast and their performances that sell this movie. Sacha Baron Cohen is the star in my mind, so perfectly cast as Abbie Hoffman, but Frank Langella as the septuagenarian, prejudiced judge of the case is equally powerful. Yahya Abdul-Manteen II as the Black Panther Bobby Seale lends an air of desperate seriousness to the film, Eddie Redmayne shines as that white liberal dude who takes himself way too seriously, and Mark Rylance is wonderful as the courageous lead defense attorney, particularly in scenes dealing with Bobby Seale. While the whole trial weighs on him heavily as the film progresses, his genuine concern for Seale is palpable.

I spent much of this review telling you the things that were odd about this film, and I stand by that. But as I said, those things stand out because this is such a slick production that the cracks become that much more obvious. It largely avoids Sorkin’s penchant for blunt lack of nuance and offers a story that helps to greatly contextualize the very world we live in. It’s interesting that a story that sees ten men (including their lawyers) fail to win a fight against The Man still feels like an inspiring underdog tale. It resonated well with this viewer, especially as the ending makes clear that justice is eventually served. Yet, I recognize this may be a dangerous tale to tell these days, and why I think the movie is so successful is that it gives plenty of sobering evidence to suggest that justice (both then and now) is by no means guaranteed.

***/ (Three and a half out of four stars)

#trial of the chicago 7 #aaron sorkin #sacha baron cohen

[eponymous-rose]

Talks Machina Highlights - Critical Role C2E92 (Jan. 28, 2020)

This week’s guests are Laura Bailey and Marisha Ray!

Announcements: At 4 PM Pacific on February 4, season 2 of All Work No Play premieres! Pre-sale tickets for autographs and photo ops for C2E2 are available now via Epic Photo Ops! Lots of “super-secret but majorly exciting announcements” to come this week on the website!

Episode 92: Home Is Where the Heart Is

Stats for this episode: it has been 69 episodes, 6 levels, and 212 Exandrian days since the Nein last saw the reformed bandits. The Nein haven’t killed anyone since episode 86, a campaign 2 record (Laura: “I know, I’m aching!”). Jester cast her 50th Guidance spell this episode (on herself), and it’s been 50 Exandrian days since the Nein last partook of a bottle of Lionett wine together in Trostenwald.

On initial expectations vs. reality for their characters’ fathers: Laura: “I had no notion of what he was going to be. I literally wrote that he wooed my mom, that he wore lots of rings on his fingers, and that he went off to get his place ready to come meet him, and that was all.” She notes that she knew Jester was half-water genasi, but she wasn’t there the first time they met the Gentleman to ask any leading questions. Marisha: “I had this struggling panic for a while. I didn’t know how he was going to play him. There was a strong possibility in my head that my parents were great, and were just like, ‘We were trying so hard, we’re so sorry.’ It was pretty crazy the way he actually played it. And it did feel like, he sucks, yeah, okay, no.”

On Fjord’s heart-to-heart with Beau: “I felt like Beau and Fjord had good pirate-ship bonding time. It’s been a bit since Beau and Fjord checked in, so that was a cool Fjord-Beau moment that was nice to have, like, we’re still bros, it’s great.”

Jester just wanted to make Beau feel better, especially as she realized that she’d been a little oblivious in cheering about how great her dad was: “It was so crazy, the minute we got there and you reverted back to the initial Beau, the first Beau that we met, and then even further past that. It just killed Jester to see that.” Marisha notes that the moment when Jester pulled Beau aside, she was about to lose it: “I tried to work Beau in a direction of growth, and getting to a point where she’s not angry and snappy and just fucking lashing out at people. So Beau’s going to try to keep her cool, and then I was literally sucking in the air, and you were like, ‘Come here,’ and that was just enough to get the reset button and the calm. She’s not in a place to forgive her parents, but Jester talking about the poison of holding on to all of that was kind of what, I was like, okay. I can use this in that moment to not have to make it about forgiving my parents right now, or ever, but to be able to start to heal and separate from that and that past. And for Beau to forgive herself.” Laura, after the game, was worried that it came across as Jester trying to get Beau to forgive her dad, and Beau notes that not seeing even a fraction of the effort the Gentleman has put forward kind of wiped that possibility out.

Beau’s grown a lot since she was last home. “The Mighty Nein has helped Beau trust in other people around her and come out of her shell and learn how to control her outbursts and her blaming other people and her anger. That’s so far from the Beau that was in that house.” Marisha was actually startled at herself when Beau snapped at Nott over the horse. “It was immediately all those bad thoughts were coming back, so it felt like Beau was on the verge of reverting.” Laura: “Nothing makes you fucking regress to your childhood mannerisms and behaviors faster than going home.”

Jester believes that “love is stronger than anything else”. She knows her parents still love each other, so “any of those other crazy things, they can work through.”

On whether Beau’s dad is really worried about her: “I think he cares to the extent that anyone cares about anyone’s general safety. I think he’s concerned about himself first, and what he has, and then I think he’s concerned about Beau next, after that. But I don’t know, maybe I’m being incredibly harsh. But there is, to this point, that element of what’s the twist.” Laura notes that she got a really high insight check on Beau’s dad. “There’s a reason that I was like, maybe give him open ears” at that moment.

Cosplay of the Week: a very detailed Molly! (GalacticLeah, photo by Fricbergsean)

On potentially leaving the Lionetts destitute if they destroy the hag, Laura and Marisha say, in unison: “Fuck the Lionetts.” They note that they’ve got the resources to make sure T.J. will be fine, and that’s all that really matters.

Has Jester forgiven her father? “I don’t think Jester’s angry at him. She’s very empathetic. She’s very good at going, okay, I see it from your side. And I think she was afraid more that something bad had happened to him. Obviously, if he could have returned, he would have, because he loved her mother so much. So I don’t think she’s angry at him. I don’t think, necessarily, she doesn’t think he’s perfect, but she’s making the best of the situation. I think she’s just happy that he’s around. Make up for lost time.”

Brian asks about how different it is to be supportive of each other and exploring backstories in this campaign versus with the last campaign’s more archetypal characters. Marisha: “It feels like the campaign has been very muddy and not black-and-white. The same for every person’s individual backstory issues.” She notes that there’s a lot more ambiguity. Laura: “Vex wasn’t empathetic. She was sympathetic sometimes, but sometimes when Keyleth was going through something, Vex was like, come on, get your shit together.” Brian notes just how different everyone’s characters are this time around. “It’s awesome!”

Laura notes that TJ ran up to Beau and called her sister, which means that they’ve been talking about her consistently for him to recognize her. “So there is a level there.” Marisha notes that Beau has very mixed feelings about her mom, too. “She’d never offer support, or want to challenge Thoreau.” So now she’s wondering if her mom has been quietly talking her up to TJ, or if it’s both of them. 

Fan Art of the week: Beau and TJ! (by ItsMalenyLopez)

Jester’s perspective on the Gentleman’s partners: “You can sleep with people, but don’t form a fucking relationship with them. That’s the difference.”

Marisha, on working with difficult topics on the show: “The audience goes away in the moment. Yes, it’s hard, yes, it’s cathartic, and yes, it’s something on a whole other level. It’s why roleplaying games are so fucking awesome, because they allow you to do that.” Marisha notes that she has a great relationship with her own parents, but getting to explore is interesting. “It’s hard to describe.” Laura: “There’s a safety there, to be able to dive into these places.” Marisha: “With all of these issues, these issues are skinned, but the root of them are often very relatable issues that everyone goes through. So there is a certain amount of catharsis to that. So while I personally had a good relationship with my parents, I’m accustomed to feeling shut out, feeling misunderstood, going through psychological abuse, all of those things. And, of course, everyone knows someone who has probably experienced those things first-hand, so you can get a sense of understanding in some ways, but there’s layers of everything that you’re doing that can totally think back to things that were from your life.” Laura: “I think that RPGs are so great for just humanity in general, because it really makes you see things from another person’s perspective.” Marisha: “It takes time. I don’t recommend anybody try to do something like this out of the gate with your first game.” Laura: “No, I mean, we’ve been playing this game together as a family now for eight years. And we’re just now getting to stuff like this. All that time of building trust and being able to know, okay, if I go to these levels, I’m going to have the support of the people around me.” Marisha: “The whole thing is a trust fall.”

Jester’s opinion on the M9′s worry about the Traveler’s cultishness? “Well-meaning but paranoid.” Before leaving the Lavish Chateau, she barely told anyone about the Traveler, and they all just accepted him as her imaginary friend. “She knows he’s godly. She knows how powerful he is. There is a little bit of ‘Oh, that’s weird,’ seeing how other gods deal with their... constituents?” Laura notes that she has absolutely no idea what Traveler-Con is going to be like.

Beau has always been aware that her tattoo has the jade/tarot connections with her father as well. “That’s why Beau was so salty with Molly when he was trying to tell fortunes from the beginning. It’s all layered. Didn’t intend for it, but jade just happened to be the one that boosts wisdom.”

Marisha and Laura both note that defeating more traditional enemies can be easily resolved in a way that can be used to block out the things that are really bothering you. Family issues, on the other hand, usually don’t have a simple resolution.

#talks machina #talks machina spoilers #critical role #critical role spoilers #long text post

[bevercges]

🐭 • So we literally know nothing about Bradley’s shenanigans between the end of Coon vs. Coon & Friends, when he left Earth to discover what happened to his home planet, and Bring the Crunch, where he states that he is living there now and doing who knows what.

Well I always wanted to write a post giving my thoughts on the subject (and I have a bit of a teaser here) so, for the sake of future RPs, I may as well do it. I will probably divide this into two posts because the Lore and my shenanigans are different things.

Just saying it now: this is mostly my own making and ideas as there’s very little canonical backing on the topic. If I have anything that I can quote to use as proof of my statements I will do it, but this is mostly my own interpretation.

Bradley Biggle has been around as a background character since Season 3, joining the main four as one of their classmates after moving to the fourth grade in Season 4. Still, until Season 14, he has been a (recognizable) background character with voice roles that could be easily counted with your hands –akin to characters like DogPoo or Kevin Stoley–.

The introductory paragraph above is a way of saying: we didn’t really know that much about Bradley until the Coon & Friends Trilogy. Hell, we still don’t, it is only on the final part of the trilogy, Coon Vs. Coon & Friends, when we learn a few things about him, and that episode starts with the video above.

“But Bradley Biggle is no ordinary fourth-grader!”

I am not going to waste time explaining why is Mintberry Crunch and what he does (for that’s what his About Page is all about) but, obviously, the entire clip is a form of foreshadowing to the ending. Spoilers to a 10-year-old episode: Bradley receives a message from outer space in which he’s told that he’s an alien from a far away planet whose destiny is to save Earth from C’thulu. Also Kenny thought that this revelation was going to be for him so he got scammed of his backstory, I guess.

So yeah, Bradley is a superhero with a backstory akin to Superman: he is an enhanced alien that was sent off to safety as a baby during times of crisis, and was found, adopted and raised by a human family, the Biggles. Yeah, I don’t think anyone really thought that Bradley and Henrietta were biological siblings, but whatever.

While we don’t know if everyone in the planet K'oh Kajan (or Kokujon, as I will be typing it like that) has the same powers as MBC, since we know that the berries of that planet “have the power to fuel nearly anything”, I’m going to take a guess that the “nearly” is there because they cannot grant superpowers to people, so Bradley is the outlier and a case of the chosen one. He is the only one with this powers, basically.

So he defeats C’thulu with his mint and berry superpowers and stuff (yes, defeats, he can only summon mint and berry to his aid, which would mostly work to reduce an opponent rather than killing them), and this episode ends with what would mark MBC’s exit from the show (outside of the very rare background appearance) for a very long time:

Canonically-speaking, this is what we know.

Bradley left to search for his biological parents (and his home planet, I suppose) and we would not hear about him for sure until Season 21. To be more precise, we would not hear about MBC’s shenanigans until his appearance in Fractured But Whole’s second DLC, Bring the Crunch.

Timestamp goes from 1:06 to 2:22 (unless you want spoilers).

Funny enough, while this would mark MBC’s return, it still does not give us much information about what he has been up to before the events pertaining this DLC. However, we still get a few clues from his in-game dialogue which I’m going to interpret for you guys.

"I picked up your distress call from the berry mines of my home planet. I've come to offer my assistance."

Something we know for sure is that he made it back to Kokujon!! This means that the main reason he has been away for so long (or so it’s my guess) is because he found his home planet, reunited with his biological parents and decided to settle there instead of returning to Earth with the Biggles. We still know that he visits, however, as he appears in Stick of Truth and in some more episodes (before disappearing again in Season 22):

We still don’t really know anything about his home planet, though, outside of very selective information he gives in and out of battle. Here’s a few examples:

"It's so weird being back on Earth. I can't believe you guys only have one sun!"

“You wanna know the best thing about Kokujon? No school."

"I didn't travel halfway across the galaxy to be treated like this."

He doesn’t live anywhere in the Solar System, that’s for sure, because not only he has traveled “across the galaxy” to respond to Fastpass’ distress call (which is another can of worms in itself, because how could have he received a call like that from literal light years away?), but also our system only has one sun.

This is just me trying to tie things together with South Park canon (so it’s a bit of a tangent), but in Season 13, in the episode Pinewood Derby, we are made aware of the existence of the Federation of Planets, a government body that is on a galactic level. The only reason I mention this is because MBC has proven to be capable of traveling at warp speed –traveling from his home planet to Earth in a matter of (what I am going to suppose were) minutes after receiving that distress call–, and all the planets that have discovered warp speed are part of the Federation, so that must be the case for Kokujon.

The exception to this rule, if anyone has watched the episode, would be Earth, but that’s because they didn’t meet the requirements to join the Federation and were blocked off the rest of the galaxy instead.

Not sure if this is canon anymore, but if it is that means that Bradley is constantly breaking the law by visiting a planet that has been labeled as off-limits, but he is not the only alien that has set foot in South Park anyways.

Actually, speaking of breaking the law and stuff, that reminds me... here is a screenshot of MBC’s character sheet:

While most characters in FBW have the Lawful (and only Lawful) alignment, MBC stands out because he has a more specific alignment. Not only he is Chaotic (which explains the possibility of him being breaking the law whenever he travels back to Earth), but also Neutral, which makes him... a morally grey character. He is neither good, neither bad, he is just... well, himself.

Why am I bringing this up anyways? Because there is one detail about the Kokujonian society that those that have played the DLC are aware about: the caste system.

"On my home planet, you'd get 10 years in the berry mines for that!"

The mention of these berry mines have been a thing ever since Season 14, but this line that can pop up when MBC is attacked in game has quite the connotations. Simple: you commit a crime, you are sent to the berry mines. You commit a crime, you work at the berry mines. You commit a crime, you become a slave. But you could say “oh, Mouse, but it could be like community service like many prisons on Earth- “ and I would have to tell you that you’re wrong because even MBC says so himself.

Despite being a trope in many sci-fi stories based around alien societies it is a very fucked up elephant in the room and everyone and their mother knows this. The last mission in the Bring the Crunch DLC involves fighting (and killing) a mind-controlling alien whose motivation was revenge against the society that put his family (and possibly his entire race to) into this position. Not only that, but if MBC is being truthful, the Kokujonian society has no issue to do the same with anyone that breaks the law, even their own people.

So, does the fact that he is part of this society make Bradley evil? No. Once again, he is Chaotic Neutral, he is just Bradley. And looking at the definition of Chaotic Neutral:

“Chaotic neutral characters like to indulge in everything.  [...]  This type of character will at least consider doing anything if they can find enjoyment or amusement.  Life has meaning, but theirs has the greatest meaning.  According to chaotic neutrals, laws and rules infringe on personal freedom and were meant to be broken.  This character is always looking for the best deal, and will work with good, neutral, or evil to get it; as long as he comes out of the situation on top.  The chaotic neutral is constantly teetering between good and evil, rebelling, and bending the law to fit his needs.”

His alignment makes him more complicated than the black-and-white idea that is being good or being evil on one fact alone. He is defined, however, by the fact that he does what he pleases regardless of what society, morality and laws say. And this is easily backed up by how he addresses the Crooked Cop enemy class in FBW:

"Earth police have no jurisdiction over... Mintberry Crunch!"

"Authority figures are no match for... the crunch!"

So, basically, his alignment makes him a free spirit and, at best, because his family owns slaves, he would be a proxy. He’s mostly a 10-year-old with superpowers that has been granted total freedom to do what he wants and takes full advantage of it (an also a superhero and an illegal alien on Earth, literally and figuratively), so he is not precisely defined by the society of his home planet. I do believe, though, that he has been influenced by the Kokujonian society as a result of living with his biological parents, so his morality and ideas flip-flop a lot.

“Chaotic neutral characters are extremely difficult to deal with. Such characters have been known to cheerfully and for no apparent purpose gamble away everything they have on the roll of a single die. They are almost totally unreliable. In fact, the only reliable thing about them is that they cannot be relied upon!”

MBC choosing to fight that alien (an alien he carelessly allowed to follow him to Earth) could also be interpreted as personal defense and him defending planet Earth from an outer space threat as the Zarganor voices his intentions pretty clearly in-battle, but everyone is welcome to draw their own conclusions since both of them were motivated by very different things.

Anyways, once again, Kokujon is a pretty fucked up planet, but it is also Bradley’s home planet. We can assume that finding this planet and his biological parents helped him discover his real identity as Gok'zarah and, once he accomplished this goal, decided that he had nothing else worth pursuing and settled. He is rather unpredictable, as his alignment dictates, so he may not even stay on Kokujon a lot and instead travels through the galaxy- but those are headcanons of mine.

In conclusion, as a TL;DR: Bradley disappeared from Season 14 to Season 21, and then from Season 22 and onwards, because he’s an alien and has chosen to live in his home planet. Said planet’s society has its fucked up side but Bradley is so unpredictable due to his free spirit nature it is hard to pin-point his morals.

Anyways, for a character that started as a joke character that was used as a deus ex machina, I think he’s pretty cool! :·D And probably one of the strongest characters in this show’s universe.

#📁 • OOC. #🍚 • Bradley!About. #🍚 • Bradley!Headcanon. #cw long post #(Though in this blog I love all of my boys this one has a weird history.) #(I still remember when I liked MBC in an ironical sense; yeah; sure.) #(Now he's just one of my favorite characters ever LOL.) #(What do you mean I shouldn't care this much about a joke character?.)

[gdelgiproducer]

What’s been your favorite staged version of JCS? (Non-concert)

First, a list of the staged (non-concert) versions of JCS I’ve seen: two high school productions (about which you’ll hear nothing in this post; it’s unfair to judge them in competition with pros), the closing performance of the 2000 Broadway revival, two performances of the national tour that followed said revival (one of which featured Carl Anderson as Judas and Barry Dennen – Pilate on the original album, Broadway, and in the 1973 film – as Herod), and four performances of a national tour initially billed as Ted Neeley’s “farewell” engagement in the role of Jesus. In total, discounting the number of performances of each, five productions, only three of which we will consider here.

The 2000 Broadway revival had basically all the problems of the video of the same production: I’m sure Gale Edwards is a fine director of other shows, but she missed the boat with this particular iteration of JCS. (Not having seen her original production at the Lyceum Theatre in 1996, which unfortunately never left that venue and was reportedly far better than the one that went wide, I can only comment on this version.) Her direction and the production design that accompanied it were full of the kinds of blatant, offensively obvious attempts at symbolism and subtlety that appeal only to pseudo-intellectual theater kids. In real life, there’s no such thing as obvious good vs. obvious evil (things just ain’t black and white, people), and any attempt to portray this concept on stage or in a film usually results in a hokey “comic book” product, which is kind of what the 2000 production was. 

The first thing Edwards did was draw her line in the sand. “These are the good guys, and these are the bad guys.” The overall production design played into this ‘line in the sand’ feel as well, being so plain in its intentions as to almost beat you over the head with them. There may have been some good concepts mixed in, but for a show that runs on moral ambiguity, they were very poorly executed and did damage to the piece. Some examples:

Annas and Caiaphas were devoutly “evil,” seemingly designed to inspire fear.  It’s easy to see good as so very good, and bad as so very bad; to want to have the evil in a nice little box. But it’s not that simple. As Captain Jean-Luc Picard (and now you know where my Star Trek loyalties lie, curse you!) once said, “…villains who twirl their mustaches are easy to spot. Those that clothe themselves in good deeds are well camouflaged.”  Evil isn’t always a clear and recognizable stereotype. Evil could be lurking inside anyone, maybe even in you, and you would never know. People aren’t inherently evil. Like good, it’s a role they grow and live into. And since history is basically a story of the developments and actions of humans over the ages, maybe it’s a mistake to view the characters who’ve played their parts in it so one-dimensionally. It doesn’t dismiss the evil they did, but it does allow one to understand that this potential to be good or to be evil is in everyone, and that it’s not always as simple as just doing the right thing.

Judas was an almost thoroughly unlikable prick (though Tony Vincent played him a tiny bit more sympathetically than Jerome Pradon in the video); in beating Jesus over the head with his cynicism and curt remarks, any sense of a fully three dimensional person was lost, leaving us with a total, utter dickhead. If the audience is to truly feel for Judas, and appreciate his fall, it’s imperative for them to see his positive relationship with Jesus. More importantly, it has to be readily apparent. It shouldn’t be the audience’s responsibility to assume as much. I never once saw any love, or even a hint of friendship, between Jesus and Judas in the 2000 production. Judas’ interactions with Jesus were a constant barrage of either completely in-your-face aggression, or more restrained (but still fully palpable) aggression. No hint of a conflict in him, or at least none the audience could see, and what use is a conflict or emotion if the audience isn’t privy to it?

And when not telegraphing an ultra-specific view of the story’s events, everything else about the design would’ve left a first-time viewer befogged. Young me liked the industrial, post-apocalyptic, pseudo-Gotham City atmosphere of the set. Older me still likes it (though I am firm in my opinion it works best on stage), but realizes what a mess the rest of it was. We’ve got Jesus and the apostles straight out of Rent, Roman guards that looked (with the choice of riot gear) like an army of Darth Vader clones with nightsticks substituting for light sabers, priests that practically stepped off the screen from The Matrix, a Pilate in generic neo-Nazi regalia, a Herod with showgirls and chorus boys that seemed to have visited from a flash-and-trash third-rate Vegas spectacular, a Temple full of ethnic stereotypes and a mish-mosh of dime-store criminals, and a creepy mob with a striking resemblance to The Addams Family that only popped up in the show’s darker moments. Lots of interesting ideas which might work (operative word being “might”) decently in productions of their own, all tossed in to spice up a rather bland soup. The solution to having a bunch of conflicting ideas is not to throw all of them at the wall at once; you look for a pattern to present itself, and follow it. If no pattern emerges from the ideas you have, it’s a sign you should start over.

You can see what my basic issue was: where other productions at least explored motivation, examining possibilities and presenting conflicting viewpoints for consideration, the 2000 production (when not utterly confused in its storytelling thanks to conflicting design) blatantly stated what it thought the motivation was without any room for interpretation – this is who they are, what they did, why they did it, so switch off your brain and accept what we put in front of you. Which, to me, is the total opposite of what JCS is about; it didn’t get famous for espousing that view, but for going totally against the grain of that.

The national tour at least had Carl and Barry to recommend for it the first time around, but for all the mistakes it corrected about the 2000 revival (swapping out the shady market in the Temple for a scene where stockbrokers worshiped the almighty dollar, with an electronic ticker broadcasting then-topical references to Enron, ImClone, and Viagra, among others, was a fun twist, and, for me, Barry Dennen gave the definitive performance of Herod), it introduced some confusing new ones as well:

For one, Carl – and, later, his replacement, Lawrence Clayton – looked twice the age of the other actors onstage. Granted, Christ was only 33 when this happened, but next to both Carl and Clayton, Eric Kunze (I thankfully never caught his predecessor) looked almost like a teenager. When Ted and Carl did the show in the Nineties and both were in their fifties, they were past the correct ages for their characters, but it worked – in addition to their being terrific performers and friends in real life whose chemistry was reflected onstage – because they were around the same age, so it wasn’t so glaring. Without that dynamic, the way Jesus and Judas looked together just seemed weird, and it didn’t help anyone accept their relationship.

Speaking of looking weird together, the performer playing Caiaphas – who was bald, and so unfortunately resembled a member of the Blue Man Group thanks to the color of lighting frequently focused on the priests – was enormously big and tall, while the actor in the role of Annas was extremely short. Basically, Big Guy, Little Guy in action. Every time I saw them onstage, I had to stifle the urge to laugh out loud. I’ve written a great deal about how Caiaphas and Annas are not (supposed to be) the show’s villains, but that’s still not the reaction I should have to them.

The relentlessness of pace was ridiculous. It was so fast that the show, which started at 1:40 PM, was down by 3:30 PM – and that included a 20-minute intermission. What time does that leave for any moments to be taken at all? A scene barely even ended before the next began. At the end of the Temple scene, Jesus threw all the lepers out, rolled over, and there was Mary singing the “Everything’s Alright” reprise already. How about a second to breathe for Mary to get there? Nope. How about giving Judas and Jesus two seconds’ break in the betrayal scene at Gethsemane? The guards were already grabbing Christ the minute he was kissed. I was so absolutely exhausted towards the end of the show that I was tempted to holler at the stage to please slow down for a minute. The pace didn’t allow for any moment in the show to be completed, if it was ever begun; it was just too fast to really take advantage of subtle touches and moments the actors could’ve had, and as a result, I think they were unable to build even a general emotional connection, because one certainly didn’t come across.

The cast was uniformly talented singing-wise, with excellent ranges and very accomplished voices. (In fact, the second time around, the woman understudying Mary, Darlesia Cearcy, walked away with the whole show in my opinion, and I am incredibly glad to have seen her career take off since then.) But, in addition to some being more concerned with singing the notes on the page just because they were there than imbuing them with emotion and motivation, the cast was undercut by the choices that production made with the music. For one, there’s a huge difference between singing “words and notes” and singing “lyrics and phrases.” When you have a phrase like “Ah, gentlemen, you know why we are here / We’ve not much time, and quite a problem here…” you sing the sentence, and if sometimes a word needs to be spoken, you do that. You don’t make sure you hit every single note by treating each like a “money note” (which you hit and hold as long as you can to make sure everyone hears it), dragging out the tempo to hang on to each note as long as you can. Generally, the actors were so busy making sure every note was sung – and worse, sung like a money note – that they missed the point of singing a phrase, and how to use one to their advantage. Caiaphas and Pilate were particularly egregious offenders. (I’ve never understood some of these conductors who are so concerned that every note written has to be sung. The result suffers from it.) 

And then there’s Ted’s production. Of the three, it’s the one I liked the most, but that’s not saying much when it was better by default. 

The production design was stripped-down, the set basically limited to a bridge, some steps, a stage deck with some levels, and a couple of drops (and a noose) that were “flown in.” The costumes were simple, the sound was very well-balanced, and the lighting was the icing on the cake. Combined, the story they told was clear.

The music sounded very full, considering the pit consisted of a five-piece band relying in part on orchestral samples.

Ted, for being of advanced age, was in terrific form vocally, if his acting fell back a little much on huge, obvious, emotive gestures and choices. (I love him and all, but his attempts at acting were kind of like a “Mr. Jesus” pageant, striking all the appropriate Renaissance poses. The film, through editing and close-ups, allows him a subtlety he just ain’t got onstage.)

And there were some beautiful stage pictures; for example, there was a drop with an image of a coin with Caesar’s head on it in the Temple scene, and it fell on the crowd when Jesus cleared out the riff-raff. In the leper sequence that followed, the chorus’ heads popped out of holes in the cloth, under which they undulated, pulsing to the beat, and rather than being treated as a literal mob scene, the sequence had a very dream-like effect, a mass of lost souls reaching out to Christ. It was rather like a Blake painting, with a creepy vibe in a different manner from the typical “physically overwhelm him” approach. He didn’t interact with them, didn’t even turn to look at them, until finally he whipped around with a banishing thrust of his arm, hollering “Heal yourselves!” Sometimes it was over-acted with annoying character voices (remember, I saw this four times), but when it wasn’t, the effect was chilling.

My main beef with the show was, oddly enough, on a similar line to my beef with Gale Edwards’ production: it drew lines in the sand. But in this case, it drew them with respect to Jesus’ divinity. 

As written, JCS deals with Jesus as if he were only a man, and not the Son of God. The show never suggests that Jesus isn’t divine, but neither does it reinforce the view that he is. Portrayed in detail in JCS is the mostly-unexplored human side: ecstasy and depression, trial and error, success and regret. He agonizes over his fate, is often unsure of his divinity, and rails at God. Not so in this production. Aside from “The Temple” and “Gethsemane,” there was never any room for doubt that Jesus was the mystical, magic man portrayed in the Gospels.

At the top of the show, after a fight between his followers and the Romans during the overture (a popular staging choice I’m not a real fan of, but you’ve got to do something during that moment in a fully staged version, and I understand why it’s an easy choice to make for exposition purposes), Jesus made his majestic entrance, spotlit in robes that looked whiter than Clorox bleach could produce, and raised a man from the dead. Well, where’s the room for Judas to doubt? Clearly “this talk of God is true,” we just saw it! If this guy is actually capable of performing miracles, and more than that specializes in necromancy, good luck telling him that fame has gone to his head at the expense of the message and he’s losing sight of the consequences! Try explaining to anyone that that person is “just a man”!

If that weren’t enough, Jesus went on to have a constant connection with God throughout the show, speaking to a spotlight that focused only on him and often served to distract him from anything else happening onstage, and at the end, during “John 19:41,” his body separated from the cross, which fell back into the stage, and he ascended to heaven. 

Now, though the former was admittedly played to excess (some reviewers unkindly compared Neeley to a homeless man with Bluetooth), there are arguments to be made in favor of both of these choices: a Jesus who constantly seeks a connection with God that isn’t reciprocated, searching for guidance or at least a friggin’ clue, is great foreshadowing for his eruption – and acceptance – in “Gethsemane.” As for the ascension, depending on how it’s staged, there’s room for argument that it could be interpreted more metaphorically than literally, as the moment when Jesus’ spirit is born, as Carl Anderson once put it (meaning, to me, that his message is given life and strength when his body fails him). But this production didn’t have that level of shading and layers to it, and coupled with the resurrection at the start, it defeated the rest of the story.

None of ‘em’s perfect, and I don’t think I could create the perfect one. Thus, concert.

#AMA

[davidmann95]

What are your thoughts on Infinity War and do you think the portrayal of Thanos is gonna make it harder for DC to do Darkseid in a future move due to comparisons?

Extended disconnected musings below the cut because world-shaking spoilers fucking obviously, but for the section of my audience that hasn’t seen it yet but is fine with simply seeing my immediate reaction and placement of it: it’s so very good, y’all. Hype as modern blockbuster filmmaking gets. Not a top-5 MCU flick (which is a credit to the MCU, not in any way a ding against this), but if you only count the Avengers movies that actually have “Avengers” in the title, this is definitely the best of that lot.

* I had been, while not concerned per say, very curious how the Captain America team would handle this - the writers might have been there from the beginning and done some pretty bombastic pulpy action in the first Cap movie, but the Russo Brothers had been entirely on the grounded side of the franchise, even doing the relatively grounded Avengers movie in Civil War - given this would be the most cosmic and superheroey of the bunch, and they acquitted themselves magnificently in every way imaginable. It’s big, it’s funny, it’s ballsy, it’s engaging, it’s fun, it’s weighty as hell, it’s emotional, it’s the gold standard of this sort of thing. I have no idea what they’ll do if they ever stop doing Avengers movies, because at this point the sky is the absolute limit for them.

* I know people have already inevitably been complaining about this being dependent on previous movies for continuity and character, to which I say

1. Fuck you, this is the sequel to a once-in-a-generation filmmaking blockbuster that completely changed the game, of course you’re going to know who the goddamn Avengers are, most especially if you’re going to see this movie. Don’t act like you’re that cool. You’re not that fuckin’ cool.

2. This may not have been a movie of character development, but it’s by no means a movie short on character. It’s very much in the vein of Grant Morrison’s JLA, in that it banks on familiarity and iconography not to change our understanding of these characters, but to do the most conspicuously *them* moments possible. Captain America might be a minor presence, but he’s Captain America as heck in this, and so forth.

3. This only banks on you having seen the first Avengers. Banner is our entrypoint character because he himself doesn’t know what’s going on so the Avengers breakup can be recapped in broad terms, the initial conflict you don’t really have to know about Ragnarok to understand (they could’ve been fleeing Thanos destroying Asgard for all a casual viewer would know), Spider-Man’s role is obvious even aside from him being a cultural icon, Panther is Cap’s secret ally the rest of the team barely knows about so and Wakanda are broadly understood, and the Guardians and Strange are reintroduced. Strange you immediately know all you need: Wong defers to him so he’s clearly a big deal, but he’s also still telling him things about magic - even if jokingly - so clearly Strange is not the most seasoned veteran and hasn’t been in this hidden mystic world forever. The Guardians are space bozos, and based on Star-Lord’s manchild nature and 80s nostalgia and lack of familiarity with the Avengers you can guess he hasn’t been to Earth in a long time even if he clearly hails from there.

* Thanos was…good? Though I would have yelled “BULLSHIT!” at my monitor when I saw Starlin declared Thanos in an interview to be exactly as he had always envisioned him had I seen this at the time, because this is very much from the Slade-in-Teen-Titans “scrap everything, and it’ll wind up better because there’s nowhere to go but up” school of villainous improvement. But seriously, while surely people will write eye-rolling thinkpieces on his nature and goals, he’s a proper vile bastard of the sort we haven’t quite gotten in these movies before that more than justifies his place after 6 years of buildup, with humanity to spare keeping him from being a caricature; it should avoid Darkseid comparisons quite deftly (and vice-versa), even if none of what made this work can translate back into the comics. And as much as the sidekick baddies might have been traditional uncanny-valley CG, this guy might be the most amazing effect I’ve ever seen in a blockbuster: I totally bought this was a real flesh-and-blood living being existing in recognizable 3-dimensional space whenever they zoomed in on his expressions. And more importantly, they acknowledged he has a nutsack for a chin.

* Speaking of effects, that’s how you do a fuckin’ magic fight!

* And speaking of villains: SKULL. What a payoff, and I sure hope he stays and fills the role Mephisto did in the original Infinity Gauntlet as Thanos’s right hand man, because I want to see him face down with Steve as Captain America one more time. In a very different movie/s, I could have seen him seizing the Gauntlet and promising Thanos he too will wipe out half the universe, but much less indiscriminately, with the great tyrant dying with the ultimate monstrosity his endeavor has brought about evident to him at last. And then you’d have the ultimate Nazi as the final boss, since not only are he and Cap enemies, but he battled Iron Man’s dad, was well-versed in Asgardian mythology and stole one of Odin’s treasures, and is like Hulk a failed Super Soldier. What we got should be pretty good too though. Fingers crossed he at least sticks around to menace Bucky and Sam once one of them takes over as Cap.

* Outside the villain, boy, who would have expected Thor would basically be the closest thing to a main character of this movie? I guess Marvel rightly expected Ragnarok would be fire, and knowing that he’ll now be the major remaining original Avenger, are trying to build him up in double-quick time. And with only half of Asgard gone, they can keep the setup Waititi provided after this (even if I wish they hadn’t brought back his eye. I’m not worried for him personally though; his godly constitution should be more than capable of resisting mere alien raccoon ass germs). And given Ultron was the Iron Man-centric flick and Civil War was literally a Captain America movie, it feels fair they gave this to the third member of the core trio. By contrast, I’m not sure whether Black Panther was too late for them to account properly for him, or they did know, and that’s why the final action was set in Wakanda even though it’s relatively irrelevant.

* The characters getting to bounce off each other was much of the heart of this, and while Downey vs. Cumberbatch was totally reasonable - I wish Strange and Spidey had more time together as promised as fellow Ditko creations, but doing Sherlock vs. Holmes makes sense, with “Do you concur, Doctor?” almost feeling deliberately evocative - I never would have expected Thor and Star-Lord to be the standout comedic pairing. And yet, as Drax put it, it entirely makes sense: “He is not a dude. You are a dude. He is a man.”

* What most leapt out at me as signalling this is the post-Trump movie relative to Civil War’s summer 2016 blockbuster? There, the question of whether or not the government can be trusted is the inciting incident that drives everything. Here, that the government is actively working against the right thing is so plain that Rhodes - who had previously said his critical injuries were more than worth standing up for the Accords, so passionately did he believe in all they stood for - immediately, casually acknowledges that the entire thing is fucked and bails with no fanfare, and that’s the end of it.

* I’d expected this to be an all-out invasion flick and so had been disappointed no Defenders or whatnot would at least cameo, but as it really turned out I’m not surprised there wasn’t a place for Daredevil to stick his horns in. And despite assurances, no Hawkeye! I’m sure as many as 5 or 6 people were quite disappointed.

* Betting pool on who’s actually dead? Obviously everyone vanished will be okay, but the others? Gamorra looks pretty stiffed, but she seems a safe bet to return. Vision’s end felt gruesomely final, but they put so much effort into implying he might be able to survive without the stone, and now they have a seminal story to draw on for a potential solo movie of his. Loki, I think, is most likely to remain in the ground. A last-minute return and final prank against Thanos wouldn’t be out of place for him by any means, but his character has come full circle, and I think it’s more likely that if he returns it’ll be as Kid Loki.

* Speaking of the vanishing, I really appreciate the thought that clearly went into who was taken off the board. The castoffs either really had nothing to do with the Thanos conflict, even and indeed especially if they were big for maximum shock value (Black Panther, Spider-Man, White Wolf, Falcon, Mantis), or DID have something to do with Thanos but whose arcs in terms of physical confrontations with him reached their logical climaxes (Star-Lord vented regarding their shared relationship to Gamorra, Drax tried and failed as he was always going to because that one-sided hate he wanted fulfilled isn’t as much at the core of his character as Gamorra’s relationship with Thanos is). Or in Strange’s specific case, the enigmatic type with an ace up his sleeve who could logically leave a final mystery and hope for others to have to rely on. And as a whole, it means the final OG Avengers movie ISN’T going to be an even bigger crossover movie than this the way we thought. This, for the MCU’s 10th anniversary, was the big crossover movie. The last Avengers movie as we’ve known it up to that point is mostly just going to be the founders (plus Captain Marvel, a mandatory Wakandan representative or two, and Rhody since he’s the other hero who was introduced in Phase One) getting one last hurrah. And it makes sense to go with that smaller cast, because they’ll want space to really zero in on Steve and Tony before they go, and since going at Thanos head-on is no longer an option, there’s not really going to be an opportunity for the same kind of massive super-war we got in here anyway, because then he’d simply de-create them.

* Steve and Tony are going to die, and going into pure fanfic, I think I know how it’ll happen. Steve will get the Gauntlet, and it’ll kill him to use it, but in an homage to the climax of Kree-Skrull War, he’ll use his last breath to not only revive everyone, but bring together an army of superheroes to defeat a depowered Thanos once and for all (Gamora or maybe Nebula almost certainly striking the final blow), raising his returned shield high, exchanging a last look with Bucky, and finally crying out “AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!” And Tony? Tony is going to knowingly walk to death in a doomed fight against Thanos as a distraction to give Steve that chance, becoming the guy who lays down on the wire and lets someone else crawl over him. It not only reaffirms his partnership with Steve and the idea behind the original Avengers just as both die, but brings his character arc totally full circle: he faces down the embodiment of his nightmares, and after having lived as the ultimate egotist, he dies as the man who sacrifices himself so someone else can secure the win. And Thanos was I believe introduced in an Iron Man comic, so that aspect’s pretty appropriate too.

* Jackson finally almost got to say motherfucker in one of these! And that’s the second Marvel movie with a character nearly saying fuck. Take the leap Disney, I believe in you. And much as that last shot in the stinger was neat, and much as this alternative would have been literally impossible, how much cooler would it have been if that screen had shown a “4″?

* My #4 title prediction? Avengers: The End. There was a big Thanos story by Starlin titled Marvel: The End where he destroys everything but ultimately turns it back, and that’d be both ominous enough to fit the warning that we should be scared of this title, and spiritually truthful. And since the Spider-Man movie right afterwards will according to Feige mark the start of the new MCU, they can title that Spider-Man: Brand New Day in accordance with said new beginning.

* Post-all this? It’ll be awhile yet before the Fantastic Four and X-Men come on stage, so ‘Phase 4′ will basically have to stall until they can bring in Doom to be the true final boss before the inevitable reboot a decade or so down the line. Spider-Man’s the new lead (hence the Iron Spider armor, which in Homecoming seemed deliberately to be overly gaudy as Tony’s vision of a Spidey remade in his image but now seems an indicating as his leading man status, the red/yellow/blue color scheme marking him as Peak Superhero) along with Panther, Captain Marvel, and likely Thor as the old standby. The Avengers likely disband for a bit due to losing the core and break up into different teams - your Ultimates, Champions, Young Avengers, etc. - before coming back together in New Avengers, managing to make the Avengers movie after the next one an event by making it about the reformation. Osborn leading the Cabal’s the big bad; he’s the leading man’s leading villain, he has the pedigree thanks to Dark Reign while still being able to put on a Goblin suit at the end, he lets them do the inevitable “all the bad guys get together to fight the Avengers” story, and while it might not work as well as it would have post-BvS pre-Justice League, using Sentry/the Void - a compromised, frightening, unsure, ‘realistic’ Superman figure - as his muscle and the true threat would be hella charged at the moment in a way I could see the MCU being cocky enough to go for, even if they never outright do Avengers V Squadron Supreme.

That’s what I got. As the god of thunder would say, farewell and good luck, morons.

#Avengers: Infinity War #Avengers #MCU #fanfic #Opinion

[marymotherofmonsters]

These Roads We Take

Wincest Writing Challenge Round 14 @marymotherofmonsters vs. @rodiniaorzetalthepenquin

Prompt: Death (tarot card)  Rating: Mature Tags/Warnings: Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Canonical Character Death, Canon Temporary Character Death, Suicidal Thoughts, Self-Worth Issues, Hell Trauma, Incest, Sibling Incest, Implied Bottom Dean, Implied Top Sam, Frottage, First Kiss, Angst, Bittersweet Ending, Unhappy Ending Summary: Sam was warned, but some things just seem inevitable.  Word Count: 2,043 Ao3 Link

Despite all the things Sam’s seen and done in his life, he’s never put much stock in tarot readings. It’s easy if you know how to spin them, considering most people can’t be bothered to learn the card themselves and there are at least a dozen books in any “occult” section in even the most mundane stores these days for those who do care to learn. Anyone with a deck of cards and a showman’s personality can read the future, it’s spotting the real deal that’s usually the issue. Most witches don’t bother with it. Some Wiccans make their money doing it. It’s that bridge between the two, the witch who passes as a friendly old-world healer, that you have to worry about. Those ladies (sometimes men, too, but not as much) give bad readings and shill their crap. They’ll cast nasty curses and charge for their removal. It’s a sick racket, but it’s probably as old as humanity. Still, every once in awhile, it’s Sam’s job to shake them up and let them know someone’s on to them.

That’s why Sam’s in a tiny house turned apothecary in the middle of Wichita, sitting across from a small woman with faded pink streaks in her hair called Belinda. It’s been a slow week for both of them, but that’s probably about to change.  Belinda makes him shuffle the cards and he sets them back down on the table. She takes a deep breath before cutting the deck and drawing the top three cards face up. She tries to hide the slight intake of breath but it still draws Sam’s attention more than the cards in front of him; the Queen of Swords, Ten of Swords, and Death.

“You’re approaching a crossroads,” she says. Sam does his best not to snort a laugh at that. “But the cards urge you to move with your head and not your heart. If you don’t there’s the potential for great pain in your future.”

Sam does snort at that. Belinda snoots him a sour look, her nose wrinkling as her lips turn upwards. “You disagree?” Belinda asks.

“Well, it’d help if I knew what kind of decision I should be making with my head, don’t you think.”

Belinda draws another card, the Two of Cups. “Romance,” she says flatly.

Sam rolls his eyes. “That’s great but I’m not exactly in a position to worry about romance at the moment.”

“No?” Belinda asks. “What about the young man you came in with?”

“He’s my brother,” Sam balks.

“Oh. Well,” Belinda shifts in her seat, staring down at the cards. A tinge of pink colors her cheeks as she taps her long nails against the cloth covered table. “Perhaps then…” she sighs, licking her lips, “regardless, there will be a decision in your future that you must take caution in making. If you don’t the effects will be long-lasting and they will be painful for you.”

“Involving romance, right?” Sam can just barely keep the smarm out of his voice.

“Involving partnership.”

“Right.”

Belinda levels him a look that says ‘why the hell are you even here if you don’t believe’ but what she says is: “your five minutes are up. Would you like to pay for another reading?”

“Nah, I think I’m good.”

“Well, if you change your mind, we’ll always be right here.”

Belinda lets him back into the main room and takes her place back behind the counter. Dean’s flitting around the shelves, picking up the trinkets and rolling them between his fingers.

“Dude, look,” Dean says, tipping chin toward the shelving behind him. The shelf is lined with red, black, and white candles, all in the shape of penises.

“Really, Dean?”

“What?” Dean laughs, “could be fun. You never know when you’ll need a dick candle.”

Sam rolls his eyes and walks out of the store, Dean following behind. It takes them about five minutes on the road before Dean speaks. “Anything we gotta worry about in there?”

“Nah. I think she was full of crap.”

Sam doesn’t put too much stock into the reading, or into the fortune teller’s insinuation. It happens all the time, that people mistake Sam and Dean for lovers and not brothers. It shouldn’t mean anything, but Sam would be lying if he were to say that it didn’t twinge in his guts every time they had to admit it wasn’t true.

-----

Sam’s drunk. His mind’s a whirlwind and he wishes it could just end. He’s useless. This stupid gift doesn’t help anyone, it just causes more problems. His dad knew it. He knows it. He’s a freak and a monster and it’s only a matter of time before he really messes up. He couldn’t save Ava. He couldn’t save that lawyer. He probably can’t even save himself.

“Don’t ask that of me,” Dean says. His voice nearly cracks, but his eyes betray him, though. He’d probably have an easier time of it if Sam asked him to cut off his own leg.

“Dean, please. You have to promise me,” Sam says.

“No,” Dean says, his voice barely a whisper. His fingers tighten around Sam’s wrists and Sam flexes his own hands in Dean’s jacket. “I can’t do that.”

Sam looks up at him and he swears he can see his heart breaking. “Why not?” Sam whispers, “why not? I’m a freak. I’m pathetic. I’m not good.”

Dean’s hands are at the sides of his face in an instant and Dean drops to his knees. “Because I can’t, Sam. I can’t do that to you. Don’t make me. Please don’t make me.” He’s staring at Sam with wet eyes, deep and imploring, begging almost, for Sam to understand.

Sam leans into Dean’s touch. “I’m a freak, Dean.”

“No, you’re not. You’re just figuring it out.”

“I’m sick.”

“There’s nothing sick about you.”

“But I - “ he doesn’t want to say it. He knows he shouldn’t say it. He knows it will fuck all of this up, so much more than he could ever hope. Dean will leave or he’ll yell or he’ll panic. But maybe, it might just make him decide Sam’s right about this.

In the end, he doesn’t say it. He surges forward until his lips connect with Deans. He half misses and it’s more than a little sloppy, but he still goes for it.

When he pulls back, Dean is staring at him, not in horror or disgust, but… disbelief?

“Sammy,” Dean whispers.

“See,” Sam says, “I’m sick.”

“If that makes you sick,” Dean says, “I guess I’m sick too.” Dean leans in this time, capturing Sam’s lips in a bruising kiss. Sam struggles to keep upright but ultimately falls back on the bed, pulling Dean with him.

They writhe like that for a while, trading kisses with tongue and teeth while Sam paws at Dean’s clothes with clumsy hands. And then Dean pulls back and Sam’s left cold and wanting.

“We can’t,” he says.

Sam whines.

“You’re drunk, Sam. We can’t.”

Sam reaches out to him, but Dean just kisses his knuckles before stepping back. “Get some sleep. We’ll uh. In the morning.”

They don’t talk about it in the morning.

----

Sam’s pissed. He’s been sulking for the better part of the day, up in one of Bobby’s spare rooms, while Dean and Bobby talk. As grateful as he knows he should be, Dean shouldn’t’ve sold his soul. He’s not going to yell, though. He’s not going to tell Dean how stupid it was or how wrong, he’s just going to find a way to get Dean out of it. It’s the least he could do.

There’s a knock at the bedroom door and Dean walks in, eyes downcast. He’s uncharacteristically sheepish like he’s expecting to get chewed out at any moment. Sam’s not going to do it, though. He knows it’s not going to change what’s done.

“Hey, Sam,” Dean says.

“Hey.”

Dean doesn’t move, so Sam takes the initiative to draw him across the room by his wrist, setting him down at the foot of the bed. “We’ll figure it out,” Sam says.

Dean nods but says nothing. He doesn’t need to. His eyes are still red and glassy from earlier, his cheeks stained with tear tracks. He’s terrified, that much is easy to see. Sam wishes he could take it all away, right then and there.

He slings an arm around Dean’s shoulder, kissing his temple. Dean leans into him, nuzzling into his chest. He strokes Dean’s back and before he knows it they’re kissing again, this time slow and deliberate, pressing the words they can’t say into each other’s skin.

I’m sorry says Dean’s tongue as it slides across Sam’s own. It’s alright says Sam’s nose when he nuzzles into the soft skin behind Dean’s ear. I love you they both say when they tumble into the bed, fingers drifting across each other’s scarred skin. The rut together, their clothing pull haphazardly out of the way, until they’re both shuddering and gasping on each other’s names.

They don’t talk about it.

They don’t talk about it when it happens in the Impala two weeks later or in the motel shower a week after that. They don’t talk about it when Sam’s cock is buried inside his brother that Christmas. They don’t talk about it the night before Dean’s deal comes due. They never talk about it.

And then Dean is ripped apart by hellhounds.

----

They say death changes people but they never really say anything about how it changes those who come back from it. Sam supposes whoever “they” are probably know nothing about resurrections, though. Once the initial shock and disbelief of Dean’s return wore off Sam hoped they could go back to something normal. Or at least as normal as their lives, as their choices could allow.

But Dean is distant. His eyes stare off into the middle distance more often than not. He’s trying, Sam can tell, but that easy smile and smooth attitude don’t fit right anymore. It’s like a jacket that’s too small in the sleeves; it fits alright until you start to move and then you’re exposed, and Dean is desperately trying not to move too much.

They don’t get past a heavy make-out session the night Dean comes back from Hell. He doesn’t say much, just that he’s tired and hungry and wants a bath, so Sam lets it go. Months later they haven’t gotten past heavy petting before Dean pulls away and makes excuses. He’s got a headache this time, apparently.

“You know, if you don’t want to anymore you could just tell me,” Sam says.

“What? No, I told you. Just a headache.”

Sam rolls his eyes. “What’s going on, Dean?”

“I already told you,” Dean says. He’s busying himself with one of the duffle bags, re-rolling shirts that have unrolled as they’ve pulled their clothes and equipment out.

Sam sighs. “You know I can’t do anything about it if you don’t tell me what’s wrong.”

“I already did. Now, would you leave it alone, Sam?”

Sam stands, walking around the bed and coming up behind his brother. He sets a hand on Dean’s hip and he goes stock still under Sam’s fingertips. “Dean…”

“Leave me alone.”

Sam draws back, pushing his hair out of his face. “Fine. Okay, fine. I’ll leave you alone. But you gotta talk to me eventually.”

Dean huffs and throws the t-shirt he’s holding back into the bag before stomping off to the bathroom.

The shower starts to run and Sam pretends he doesn’t hear soft sobs over the water.

-----

Dean tells Sam that he remembers Hell. He doesn’t go into details, not really, but he describes the feelings. There’s shame and guilt echoing in every syllable that falls from Dean’s lips.

“They take every good thing in your life and they ruin it,” Dean says, “every goddamn thing.”

And Sam understands. He wants to reach out and touch, to sooth the tension building in Dean’s shoulders, but he thinks better of it.

“I’m sorry,” Sam says.

“So am I,” Dean says. He throws Sam a sad half-smile and it’s like a knife in Sam’s chest.

He’s going to make Lilith pay if it’s the last thing he does.

#wincestwritingchallenge #rodiniaorzetalthepenquin #wincest #canon divergent #mind the tags #i wrote this #reading list

[comic-movieheroesranked]

Cinematic Comic Characters Ranked! (Year 2010) Part II

We’ve reached a decade of lists! To be honest the year 2010 was one of the weakest years when it came to decent comic movies but there were still some good ones! We get two sequels with Iron Man 2 and Predators and the debut of Kick-Ass, The Losers, Jonah Hex, Scott Pilgrim vs The World, and one of the worst movies in cinema, The Last Airbender. Without any more delay here’s #50-26!

*SPOILER ALERT FOR ALL HIGHLIGHTED MOVIES ABOVE*

50. Firelord Ozai (The Last Airbender)

"My son has failed me."

Firelord Ozai was shown a lot more in the film than he was in the show during Book One. To me, this was a mistake. In the show, Firelord Ozai had this Big Brother creepy aura that kept fear in everyone who talked about him and made the viewers know that he was the most dangerous person in their world. In the movie we see him calmly strolling next to some flowers and while he does look powerful, he kinda looks beatable and not much of a threat.

49. Noland (Predators)

"I'm the one that got away. The one you don't fuck with."

At first I thought Noland was someone that group needed. He's survived the planet for several seasons and has even managed to kill a couple of Predators himself. Only problem? He's crazy. He tries to take out the group which forces Royce to signal one of the Predators to find them. Noland tries to take off but is quickly blown to pieces by the Predators he's been avoiding for years.

48. Sokka (The Last Airbender)

"I always end up getting wet."

I hated Sokka. He wasn't funny at all and in the show, some of the best comedy comes from Sokka. It seriously bothered me every time he showed up on the screen because I knew it would be nothing like the Sokka from the film, in the worst way possible. We also didn't get to see him begin his journey of becoming the great leader he becomes by the time Book Three rolls around and his relationship with Princess Yue fell completely flat.

47. Natalie 'Envy' Adams (Scott Pilgrim vs The World)

"You just headbutted my boyfriend so hard he burst."

Envy was Scott's big ex that dumped him when her band got signed and moved away. Now a big star, she returns so her current boyfriend can destroy Scott once and for all. She mainly just eggs Todd on but once he's destroyed she moves on with her band. I will say that I really liked the song her band performed at their concert. It was catchy.

46. Happy Hogan (Iron Man 2)

"I got him!"

Happy is back with a little more screen time in the second film. Still serving Tony Stark, Happy shows he's just as loyal as Pepper is when it comes to helping Tony when he's in need of it. However, it seems he prefers Pepper more as he decides to work for her once she briefly cuts ties with Tony. We also see him bravely take down one of the bad guys...while Black Widow takes care of the other twelve men.

45. Nick Fury (Iron Man 2)

"Contrary to your belief, you are not the center of my universe."

When Tony Stark hits rock bottom, Nick Fury shows up to smack some sense into him. He reveals Black Widow is an agent of his, Tony's father is a co-founder for S.H.E.I.L.D., and lets Tony know what elemental metal he can use as source of energy that won't kill him. He does all this in a matter of one scene then takes off to probably go recruit more Avengers.

44. Max (The Losers)

"I've done a lot in four months, Wade. I'm a very busy man."

The big baddie of the film, but he barely made an impression of me. At first I thought he was going to be this evil, calculating guy that killed 25 kids and felt nothing but he turned out to be just really rich and could pay people to do what he wanted. He, himself, wasn't that imposing so it was a surprise to no one that once his goons and his money were gone he was reduced to someone that gets mugged on the bus.

43. Justin Hammer (Iron Man 2)

"I'd love to leave my door unlocked at night, but this ain't Canada."

This dude reminded me of a horrible used car salesman that just wouldn't shut up. Seriously this guy is the very definition of a cockroach. He first tries to take down Tony with the government but when that fails he tries to be buddy-buddy with him so he can get a slot in Tony's expo. When Stark doesn't fall for it, he then starts funding the guy who tried to kill Stark to basically copy him so Hammer could get all the glory. I'm glad no one took him seriously but something tells me he really means to get back at Pepper for having him arrested.

42. Katara (The Last Airbender)

"I'm the only water bender left in the Southern Water Tribe."

Besides her whiteness, Katara didn't bother me THAT MUCH. She seemed to have this worried look on her face the whole time and her narration just didn't have the same impact as the on in the show. With all the cuts to make the movie shorter, it seemed Katara got the short end of the stick most of the time. Aang takes her spot when it comes to inspiring the earthbenders that are imprisoned and her mastery of waterbending is completely taken out as well. Even her epic fight against Zuko is shortened in favor of a fight between Aang and him.

41. Kim Pine, Stephen Stills, Neil Nordegraf (Scott Pilgrim vs The World)

"We are here to sell out and make money and stuff."

The members of the Sex Bob-Ombs! We got Stephen, the vocals and someone who just wants the band to reach the next level in their career so bad that it's made him paranoid; Kim, who used to date Scott in high school and now seems to hate him and insult him every chance she gets when she's not hating every other female drummer she sees; and Young Neil, who's basically the Great Value version of Scott and is only in the band when Scott can't play. They travel with Scott as he deals with all of Ramona's exes with the hope of getting signed but when that opportunity comes with Gideon, Ramona's top ex, they decide friendship is better and help cheer on Scott to victory!

40. Katie Deauxma (Kick-Ass)

"I'd fuck his brains out if I got the chance."

Katie first had Dave on her radar when she thought he was gay and being outcast by the entire school. Wanting to be there for him, she offered her friendship and the two became super close through the movie. When Dave reveals he's Kick-Ass and that he isn't actually gay, they start a relationship. It's Katie's disapproval in the vigilante life that gets Dave to quit being Kick-Ass for a brief moment and they continue to date after Kick-Ass and Hit-Girl beat Frank and Red Mist.

39. Gideon Gordon Graves (Scott Pilgrim vs The World)

"Game. Over."

Gideon is Ramona's most recent ex, who started the League of Exes when she dumped him. He has all the money in the world and uses it against Scott every way he can. He was honestly my least favorite ex. He wasn't as fun as the others and only dated Ramona because he had a mind control device on her. He's destroyed with the combined effort of Scott and Knives, allowing Ramona to date whoever she wants.

38. Tracker Predator and Falconer Predator (Predators)

*clicking sounds*

These two Predators were part of the trio hunting our group of humans. As a group they were able to take down a couple of them and on their own they were pretty impressive as well. Tracker Predator managed to kill Noland, who's been avoiding the Predators for years and mortally wounds Nikolai before the other blows the both up. Falconer Predator tried to do things the honorable way and take on Hanzo one on one in a sword fight. He dealt a finishing blow, but Hanzo also managed to bring him down as well.

37.��Burke (Jonah Hex)

"I'm gonna hand Turnbull your balls in a snuffbox!"

For every villain wanting to destroy a country there's always a psycho sidekick who just wants to go along for the ride because it's fun. Turnbull's psychotic sidekick was Burke, who didn't understand what was going on half of the time but still killed anyone that got in the way of Turnbull's plans and enjoyed every single second of it. He almost kills Jonah himself the first time they face off, but on the rematch Jonah manages to not only kill Burke, but also brings him back to life just to incinerate his body completely.

36. Prince Zuko (The Last Airbender)

"I will restore my honor!"

I felt like Zuko in film did really well portraying the anguish the Zuko in the show had, but I could not help but giggle every time he tried to be threatening or intimidating. I couldn't buy it. Also is that what you call a scar? Because to me all that looks like is a small scratch. His rivalry with Zhao was cut back which is a bit of a shame because that really is one of the few times during Book One that you feel some type of sympathy for him and want to root him on.

35. Lucas Lee (Scott Pilgrim vs The World)

"The only thing separating me from her is the two minutes it's going to take to kick your ass!"

The cool action star and Ramona's 2nd ex! He wasn't so cool when they dated so she left him for Todd and he went on to be the biggest skate boarding/movie star the world has ever seen! When he faces against Scott he has his stunt team take him on before he kicks his ass all throughout the movie set. What kills him in the end? Scott convincing him to skate down a rail, which he does awesomely until he blows up all of a sudden.

34. Hanzo (Predators)

"Because I talk too much."

Hanzo never spoke a word to the group until he discovers an old samurai sword in Noland's hideout and even then it's only a couple of words. Although he works for Yakuza, he still has a sense of respect and decides to go against Falconer Predator one on one in a sword fight. Even though he's thrown around by the larger beast, Hanzo deals a killing blow that brings the Predator down. Soon after, however, Hanzo dies from his own wounds.

33. Frank D'Amico (Kick-Ass)

"Playtime's over kid."

The most powerful mob boss in the city, Frank takes down everyone and anyone who gets in his way. With the snap of his fingers he can get whatever he wants, so you can only imagine how his ego was handling Kick-Ass ruining his business. Even though he doesn't take his son seriously, he allows Chris to become Red Mist to lure Kick-Ass into a trap, which gets ruined by Big Daddy. Frank gets his revenge by having his goons light Big Daddy on fire, but ends up having to deal with Hit-Girl. To his credit, Frank isn't hard to take down. In fact, he very nearly kills Hit-Girl before Kick-Ass comes and shoots a bazooka missile at him.

32. Edwin (Predators)

"I'm a murderer. I'm a freak."

Everyone thought that Edwin was this innocent doctor who was mistakenly thrown into the hunting preserve with the rest of these killers. He plays the act the entire movie, earning everyone's trust and basically becoming the little brother they all look out for and protect until the very end when it's just him and Isabelle. He shows his true colors by slicing her with a paralyzing blade and almost kills her before Royce shows up. Luckily Royce isn't fooled by the kid's act and he leaves him with a bunch of grenades to greet the last remaining Predator.

31. Todd Ingram (Scott Pilgrim vs The World)

"Chicken isn't vegan?"

This idiot seemed to be the strongest out of all the exes and Ramona's longest relationship. With his vegan lifestyle comes really cool psychic abilities that allows him to wipe the floor with Scott in front of everyone, including Scott's ex, Envy, who happens to be dating Todd now. The idiot apparently doesn't know that a lot of stuff isn't vegan, specifically chicken, so the Vegan Police show up to take his powers away, which allows Scott to take him down.

30. James "Rhodey" Rhodes/War Machine (Iron Man 2)

"Yeah, it's called being a badass."

Rhodey is back and even though he might have a small ounce of respect for Stark, he still doesn't like him. His dislike is what pushes him over the edge to take on Tony's War Machine before engaging in a fight that takes down Tony's entire mansion. I think he has a good moral compass but his dislike for Tony causes him to not recognize when Tony is right about something, which is how Whiplash is able to take over War Machine in the film's climax. In the end Rhodey has finally established himself as a hero and watching him fight along Iron Man as War Machine was very cool to see.

29. Uncle Iroh (The Last Airbender)

"We will find you a nice girl."

Uncle Iroh in the film is a perfect example of going in a completely different way with a character, and it still being good. Sure I would have loved to see him express a love for tea or play some Pai Sho but I didn't need it. Iroh was still laidback, cared deeply for Zuko, and had a respect for the spirits and other nations. They even touched on his son's death in Ba Sing Se. In the film there's this weird thing about firebenders not being able to create fire but only able to control it (extremely stupid, but whatever) and Iroh is one of the few people who can actually create it. He uses his techniques to aid Zuko in escaping from Zhao and continue to go after the Avatar another day.

28. Quentin Turnbull (Jonah Hex)

"The United States will know Hell."

Our main villain who kills Jonah Hex's family after Jonah betrays him and kills his son, Jeb. I personally don't think it's Jeb's death that makes Turnbull go evil, I think he was already like that when he served as the Confederate Army's Commander. It just took Jonah a while to figure that out and when he did it was too late to save his family. Turnbull fakes his death to throw off Jonah so he can create the ultimate weapon to destroy the United States. He's nearly successful but Jonah manages to show up at the last minute to kill him for good.

27. Classic Predator (Predators)

*original clicking sounds*

The group finds Classic Predator strung up on the other Predator's ship and later learn from Noland that he belongs to an inferior clan. Royce decides to free him in hopes that the Predator will take him back to Earth. The Classic Predator is good on his word, but when it comes to facing the stronger Berserker Predator, he falls short and gets decapitated.

26. William Roque (The Losers)

"Well, you better be, because I ain't getting killed by no girl."

Roque was my least favorite Loser for obvious reasons but I really liked him in the beginning. I thought he was going to be this crazy, unpredictable guy who would find any excuse to pull out his knives and that's not what was delivered. Instead Roque complained about everything the group did to get their life back even when the group's plans were actually pretty solid. Then he decides to betray the friend's he's known for YEARS for a chance to live in America again, which is something I would expect from Pooch so he could be with his family, not from a guy who had no one waiting for him back in the states. So yeah, I wasn't mad when Roque ended up getting blown to piece by Cougar.

#iron man 2 #jonah hex #kickass #the last airbender #the losers #predators #scott pilgrim vs the world #William Roque #Classic Predator #Quentin Turnbull #uncle iroh #james rhodes #war machine #todd ingram #Edwin #Frank D'amico #Hanzo #lucas lee #prince zuko #Tracker Predator #Falconer Predator #Gideon Gordon Graves #kim pine #stephen stills #Neil Nordegraf #katara #justin hammer #Max #nick fury #happy hogan

[gingervsblondie]

Blondie (1938)

9:09 PM, Friday, 20 September 2019

Hi. My name’s Euan. Maybe you know me from things. Maybe not. What I’ve just done is open a blank word processor file on my personal computer, and alongside it I’ve opened the 1938 film Blondie, the first in the 28-film-long movie franchise based on the newspaper comic strip, which I haven’t read to any significant extent. In yet another tab, I’ve opened the Wikipedia article for said film, in which I’ve just now learned that Blondie refers to the female lead of the series, something which I was not previously aware of. Every Blondie strip I’ve ever read focused on Dagwood, so I guess I assumed Dagwood was Blondie. I knew that Dagwood was a character but I guessed that he was some wacky side character that I might see if I took a deep dive into the Blondie mythos. WHICH I SUPPOSE IS WHAT I’M DOING NOW, ISN’T IT? Because today I start my journey to watch every Blondie movie ever produced, 28 movies between 1938 and 1950. This... is Ginger vs. Blondie. A minute ago, I didn’t know who Blondie was. Let’s get stuck in, shall we?

9:10 PM

I’ve made a terrible mistake.

9:16

Went to get movie snacks and when I came back and hit play, I accidentally started playing Bombing California St., the third track from the soundtrack for The Last Black Man in San Francisco, on Spotify. It had an interesting effect, adding a dissonant ominous vibe to the cheerful intro, as well as reminding me that good movies exist and I’m gonna watch all the Blondies instead.

9:19

Arthur Lake does look like Dagwood. At this junction I don’t know if there will be different regenerations of Dagwood, but I feel if I’m taking on this endeavour I should get to know the actors’ names.

9:23

“Blondie, oh look! One of my blue socks is green!” -Dagwood, in a black and white movie, based on a black and white comic strip.

9:29

I’m impressed by Larry Simms’ performance as Baby Dumpling (who I will henceforth call Alexander because Baby Dumpling is a demeaning name for a human being) if only because he looks way too young to be able to repeat these lines on cue, as he’s doing. Actually, he seems to have the best comedic timing of any of the actors so far. Lake’s Dagwood and Penny Singleton’s Blondie have delivered a few genuinely funny jokes in such a weirdly timed way that they fell flat. Like it took me a second longer to process them than it should have.

9:35

Just used an inflation calculator to translate a bit where Blondie spends $580 on furniture into modern currency. Then I converted it to Canadian dollars so I could relate to it. Turns out it’s about $14,000 CDN.

9:38

Alexander sits in the time-out chair.

Blondie: “What have you done?”

Alexander: “Nothing, yet.”

https://youtu.be/oCghUlTLKVA?t=178

9:45

There was just a scene where Dagwood asked for advice about being in debt, and someone told him to hang himself, followed immediately by Alexander drying dishes for his mother and saying “When I dry dishes, I hate myself.”

I’m a bit concerned about the screenwriter.

(Who in this case happens to be a man by the name of Richard Flournoy.)

9:51

There was a scene where Dagwood talked to a framed photo of Blondie and Alexander on his desk. It was actually really sweet. And ended with Dagwood saying “Huh? Oh, I thought you said something.” Which made me smile.

That was a good scene in the movie Blondie.

9:54

Alexander just went full Krazy Kat and hit his friend Alvin with a fucking brick. When I saw him hiding the brick behind his back I was QUITE DISTRESSED.

9:56

The movie just made me laugh. Dagwood finds a weight scale/fortune teller, which he puts a coin in, and it tells him he weighs 163 pounds, and that he is “a stupid fellow and not likely to succeed.” He spends another coin and it says the same thing. Another man comes in, gets his weight, and is told he’s about to consummate a successful business deal. Smiling, Dagwood takes out another coin to try again.

None of this was funny.

When he inserts the coin, the scale says “Save your money, sucker, I’ve told you twice already.” And then you hear the coin being returned. That got me.

10:07

Made me laugh a second time. The joke was Guy A asks Guy B-

Guy A: “Where did you leave it?” (It being a vacuum cleaner that’s gone missing.)

Guy B slowly turns his head to look in one direction. Guy A follows suit. Then Guy B points in a different direction than he’s looking.

Guy B: “Over there.”

Stupid joke. I should note that it’s in questionable stereotype area. Guy B is a black hotel worker who I guess is supposed to be a bit dim. But if we’re giving the movie the benefit of the doubt, maybe it’s completely unrelated to him being black and completely unrelated to the unfortunate history of ridiculing black people in early American comedy.

But I mean the black guy’s giving probably the funniest performance in the movie so I gotta give props to him as a comedy performer if not to the writer.

Looked him up, his name is Willie Best. He died at age 45. “In the 21st century, his work, like that of Stepin Fetchit, is sometimes reviled because he was often called upon to play stereotypically lazy, illiterate, and/or simple-minded characters in films.”

The article for Blackface is listed in his “See also.”

Can one appreciate the comedic work of a black man who was reinforcing harmful stereotypes against black men? I didn’t realize such questions would arise when I started the 1938 movie Blondie and indeed the rest of the franchise which I’ve apparently committed myself to.

10:11

Snort. Does a snort count? I snorted. Snort Watch 2019.

Guy: “Dagwood Bumstead. Now your last name, you can’t help that. But somebody is to blame for your first name.”

Dagwood: “That’s right.”

Guy: “Any middle name?”

Dagwood: “No.”

Guy: “Well, that’s a break.”

10:27

Jesus fucking Christ, Dagwood is absolutely traumatizing Alexander. He just told him that if he kept running away from home then maybe his family might stop loving him, and one day he’d come home and they’d be gone. THAat Is NoT HowW youU PARENT DAGWOOD

10:28

The dog is a good actor.

10:30

Snort watch 2019: “General manager? General nuisance.”

I never said I had a high bar for what makes me snort.

10:33

I ship Dagwood and Blondie tbh.

This movie is kind of carried by genuinely sweet moments here and there. Y’know, in between the racism and irresponsible parenting.

10:36

Dagwood Sandwich Watch 2019:

He put a coaster in it by mistake.

10:40

‘Nother sweet moment! Blondie and Dagwood each individually snuck out of the bedroom to go check on sleeping Alexander, meet each other in his room, say “Hello.” “Hello.” And then go over to his bedside.

10:53

Dagwood’s problems came to a head at a surprise reveal in his home, in front of visiting friends. Made me think of Bob’s Birthday, the pilot to Bob and Margaret.

https://youtu.be/k-58TB6-Sy0

10:57

A lot of the conflict right now is revolving around potential infidelity. Which I wouldn’t have predicted, at the very least not in the first movie.

11:13

Thus ends the first Blondie film. It had heart. Not too many jokes landed but it didn’t get boring.

My rating is: one Dagwood Sandwich containing corn chips and turkey.

Strap in folks, we’ve got 27 movies to go. Might watch one more tonight, but I do want to re-watch Bob’s Birthday first.

11:30 I did that. Made for an interesting contrast. Some parallels of marital devotion and infidelity. ALRIGHT HERE WE GO BLONDIE MEETS THE BOSS 1939 GET HYPED EVERYBODY

#gingervsblondie

[siavahdainthemoon]

'this is problematic’ culture vs ‘it’s just fiction’ culture

Look, here’s the thing. I know this site is super divided between ‘this content/your fave/that pairing is sUpeR ProBlemAtic’ and ‘sit up shut down let me enjoy the thing’, and it’s an argument that generally doesn’t go well, because on the one hand the people who cry ‘problematic!’ are often really black/white about it and waaaay too happy to abuse/attack/demonise people for mistakes, and on the other hand people who love their Things get understandably super defensive and protective of them when they’re attacked.

And there’s a whole lot of issues tangled up in there about puritan moralities and generational values and pre- and post-9/11 cultural ideology, and it’s all relevant and important, and if we’re going to have this conversation then it needs to be calm and rational and nobody doxxing or screaming abuse at anybody else.

Particularly at kids and teenagers, for Lilith’s fucking sake. Like any of us were perfect at twelve or sixteen or whatever. Like any of us are perfect now.

We are all human. That means we’re all flawed. We’re all complicated. When people fuck up, you point it out and give them a chance to do better. Equally, when you fuck up, swallow that defensiveness, own up, apologise, and do better next time. Fucking up doesn’t make you a bad person; you’re a bad person (or at least a fucking idiot) if you refuse to consider/admit that you might have been rude/done harm/hurt somebody and continue the behaviour. 

That said.

A story is never just a story.

It doesn’t matter if you’re the creator or the consumer: it doesn’t matter if we’re talking about books or films or shows or video games. If a human created it, it contains biases and opinions, deliberately put in there or unconsciously. The fluffiest sweetest romance novel has things to say about sexuality and relationships and gender roles. The most self-indulgent action film with All Teh Explosions reinforces cultural ideals of masculinity and heroism. 

This is a fact. You don’t get to debate about this. 

It’s also not at all a bad thing, intrinsically. It’s just how the world works, how our minds work, how we tell stories. If nothing had any meaning, nothing would matter. Stories wouldn’t affect us the way they do, the way we need them to as human beings, if they didn’t speak to us this way, on a conscious or subconscious level.  

The reason it becomes an issue, sometimes, is because what stories say affect us.

It doesn’t matter that you don’t ‘see’ the message, the bias, the opinions. It doesn’t matter that you’re just enjoying a fluff fic or a thriller, gods, stop making it political. You don’t have to take a book apart in English Lit for it to literally affect how your brain works. It just happens.

Don’t believe me? I have receipts: here’s a study proving reading Harry Potter reduces prejudice. Here’s an article about the neuroscience of how film clips create empathy (or a 5 minute video running through the same info and study, if you prefer). Here’s another on how the brain basically can’t differentiate between actions and senses read in a novel and real life ones, and, again, heightens empathy for others. Here’s a Ted Talk by neuroscientist Uri Hasson on how our brains sync up while communicating, and how a single sentence can make us think like other members of the group. Here’s an article that sources several different studies on how our brains confuse metaphors with reality and how it affects our behaviour. Here’s a video rundown of the neuroscience of empathy and mirror neurons, and here’s an article full of citations on how not only can fiction make you feel, but readers and writers both score higher on empathic tests than the general population. Here’s a brief Ted Talk linking cultural folklore to gender inequality; here’s an article about how facts don’t change our minds, and here’s another about how stories do. Here is a tumblr post (because it’s the best explanation I can find of the subject) about how our brains learn visual ‘shorthand’ that doesn’t differentiate between real-life experiences and what we see in film and tv, and why that makes the stories we tell sometimes dangerous and always important.

So, again, this is not something you get to debate. Stories, both fictional and not, affect our brain chemistry, our empathy, our prejudices, our beliefs, and our behaviour. Scientific fact, not up for discussion. 

This is why it is, actually, fucking important to discuss problematic elements in our fiction. Because without conscious and deliberate critical thinking, the vast majority of us do just absorb the things we see and read. @fozmeadows, whose blog you should be following as a matter of course, said ‘depiction is not endorsement, but it is perpetuation’. When a story depicts a harmful idea or concept (I would like to add, in the wrong way, because it is absolutely possible to tackle or explore dark gritty topics in way where the narrative makes it clear that This Is Not Okay In Real Life Kids, even if you are dealing with messed up characters who think that it totally is; no one with any sense is demanding that All Fiction 5ever Must Be Only Cotton-Candy And Puppies, how boring that would be), it normalises that concept. Having every black guy (or the only black guy) in your film be a vicious criminal reinforces the cultural mythos far too many white people have that All Black Men Are Ebil. This does not just apply to racism. I will defend the obsessive loves of tween and teen girls to the death, but the romantic relationships in the Twilight series are objectively abusive and framing them as romantic is dangerous; not because young girls are stupid, but because if you absorb without critique a story that tells you your Love Interest taking the wheels off your car so you can’t visit someone he disapproves of is romantic, then why would you not believe the same behaviour is romantic in real life? That has become your definition of romance, and applied to real life, that is scary.

I think the important point here, though, is, if you absorb a story without critique. Everyone is allowed to like what they like; you don’t get to sneer or snarl at someone who likes Twilight just because there are problematic elements in it. What you should do, particularly if you’re talking to a young person, is check in that they know real-life romances shouldn’t work like that, and then move on once you’re sure they understand. You can ship unhealthy ships and you can guiltily or proudly enjoy any piece of media you want, as long as you acknowledge, within yourself, that there are pieces of this story you should not add to your Template For Real Life. 

And content creators - you can also tell any story that you like. But don’t for one second pretend, ever, that your story is only entertainment. It isn’t. It never is. Do with that responsibility what you will - nobody can stop you - but be aware of it.

That’s it. Don’t scream at or doxx or abuse anyone who likes what you don’t like, even if it’s problematic. Don’t defend the problematic elements in what you like, just acknowledge them and continue on with your lives. Try and tell stories that are fun and epic and also make the world a little better.

As you were.

#stories have power #your fave is problematic #how to human #Science rocks #f: anthropology #storytelling #feminist storytelling #psychology #I am so sick of this argument #just be kind to one another #fanthropology

[thenichibro]

Winter 2017 Anime First Impressions

The first season we’re really feeling the effects of more anime simulcast services. Yellow subs, torrents not being under the CR/Funi umbrella - dark times. Due to the fact I can only DDL at college, I am choosing not to watch LWA or Onihei because I wouldn’t be able to keep up with them. I’m definitely going back to LWA after the season’s over though. Regardless, this season has the usual ups and downs, but initially I’m seeing a lot of ups - Maidragon is fantastic, Demi-chan and Urara are cute as hell, and Scum’s Wish is almost emotionally draining to watch, it’s so enthralling. Here’s what I’m watching, with MAL links: Fuuka (MAL) Starting off, we have an ecchi almost-harem manga that I didn't like. Great. Fuuka has the original plot elements of a shut-in guy that popular on the internet, who also has a super-popular girl as his childhood friend and soon gets to know another cute girl. Also his three sisters never wear clothes. Cool. Fuuka wasn't really that shit until the truck-to-the-face level plot twist that occurred in the manga, which I hope they will reach in the anime just for the reactions to how bullshit it is. Other than that, Fuuka is a less-than-stellar sort of harem about a whiny, bland main character. Fuuka even falls on the MC twice in the first episode for good measure. Oh, I guess also the plot involves playing music, but that's basically just a way for more random good things to happen to an unlikable character. OP and ED are nothing special, either. If anything, Diomedia's art style is usually good. Otherwise, avoid. Masamune-kun no Revenge (MAL) A story of a fat kid who got ripped and now wants to get revenge on his former crush. It's something new, for sure. The completely worthless perfect-in-everything trope is now supplied by both the female AND male leads. What a show. At the very least, Masamune-kun tempers the trope by giving both mains embarrassing reasons to keep up airs. The girls we've met aren't half bad, and I for one support a peppy class rep rather than the standard strict, megane type. The princess-complex is so tiring every time it happens, so lets hope that the show moves more toward Makabe/Aki in their real selves rather than putting on airs. Masamune-kun's plot actually strikes me as similar to Last Game, if anyone's read that manga. While I doubt this show will carry far enough into the future to deal with marriage, the story of a guy trying to ruin/outdo a girl and falling for her is definitely there. I have no strong feelings one way or another about this show, at least not yet. That will probably depend on how much princess Aki vs. normal Aki we see. Minami Kamakura Koukou Joshi Jitensha-bu (MAL) I thought Long Riders was last season? Anyway, here we have a slice of life about a girl in a biking club. Relaxing enough premise, for sure. First impressions are that this show takes it pretty slow, judging from the fact that it takes 14 minutes before the main characters get to school at all. That is not a complaint, just an observation. Another is how different the landscape art is from the character art. The show opens with some amazing nature stills, while the character art is, for lack of a better term, "old." As in, it almost has the feel of an earlier 2000s show. I did wonder how much into biking the show would get, like Long Riders did, and the end of episode 1 answered that for me. The last two minutes or so are a live action segment where two of the seiyuu learn about getting into biking by talking to a guy running a bike shop. While the super serious stuff is what kind of made Long Riders fall flat for me, maybe it won't be as serious. We’ll see. Nyanko Days (MAL) I guess since I can't get my Teekyuu fix, I'll have to find a different two-minute show. Nyanko Days is about Tomoko, a girl who has three personified cats. For a two-minute show, that's about how far episode 1 got. She was depressed about being lonely, but cheers up upon arriving home to her three cats, Maa, Shii, and Rou. For a show this short the animation is surprisingly clean, and the 30sec ED was suitably full of "nya" and various words combined with it. It's cute, and it's two minutes long, so why not? Seiren (MAL) I came into this show knowing little more than it was a school romantic comedy, and overall I think it benefited my first impressions. The show focuses on three main girls and their relations with the male MC, and dedicates a few episodes to each of them out of the 12-episode cour. I'm immediately wary of this, only because it gives me flashbacks (read: PTSD) to Photokano, where they focused on a different girl each few episodes and then reset time the next section. I do enjoy the lack of the transfer student trope, at least for the MC. The first moments successfully give you the sense that there is already a school community, something I prefer over having to sort out relationships individually following a transfer. Overall, the MC is pretty standard and the current girl has a tiring personality. As long as this show stays far from resembling trash like Photokano, I think this show will be defined by the personality of the current girl, whether you like that or not. Chaos;Child (MAL) Because we needed more of the Chaos;Head storyline. I don't remember much about Chaos;Head, other than the incredibly shit voice of the main character and the incredibly shit everything else. I watched the first episode in a 1-hour combination with "Episode 0," which is a recap of Head. If you get the HorribleSubs release, that's what the file will be. Anyway, Child itself takes place six years after Head, in which the main character of that show causes some event or something. The recap doesn't help at all. Child follows a school's newspaper club investigating murders similar in strangeness to those during Head. Initially, Takuru seems like a person interested in the depravity and bizaare level of the murders, but that personality gets completely dropped when he tries investigating the newest murder - he completely loses all cool after seeing a body. While that otherwise may be a fairly normal reaction, it goes at odds with the Takuru that had looked at pictures of previous murders and called them "juicy" and interesting. He also regains the first personality after the event is over. Just seems way too abrupt. I will say Itou Kanako returns as she does for everything semi-colon related, and her voice is as good as ever in the OP/ED. I'm thankful for the lack of the otaku protag, but otherwise this seems just as nonsensical as Chaos;Head but with better art. Not looking forward to more. One Room (MAL) The second short show of the season, from famed artist Kantoku. That's the only reason I'm watching this, anyway. This show makes the initially strange choice of being shot in POV, with a voiceless male protagonist. The first episode sees him meet his new high-school girl neighbor, then grow close enough to her that she asks him to help her study. The show is billed as series of shorts focusing on three girls, so I would expect something like four episodes for each one. The most noticeable part of the show is the art, and damn does it look good. Closeups of the girl, fluttering cherry petals, everything is beautiful as a still and smooth when in motion. The POV part is less of a problem for me as I see it as similar to a visual novel, and with the girls being cute and the art being great, this will be an enjoyable watch each week. Kemono Friends (MAL) An all-CG mobile-game show, and a full 24 minutes at that. Why am I watching this? One of the things that stood out immediately was the grating sound of the first two characters's voices. Kemono Friends involves Japari Park, in which anthropomorphized animal girls live and have to deal with aliens called Ceruleans. While the show is clearly projecting a light-hearted tone, it was strange to hear heavy techno during a battle with a big Cerulean. This show looks like no more than a walk around the different areas to see different animal girls. I'd be satisfied with that if it wasn’t just so boring. The OP is suitably bouncy, but even if this show doesn’t get serious, 24 minutes of bad animation is a serious slog. Kobayashi-san Chi no Maid Dragon (MAL) Ah Kyoani, the true saviors of anime. Kyoto Animation's production budget meets the artstyle and writing of Danna ga Nani's creator. I'm on board. A working adult who drunkenly invites a dragon-girl to be her maid. A unique premise, to be sure. Right off the bat, the contrast between the Tohru's unfazed optimism and Kobayashi being done with her shit all the time made me laugh my ass off. The sequence with Tohru getting more scared of humans when Kobayashi and Takiya are drunk was also top-tier. Art-wise the show looks great, animation is smooth, and Tohru is cute as hell. Always a plus. In addition, I think Kobayashi is a grounded character with a few weird tastes, which is somewhat more relatable than a totally “normal” person, if I'm being honest. Regarding the OP/ED, I will do anything for more fhana, and Maidragon's OP does not disappoint. No ED in episode 1. Overall, I was surprised at how much I liked a show with such an ostensibly strange premise, but I am wholeheartedly excited for the next episode. Kuzu no Honkai (MAL) I was immediately drawn in by the brutally emotional premise of Kuzu no Honkai, or Scum's Wish. Two students dating, only using the other as a physical replacement for an impossible emotional love. Wow. I was almost shocked when the episode ended, because I had been enthralled the entire time. Even through the intimate scenes, there was a heavy air, one punctuated by wells of emotion that kept me breathless. Something has to be said for the sound design too - the crescendos of music match Hana's emotional ups and downs to a T. Flawless. Likewise, the art throughout, especially with the black watercolors clouding white paper, the choices of camera angles during the intimate scene - it brings out the regretful and simultaneously indulgent feelings that the scene evokes. The fact that sexual encounters in anime are almost always moments for comedy rather than real emotion just makes Kuzu no Honkai's scenes more unique. Just the very idea of feelings so strong that two lonely people would come together to physically try to stave them off is both depressing and greatly intriguing at the same time. Even the general atmosphere of episode 1 enriched the painful introspective Hana was going through, culminating in the titular wish. With the courage to take a darker look at high-school romance, I want to see more. Watch this show. Demi-chan wa Kataritai (MAL) I didn't think I had a thing for something as specific as "blonde vampires," but there you go. Man, does this show make me feel good. A world where racism towards demi-humans has calmed down to the point where it's a normal part of life. No serious, overbearing issues, just a fun, light-hearted look at the concept of a demi-human living a modern life. I think I find the epitome of that in Takahashi, who doesn't really want much more than to just know more about demi-humans - he has a genuine desire to get to know the subtleties of their lives. Soft-spoken and laid back, he is the perfect foil for the quirky, bubbly Hikari, the aforementioned blonde vampire. Funny exchanges with a few heartwarming moments combine to form one hell of a great first episode. The ED fits the relatively calm tone perfectly, but I'm partial to the OP by TrySail after they caught my eye doing Classroom Crisis' OP. Give it a listen. While there are some noticeably harem-esque undertones, if this show stays relatively away from Monster Musume ecchi and carves its own niche, I will enjoy it to the fullest. Urara Meirochou (MAL) [To get this out of the way first, FUCK Anime Network - who the hell thinks yellow subs, and hardsubs at that, still look fine? At least with the CR/Funi deal I would think we would have some consistency for once, damn.] I saved this for last because it looked like the most healing show this season. That, and midriffs. I'm a sucker for the traditional Japanese style (Mushishi, Katanagatari, Uchouten Kazoku), and Meirochou's art and architecture do not disappoint. Thus far, this is a heartwarming tale of four girls working to find themselves through their style of fortune-telling. The four girls are quite cute, even if Nono's voice is pitched just a bit too high. Also, midriffs. I hope that stays. I also like Chiya's wild-person-new-to-society personality, and I think it meshes interestingly with three other girls that, while adjusted to society outside of Meirochou, are otherwise just as new. Overall, this is a show that takes an interesting setting and premise and aims to tell a story through four cute girls. What's not to love?

#fuuka #masamune-kun no revenge #minami kamakura koukou joshi jitensha-bu #nyanko days #seiren #chaos;child #one room #kemono friends #kobayashi-san chi no maid dragon #kuzu no honkai #demi-chan wa kataritai #urara meirochou #winter 2017 anime #my anime reviews

[tatakatte]

Thoughts on The Last Jedi

Overall: I loved it, but I can very much understand why people won’t. It’s a smorgasbord of plots and characters that doesn’t linger long enough with any of them and completely shatters the cadence of the other trilogies. That being said, it gave a hint as to a different message than we’ve previously felt in the Star Wars movies. One that I find refreshing and intriguing if they have the guts to really thoroughly explore it.

The movie can be divided into three sections. We have the Resistance plot, which focuses mostly on Poe Dameron and Leia. Then the Caper plot, which is Finn and newcomer Rose - easily the most extraneous of the plots and a big part of why I think people will not like this film. Lastly is the Jedi/Force plot, the major one that deals with Luke, Rey, and Kylo Ren.

Rebellion Plot:

The plot device used here - the slow chase to inexorable death via depleted fuel - always has the potential to cast a feeling of dread and defeat. There’s nothing they can do to get more fuel, and if they are caught, they will die. This is used effectively, and is devastating. It’s hard to watch the resistance get beaten and beaten and crushed by inevitability. It was also a good device to use, since it was so slow, versus the quick pace of the battle scenes and the Caper plot.

Poe Dameron was the star of this plotline. We get to see him really shine here, under tutelage from Leia, while still being his own infuriating person. He seems a mix of the Han Solo and Leia archetypes. He’s brash and reactive, but he’s also calculating and deeply loyal. I don’t think he can ever be the diplomat Leia is, but he can certainly get close. For all that they didn’t give him in TFA, Oscar Isaac kills it. He’s cocky, but not destructive. Yes, his first instinct is to blow things up, but he learns several times that sometimes he has to find a different way, that he has to rely on other peoples’ knowledge, especially those more experienced than him. I like that he fucked up a few times, because it takes time for people to learn from their mistakes. Don’t even get me started on his relationship with BB-8, which is adorable, nor his constant admiration for Finn, which should make Stormpilot fans happy.

Really, it’s his interactions with Leia that show his true self. He argues with her, but defers to her when necessary. It’s obvious that Leia has sort of replaced Ben with Poe, mothering in the only way she knows how.

I loved that they had Holdo use the lightspeed to shatter a ship. It’s one of those pet theories that you wanna see, but rarely do. The sacrifice was good - a character we could respect, but nothing too devastating.

The two major battles - space battle at the beginning and red-dirt battle at the end - were well done, typical fancy action shit. I absolutely loved the visual of the white salt being shifted to reveal the red dirt. It was gorgeous and seemed more cinematic than usual. The first battle had the first showing of the humor that would be used in the film, and what I very much dislike. It’s the very meta obvious humor, and while it makes people laugh, it starts to feel inappropriate and too easy. I’m not quite sure how to articulate it. I like my humor to be more subtle, and probably why it rubs me the wrong way.

Leia was underused, but I loved that she used her Force powers. The situation was weird, but damnit if I don’t want Leia to use all the Skywalker powerful shit, just like her brother. It’s always bittersweet with Leia, that Han is gone, her son is gone, and now Luke is gone. She’s all that is left, and she endures. I’m so sad about Carrie Fisher passing, It looked as though she was really enjoying this film.

Caper plot:

Finn and mechanic Rose head to a casino planet to find a hacker to get them into the ship that’s tracking the rebel fleet. Yeah, it sounds convoluted because it is. Fortunately, Finn and Rose are so damn adorable and charismatic that I loved it anyway. Rose in particular came with a strong sense of self and devotion to the rebellion.

The film fails poor Finn. He has no character development and gets a lot of action, but it invariably is pointless. John Boyega is so wonderful, I hope the third film utilizes him appropriately.

Benicio del Toro was more tragically underused than Boyega. His hacker character doesn’t even get a name, has a cute humanizing moment, and then sells out Finn and Rose for a hot dog. Like, what was the point of having such a big actor play him. Maybe we’ll see more in Episode IX, but it was so weird having him do nothing in this one.

I’d like to reiterate this idea for Captain Phasma and the tragedy that is not using Gwendoline Christie. She’s awesome, and has shown to be a versatile actor, and we see her for about ten minutes and three lines. She ‘dies’ but I think they might bring her back for Ep. IX. There was no build up, no backstory or explanation. They have to do something.

Jedi/Force plot:

The meat of the movie. It’s the best part of the whole thing.

We see Luke downtrodden and beaten. He’s failed his sister, his friend, and his nephew. He didn’t train Ben properly, and ended up losing him to the Dark Side. And so Luke has made himself a crotchety hermit that won’t train anyone else. But there’s still that guy inside who brought balance to the Force. The Luke that saved his father, that turned down the Dark Side over and over. Mark Hamill does some of the best acting of his life in this film, giving us so much despair and so much hope. I also feel that Hamill’s career as a villainous voice actor influenced his portrayal of Luke, giving him just a hint of darkness that he didn’t feel like the Golden Child of the original trilogy anymore. I think he came to peace in this film, especially when he accepted that the way he was thinking of the Jedi - as these pristine providers of truth and justice and without flaw - wasn’t a way that could be sustained. And really, that whole ideology started with Luke, when he saw that Darth Vader - the baddest bitch of all - could still have light in him.

Rey was delightful. I do think her training was perfunctory and probably will lead to disaster, her vulnerability with what she saw through the Force and how she connects to it makes her a new sort of Jedi. She isn’t the black and white good or bad Jedi from before, which I think is necessary to the survival of the Jedi. A lot of folk have made talk about her being a Gray Jedi, which I think will happen if not in name, because I think it’s the only way the Jedi can proceed. What they’ve been doing obviously hasn’t been working.

Her Force bond scenes with Kylo Ren - Ben Solo - are amazing. Their connection was heartbreaking and soft and tender and naked in its emotions. I can’t even describe how lovely it was. They were like small children sharing secrets, exposing their deepest parts to each other. You see Kylo actually be a person rather than this whiny bitch, and the scene where they touch hands is one of the most sensual things that has ever happened on screen. A lot of people (especially Reylo shippers, hi) see a sexual component to their Force bond visions, but for me, it was just intimate. It was intimate in a way that was difficult to watch at times. It was a raw emotionality that doesn’t often appear in Star Wars films, and I believe never to this degree.  That’s what I believe will resonate the most with people.

That, and the battle scene before Snoke, of course. I wasn’t happy with how quickly and abruptly they killed off Snoke. We didn’t learn a thing about him! But in some ways, I‘m glad he was disposed of so early, so that we can move on from Kylo having a dark manipulative master. And the way they did it was wonderful.

Kylo Ren gets A+ treatment in this movie. You can see the conflict in him, and how determined he is to be the antagonist, and how much he hates and how much he longs for his family. Early on, he has a chance to destroy the ship that Leia’s on, but he feels her. And he doesn’t shoot. He seems like a stunted little boy who was betrayed by everyone he loved and now he’s tearing them apart in the way Snoke taught him. He calls himself a monster, and only people who are in deep pain will do something like that. Monsters never think of themselves as such.

Kylo had moments of his usual short temper, throwing fits, being melodramatic crap. And it will always be hilarious about how the peons of the First Order seem to be completely used to him destroying random shit and they just carry on as usual. But I do feel like we saw the pale underbelly of our villain. He’s not cut-out for it, really. His redemption arc in Ep IX is going to be painful and glorious and it will happen.

The thing I liked most about this film, however, isn’t really any specific scene or character. It’s this idea Kylo Ren has, that he has to kill the past. Obviously, he takes it to a literal sense, but I think the motive behind it is intriguing.

After all, here we are again. Rebels vs empire. Separatists vs the Republic. Resistance vs First Order. Have we learned any lesson? Will this keep happening, over and over. Revolution, new government, oppression, revolution, etc. Nothing really gets better. At the end of the film, the entire Resistance fits inside the Millennium Falcon. Like, 30 people maybe. That’s not nearly enough red shirts to last a whole movie.

But there’s hope. We have Poe Dameron, who is in Leia’s position, but not quite like her. We have Finn, someone who broke out of the stormtrooper faceless mold. We have Rey, someone who rejects the Jedi teachings in a way that doesn’t embrace the Dark Side, but rather recognizes that the two sides will always be there, always need balancing. And we have Kylo Ren, this arrogant, whiny, tantrum-throwing abuse survivor, who’s been gaslighted and groomed for who knows how long. He’s not another villain who’s evil for kicks. What do we do with all these people who don’t fit in the Star Wars hero/villain templates?

The old way of doings things hasn’t worked. It’s made monsters and terrible people and killed countless. It never stops, it never truly gets better. That’s particularly emphasized - perhaps unintentionally - on the casino planet.

Finn and Rose have a sort of rollicking adventure, evading the police and getting into/out of trouble. del Toro’s character rather ham-fistedly states that the weapons dealers give to both the First Order and the Resistance (yeah, ok, what unionized friendly weapon-supplier are they supposed to use??), that there’s problems on both sides. However, I think the more poignant moment is when we see the kids being used as slaves, basically. They are tiny and live in the stables and obviously orphaned or sold to take care of the horse-creatures. Even Rose talks about how the children of her planet were used, destroyed by these money-hungry warmongers. The Empire rose, the Empire fell, the Republic rose, the Republic fell, and these poor people stayed in the same place. They are still downtrodden, impoverished, enslaved, used.

The old way doesn’t work. We have to try something new.

I really hope they embrace this idea in Ep IX. It excited me in a way that a lot of media has failed to do. I would love to see the talent behind Star Wars embrace a complete paradigm shift.

--- an aside. I absolutely adored that Rey’s parents were worthless junkers who sold her for drinking money. Really, truly, I feel like that’s in the spirit of what the filmmakers were trying to say. However, we do get this information from Kylo Ren, who isn’t the most reliable of sources, and may have been manipulated by Snoke (what’s new). I would much rather this be the truth.

But. During all their Force Skype scenes, Rey and Kylo felt very much like children bonding. Their interactions had an air of innocence to them. This was juxtaposed with Luke and Leia having their own Force-provided conversations and insights in a parallel that I’m still not sure was intentional. In fact, when Kylo is telling Rey that she knows who her parents are, that she’s always known, I straight-up thought she would say that Leia and Han are her parents. That her and Kylo are twins (are they the same age??? maybe siblings). It felt like a natural lead up, and I wouldn’t have been surprised. Was this just me? Am I the weirdo now?

Oh well.

#the last jedi #the last jedi spoilers #tlj spoilers #tlj #star wars #reviews