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mogsk · 3 years

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So I watched an anime called “Violet Evergarden” recently, the elevator pitch of which is basically “feral girl is taken in by military man, turned into a child soldier, military man dies, but not before telling her ‘I love you’, but she doesn’t know what that means, so after the war she becomes a ghostwriter with the ostensible aim of figuring out what ‘I love you’ means through other people’s expressions of love via letter-writing.

It’s a good little concept, and while I enjoyed it, it’s also stuck in my brain as being profoundly odd from a storytelling perspective.

Like, the initial premise is v strong, Violet’s driving objective is to understand the last thing she heard her father figure, “The Major”, say to her before she blacked out and woke up with no arms. She was a feral orphan child with little grasp of language or expression, and so she is burdened with not understanding what this very important person to her was trying to convey before they parted ways. Good shit.

And it seems to carry this fairly well at first. Each episode varies in how much it advances the central plot, but each boils down to Violet having to learn a lesson about how people express their feelings for each other, how they express love through words, or how they fail to do so, and so slowly she goes from only being able to produce very precise and terse letters which read more like military reports, to being able to swoop in and fix people’s interpersonal problems with the power of a well-dictated love note.

Where it kinda falls apart for me is about halfway through the series, where we see that Violet has more or less grown into her role as protagonist in an anime about the power of letter writing and the meaning of love (-ish). She’s gotten so good she’s tasked with facilitating one half of a romantic correspondence between the nobles of two nations whose relations are still tense after The War (which Violet fought in), and so have decided to arrange a marriage between their noble children -- a 14-year old girl and a 24-year old man.

Now up to that point, the messaging around the central theme felt odd, but it made sense, like, Violet is growing to understand love, and so how the show does this is by giving her a lot of weird and fraught situations around that theme: we have a woman who is in love with a man, but she wants to play hard to get which Violet ruins by writing a letter that just directly states ‘I have no feelings for you, please stop calling on me’. So then she goes to letter-writing school where one of her classmates has an alcoholic brother who she wants to express her love and thanks towards, but doesn’t know how to pierce the barrier of grief surrounding him due to the death of their parents in The War.

It keeps on like this p consistently, the central question “What is love? What does someone mean when they say ‘I love you’?” is addressed fairly cleanly, but then, once the issue of Violet’s struggle with being able to convey people’s emotions becomes effectively resolved, we kinda start to leave the rails!

Back to the mid-point episode, so, through trying to properly convey this 14yo princess’ feelings, Violet learns what her true feelings are. No, it’s not that she is discontent with being forced to marry a man ten years older than her because, you see, they already secretly met at a royal party when she was, like...10?? And he found her crying and was, like, “Hey kid, you okay?” and that was the first genuine expression of human emotion outside of her dutiful maid she’d ever gotten. You see, what her discontent is is that she knows the man she met, with a heart so simple and pure he feels compelled to comfort a crying child, would never write these letters, and so Violet conspires with the prince’s ghostwriter to allow them to have a more honest correspondence (which is then reprinted in all the newspapers around both countries.)

What got me about this episode is how it, like, throws all these different narrative threads in the air around this central theme of “What is love?” -- the concept of arranged marriage, the idea of confusing appreciating someone’s kindness for having other feelings for them, the MAID who is, like, the princess’ closest friend and confidant, but who has to explain that, once she’s married off, they will have to part ways because she doesn’t serve the princess, she serves the royal family and there’s this great scene where the princess is weeping after she says that and the maid is like “I cannot accept that command, I will continue standing here right by your side” and it’s really intense!

But then...it all gets dropped in the interest of the final note being...yeah sometimes you have to marry a guy in his twenties when you’re just a teenager, but love’s just funny like that ig!

Which sounds ungenerous, and like, I wanted that to be the case, I wanted it to be setting up something, like, “Despite Violet gaining proficiency in letter writing, she still is struggling to understand the more nuanced dimensions of love and so her shortsightedness will come back round to bite her in the ass” (it does not, we even get a montage of all the people she’s helped including the newly married royal couple smiling happily at the camera.)

We then get more episodes like this, where Violet’s done learning about Love and is now in effect teaching it to others. She does this by...sitting and looking pretty with a guy while they wait for a comet to go by, imitating a playwright’s dead daughter so he can be inspired to finish his play, and...writing a bunch of letters on behalf of a mother dying from anime mom disease, but who wants to be able to speak to her daughter as she grows up through a series of pre-written birthday letters.

And, like, in isolation, it’s all very moving! Each story has a very touching emotional drive to it, but it seems like the question of “What does ‘I love you’ mean?” p much falls to the wayside, even after we get the big 3/4s of the way through reveal that the Major is dead and Violet didn’t know! So we’re treated to flashbacks of their relationship, including the moment where he repeats that damning phrase!

But then we really don’t pick it back up again? It kinda superficially grows in relevance as we approach the conclusion, but it’s never again properly addressed until after a sudden spat of military drama breaks out with people trying to reignite The War and Violet suddenly having to put down her typewriter and pick up her combat knife, but now, for some reason, she refuses to kill people because...she isn’t just a tool?

And I think this is what ultimately frustrated me, is that those are two great themes “Discovering what it means to love” and “Can a person conditioned to fulfill a specific purpose ever be free to choose their own path?” but the problem is, the series really has centered itself on the former while kinda sorta implying the latter, but in the final scenes, we are suddenly given a resolution to the latter (which is basically Metal Gear Solid, “You are not your DNA”, “Just live Snake” that’s been done beautifully and with more thought already by, well, Metal Gear Solid) whereas the former, what was the entire driving force behind Violet’s character development is kinda sorta hand-waved off as “What is love? I still don’t think I know, but maybe that’s just how it is!” which is fucked up coming from someone who by the midway point is basically counselling or facilitating love between people!

So, like, I enjoyed it a lot, there were some great moments and the supporting cast, while mostly one-dimensional save for Violet herself, made for at least nice scenery, but I’m just so blown away by how they seemed to manage to forget (or ceased wanting) to tell the story they laid out in the beginning in favor of some p uniform military drama that suffered precisely because most of the series was dedicated to developing the central theme that it ultimately seemed to abandon, or perhaps came across as being burdened with having to carry into the conclusion.

Also it was super fixated on dads, like, The Major is basically Violet’s dad, his best buddy who goes on to hire Violet as a ghostwriter has a big reveal in the end that he’s been writing letters to his hypothetical future child, the sad dad playwright with the dead daughter -- I dunno what to do with all this besides the usual base level of suspicion I have for all dead-heavy content, but yeah!

There’s two movies, a side story from mid-way through the series and a sequel, and I feel like I almost have to watch them at some point, just so I can tie a neater bow on how I experienced this whole story, but yeah, Violet Evergarden, come for the cool metal typing hands, stay for the heartfelt explorations of what it means to love people, shift nervously in your seat when dads suddenly become involved!

#spoilers

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hows-it-holed-up · 4 years

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Perfunctory Photo Recap: Alias 1x01

After starting off with Gossip Girl and swinging wildly in the other direction for my second post, I decided a happy medium for No. 3 would be that early-aughts ABC classic, Alias. The show premiered basically immediately after 9/11, and I started watching it in 2002 with its mid-season premiere – meaning I missed the first half of the first season and didn’t get to watch it until it RE-AIRED over the summer of 2002. (How did we ever live without streaming apps? Unfathomable.) Anyway, I was obsessed with this show when it was on, and I suspect it’ll hold up pretty well, even though we’re the better part of 20 years out from the pilot. Let’s get our spy on!

My Disclaimer: None of these posts will be in any way comprehensive, because I’m lazy. All of them are probably going to have spoilers of some sort for the entire series…or at least what I remember of it from when I last watched it an eon ago. Exactly what you want in a recap!

The Prophecy: Our heroine Sydney Bristow thinks she works for the CIA, but learns pretty quickly (after they murder her fiancé) that she’s been a bit of a dummy! She actually works for the bad guys – an organization called SD-6. Will she just sit back and accept it? That would make for a pretty short series!

Fresh off his thrill-a-minute action masterpiece Felicity, J.J. Abrams stays brand consistent, opening his new series with some light waterboarding.

We cut almost immediately to Sydney in a college classroom (there we go, J.J.), where she’s scribbling furiously in a blue book and giving me anxiety-induced flashbacks. She meets up with her BF...

Who proposes to her on “the quad” while singing “Build Me Up Buttercup” at the top of his lungs. I remember finding this adorably romantic in high school. If someone inflicted this on me now I would literally walk away and never speak to them again.

Syd here seems to be contemplating the exact same thing. But she (somehow) gets over it and says yes.

Wow, there it is! “The CIA.” Honestly, Sydney really should have figured out this wasn’t legit almost immediately. No way the vibe at ANY CIA office is industrial chic. There’s barely a fluorescent light to be found!

LOOK AT BABY BRADLEY COOPER! (Yes, this screengrab was very strategic.)

He’s so crestfallen when she tells him she’s engaged to Doug or Dave or whatever his name is. Poor BB. Don’t worry Bradley! He’ll have shuffled this mortal coil by halfway through the episode.

Annnnd this is why:

Big no-no!

He freaks out and I guess runs off. When they meet up again it’s at some oil-pumping hoosit in Bakersfield or some such, and she gives him some cringeworthy line about having always hoped she’d find someone to give her life meaning and he’s the one etc. etc. GROAN.

Then she jets off on her latest mission, where the best part is she gets to use her real accent for about 10 seconds.

As a southern(ish) lady myself, I always get a little delight when I hear a good southern accent! Everyone seems to think they can do a flawless one, but it’s almost impossible to find someone who’s not from the region and can do it properly. The attempts are usually skin-crawlingly bad.

Anyway, after the mission, she returns home to a not-very-nice surprise.

J. Garn is VERY good in this scene.

After a wee confrontation with her boss about the small matter of murdering her fiancé, we cut back to the torture scene, where Sydney’s got some jokes!

LOLLL!!!!1! But to be fair they did shoot her full of a big ol’ syringe of something we’ll assume is affecting her frontal lobe, or whatever. You try being funny in the middle of a drug-enhanced torture session.

Anyway, we cut back to Dorian’s funeral, where we get eyes on Will’s (Bradley Cooper’s) sister, who happens to have fire-engine red hair and be dressed like a British goth-punk from the ‘70s. Super approps funereal attire. And also probably nothing to do with Syd’s lil future disguise – just a total coincidence.

Then over to this image of me, every night of this COVID-19 quarantine. Note the bottle within arm’s reach. By tomorrow I’ll probably be foregoing the glass altogether.

When we check back in with our girl, it’s been 3 months since she’s been into the office. Prob b/c of the whole “murdered her fiancé” thing but who can say really. Anyway folks aren’t super pleased!

Like really not super pleased.

There’s a whole fighting thing, and as Syd’s struggling to escape her dad dadus ex machinas on up:

He tells her the people she’s working for are actually the bad guys. And she’s like NUH UH! And he’s like “So then how come you’ve never been to Langley? Also come on have you seen the offices?”

Not really being able to argue with his logic but also not really trusting him, Syd runs off and steals Will’s sister’s identity (SHOCKING TWIST!). Because as all great spies know, you want to stand out as much as possible – so best practice is to dye your hair the brightest color you can manage and dress like it’s Halloween so that everyone will notice you.

Anywho, all of that somehow works, and we arrive at the part of the narrative where she gets captured and tortured. But because she’s the star of the show, it probably won’t come as too much of a surprise that she escapes! She runs off to find the thing she was supposed to find at the beginning of the show:

A highly coveted floating clown nose! (No but actually it’s much more sinister than that and is a big deal later in the series.)

She gives it to her boss so he knows she’s back onboard:

Then heads straight for CIA HQ, where she writes down her story for this handsome fellow and offers to be a double agent for them:

Sigh. I remember being very into these two as an IRL couple and finding out they broke up immediately before a French test. I also remember I did not do excellently on said French test. I’m sure it had nothing to do with the fact that I had no interest in studying. I would probably be fluent now if it weren’t for them.

Anyway, the CIA verifies her statement and sends an asset to let her know that she’s in:

Yes that’s what I just said.

It turns out that papa Bristow is ALSO a CIA double agent! What a good reveal to end on! Great job J.J.!

Debriefing:

- After spending 20 minutes searching for a free, not-illegal way to watch this sucker online (because I’m a cheap bitch), I finally gave in, swam around in my massive hope chest and literally dusted off this DVD, which it turns out I still own. Did I buy a DVD player just so I could watch my Alias, OC and Friends DVDs? Who can say!

- I didn’t realize they introduced the Rambaldi mythology in the first episode. It’s actually pretty impressive they could maintain that as a narrative thread throughout the show. Also we’ve got a “47″ alert at 12 minutes in.

- They have Jennifer Garner speaking a ton of languages throughout this show, as I recall. I wonder if she’s any good at any of them? She sounds vaguely convincing in the pilot, to me, but what do I know?

- I think we can all agree that Merrin Dungey is a national treasure and deserves to be a bigger star than she is. I’m always so happy to see her when she pops up in other things. And she’s great in this show.

- Overall, the Alias pilot holds up REALLY well. It does an amazing job of giving depth to all of the characters and really making the audience care about them – even the ones who only appear for a few minutes. The plotting is strong, and the groundwork for the rest of the series is laid without being even remotely heavy on eye-rolly exposition. Plus the actors’ performances are all *CHEF’S KISS*

#tv recap #spoilers #alias #pilot

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nellie-elizabeth · 5 years

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Grey's Anatomy: Nothing Left to Cling To (16x01)

Oh boy, we're back! This show is one of the hardest that I review, because there are just so many characters and so much going on.

Cons:

I'm never going to be on board with Owen and Teddy! I can't do it! You can't make me! Amelia and Link are fine, Teddy and Tom are adorable. Owen can go be a single dad for a while. Yeesh. There's that scene at the end where Owen finally figures out how to help Teddy - he lists the house and finally seems to be hearing what Teddy needs. And the whole time I'm just like - ugh I don't know if this dude deserves this. Teddy is more annoying with Owen, and much more fun with Tom. I like that Tom is planning on fighting for her, but I feel like it's going to be fruitless.

This is half a complaint, and half a hope. We see Jackson starting up a potential relationship with an EMT, as he and Maggie are firmly broken up. I hope that sticks. I do not want to get back on the Jackson and Maggie merry-go-round. These two characters are at their worst when they're together. I like them both so much better when they're alone, or with other people. Also, it was weird that the hiatus hook was all about Jackson being in peril, but he wasn't, at all. He was helping some climbers who had gotten injured, and he is safe. I thought at first the episode was going to flash back and show all of the drama that had happened in rescuing the hikers, but no. It was practically a footnote on the way to other things. Kind of an odd narrative choice.

Amelia being pregnant is just... sigh. Can't we have just a couple of episodes where the pregnancy-related drama dies down? I guess not. I was ready to be amused by her trying to set up a threesome with Link and Carina. I was even wondering if Carina was going to get annoyed by her assuming that this was an okay thing to just ask. But instead, we've got pregnancy scandal. And it's Link's, right? I can't remember, time-line wise, if there's a chance it's Owen's. Either way, it's drama central once again. I was just starting to really enjoy Amelia and Link, too.

Pros:

I complained that the Jackson drama was so weirdly brushed over, as he wasn't at all in danger. But I really did like the married couple who were found by Jackson after he'd abandoned Maggie on the road. They acted as a benchmark of devotion. She held on to him for hours and saved his life at the cost of serious damage to her own body. And then she fought for him as he got sick in the hospital, wanting to save his life but also to preserve his wishes. It's nice to see a somewhat outside view of a powerful and devoted couple. When you measure them up against a lot of the other relationships on the show, you can see where things falter, and where things hold true.

Speaking of things holding true, this episode takes us through a month of time, as we see Jo get help in a facility, and Alex come to terms with being there for her. Poor Jo tries to give him an easy out, because their license was never filed and they're not actually married. But when Jo is ready to come home, Alex does the cheesy get-down-on-one-knee thing and re-proposes to her, committed as always to staying by her side. This was cheesy and yet perfect. I love that Jo isn't suddenly rescued from darkness by her white knight, but she's doing much better and she's putting in the work. I want to see her and Alex have all of the happiness in the world. They truly deserve it. I also really liked Link and Alex getting drinks together. I wish they would do more with Link and Jo's friendship.

We are seeing the consequences of Meredith's lawbreaking, as she, Alex, and Richard have all been fired, and Meredith's medical license is in question. I like that Meredith takes it all in stride, as she was expecting something a lot worse than community service. There's even the scene at the end where she's telling Andrew that it's like a vacation. And then an email comes, and the board is going to pursue a hearing against her medical license. I would imagine that this is a wake-up call for her, as she realizes what she might have cost herself. It was interesting to see Meredith's dilemma treated almost in a comedic way, because it highlights her privilege as a white woman of means. It's also nice to see that DeLuca hasn't had to pay for his heroic lie, as he is released and back at work at the hospital.

And then there's Richard, who is feeling aimless without his job. He and Catherine are on the outs because Catherine supported Bailey in firing Richard. I like that Richard is angry, and standing up for himself a little bit, but also that Catherine is firm in her own decision. She's angry with Bailey for what has happened, but she's not begging for Richard's job back either. That's an interesting balance. My general dislike for Catherine should be a surprise to nobody who has read these reviews before, but I like this dilemma. I also love the idea of Richard and Alex working together at a different hospital. They were both fired, but their medical licenses are not in doubt. This hospital is in need of an overhaul, and I think Alex and Richard might actually be up to the task. It will be fun to see Alex take on this new challenge, at least for a while.

Before the end of the episode, with the Amelia pregnancy reveal, I was actually really enjoying Amelia and Link's plot. Amelia was confusing in her communication to Link, but eventually cleared it up and told him that she wanted to slow things down, go on some dates. This is how the subject of a threesome gets brought up, and Carina is looped in. I like Amelia as a comedic character. She's at her best when she's not being all broken up about Owen. I hope that even with the pregnancy, we can keep some of this lighter tone.

Tom Koracick is such a joy. I love how happy he was to see Teddy and the new baby, and how he declared his continued feelings for Teddy, but said he would be just her friend and be there for her. He's honestly such a good guy, and I hope he ends up with someone who deserves him. Also, now he's helping out with Catherine's foundation, and he's effectively Bailey's boss. That seems like it will lead to some interesting and hilarious drama!

That's that. All in all, this episode didn't feel over the top, as far as Grey's Anatomy premieres go. It resolved some of the dangling threads from last year's finale, and laid the groundwork for some stories I'm sure I'll enjoy. I'm less sure about some of the other story elements, but that's been true on this show from the very beginning.

8/10

#review #greys anatomy #greys anatomy review #grey's anatomy #grey's anatomy review #grey's abc #greys abc

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ohjohnno · 4 years

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Outrageous Fortune Reviewcap: S1E08 (”My Dearest Foe”)

Well, now I see why I didn’t remember what happened in this episode. The answer, it turns out, is nothing much. This isn’t technically a filler episode - a couple of important new characters are introduced, and a plot thread is introduced at the end that will continue through just about the whole rest of the show - but the actual events of the episode are mostly inconsequential. Accordingly, I won’t spend too much time on ‘em here.

The first plot concerns Cheryl, who has now taken up a job at an insurance company. Nobody except her is especially happy with this - insurance companies, we’re informed, are “the scum of the Earth” - but Cheryl seems to like it.

Things, alas, are not as they seem. The branch Cheryl works for turns out to be running a neat little scam, the girls there all approving each others’ bogus insurance claims; the boss lady, Penny, has been overseeing it thus far, but is looking to move on and wants Cheryl to be her replacement. She only hired her, it turns out, because of who she was, and Cheryl is quietly exasperated; no matter how she tries, she can’t seem to outrun her past. Penny also suggests that another reason she hired her was because she thinks of her as a kindred spirit in having been victimized by a terrible man; Cheryl’s not overly enthused with that suggestion either.

After a little deliberation, she turns down the offer. Penny didn’t expect that, and now fears that she’s told Cheryl enough to make her a threat; she tries to ship her off to a different branch in a place called “Pakuranga” (apparently way off elsewhere in Auckland). Cheryl, feeling betrayed, indulges in a bit of the old family tradition and steals her car, pawning it off to pay some maintenance bills; Penny fires her, and that, one might think, would be the end of it. But Penny, in a fit of pique, calls the cops on Cheryl over a stolen item she spotted in their house one time, and after an incredibly bored visit from Judd and Hickey (who have much better things to be doing), she pays Penny another visit, telling her in no uncertain terms to leave her the fuck alone before she has her friends rob the pants off her and everyone else in the office. Penny backs down.

“For your information, I’m nobody’s victim,” she tells her. Hmm. No comment.

The other main plot concerns Pascalle, and there’s barely anything there. She gets a call from the modeling agency she got registered at before she left the strip club, and they’re considering her for a charity shoot about animals. While in the waiting room, she bumps into a girl named Chantel Lazenby, a fellow model with the agency who also used to be a schoolmate. She used to be very fat, apparently, but she certainly isn’t anymore, and Van is of the belief that she’s “a dyke” (mostly because she rejected his advances once). What follows is an extremely low-stakes rivalry between the two as they both attempt to get the modelling job, mostly involving Pascalle and Chantel having a couple of glorified drinking contests and a few silly lesbian jokes. Eventually, Chantel is successful, and Pascalle is left in the dust, bitterly assuring herself that “Chantel was fat once, and you can’t escape genetics.”

That’s really it, as far as plots go. Doesn’t sound like enough to fill up an episode, does it? Well, it really isn’t - and it doesn’t. The rest of the episode is filled, mostly, with little things; interactions between various characters that have little plot significance but are fun to watch anyway. They’re the meat of this episode, and they make it a lot more likable than such an inconsequential episode really has any right to be.

For a start, Loretta - perhaps thanks to the success of her atrocity last episode - is in the very best mood we’ve ever seen her in the show so far; she’s bubbly and perky, grinning constantly, cracking jokes at everyone’s expense at the speed of light while making herself a constant nuisance for Cheryl, and, as much as I kinda hate to admit it considering what a monster she’s proven herself to be, she is absolutely delightful. We also learn that she’s one of those film nerds who considers Showgirls to be an underrated masterpiece, although she might just be teasing Van there.

There’s a running joke involving a big wooden cuckoo clock that Van (at Loretta’s behest) bought Cheryl for her birthday; it’s an ugly old thing, and it turns out to be stolen (not surprising, since Van bought it from Eric), and Cheryl hates it, which of course means Loretta completely loves it, repeatedly putting it back up on the wall every time Cheryl takes it down. “It’s a battle of wills,” she says, and it’s both hilarious and kind of oddly adorable. Also, lest we forget, Loretta having the idea to get Cheryl a present in the first place is significant - there’s a heart in there after all, it turns out, even if it behaves very strangely sometimes.

We also learn that she used to be great at Irish dancing, which will eventually be important (though not for a very long time). Elsewhere, we find Ted dealing with the fallout from last episode in his own way: poker, at the Wests’ dining table. He’s joined, over the course of the episode, by Munter (which is significant, since that makes this the first time he’s done anything plot-wise that isn’t related to Van), Eric (who’s still upset over Cheryl leaving the crime business), a new character called Falani (a very large, very crooked Samoan mechanic who will become a major supporting character eventually, and who also fixes Cheryl’s car this episode), and eventually Rochelle (who you may remember from episode four). It’s pretty high-stakes for them - they’re all playing for money - but it’s very low-stakes for the viewer, and it is also, possibly, the best part of the entire episode.

Nothing much happens because nothing much needs to. It’s oddly relaxing to watch, actually; just a bunch of nice, simple jokes about an odd cast of various bogans playing poker against each other, subtly revealing things about themselves in the process. Falani goes on lengthy monologues about his skill at making love to his wife, but proves markedly less skilled at the patient, analytical art of the game; Munter is remarkably laid-back, enjoying softly making fun of Falani’s bad luck perhaps more than the game itself; Eric is perpetually grumpy, except when he disappears into the West bathroom and decides, for some reason, to try on some of Pascalle’s moisturizer (possibly thinking it’s Cheryl’s), which is hilarious; Rochelle is arrogant and remarkably skilled. But none of them are as good as Ted, who cleans them all out with aplomb, rarely speaking or changing his facial expression. “I feel much better now,” he says to Cheryl at one point; Cheryl isn’t so enthused with all these bums lazing around her house, but she can see his point.

Ted, at one point, has a one-on-one chat with Cheryl, noting with neither praise nor condemnation how the Wests “have never been much good at what you might call actual jobs”. We’ll see how that statement ages. Wolf turns up just long enough to justify Grant Bowler’s paycheck, his scene pretty much pointless except for how funny it is; he baked her a birthday cake, apparently, but when a car failure prevented her from arriving at the prison to pick it up “it got eaten”, and now he doesn’t want to talk about it, moping like a teenage boy behind the prison desk.

There’s two sides to this show, basically, and this episode is the lighter one. It’s all very low-stakes and very whimsical, and if that means nothing much of consequence happens, well, that’s okay. We get to see the three West children who still live at home laughing and having fun with each other, their lives all mostly tranquil for once, giving us something of a control group for when things start to go wrong. We see the West household in a moment of peace, nothing particularly awful happening to it, nothing calamitous getting in the way of the atmosphere. It’s nice. I like it.

There’s one more thing. In this episode, we’re introduced to Kacey, an old friend of Cheryl’s with “shit taste in blokes” (her words) and a passion for designing undergarments. She talks, at first, of starting up a business, and eventually, having lost her latest job, Cheryl agrees to join her in her venture. The results from this pairing will last a very long time indeed, and Kacey will end up becoming an extremely significant character. That’s all yet to come, though.

This episode also has possibly my favorite ending to any of the less important Outrageous Fortune episodes ever. If you’ve seen it, you know what I’m talking about. Man, this show could be funny when it wanted to. And here, for the most part, that’s all it wants to do. There’s nothing wrong with that at all. After the last episode, it’s nice to have a breather. As I recall, actual important stuff kicks in again next episode. I will see you then.

#Antonia Prebble #Siobhan Marshall #antony starr #Robyn Malcolm #grant bowler #television #outrageous fortune #Frank Whitten #rachel lang #Gutter Black #nz

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darklingichor · 4 years

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Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell Ramble Fest Part 5. *Spoilers*

Day 5: finished it. Okay, lots of things. Rowell's writing is absolutely addictive, I would have finished it faster if it weren't for my job and bills and stuff. Stupid responsiblites keeping me from reading.

I think I'll take each plot thread and follow it to the end.

With Levi, I sort of expected him to be Reagan’s brother, possibly twin (just by the way she reacted to the identical twin thing). Anyway, what college class allows you to read and test on The Outsiders? Can I borrow anyone’s time machine and go take it? I literally (and I actually mean literally) read that book twenty times in a row when I was fifteen. I wrung every bit of context, subtext, and not-even-in-the-text out of it. I felt like I knew Johnny and Ponyboy better than I knew some of my own family members. My best friend and I also took turns reading it out loud to each other (we did this with a lot of books, actually). I could have taken that test in about five minutes and would have been the easiest A I ever got!

Anyway, can I just say that I love the fact that Cath sees audio books as reading? Some people don’t and it annoys me to no end.

So I do like the Cath/Levi pairing, but what is it about romance in fiction? One half of the pairing doesn’t answer texts so the other half makes out with someone else? Does this happen in real life? I’m aro ace, this is completely foreign to me. I mean, I understand the concept of demiromantic and demisexual. Someone you feel connected with makes you want to do the romance or physical thing with them. But then you wouldn’t just kiss someone else because you didn’t hear from the special someone for a couple of hours, right? How does that connection happen in the brain? Not judging just wondering about something that makes no sense to me, personally.

It was sort of interesting how the relationship progressed. I get why she was so reluctant to really go there. Cath is the embodiment of fool me once, you will not get a twice.

I like that Levi really is a nice guy. Not a guy who plays nice and then expects something because of it. He legitimately felt horrible for the kiss with the other girl.

Also often, in the stuff I watched growing up, the love interest had to "look past" the geeky stuff that the main character liked. It is cool that Levi likes Cath for everything that she is, including the stuff that Wren tries to downplay. Same goes for Cath liking Levi. Niether one of them change to make themselves "better" for the other. That seems more real to me.

I like the slight struggle they had with Reagan being Levi's ex and how they all moved passed it. The only thing I can't figure out of I like is how once the relationship solidified, Cath's anxiety seems to have, if not disappeared, then greatly reduced.

I can't figure out if that's because she had more in the way of support in the form of Wren, Levi, and Reagan, more confidence because of the reactions she got to both forms of her writting, less stress because her dad had more support from her grandmother, and all of the other things that came together for her... Or the "Got boy now, what is mental illness?" Trope.

I would say it's the former because it would make sense, but we spend so much time in Cath's head and see her struggle and overcome, in the little daily battles that are always there even with changes made in the form of healthy coping mechinisms, medication or counseling. And suddenly it just drops away... I don't know, that bugged me.

Speaking of struggles

Arthur’s episode was handled really well, and I’m completely on Cath’s side. Family comes first. I don’t care if they are uncouncious, I wouldn’t be able to consentrate on a final if a close family member were in the hospital and I wasn’t there.

The part of my brain ruled by the anxiety goblin completely agrees with Cath wanting to leave the school. The part of me that is closer related to the turtle than it should be. “This is scary, uncomfortable, painful, ect. Time to hide.”

The more reasonable part sort of agrees with her when she said she didn’t choose the school, Wren did. Why stay at a school that you didn’t want to attend in the first place? I also understand the logic behind wanting to stay home to take care of her dad. Is ot the eighteen year old kid's job to take care of the parent? Not really, but what do you do when someone you love needs help?

The more rational part also says: You have a scholarship? Stay put, kid, loans blow!

During this whole thing? Wren is still a dick. The You and dad are crazy because you let yourselves be crazy argument...

"Got a broken leg? Walk it of wussy!"

Now, is that to say that Cath's way of letting her anxiety cope with her rather than the other way around is right?

No.

But it's a lot more complicated than "Just don't let it bother you." Bitch, if she could do that she wouldn't have anxiety now would she?

I don't know a lot about bipolar but I know enough to say with confidence, that just willing the chemicals in your brain to behave is not going to cut it.

So Wren's alcohol poisoning. Can I say that I loved how it was handled? The writing got around every tired thing that can happen coming out 0f a plot element like that.

Wren and Cath did reconcile, but Cath didn't cut her a lot of slack and was matter of fact about how stupid Wren's behavior had been. Her dad didn't do the whole "I'm just glad you're okay" thing, he laid down the law. One of my favorite lines from Arthur was when he told Wren that she had to go to AA meetings.

"I'm not an alcoholic."

"Good. It's not contagious. You're going to meetings.”

I honestly wouldn't mind a story from Wren's perective over the course of this year. It would be interesting to see her partying, her relationship with her boyfriend and her thought process while she let some of her personality blaze through while hiding others.

After she and Cath make up it becomes clear that she thought that she couldn't go to parties, make new friends, have new experiences and be close with her sister and still openly love nerdy things.

Professor Piper, writing, Laura, and Simon Snow.

I get the feeling that Professor Piper is suppose to be subverting the Mary Sue stereotype. When Cath first starts the class she is in awe of this teacher. Piper is wise, talented and compassionate. She's perfect. So when she first talks down fan ficton, I thought, well if the story were to follow the Mary Sue, Cath would "realize" her folly and abandon Carry On, Simon. I knew that wasn't going to happen.

The more she bad mouths fan fiction, the more she just... Acts like nothing touches her, I thought: She's the Mary Sue... But she's almost the villain (and almost is important here because she doesn't continue down that path). I mean, she can do whatever she wants with her students' grades? What university is this? Professors have to get their grades submitted by a deadline. She couldn't hold Cath's grade just cause she felt like it. She'd have to submit an incomplete and I'm pretty sure that it would have to be made up long before it actually was.

She calls fan fic "Stillborn" as if the only ultimate reason to write is to make a living off of it, that was bitchy. She likely would have been surprised that a good number of her students probably dabble in it, because I haven't met many people who write (post Harry Potter) who didn't read some fanfic, if not write it, and that's just one fandom Yes, it is a wonderful thing to make your living doing something you love, However, Cath is also right, you can write like some people knit or scrapbook. You can do something you love simply for the love of it.

Further more and most importantly, no writting is "stillborn" you put effort into it, it lives, if only for you.

Now, Cath is trying to not write her final project because she's scared, she's afraid that she doesn't have it in her to do with her own characters what she does so well with Baz and Simon. That doean't mean her reasoning isn't sound, it's just not sound for her.

Nick... I don't have a lot to say about Nick. I knew he was going to end up being a tool, and he was.

Same goes for the Laura thing. I agree with Cath, you don't get to walk out of being a parent and walk back in to be a fair weather friend.

Simon Snow. As a framing device first the "original" books and then Carry On, Simon was very effective. I had a hard time listening to many of them though because of the narration. Don't know why they had the narrator switch when we were in Cath's story.

Having read Carry On before Fangirl, it was interesting to see the differences between the stories. And it simaltiously gave and took away hope for the Anyway the Wind Blows.

That fantastic part where Wren tells Cath that she can't kill off Baz, that she'd always said that Baz deserved a happy ending because of everything canon and all the fics they'd written and read, had put him through.

I thought: That bodes well for Baz in the next one.

But Wren also says that Cath has to give him a happy ending because Gemma T. Leslie never will.

Then I thought: Well shit, that doesn't, does it?

And all of this means nothing, really. Carry On and Wayward Son exist outside both this book and the fictional series...

Gah! This universe is like a Russian nesting doll crossed with a rublix cube!

The little bits we get of Cath's final project were lovely, and yes, painful. Writing something personal is painful but, but cathartic a lot of the time.

I had a lot of emotions reading this book and while I like Carry On more, I think Fangirl is fantasic. Just from the two books I've read, Rainbow Rowell's speciality is to take expectations and expertly either defy them or bring them to fuition in a way that is more satisfying than what the reader might be expecting. This means I might break from my escapist reading trend a bit more often.

#book #books #fangirl #rainbow rowell #spoilers #eight #book blogging 2020

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douxreviews · 5 years

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American Gods - ‘Moon Shadow’ Review

"Fear is order. Fear is control. Fear is safety."

Season two of American Gods wraps up. It was... a little confusing. The episode, not the season. Well, actually also the season.

Much like 'Donar the Great' a few episodes back, 'Moon Shadow' had a lot in it that felt very Fuller-esque. So again, I ask myself how much of the planning for this was already underway before his exit from the show. Quite possibly none, and it's just the result of a DP or one of the designers having a similar artistic taste, but it seems to carry across all the elements of design, from sound to shot composition to the visuals.

Take, for example, a moment that I've seen now in a couple of places questioned as, 'What the hell was that about?' I refer of course to the gorgeously framed close up shot of the snails on the side of the burial vault. Fun side-fact, I had to look up what exactly those above ground stone things that Shadow was lying on were called and was informed that they were very common for Egyptian Pharaohs. Nice detail work there, set designer or whoever made the decision to have them in Jaquel and Ibis' cemetery.

Now, the contrasting image of Shadow sleeping on top of the Vault, then waking to find Laura sleeping on the adjacent one is a very nice, if not overly subtle, 'in life we are in death' visual. Particularly given the characters involved. But then they up their game and open the morning shots with that close up of the snails clinging to the side of the stone monument. This is a great shot for a few reasons, but it's there for a very Fuller reason. It's a stark visual of gross, complicated, uncomfortable life clinging on in the face of cold, unalterable death. It's the same message as Shadow lying on the thing put in a much more confrontational way.

But I appear to be waffling in the little details instead of looking at the big picture, so let's look at that big picture.

There are a few ways to wrap up a season finale, but two of the most popular are either by building to a spectacular reveal of something that changes our entire understanding of what we've seen before, or arriving at a climactic plot development. Both of these can either be something completely out of left field or the final realization of something that's been slow burning for a long time and is finally paying off.

Wednesday's reveal as Odin in season one's finale would be one of those slow burn examples of the former. Easter's decision to join Wednesday and unleash her power starting the war was the slow burn example of the latter.

This finale kind of attempts both, and while there's a lot I like in this one, neither of those threads feel like a complete success. Perhaps looking at the two of them individually will help me parse out how I feel about this episode, because, honestly, seven or so paragraphs in and I'm still not 100% certain that I know.

So, clearly the big reveal here is that Shadow is Wednesday's son and has some sort of powers. This is, to be fair, a huge reveal. But the problem is that they've sort of half revealed it at least three or four times this year, and so the net result is not unlike when your sassiest friends comes out of the closet to you and your first reaction is 'Oh, did we not already know that? I thought we were already clear on that.'

Side note: that's not a helpful thing to say to the friend in question, should the occasion arise.

Since almost the beginning of the series fandom has been more or less convinced that Shadow is Odin's son Baldr. Or Baldur, or Balder. Old Norse didn't have a strong written component outside of a limited set of runes, and the written forms we understand of it today were almost entirely imposed on it later. Thank you for indulging me with sharing that. Orthography is one of my favorite things. Orthography and assembling flatpack furniture.

Ahem. Fandom has long believed that Shadow is going to turn out to be Baldr. That's a nice, big reveal to end the season on, but by the time we get to Wednesday openly confirming it at the end of this episode we've already heard him talking to young Shadow in flashback while Shadow's mom is dying and been nearly beaten over the head with the implication of Shadow's paternity during the discussion of his presumably half-brother Donar.

On the other hand, we have the plot development of Mr. World officially commencing what we might call the counterattack in the war by using the newly resurrected New Technical Boy to facilitate New Media in calling the entire world down on Shadow, Wednesday, and for some reason, Salim. It was clever of them to publicly use not just the bank robbery in Chicago, but also the massacre of the cops back in 'Lemon Scented You' and the alleged 'chemical attack' in Kentucky which was of course really Easter's taking back the spring. That all gave it a nice sense of all the multiple plot threads coming together organically, and was tied together well by New Media finally speaking to Shadow in the same way old Media did. That's the first time she's really felt like a continuation of the same character for me, and I'm down with New Media now.

That's all great. But it's tied in, in fact it's the entire impetus for, Shadow's big character transformation in which he learns to use what powers he has. Specifically, he seems to alter reality by reaching into his own memories to clear the police and SWAT units from the funeral home's vicinity. From what we hear over the news, he didn't change things so much that the cops aren't still looking for them specifically, but did make them 'un-know' where specifically they were hiding.

The problem is that I think more than a couple people will have read that last sentence and thought to themselves, 'Huh. so that's what was happening,' and therein lies the episode's real problem. I think the blame really can be laid to Yggdrasil in this case. Having Shadow dragged into the tree, on top of all the flashbacks and intercuts between dream and reality so that he can metaphorically and literally hatchet his way into the god-space, is just an overly complicated and muddy way to visualize that. And that muddiness really hurt the reveal that they were trying to make the big exclamation mark at the end of the season. Instead of coming away thinking, 'Wow, I can't believe what just happened!' the viewer leaves thinking, 'What the hell just happened?' and that's not a great note on which to end a season.

No Yggdrasil! Bad Tree! Put the nice man down!

Quotes:

New Technical Boy: "Hello, old friend."

Laura: "I am not my mistakes, Shadow."

Burial Vault Inscription: "She hath done what she could." That is just an incredibly depressing final memorial.

Mr. Xie: "Science is the closest we come to wrestling god." New Technical Boy: "Why would you want to…?"

Laura: "Planning on kissing me again? Cause I’ve had kind of a day." Bilquis: "My kisses have been known to improve a day."

Laura: "You don’t like him either." Bilquis: "Is that what your intuition tells you?" Laura: "No, I just know an I’d-like-to-punch-that guy-in-the-mouth-look when I see one."

Salim: "Sorry, I’ve never purchased liquor before. It’s for a friend. He’s a leprechaun. He died." Cashier: "OK."

Bilquis: "I’m a great believer in frankly assessing one’s situation."

Salim: "I don’t know what we are going to be, but I want you to know that I don’t regret any of it. You have taught me how to love."

Jinn: "You know me. Eyes of fire, shit for brains."

Bits and Pieces:

-- I suspect that Nancy and Ibis' conversation over the chess game is going to reward re-watching after all is said and done and the whole story is told.

-- I still don't entirely understand whose side Bilquis is on or what her goals are. She's certainly all right with Laura killing Wednesday and actually seems to consider the offer to join her. No Ruby Goodchild this week.

-- The first ten minutes with Mr. World and the 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast is hands down my favorite thing this show has ever done. A beautiful exploration of the interrelationship between fear, belief, and objective reality. Crispin Glover was born specifically to deliver that monologue.

-- I've come to realize that the most useful way to watch this series is to assume that whatever happens was the outcome wanted by someone, and then work backwards as to who would want that outcome and why. That also works for Agatha Christie books, by the way.

-- I liked the old Technical Boy better. He had much more personality. And while I get that they were going for fiber optics with the new costume, it ends up coming across as Green Lantern. Was that a Michael Green nod?

-- The echo of the opening War of the Worlds monologue sprinkled throughout New Media's on-air rant was very effective at bringing everything together. Nicely scripted.

-- I love the wall-size bas reliefs of Bruce Langley's head on the walls of Xietech. I need them in my home.

-- The NRA logo on the opening film card leading into a discussion of how creating fear allows you to control people was an inspired touch.

-- Here's hoping that Laura's running away with Mad Sweeney's body means that we haven't seen the last of him. Even though they're both dead, I'm still 'shipping them super hard.

-- The Jinn chose to protect Salim by taking him away, even though it means facing consequences for disobeying Wednesday. That's very touching. I assume we'll learn in season three why the Jinn is bound to Wednesday. I very much hope it doesn't involve rubbing a lamp.

-- It's very in character that Wednesday's entire role this week was 'Go out for dinner and watch the pieces fall into place.'

-- It's strange that they went out of their way to remind us in the pre-credit sequence that Sweeney had sent the spear into the Hoard, and never got around to addressing that this week. Setup for next year I suppose.

A mostly enjoyable season finale with some very high highs and some very low lows, which sums up season two in a nutshell. Still, any series that gives me this episode and 'Donar the Great' in a single season deserves to go on for many, many years.

Two and a half out of three graveyard snails.

P.S. please bring Chris Obi back next season.

Mikey Heinrich is, among other things, a freelance writer, volunteer firefighter, and roughly 78% water.

#American Gods #Shadow Moon #Mr Wednesday #Laura Moon #Neil Gaiman #American Gods Reviews #Doux Reviews #TV Reviews

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kalico-to-the-letter · 5 years

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REVIEW // RWBY | 6.13 | “OUR WAY”

AKA the welcome home.

Welcome in to my review of the thirteenth chapter, and the finale, of RWBY’s sixth volume, entitled, “Our Way”.

In this episode: Light reigns. Greetings are extended. Darkness gathers.

Rise.

TELL THEM – I CAME THE LONG WAY ROUND.

I’ve praised the overall efficiency of this season of RWBY; for the most part, and particularly in the second half of the season, the episode times have been spent wisely, hitting plot points without sacrificing too much build up or leaving us feeling too shortchanged when it’s truly mattered.

But that want to tell expansive, multi-character stories within these kinds of thinned-out structures is always like playing with fire, because one inevitably risks running into one of two things: not doing as much as it can, or trying to do far too much.

And this has been the story of RWBY for all of this season. They nailed that balance, in my opinion, for the first half of the season, by anchoring the story to Team RWBY’s struggles and smartly dotting other teases around the perimeter. But introducing Argus meant introducing a new setting, new side characters, and a new sub-antagonist, all while needing to marry with those established setups – creating a readjustment period which the show then struggled to leverage into anything truly remarkable – and somehow running into both of the above problems.

Question: Do we particularly like Argus, after all this? It’s a nice enough town, with fairly chill people, and that was definitely a breath of fresh air after the darkness of Haven last season, and traipsing through the snowy woods in the first half of this season. But beyond it being the home of the Cotta-Arc family, and providing a truly heartfelt moment remembering Pyrrha, I can’t see that it’s left much of an impact. All the action happened outside of the town itself, and ultimately, it was just another pit stop on the way to Atlas.

There are two principle reasons for that. First is the antagonist – despite the actual mechanics of her character arc working really well, Caroline Cordovin has done very little for me. Sure, she plays a big part in the story, and is ultimately somewhat redeemed by taking down the Leviathan, but when you sit back and look at the wider context of the season, and realise that she, this gatekeeper figure, was the season’s most prominent character antagaonist, it’s a bit unimpressive. Adam played his part, but that part was to essentially appear out of nowhere and die, while the series’ biggest antagonists were kept to the sidelines, even after a number of promising teases.

The second reason Argus has struggled is the lack of a meaningful mooring point. The most appealing characters Argus gave us, in Saphron and Terra Cotta-Arc, were introduced immediately, as well as given an interesting potential subplot thread. Unfortunately, nothing came of it, and their role in the story was quickly reduced to shepherding the protagonists out of town, with a minimum of callback to that tease. If the protagonists’ escape had been more strongly linked to a local subplot, then the experience would have felt more important than it does now, which is really a bit of a blip.

It adds up to a story which didn’t do as much as it could have in defining the basics, and then tried to do a bit too much. A difficult situation, to say the least, and the way it wraps up in this finale doesn’t fix or really even attempt to justify some of the season’s recent creative directions.

Say, if the Argus story we’d had drip-fed to us had ended with a Grimm fight at least matching the intensity of Blake and Yang vs Adam or Gang vs Cordovin, then sure, I wouldn’t be so irritated by how this Leviathan element was executed. But in this finale, there was no epic battle, no time for any drama to build. The big moment just kind of … happened, and then we moved on.

It was a great moment, don’t get me wrong. Seeing Ruby facing off solo against this huge monster was a big deal, and I got quite emotional at seeing all the flashes of her memories as she tried to summon her Silver Eyes. I liked the swell of that moment, and how it finished with Cordovin remembering her purpose and using the mecha suit for the thing for which it was designed.

But this “battle” did not justify how the Leviathan was so clumsily inserted into the story at the end of the previous episode – the creature’s presence hammered in the consequences of the Gang vs Cordovin fight, but really it just existed as a plot device to redeem Cordovin and give Ruby a reason to try her Silver Eyes in earnest.

And ultimately, that was the clear, main objective of this now “in the interim” season, to take Ruby and properly work on her character to the point that someone like myself, who was always just “ok” with her, is now very positive about her and her position in this story, going into the series’ likely final phase.

So here we finally are. In Atlas. Where a lot of things will surely come to a head, and in time, this transitional season will not be remembered as being too difficult of an experience – just a necessary step to get to the big stuff. But right now, in this moment, having spent the past fourteen weeks thinking about the ways that this season’s story was developing, I can’t help but be a little bit flat about it all. Especially when it promised so damn much in the early going.

OBSERVATIONS

Keep in mind that when I talk about the antagonists, obviously I’m putting the Grimm in a separate category – they don’t have characters, after all.

Do I even have to say that I loved the post-fight interactions between Blake, Weiss and Yang? You know I did. As weird as this show has been to follow at times, the best part of it has always been its characters, and these days I can definitely admit my attachment to these three girls, and Ruby now as well.

I believe that’s the first time we’ve seen Neo’s semblance in action – materialisation, seemingly hologram-based in nature.

So, Ozpin helped Oscar safely crash the airship previously, then disappeared again. All right then.

I almost screamed when I saw Summer Rose’s face reveal, I will not lie. The whole animatic was very emotional, especially seeing its progression, and how just the thought of Pyrrha caused Ruby to lose control of her positive energy.

I noticed a couple of spots where the animation seemed to lose or skip some frames – Cordovin leaping at the Leviathan and when Salem shrouds herself in darkness to cut the episode to black.

I like that the main parameters for Volume 7 are already being laid down – everyone is going to Atlas, and things are going to burn.

It seems like the overarching story is proceeding into its end phase, and there is probably a larger discussion to be had about how the rest of the series will unfold on a structural level. RT seem to be scaling back focus on this show as they move onto other projects. I suppose it makes sense – this series is well past the point of having “potential”, and has probably already peaked at a commercial level, so all that’s left to do is manage what remains. It will be interesting to see what happens going forward in terms of production and output for RWBY.

GRADE: C+

As a finale, “Our Way” is a very appropriate encapsulation of season six’s latter half – charged with very good psychology and enough baked-in character work to carry its stories, but also guilty of not doing the best it can with some of its ideas. This was the moment to pay off the season’s recent efficiency with something epic or escalated, but instead it rushes through a number of its important story beats and moves on without batting much of an eyelid. Even though big things are being set up for future stories, the lack of depth in the overall Argus storyline hurts this finale’s attempts to serve as a definitive, grand closer. However, it does complete the season-long ascension of the Main Heroine with emotional aplomb, and leans on its strong characters to the point that it becomes … fine.

Volume 6 of RWBY is a strange beast, stranger than Volume 5’s up-and-down swings, or Volume 4’s all-consuming melancholia. What makes this the case is that it opened by serving up six episodes of consistent, quality storytelling, only to run into roadblocks of its own creation in the latter seven episodes. Some of the worst parts of this season? The meandering in Argus, dropping the “tension within Team RWBY” angle as soon as they’d reached Argus, and the meagre, in hindsight, teases of the antagonists “making moves” but not really doing that much. Some of the best parts of this season? The constant focus on character, the attention paid to the fight psychology, the reestablishment of Team RWBY as a unit, the focus put on Blake and Yang, and the unwavering effort to solidify Ruby Rose as the primary heroine. – KALLIE

#rwby spoilers #rwby reviews #rwby6 #rwby volume 6 #rwby

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elizabethrobertajones · 6 years

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Since Cas is supposed to be spending a lot of time with Jack next season and teaching him about life and stuff, and probably being really sad about Dean while he does it, do you think Jack might notice and bring up Cas and Dean's relationship? He certainly would have no reason to avoid the topic like Sam or anyone else would. If they're really serious about focusing more on interpersonal relationships then I really don't see how they can avoid talking about Dean and Cas.

The tone of your question is making me weirdly feel like we’re verging somewhere between reality show and scripted drama, where the characters are almost out of control of the writers and all the drama is bubbling under the surface, ready to spill out at any moment :P

Like, from a writing perspective, I feel that they just do not approach it as if Dean and Cas are literally real and in love in the same way that to fans who only get the finished content, it can come across… There’s a much more mechanical approach to actually writing scenes than feeling like there is any inevitability. It depends entirely on what Dabb and/or the writer of the scene/episode wants to convey on a wider thematic level and on the closer personal level. If they wanted to emphasise that both Cas and Jack are missing Dean and Jack asks Cas about Dean, then it’s 100% in their control to script Jack’s innocence and Cas’s care with responding, based on circumstances, location, current mood, other things that happen this episode, and wider season-long factors, to be as cagey as he likes.

If Cas and Jack were having that throwing the ball back and forth moment I was dreaming of this morning, it could be cute and wholesome, and Cas regretfully says that they’re doing this because it’s the kind of human thing Dean would suggest, and Jack makes a sad inquiry about how Dean helped Cas become more human and learn to do human things, and Cas, aware that Jack is struggling to be human, answers from the POV of his own slide towards humanity that Dean’s caused, and talks about how Dean has lead him down that path with fondness and pain, and ends with assuring Jack he’s doing really well compared to Cas’s own attempt, and we just charged through a ton of serious Destiel territory without touching the sides.

Maybe Jack gets hurt on a fight that they get into in the sharp end of the dramatic search for Dean, and Cas has to heal him and laments his dumb humans always getting hurt and now Jack is one of them, but then prompted or not, starts talking about how strong Dean is regardless, and it lapses into a quiet moment of them agreeing they’ll save Dean and he’ll be okay, and again, Cas says some deep shit about Dean but it’s not romantic in the surface text, it’s prompted by his sense of protectiveness of Dean and Jack, and that linking factor is just the conversation starter.

Or Jack does some gross thing and then blames Dean, like spitting food like Dean did in front of him in 13x04 and Cas tells him off and Jack says Dean does it, defensively, and Cas gets all roll-eyes-fond-smile, and says that Dean is the best and worst teacher of humanity, and they get into the subject that way… You know, that would be a comic beats, quick answer, joke about Dean to break the tension moment and wouldn’t really get deep at all except for the implied massive fondness they both have for Dean.

Or Jack and Cas are having a quiet moment maybe driving somewhere or stopped at the side of the road and Jack asks Cas to tell him more about Dean because he seems to know him so well but they would be fully in the right to make the question innocent and to have Cas respond carefully like for a kid who doesn’t need to know all his angst, and Jack might see how Cas is handling it all but he will remember Sam and Dean acting so differently about losing Cas when he was newborn that he can only really at the most probing to maintain his innocence ask Cas about how he is feeling about Dean compared to how Sam and Mary are handling it. And as messed up as Cas might be he’s not under an obligation to tell Jack that he’s pining for Dean romantically, and their shared connection to Dean is a family one, not the extra romantic stuff that only Cas has, so talking about that is what can result in any probing directly from Jack in a calm moment if they don’t want to force a confession, which would be the writers’ hand, not Jack or Cas making it happen.

You know, those ideas just as an example of many ways of how to think about the themes and character stuff going on about how a scene is structured and why you would write it. As Jack spent so much more time with Dean than he did with Cas, and ditto Cas has of course more knowledge of Dean, AND that freakin attention hog drama llama is off being possessed by Michael and the main mytharc for them as a result, there’s so many reasons for Jack and Cas to discuss Dean or find him the common thread in a scene that will help them connect.

But there’s no actual imperative on the writing or with the characters that will FORCE them to talk about Cas’s feelings because as much as they’re so strongly implied the text is sagging and tearing and creaking around the weight of it all, the writers are using romance TROPES but they are NOT writing a romance NARRATIVE. Like, romantic things happen all the time between Dean and Cas, but of course the actual story is action/horror/drama and all of those tropes have the bigger storytelling weight. The overlap is enough you can see the ups and downs of the story as basically any narrative - it’s like horoscopes in that sense - and you need to take common sense clues on the writing to know what is actually being told.

The jokes we make that the writers keep Dean n Cas separate or whatever because they’ll just start making out are funny and true in some ways for us as the audience, our expectations and desires if we had full control of the story, especially when reading the emotional weight of their personal narrative. Like, we can identify SO MANY “just kiss him you fool!” moments in the story, obviously none of which were actually kisses despite being the opportune moment.

In the wider picture, the story is never constructed around telling itself just about Dean n Cas and making the beats of their relationship the MAIN reason anything is happening, as in, this story is first and foremost about the hunter pining for the angel and everything has been constructed to be about that from the start. It can inform major events and stuff, but it still isn’t WHY they are writing the story. I know it’s common discourse to be like NOTHING MAKES SENSE WITHOUT DESTIEL but in truth you can ALWAYS see the real line the writers mean to take and while I don’t think the Destiel is accidental, I also don’t think it’s a primary motivator to the plot or characterisation.

This is also NOT a wild hot take for a Destiel shipper or meta writer, it’s being clear about what the show’s intent actually is, and trying to understand where the Destiel reading comes from. Like, in no ways am I saying Destiel isn’t real, a solid part of the narrative and acting, and knowingly written into scenes and story arcs and that there’s always a romantic flavour to Dean n Cas stuff that lacks elsewhere. Of course there’s all this subtext to float a massive ship on. But the luxury of this sort of subtextual romantic story is that the main arc between the characters can have plausible deniability and that in no way for where the writers are working from, does that force them to make choices which they aren’t extremely knowingly doing when it comes to the give and take of making scenes read one way or another.

Like, the entire point is, no previous season has been written as if the actual pitch was canon Destiel at the highest level, because if it had been, we’d have canon Destiel right now, I can say from the luxury of a hiatus where all previous seasons are laid out before us very firmly not having canon Destiel. 13x01-6 was written to be about Dean and Cas in a way that has not ever really been so overt that the emotional arc Dean feels about Cas is the controlling interest but at the end of the day it did not go canon in that time and we moved onto the next story arc. Which is nice we GOT a story arc so much about how they feel but it was still just teasing and subtext and all.

And I am seriously, seriously, not saying this from a place of negativity, bitterness, or whatever else. It’s not a criticism!!! it’s just stating how the fact of the story is. The narrative about Destiel has got so wildly derailed by attention grabbing hype I’ve been clutching my face and wailing at recently about how the end of last season was their big moment to make it canon or they’d have irredeemably fucked up, and blah blah everything seemed to be going that way... No! It wasn’t! The story is not beholden to Destiel! It’s CLEARLY not except for 13x01-6 and that was a contained arc and honestly I still haven’t processed what it means in a bigger picture except that I have no bitterness and all the chill for now.

But the writers’ room is just plodding along through seasons and plotlines and all the different character arcs, and all their MotW and episode pitches and ridiculous ideas and they’re using Destiel as a known emotional tool we respond to and they also clearly like, while at the same time all their focus on plot stuff can very clearly be nothing to do with Destiel and in no particular hurry to do anything about it.

I need this to be really really clear because I spent last season yelling into the void it felt like, repeatedly warning about fandom hype, expectations, and so on, and a bunch of people still got all revved up then really confused and disappointed and upset that the whole thing hadn’t been a massive Destiel whatever, and that instead the episode had been about *gasp* Sam and Jack and Lucifer??? (And also Michael!Dean with no build up and out of the blue because we hadn’t been warned since 12x12 it was happening, because the only thing that happened in 12x12 was Destiel flirting and confessions and sometimes if you were looking closely Mary being an evil hag :P)

So this year I’m going full grump about fandom narratives, expectations, predictions, told-you-sos and so on. At least on my blog, if you come chat to me sounding like the narrative is locked in stone and Dean n Cas are so real they’re breaking the bounds of reality to force the writers to write them being gay together, I’ve just been in fandom too long at this point not to feel like I’ve seen it all before and the only predictions I make are about the fandom meltdowns and what do you know, of THAT I have 100% clarity >.>

PLEASE be critical of what you read; things that might be jokes are hyperbole and things that might be are serious are usually filled with disclaimers and attention to how the reader might react, such as reminders of anyone’s ability to predict canon, and so on. If I’m going around making unfounded statements about Sam ripping the sleeves off his shirts, I’ve seen a BTS pic with a sensible explanation for why we’re not seeing this on screen but it’s a hilarious detail to know when he wears a jacket indoors... But I’m going to PRETEND Sam has flipped and torn the sleeves off all his shirts until canon proves me wrong, because I know it will so I can dick around making jokes about it because no one gets hurt when it doesn’t happen. When someone is making gargantuan claims about canon, Destiel, intent etc, even if you think they’re so much smarter than you (we’re all just faking it, truly. You’re good :P) don’t take anyone’s word as gospel. Understand that meta has no secret access or understanding, there’s no certainty in what we say or do.

i mean I am flat out being hesitant to talk about things which others think are firm spoilers because I just do not think they’re at the point where we know anything about them to say anything. What is the tone, the context, the, you know, full episode surrounding it? I don’t really care about spoilers because they never mean anything, it’s just a weird collecting hobby we do on the internet, and belatedly offer interesting context but before we see the episode are just infuriating and misleading and can only ever be. Full spoiler CLIPS of episodes can be infuriating and misleading, if it’s of an early scene that is pretending to be something else before we get to the real tone/plot/reason for the episode. There’s no validation or proof from spoilers, only glimpses and PR and no storytelling context to explain why it looks the way it does.

The spoilers from SDCC were all utterly banal, empty, predictable answers that tell us nothing of any use or relevance because they’re not going to tell us anything actually interesting or useful because if they were, Dabb would start narrating his full meaning of a chunk of episode. At best we can use the common themes of the answers they gave as our starting points for interrogating the text, like I did above with my hypothesis for Cas and Jack conversations, about Jack feeling human without his powers, and we know they’re spending more time together and they’re looking for Dean. So we can construct ideas but they can go anywhere the imagination takes us... Which is, of course, not where the season is going unless we happen to roll some really lucky speculation dice. Which means, again, the spoilers are only actually relevant/matter WHEN WE HAVE THE ACTUAL EPISODES.

Speculation is ridiculous and I am more and more annoyed by it the longer I’m in fandom, because it ends up with everyone seeming to want to know the story in advance. There’s a media industry in guessing, selectively spoiling, and basically just over-analysing things only to try and work out what happens next. People on the internet being able to guess all the plot twists and secrets because tropes work in certain ways and there are inevitable conclusions sometimes, or legit detectiveing the resolution to a final book or episode or whatever, are missing the entire point, in their need to KNOW what happens next, that it’s only watching it which is actually fun. And if people struggle watching something without knowing what happens, then wait a day and spoil yourself on the real facts and then watch... Blargh.

Wanting to know the raw beats of the story and all the things that happen, usually just to look smart and like you beat the system of the mystery of storytelling, is not what we should be doing as a fandom. We should be ENJOYING ourselves in the fictional space, not stressing over what will or won’t happen. Or feeling like the story now HAS to happen one way or another.

No. It doesn’t. It never does. It can act like it does right up until the last minute and we can hope that it goes where it seems to be indicating and talk about storytelling integrity ahead of any rug pull or whatever, but the writers themselves, the people crafting the story, are under NO pressure from the characters, story, plot... not to do whatever they want with it.

Like... idk, I just feel like fandom has got so full of hyperbole that we’ve got to the point where people aren’t reading it as hyperbole any more and are legit operating on a level where demands and interpretation are on this completely wild place where everything’s just Destiel holding the writers hostage and screaming and there’s full agendas and No Homo Interns galore and I really can not tell at this point, if I whipped up the No Homo Intern from scratch now instead of 3 years ago, if people would BELIEVE it because things got so wild at the end of last season, when it came to how people were treating the text as a living, almost violent thing.

Destiel is ever-present in our lives, yes. It is NOT the writers’ top priority in a scene and they’re under no obligation to make it so despite what would be in the best interests of the show and story, and scenes written without it overtly present are not going to be bad, negligent, stupid, poorly-written, confused, forced at gunpoint by the No Homo Intern, or all written by Buckleming. It is very very possible that the show continues to be written entirely as it has been almost the entire time - which is to say, with Destiel subtextual, and not on the top priority of the agenda in every writers’ mind in every scene, up to and including when Dean and Cas interact or one of them talks about the other.

It’s just one of those things like the social contract which I tend to assume we’re all operating on until things have gone way too far and I realise I am the only one who read the terms and conditions and also someone just got stabbed??

#Asks #destiel #riverboat gambling #fandom problems #wank for ts #like... I know comments like this ask are common jokes #but seriously #I would rather let you down and write this instead of a funny ask #than fuck up and write a funny ask about that comment and leave someone truly believing what they just wrote >.>

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fusonzai · 3 years

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Reconciliation through writing 1: Chuck Norris, my dad, me.

I was ten and it was a Saturday night at my Grandma’s house. My dad, my grandma and I were gathered around the TV killing time. We’d been living at my grandma’s for a while now as our new house was being built. Mum had gone to bed and I was waiting for my Dad to remember my bedtime. An ad came on for this average looking cop show, however the lead; a bearded All American looking man, sure knew how to fight. Being a kid and not wanting to go bed, any tv show seemed appealing, round house kicks or not.

My Dad also seemed to know a lot about this actor. We waited for the show to start as my dad told me all about how this was the toughest guy in Hollywood. He’d always beat up the bad guy and save the day, your 80’s ‘women wanted him, men wanted to be him’ archetype. This man would many years later spawn one of the earlier internet memes, but for now the internet was relatively dormant. The man was Chuck Norris, the show was ‘Walker, Texas Ranger’, and it was the catalyst of one of my fondest memories of time with my Dad.

(I reckon this movie still holds up)

I don’t know how to state this in any other way but, looking back on it all, my dad probably didn’t want to have a child. He had a not so conventional childhood and had never met his biological parents. I have these childhood memories of simply just not seeing him much. I remember missed birthdays and business trips. It would feel weird to see him home on a weeknight or before I went to school in the morning. He wasn’t absent per se but he was never quite there. Even when he was, it often felt forced, not straight out rejection but just relative reluctance.

What do you do when someone pulls away? You try even harder to bring them back. I wanted desperately to find a common thread with my Dad. My friends all seemed to get on much better with theirs. Why? Why not me? A child searching for shared interests with their parent seems crazy because it is. I’m entirely sure my Dad was also trying, in his own way to find those interests with me. I was my Mum’s child, I didn’t like sports and I had few friends. I could see how forming a relationship with a boy so attached to the other parent could be hard. So, what did we do? We played Mario Kart on the Nintendo 64. He was DK and I was Bowser. This game gave me a really nice couple of years with Dad, we’d play together a couple of nights a week when he was home. Then when he wasn’t, I’d try and get the fastest laps on all of the courses, and he’d wait till I was asleep to then in turn beat all my records. I remember one day when Mum and I went out on the weekend and I came home to see that Dad held the record on every single lap of every single course in the game.

It went on like this until the N64 reached its life cycle and my dad didn’t quite have the time or ability to master the new Gamecube version of MarioKart. I think this is why a few years later, watching Walker on the couch that night was so important.

One episode was all it took, I was hooked on this show. So was Dad. He tracked down the first season on DVD and we immediately went through all of it. Then began the Chuck Norris pilgrimage. Chuck Norris starred in a long string of films from the 70’s to the 90’s. Attempting to capitalise on the Bruce Lee pioneered martial arts film genre, American moviemakers had set their eyes on Norris. He was the villain in Bruce Lee’s ‘Way Of The Dragon’ and he was going to be their new star, bringing martial arts films to the West. These movies were comfort viewing, you knew what was going to happen, they all involved him beating up bad guys. There was never a plot twist or a disappointing ending. Chuck always got his guy, and got the girl. It felt as though my Dad was showing me this action star from when he was my age and sharing some of his experiences growing up. While at the same time, we were often watching movies neither of us had ever seen, having new experiences together.

Finding old Chuck Norris movies wasn’t as simple as it is now. Blockbuster still existed and DVD’s were in mass production. We’d search for rentals, then at JB Hifi and then online for international sellers. It felt like I had a purpose (however small it was) accompanying my dad to to JB Hifi, searching through every section for films we hadn’t seen, and then politely asking the staff to see if other stores nearby had any. Then whenever we got our hands on a new one, be that a lucky find or an online parcel being delivered months later, we’d watch it on a Saturday night. I got to spend time with my Dad, I felt like he wanted to spend time with me and I was frankly over the moon when he’d make that time.

(The adrenaline rush from just watching the roundhouse is amazing)

Eventually though, we ran out of movies.

I began high school, started distancing myself from my parents and by the time they divorced when I was 15, I had fooled myself into thinking I didn’t care. The first time I saw my Dad after he moved out, we went and saw an action film. It felt fine, he made me feel like divorce was this normal adult thing that happens and that everything would go back to normal. Of course, that wasn’t really the case. Two adults who had spent the better part of 20 years together ending a relationship isn’t something trivial. Having a child who is right in the middle of high school doesn’t make it any less trivial. It turned out that saying everything was fine, when it wasn’t, would only lead to problems later down the line.

Post-divorce, I was unconsciously looking for father figures. I’d want approval and praise from male teachers, I’d try extra hard in those classes to get good marks, to try and impress. Being at an all boys school, it seemed I wasn’t the only one searching for a substitute. The male sports teachers always had this flock of boys around them during yard duty, talking about fantasy football or whatever the running joke was at the time. I don’t want to say we were lacking father figures, maybe we were just lacking more examples of how to act as men. Having your father as a guide helps, but ultimately, you’re an amalgamation of everything around you, watching how others act and mimicking their behaviour.

In my early twenties I thought I finally understood the divorce and had decided at that time that I despised my dad for what had happened. Maybe I thought it was cool? In reality it was easier than accepting the fact that he was a flawed human, just like everyone else. That adoration I’d had as a child morphed into bottled resentment. I couldn’t condone his actions and I also couldn’t relate or understand them. During this time, I was afraid of two things, one: becoming just like him, and two: how I could not relate to this man even though I shared half my DNA with him. I just couldn’t comprehend what had happened with the divorce and how I was related to the man I saw as the aggravator of it.

I went from seeing him once a week, to once a month, to about once a year. He’d try. He’d try as best he could. I’d ignore emails for months because I could. Sometimes he’d call and I’d make up some sorry excuse.

It went on like this for a few years. Fortunately, I grew up a bit more and we’d get lunch. My girlfriend encouraged me to make the most of my time with him. She came with me to dinners and gave me the strength I needed to get over my own insecurities when it came to visiting. I’d have dinner with him, my uncles and his new partner. It could feel a bit forced but the good intentions were there and I’m grateful for it. However, they never felt like the kinds of interactions you should have with one of your parents. There was a familiarity in our conversations but they were always very surface level. We’d reminiscence and circle around familiar topics as opposed to having meaningful conversations. I still couldn’t reconcile what had happened and I still couldn’t relate. It turns out the first two years living abroad would really help me with this.

I’d always held the ideology that if two people loved each other they could always make it work. If one party didn’t want to make it work, then they clearly didn’t love the other. A naive ideology, but I was 25 and in the first serious relationship of my life. A relationship that had spent almost 2 years with an ocean between it. Flights back and forth started making the pain of the distance between visits only more evident. I loved this person but I didn’t want to keep dating like this. It’s hard to say what you want when you know how bad it will hurt the other person. Months of hesitation, failed attempts, and pondering if I should just endure through it helped me understand my Dad a bit better. I understood on a minor level how two people who love each other could end something. I also understood how easy (albeit cowardly) it was to do nothing about such a thing. Just hoping it would work itself out.

(Some translations: 浮気 is infidelity and 遠距離 is long distance, also Im in the green)

The break-up, the gaping space where the other person was and the struggle to find your individuality after being together so long. Experiences felt by all, experiences felt by me, experiences felt by my Dad. The shared experience of building yourself back up gave me an unexpected link to my Dad. I understood his actions post-divorce more clearly and began to realise that we were more similar than we were different. Just because I didn’t initially realise them when I was younger, didn’t mean that the similarities weren’t there. Throughout these six months or so of hardship, solitude and self-improvement, I reconciled long held grudges and found empathy where I once thought there was none. Even though I did this all alone, thousands of kilometres away, I was finally in a good place with my dad.

Then, in 2019 I saw my Dad get married for the second time in his life.

He booked me a flight home for the event. My life is going incredibly well. My job feels more grown up and, for the first time, I can see my career laid out in front of me. I had also found a partner who I was completely enamoured with. I’m excited to tell my dad how well it’s all going and he’s happy to hear it. We have lunch before the wedding, and everything feels like it’s come together. We’re both on cloud nine in our own way, him with his new wife to be and upcoming honeymoon, me with my dream job and finally a partner I could see my future with.

(My girlfriend said she preferred the vest)

The wedding day arrives and even now it still feels surreal. I can count my Dad’s family on one hand, including me. His wife on the other hand had more family than I’ve ever known, and I’d met approximately none of them up until this day. At the reception guests would ask “and what’s your relationship to the couple?”

“I’m his son.”

“Are you the groom’s nephew?”

“I’m his son.”

Unfamiliar faces cement the realisation that my Dad had found a new family, one that I’m understandably not a part of. There was a brief moment of shock but I came to accept it. Just as I had created a new life for myself as I got older and the people around me came and went, my dad had done exactly the same. Life isn’t meant to be stagnant and I can’t be angry at my Dad for trying to find a place to belong when I was doing the exact same thing he was. We were both still figuring it out as we went. I was truly happy for him; he had found someone that made him happy, and for the first time in years he actually looked happy too. While it took time to process the whole day, I’m glad I was able to go and be in the right frame of mind to cherish the occasion. It felt like a loop closing. I felt like we had finally reached some mutual understanding where I was able to go to his wedding and be okay. I couldn’t write this piece from anywhere other than a place of love and contentment.

Being there not only for the peaks but also for the troughs; that’s what family is for, right?

After the wedding we began keeping better contact, I spoke to him more about life events and we stayed better connected than we ever had before.

I emailed him just the other day. I’m currently quitting my job and the pandemic means I don’t know if I can get home with the price of flights. I sent him a chaotic jumble of words disguised as a sentence. He just replied:

“You are only an email and an online transaction away,“ with a smiley face emoticon of all things.

Suddenly it feels like it’s all going to be okay.

I am safe, I am supported, I am loved. He’s never stopped me from falling but he’s always helped me get back up afterwards.

I spent so many years expecting him to live up to an ideal I had created from what I saw around me. While it was understandable as a child, even as an adult I still saw him as that ideal as opposed to a person. It was only when I was able to accept him as that and not some impossible standard that I think our relationship improved. He only ever needed to be what he could be, he wasn’t anybody else’s father and I wasn’t anybody else’s son. He knows that I feel safe calling on him when I need advice and I know that he’ll listen and support me no matter what.

And that’s just it. Having that makes up for everything else. Knowing that someone is there in that capacity, knowing that that someone is my father, is more than enough. I’m looking forward to a time where we can watch Chuck Norris movies together again.

(The Big Day, 2019)

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pass-the-bechdel · 6 years

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Nikita full series review

How many episodes pass the Bechdel test?

95.89% (seventy of seventy-three).

What is the average percentage of female characters with names and lines for the full series?

38.17%

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 40% female?

Thirty-seven.

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 50% female?

Twelve.

How many episodes have a cast that is less than 20% female?

ZERO.

Positive Content Status:

Strong, and refreshingly comfortable with itself (average of 3.07).

Which season had the best representation statistics overall?

Season three clocks in highest in every category but the content rating, for which season one scored highest.

Which season had the worst representation statistics overall?

Season four clocks in the lowest in every category other than the percentage of female characters, for which season one scored the lowest.

Overall Series Quality:

A real treat - significantly better than I expected on both the representation front and for entertainment, it’s high-octane excitement riddled with well-rounded and powerful female characters, and Maggie Q is an absolute jewel in the crown. The show has many virtues, but it’s worth it just for Nikita herself. Reviewing this show has been an absolute pleasure.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) under the cut:

Ok, straight up: I kinda adored this show and I am super-glad that so many o’ y’all came forward to recommend it to me. I believe I’ve made it pretty clear already that I love Maggie Q’s performance, as I love her character, and I’m not sure I’ve got much to add on that front so I’ll just reiterate how refreshing it was to be presented such a rounded and complete female character, flawed but never narratively punished or lessened for it, emotional without it being equated to weakness, strong without being masculinised, feminine without it being treated like A Statement. Nikita just is, and as wildly unlikely as it is that you’d ever encounter someone like her in reality, the ease with which her rounded character is presented gives her a sense of harsh realism. You can’t get that without a creative team that is both talented, and open-minded enough to believe in what they are creating, and that confidence in crafting Nikita without feeling the need to apologise or explain is what makes the entire show function a cut above many of its fellows in the spy-action genre.

Nikita is; Alex, on the other hand? That’s a little more complicated. Let me head this off by saying I do enjoy her as a character and there’s a lot they did with the details of her story that I really appreciate (her arc from victim of human trafficking to powerful and successful public advocate against human trafficking is a wonderful thing). The trouble I had with Alex was that I never felt like the show really settled on how it wanted to handle her. In season one her role was at its clearest, though it was plain that the mole-inside-Division schtick was not gonna last; the limitations it set on the kind of stories the show could tell were abundant and almost immediately strained as the season in its infancy struggled to keep Nikita and Alex actively involved in the same issues without blowing Alex’s cover. Just getting Alex out in the field wasn’t enough; thus, season two saw Division and Alex in uneasy alliance for mutual benefits. The bad news? As interesting as it was to have Nikita and Alex on the outs with one another for a while, the immediate consequence was that Michael became Nikita’s primary partner, and he maintained that role for the rest of the series. Alex, initially introduced as Nikita’s second in both work terms and in character standing within the series, was heavily B-plotted and otherwise sidelined through season two onwards, and in a way that sat very awkwardly with her centralised position in the first season. It was like the show wanted to ditch her in order to tell the Nikita-and-Michael story, but recognised how intensely anathema that would be to Nikita’s personal narrative and so begrudgingly kept Alex on. Even once Nikita and Alex were in the same place and explicitly working for the same purpose again, they were frequently distanced from one another and did an excessive amount of their Bechdel-passing over the phone, when they did it with one another at all. The fact that the original twosome of the show was frequently kept apart even when there was no nifty narrative excuse for it made the decision especially egregious.

This also segues into my other primary gripe with the series: romances. As I have freely admitted, Nikita and Michael’s relationship surprised me by proving far more believable and compelling in practice than it appeared in theory as the show began; that it was allowed to impact the plot without overwhelming or derailing it was a large part of what made this a functional relationship within the narrative, instead of just unnecessary romantic trimmings that occasionally cause cliche drama. The rest of the show’s romantic entanglements fared less well. Nikita’s initial motivator in the form of her fridged boyfriend, Daniel, was a generic nonentity of a story thread which the show seemed embarrassed to recollect later on, and as nice as it is to subvert the Fridged Girlfriend trope, I’d have preferred that they avoid the invocation altogether by being more original and working in something more character-relevant for Nikita. The thing about Daniel as a concept - leaving aside the narrative implications of Fridging - is that his limited existence was just a form of lazy shorthand: Nikita was given a romance, specifically a romance, because for all its progressive elements and positive qualities, this show still suffers heavily from compulsive (hetero)sexuality. And because she’s the ‘other’ girl in the story while Nikita is busy having a Destined One True Love story with Michael, Alex is the one who really gets the compulsive sexuality laid on thick. In the first half of the first season, the show toys with the idea of a romantic link between Alex and Thom. As soon as they kill off Thom and Alex is allowed out in the field, we have the odious Nathan. After ditching Nathan, they immediately introduce Sean. And before Sean is even killed, they start planting the seeds for an Alex/Owen relationship to close out the series. Alex hardly gets to take a breath in between love interests being foisted upon her, because whatever else they’re getting right, The Powers That Be still can’t handle the idea of a beautiful young female character who is not currently embroiled in romantic intrigue. Considering Alex’s story, this is especially irksome. If anyone on this show needed to be given significant space to grow without simultaneously juggling a romance, it was her.

While I’m segueing - Owen. I had a rocky road with that dude, and it started with my concern that he was being intro’d as a romantic prospect for Nikita. To be honest? I maintain that. My read on the subject is that they brought Owen in initially as a potential alternative, in case they decided that the Nikita/Michael plan was a bad idea. I really was consistently surprised when Owen didn’t get killed off at various points - not least after his Sam reveal - and I felt like the show was as unsure of what it wanted to do with him as it was with Alex, only it manifested in a very different way for Owen since he was only recurring. Every time it appeared that they had found a narrative purpose for him that should keep him around as a regular, he seemed to go ahead and disappear for a while again anyway; it seemed the writers just couldn’t make up their minds. All things considered, I can’t help but wonder if the only reason Owen/Sam’s frankly bizarre story maze didn’t end with his death was because they wanted all of the lead characters to finish the show with a partner, because, oh yeah, compulsive sexuality. Nikita gets Michael, Alex gets Owen - even Birkhoff gets a girl, though they crassly failed to even include Sonya in the finale episode. It’s not that I don’t want characters to have happy endings, but come on. ‘And then everyone hooked up with everyone, the end’ is only fun and interesting if you’re talking about literal polyamory; when it’s just convenient hetero pair-offs, it’s a snooze. When it feels like certain characters only remained in the plot so that they could participate in the pair-off, it’s worse.

The good news about the above griping is that these complaints, while broad and in most cases series-long, are fairly thin on the ground, easily ignored, and potentially all just a matter of personal interpretation anyway. As such, they are just that - complaints, not glaring faults, and certainly not devastating issues that ruin the enjoyment of what remains a very solid and fulfilling experience with a lot of powerful and dynamic female characters getting the narrative complexity they deserve and are so often denied, within a kickass action framework that respects them instead of exploiting them while simultaneously allowing the struggles, fears, and pains of their past to have presence within their present. When Nikita is good, it is very, very good, and when it is bad it is...mildly annoying. Let the fact that I spent this series review mostly whining not imply that the show was not riotously on-point at near every moment for three great seasons (excluding season four, which wasn’t awful but honestly I think the show was better off without it); if ‘mildly annoying’ is the worst you’ve got, you’re on a damn good track. All in all, the singular part of the show which was clearest and most coherent was easily its titular character, and if we all took nothing more away from the show besides the knowledge that Nikita herself is fucking awesome, it would still be time well spent.

#Nikita #Nikitatv #Bechdel Test #full series review #female representation

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zdbztumble · 6 years

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Ah yes...this one...

Well, I was writing posts back when the Japanese release was imminent about how spoilers painted M20 as overstuffed, that I wasn’t happy about swapping in two new characters for the OS cast, etc., so I obviously didn’t come to my viewing without baggage. Still, I kept as open a mind as I could about I Choose You.

And there’s credit to be given here. Aside from the usual stellar animation - which may be at its best to-date in this flick - I Choose You is, ironically enough for a film that’s part-retelling, different. Volcanion laid bare just how stale the typical pattern these movies follow had become, so even a look back to the start of the series represents a welcome break from routine. And the divergence from those early days comes fairly early in the film. Even having been spoiled on the broadstrokes of the plot, I didn’t feel like I knew exactly how things would play out, which was another pleasant change of pace.

FROM HERE, THERE BE SPOILERS

And those first few scenes, telling an abridged version of the first episode, are delightful. This is the most personality Pikachu’s shown in quite a while - cheeky, mischievous, even bratty. Voice acting and animation work together beautifully to sell that side of him, and it’s easily one of the highlights of the film. Ash is given some great lines unique to this telling (”There’s something wrong with this Pokemon,” Oak tells him. “That’s alright - I was late, so there’s something wrong with me, too!”), and if you overlook the absence of a certain redhead, this is about as nice a retelling of Ash and Pikachu’s first meeting as you could ask for.

I Choose You earns credit on another score - it actually has Ash as the protagonist. It’s still shocking to me how rarely the main character of the anime gets the through-line, or even an arc, in these movies, but he certainly does here. The plot isn’t as laser-focused on his and Pikachu’s friendship as some of the comments by staff would have you believe, but I wouldn’t say that’s bad in and of itself. Reviving the “Chosen One” angle for Ash was something that wasn’t spoiled for me, and seemed appropriate for a story featuring the second member of the Legendary Duo.

And there are Easter eggs aplenty here for hardcore fans. I suspect there are many more that went over my head, me still being so far behind on the series.

But these highlights can’t compensate for all the defects. I Choose You is a seriously flawed film, in ways that could be predicted from the synopsis, and in unexpected ways as well.

Everyone who’s reported that the film is overstuffed is correct, but that doesn’t hurt the film in the way one might think. An overstuffed plot will often feel overbearing and unrelenting - too much going on for there to be any focus. Diancie is a good example of this from the Pokemon canon. This is the odd overstuffed film where, too often, it feels like nothing is happening. And I blame this on the way the film structures the middle section. After the abridged first episode section, the movie falls into what I can best describe as the almost-montage. An example: Ash and Pikachu are battling the Celadon Gym, but instead of leading into a montage of Gym Battles, we go into Ash calling his mom at the Pokemon Center. Or, when Ash and his friends are battling some Trainers after getting together - instead of leading into a montage of traveling and battling, it leads into an encounter with Cross. Time and again in the middle of the film, vignettes that feel like they should be part of a sequence instead segue into scenes that introduce plot elements. This isn’t an inherently wrong way to plot the film out, but these elements never get followed up on immediately; they just peter out into another vignette, which in turn leads to a different element. The effect, then, is one of momentum getting lost over and over again, and nothing substantive happening until the last third of the movie. It makes watching the middle section extremely tedious.

Worse, many of the elements introduced don’t have much of a purpose for being here. The abridged recap of Ash’s Butterfree’s story is probably the worst example. It’s devoid of any of the rough times or more quirky, humorous moments that played out in the series, it’s so compressed that it’s impossible for their departure to carry the impact it did in the original, and it’s completely unconnected from everything else in the film. It’s a lushly-animated abridgment of a well-known OS arc, just for the sake of having it.

But while Butterfree’s inclusion is probably the most disparate meaningless plot thread, the Legendary Beasts are the most frustrating for me, because there was a lot of potential there. Exploring the origin story of those Pokemon and how they tie in to Ho-Oh was a wonderful concept, and Entei at least provides a decent action scene. But it all amounts to nothing. The Beasts do not in any meaningful way affect Ash’s journey to find Ho-Oh, and their connection to him only serves as a neat bit of trivia. Like Butterfee, they’re just shown for the sake of showing some Legendary Pokemon - Legendaries that had already been used in previous films.

I Choose You also struggles with forced moments. I know some people were moved by how Ash dismisses Pikachu in his moment of frustration after losing to Cross, but I found that scene a dreadful piece of writing. Ash’s reaction to that loss - especially compared with how OS Ash would’ve reacted - is rather muted. It isn’t nearly strong enough to suggest that it’s eating away inside of him and tempting him down Cross’s path. This in turn makes the rest of the group’s impatience with him seem needlessly harsh, which makes Ash’s continued muted reaction seem like a failure to move his character forward, which makes his comment to Pikachu a random, unearned moment of anger rather than a significant moment of weakness springing organically from his character. It takes a lot of the impact away from the subsequent dream sequence, because Ash never feels like he’s fallen low enough to have that sort of nightmare or take away any lesson that he really needed.

And then...there are the new guys.

Let’s get this out of the way up-front: being upset that Brock and Misty aren’t in this movie is a pet peeve. In and of itself, creating new characters to be Ash’s first friends on his journey is not a writing flaw. And Sorrel, at least, is very much his own character, not a cheap stand-in or replacement for Brock. He has an interesting personality and a shockingly dark backstory. Verity is a less successful character. A tomboy with a Water-Type who gets into a bickering/teasing relationship with Ash right off the bat and has family she wants to prove something to - she does feel like a replacement, and a rip-off, of Misty, with a bit of Dawn thrown in. (Side note: if her mother really is meant to be Cynthia, then that photo could’ve looked more like her.)

But the thing is: both of them are expendable. If you took them out of the film, Ash would still get the Rainbow Feather from Ho-Oh and be on his way. You could say that he wouldn’t get the background on Ho-Oh that Sorrel provides, but old man Bonji could’ve done those honors. Neither of their backstories factor into anything in the main plot, they don’t have arcs for themselves; they’re just there to be Ash’s friends, provide some brief character moments, and drop exposition now and again. I would have rather this been Ash’s solo journey than have two new characters with some potential but no payoff, but if there had to be traveling companions...with all the other homages to the OS, why not use two characters from the OS? Two characters well-loved by much of the audience and who played an important role in the show’s history, I might add.

I don’t have much to say about Cross. He’s what I imagine many fans think Paul is, if you took away any humanizing characteristics. Cross’s turn to the side of right at the end was an arbitrary change that didn’t really sell as organic character growth to me. Leaving him as the villain would have been preferable to the sudden heel turn by Marshadow, something that felt very much as if the staff felt obligated to have a big battle with a Mythical Pokemon. It’s a point where the old formula rears its ugly, tired head. As is Ash’s not-death, a concept that should be retired permanently. At this point, the only way Ash dying can have any impact anymore is if he really dies.

Oh, and the TRio were there. They were a waste of screentime. Nothing else to say.

All in all, I can’t say the film isn’t without its charms. And I do hope anyone who’s refused to see it thus far over Brock and Misty’s absence will give it a chance. But if it isn’t the worst of these films, it’s far from the best, and outside its opening moments is a very flawed if well-meaning effort at a 20th anniversary.

5/10

(You may have noticed I didn’t comment on The Speech. Frankly, I don’t see what’s so offensive about it. It was a dumb idea poorly executed, but nowhere near the low point for me.)

#critique #commentary #pokefilm #pokemon #M20 #Pokemon the movie: i choose you!#film school training at work #z's crits

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redwhale · 7 years

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The Curious Case of Chekov’s Thomas Hamilton.

Thomas (2x03): The new world is a gift, Lieutenant. A sacred opportunity to right our wrongs and begin a new - and I do not want my family's plot in it to be the reason for its fall. ...well, about that, Thomas.... I hate to say it.... Miranda (1x07): This path you're on, it doesn't lead where you think it does. If he were here, he'd agree with me!

The following is a stupidly, stupidly long prolonged ramble about the whos/whats/potential hows on the justification for a Thomas Hamilton return, one that originally came about after I started doing a series rewatch. There are lot of questions, and not a lot of answers, but I decided typing it out was probably better than zoning out in the vegetables section of the supermarket again, trying to puzzle out the great mystery of Chekov's Thomas Hamilton... which embarrassingly did happen. Twice. Once whilst staring at pumpkins.

Wherefore art thou, Mr Hamilton?

The following relevant quote is something @flinthamilton cleverly picked up on some time ago, which has been my soothing madness mantra ever since -

Thomas (2x01): They say it started with a man named Henry Avery, who sailed into the port of Nassau, bribed the colonial Governor to look past his sins, and camped his crew upon the beach - and thus began the pirate issue on New Providence Island. Where and when will it all end - I suppose that's where you and I come into the story.

Even prior to the great Thomas Hamilton Unified Meltdown of 4x04, like with a lot of viewers, there was an odd ambiguity to Thomas' death that I could never shake. Thomas' death is a story within a story, first told to us via Richard Guthrie, and only ever glossed over with no true specifics outside of the implication from Guthrie that Thomas had committed suicide. Hilariously, nearly every leading character on the show has been thought to be dead at some point, with Madi, Silver, and the Walrus joining the club as of S4. (Didn’t the Walrus die twice?) I thought the ambiguity in regards to Thomas' demise was odd, but had come to terms with it by the end of S2, outside of the actual reasoning why Lord Hamilton was travelling under an assumed name.

...then comes along S3, with Flint being haunted by Miranda and Mistress Death in his day/dreams. I'd initially assumed the lack of Thomas was due to a scheduling conflict with Rupert Penry Jones, but there is an almost bizarre lack of Thomas mention throughout the dreams, which easily could have been worked around with the odd bit of dialogue to compensate for the lack of actor availability. I know some viewers were concerned the lack of Thomas was done in response to some of the homophobic backlash from S2. Considering Thomas is very much not forgotten for the rest of S3, with Flint nearly in tears in two occasions over his memory, I don't know if that was entirely the case. Miranda's comment in Flint's dream is still surprising, and in retrospect, could have meant more than one person alongside of Silver's valuable companionship for Flint:

Miranda (3x05): You can't see it yet, can you? You are not alone.

On the assumption Thomas will show up at the end of the series, seeing Thomas interact with Flint in Flint's dreams would lessen the punch significantly. We've seen Thomas and McGraw interacting in flashbacks. We saw Miranda Barlow and Captain Flint interacting for a season, and then with S2, were introduced to the Miranda Hamilton and James McGraw that came before. Understandably, considering Thomas’ currently dead status, we have not seen the dynamic change between Thomas and McGraw of the flashbacks to Thomas with the Flint of the present. A conversation between Thomas and Flint, even in a dream, would come with a lot of baggage on Flint's behalf that would be odd not to mention - forgiveness, penance, loss, legacy. You couldn't have Flint and Thomas in a dream sequence without discussing at least some of those aspects of Flint, and it would again lessen the later emotional punch significantly if Thomas were to return, and then rehash the same issues in person. It would be a bigger emotional punch to see Thomas and James together for the first time since the flashbacks as the men they both now are after a decade, as opposed to Flashback!Thomas interacting with Flint in a dream. Just visually, there is quite a shocking difference between James McGraw and Captain ‘Walter White’ Flint of S3/4. (Walter Flint. Captain White.)

Again, it's not like the showrunners were handwaving in S3 how much Thomas had meant to Flint. Mentions of Thomas and his legacy are a big part of the Flint and Rogers meet and greet on the beach, with Flint blinking back tears over Rogers’ queries. He's in a similar state explaining Thomas' story to Silver in 3x10, with Silver wanting to know who Flint is really fighting this war for. Even as of 4x04, the loss of Thomas - even a decade later - is still a very, very raw wound for Flint.

...I will also never get over how darkly funny it is for Flint to show up on the beach, ready to grind Rogers under his heel, and Rogers mic-drops the name of Lord Thomas Hamilton. You see all of Flint's bravdo evaporate in a moment.

Silver getting very specific knowledge re: Thomas and his fate in 3x10 was interesting, too, as Silver could have gotten a glossed over version and it would have worked just as well. Silver needed to learn of Thomas' actual name for whatever reason. Regardless of whether the estate mentioned by Max plays into Silver's backstory or is linked to Thomas, that knowledge (and potentially using it against/or as a catalyst for Flint) from the previous season has already come into play in some form.

Silver (4x04): I see. But that wasn't really what I asked, was it? Assume, that his father was just as dark as you say, but was unable to murder his own son. Assume he found a way to secret Thomas away from London -

Flint: He didn't.

Silver: Would you trade this war to make it so?

When it comes to Black Sails, I feel like the devil is always in the details.

Outside the continual narrative thread of Thomas' mentions throughout the series, the unexplained oddity of Lord Hamilton travelling under an assumed name is still unexplained. In S1, we learn of the Maria Aleyne, but we don't know who/what/why. In S2, we learned it was Lord Alfred Hamilton, travelling under an assumed name. We now know the who/what/why for Flint's and Miranda's actions, but we still don't know why Alfred was travelling secretly. If he was visiting Peter, it still seems odd that he would do so under an assumed name. Lord Hamilton's power was absolute - who would he have to fear? He could have taken a big ship, and would have high enough status that he surely could have been protected by the Navy against the pirate threat, but instead, everything was done in secrecy.

It took until the final season for the extended Guthrie family to come into play, and that's been a narrative thread since back in S1. With the dangling 'north of Spanish Florida' thread, there's also the fact that Abigail was sent to Savannah by Peter, the very same place that Flint is supposed to end up pre-Treasure Island. The pieces have all been laid out, and have to come together somewhere - though I can't imagine anything coming to pass before 4x10. Not a lot of time to tie up loose ends, either! There's also another reason why I think Thomas needs to come back to resolve Flint's arc. Interestingly, in 2x08, Flint is concerned about judgement from Peter for the things he has done. ('Not of Nassau, but of me, and the man I have become.') If Flint was so devastated at the thought of Thomas disagreeing with his choices in S1 - and it took a Thomas-like rhetoric from Eleanor to drag him from his stupor - the ultimate, agonizing judgement of Flint would be from Thomas himself.

Silver (4x04): If we assume, that we are on the verge of some impossible victory here, a truly significant thing - that we assume that is real, and here for the taking , wouldn't you trade it all to have Thomas Hamilton back again?

Flint: ...I think if he knew how close we were to the victory he gave his life to achieve, he wouldn't want me to.

I'm assuming that by the end of the series, for better or worse, we'll have a true answer from Flint re: Thomas and the war. Thomas vs. Thomas' legacy. Silver has had the same question posed to him via circumstance, and chose Madi. We’ve since seen Max choose Anne. Flint doesn't have to make a decision like Silver or Max with Thomas dead, and can justify his actions all he wants to himself.

On a boring pacing note, I’ve been surprised that the big Skeleton Island/cache Silver/Flint stressful emotional climax seems to be in 4x09, and not the finale itself. 4x08 almost felt like the penultimate episode, leading into a finale. All of this is to say that it looks like there is time for a further resolution to Flint’s arc, and that it seems like finale emotional battle for Flint will be choices regarding the war itself, and not the cache.

How’s the weather north of Spanish Florida?

You don't do an absolutely ludicrously specific exposition dump and then don't come back to it in some form to resolve it, especially on Black Sails! What's more, the set up for the subplot happens in 4x02, with Max dropping the first hint of it to Silver.

Max (4x02): I am tempted to put the sword to you and your men both and bury this story for good, but what am I, if I spend my days pleading for a return to civility and then do dark things under the cover of night. So you will remain in my custody until I can find a place far from here to deposit you. You will be gone, but you will live.

...I also like the nice 'bury this story for good' metaphor. Black Sails loves a good story metaphor.

The odd little narrative thread once again comes up in 4x04, with Silver very unsubtly bringing it up again with Max. Regardless if the whole 'north of Spanish Florida' mention relates ultimately to Silver's backstory or to Thomas himself, Max's mention of sending Silver away was subtle and in passing in the first place that it need not be brought up again unless there is to be pay-off later. It really doesn't need to be talked about at all - she didn't want to kill him, so she'd send him away, the show has more important plot points to worry about. We don't need to know why as the audience, unless it is plot relevant later. It actually feels quite clunky on rewatches - Silver needs to get the information for the plot, but the conversation flow for how he gets it is pretty transparent.

Max (4x04): When Anne was recruiting spies in Port Royal, she met a man with an estate in the wilderness, north of Spanish Florida. A reform minded man, who uses convicts as laborers - convicts he solicits from prisons in England, where their treatment is far less humane. This man, we were told, found it profitable to offer his services to wealthy families, some of the most prominent in London on occasion, who needed to make troublesome family members disappear. Cared for, tended to, but never to be seen or heard from again.

There is so much information dumped here! a) A location - north of Spanish Florida, possibly near Savannah, and comparatively close to Charlestown. b) A reform minded man. c) The use of convicts as laborers, who had previously been treated badly. d) The biggest stand is the line about offering services to wealthy prominent families from London with troublesome family members that need to disappear. If Max wanted to send Silver away, there is absolutely no need to bring the ‘services to wealthy familes, some of the most prominent in London’ into it, as mentioning sending Silver away to be a laborer would have been enough. The show is intentionally - and a tad clumsly - invoking Thomas’ circumstance for the audience. Or a possible Silver backstory, just to cover my ass. e) We also have the implication that these troublesome family members would be found in good condition, to hand wave away in advance why those that lived there would most likely be in a fairly healthy state, hopefully both of mind and body.

As mentioned above, with the Guthrie family subplot finally coming into play in S4, there are very little narrative threads that get started on Black Sails that don't get finished. As of 4x08, we had Idelle bring up Charlotte! Regardless how it all relates to Thomas, the narrative thread of the man north of Spanish Florida certainly was a big one.

Troublesome Family Member Hideaway Camp for Rich Londonites.

Depending on Peter's role in all this, and what degree of guilt over his part in what Alfred Hamilton had done to Thomas, I can't see why it wouldn't be probable that Thomas wouldn't have ended up at the estate. I also can't imagine there would be many men offering this kind of service in the first place, let alone so comparatively close to where Peter Ashe resided, so it's again not very improbable Thomas could have ended up there. In the end, it might be a good enough justification to get Flint there - hey, there's an estate that takes in the troubled family members of rich Londonites, and what a coincidence, it isn't ludicrously far away from Charlestown! Lord Hamilton could have taken Thomas there without Peter's knowledge, but surely it would be more likely that Peter was the one to suggest it. Peter can alleviate his guilt somewhat in regards to the whole proceedings, as Thomas is free from Bethlem, and yet still keep Lord Hamilton placated. After Lord Hamilton drops off Thomas - or visits Thomas at a later date - Flint then boards the Maria Aleyne, and kills him. Was Thomas ever in Bethlem in the first place? Was Alfred Hamilton horrified at his treatment, that when Peter offered a potential out for Thomas, he took it? After what Thomas had been through, there would be no way to release him back into London society - it would have made the Hamiltons look even worse.

I'm quite curious about the man who runs said estate. How long he's been doing it, why he's been doing it, etc. Ha, maybe he's the connection to Silver's mysterious backstory! From a few paragraphs ago, the emphasis on 'tended to, cared for' by Max in her exposition is interesting. On the hypothetical Flint finds Thomas, it does tell the audience in advance why Thomas might be found in good and healthy condition, and also (hopefully) of a sound mind. I'm curious about the freedom of those at the estate. Are they in cells? Do they have more autonomy? Is it heavily guarded, or do the prisoners have more autonomy?

One negative is that with Lord Hamilton dead all those years, wouldn’t Peter have had Thomas released? Surely Thomas would know his father had died. It depends who is footing the bills in the Hamilton family, I suppose. With Lord Hamilton’s death, maybe Thomas now had the autonomy to leave, but chose not to do so.

Who needs enemies, when you can have a friend like Peter Ashe?

Flint (2x10): What was the truth, my lord? Why did you betray those closest to you all those years ago? Was it really so small and vile as a bribe? The promise of lording over other men in this place? Or were you simply too weak to say no, too cowardly to do the harder thing and preserve your decency. Tell me It was the latter. Tell me this is all happening because of your cowardice. I could accept that. I might forgive that. ...I s'pose there is my answer. Even in this moment, alone with a condemned man, you are unable to speak the truth.

It's interesting that in Peter's final moments, Flint is still aware he's being lied to.

I go back and forth whether Peter had any inkling that McGraw had become Flint. The news of Thomas' death would have come to Miranda whilst they were living on Nassau. I guess contact would have broken between Miranda/McGraw and Peter sometime after the fact. When Alfred Hamilton was killed by Captain Flint, who also made his home on Nassau, it surely wouldn’t have been that hard to put two and two together, even if Ashe had no concrete proof. For my part, I feel like Peter had considered it a possibility, but hadn't known for sure until Miranda and Flint arrived in Charlestown. There was also the time period of how quickly Flint had appeared after McGraw had arrived on Nassau that Peter seemed incredulous about, which was explained by Flint.

Peter gets very defensive, very quick at the implication he hadn't done right by Thomas.

Miranda (2x09): Tell me, sir, when does the truth about your sins come to light?

Peter: You know nothing of my sins!

---

Peter: Were you there when I visited Thomas at the hospital, to confess my signs and heard him offer his full and true forgiveness? He knew I had no choice in the matter!

Miranda: No choice-!

Peter: A hard choice. Made under great duress, but with the intent to make the least awful outcome. You wish to return to civilization - that's what civilization is!

It's funny, in a television series with a lot of characters that have done horrible things out of necessity or defence, Peter's character is still one I can never truly get a handle on, which is a compliment to both the writing and the actor. I think Peter's intentions were initially good, before greed and fear at the threat of Alfred Hamilton's reach overrode those good intentions. I wonder if McGraw's return from Nassau with the loss of the governor's family was the last straw. If there was some compassion there, and fondness for his friendship with Thomas, I imagine he would have eaten away at Peter - judging by his explosive dialogue, it did. Whether he did something about this guilt is the next question.

Also, the 'least awful outcome' still seems absolutely horrific when Thomas ended up in Bethlem. Somewhat less horrific if he ended up cared for at an estate, but still an ultimately cruel treatment of a man whose only crime was to help others and change the status quo.

As I rambled on above, with north of Spanish Florida comparatively being so close to Charlestown, surely Peter must have known of the estate. Did he create the place himself, and find a man to run it? Was it because he'd heard good things about the reform minded man that he could offer the knowledge to Alfred, to alleviate some of their guilt about the treatment of Thomas? Was it just an estate Thomas was staying at that ultimately became something more?

The following point likely means very little, because if someone is trying to kill me, I'd be telling them to wait, too! Regardless, it is backed into a corner with Flint loose, loss of power, hands up, that Peter pleads, "Wait, James -" before he is stabbed, before everyone's favorite Nation of Thieves cue plays. After that, Peter says no more, and is resigned. If Peter has knowledge of Thomas, it's a final 'fuck you' to Flint to let the knowledge die with him.

Peter(2x09): You and I will sail to London together, then you will stand up and tell your story.

The main negative I can see with Peter knowing Thomas was alive was, after visiting Nassau with Flint, he was going to take him to England to reveal the true story of James McGraw. Whilst Peter no longer has the threat of Alfred Hamilton hanging over his head, it's not unlikely that Thomas wouldn't hear about the Flint reveal eventually, unless the estate he is being held in is very restricted and lacking in news from the outside world. I can't imagine he wouldn't be furious at Peter when he found out about McGraw's judgement, especially if it led to McGraw/Flint being hanged.

The Reform-Minded Man of Mystery.

With the reveal of Thomas wanting to pardon the pirate of Nassau in 2x04, the reformation aspect of Thomas' character particularly apparent, especially with his interactions with McGraw, Alfred Hamilton, and the introduction of Peter Ashe.

Thomas: They're men!

McGraw: They're traitors to the crown!

Thomas: What difference does that make?

McGraw: Makes some difference to the crown-!

Thomas: Just answer me this - would it work?

Excerpts from later in 2x04 with Thomas' dialogue to Alfred:

'I want to put them to work. Tilling, harvesting, coopering, building, smithing, fishing.'

'I intend to secure them pardons. A blanket amnesty for any man that would accept it, in exchange for his allegiance, renunciation of violence, and his labor.'

'This is the solution most likely to lead to our desired result, and it also has the virtue of being the right thing to do.'

'If you do not forgive men their sins, then your father will not forgive your sins!'

Thomas, later at his salon(2x04): Absolution. A clean slate for those wanting to accept it. -- I am committed to this end, but it is a long road, and I will need your help to see it through.

Even after 2x05, when it is revealed of the horrors that occurred in Nassau with the Governor's family, Thomas still doesn't give up on the pirates of Nassau.

Thomas (2x05): The men responsible for this crime deserve to be punished, but we cannot, we must not, allow their actions to condemn the rest.

As @flinthamilton pointed out, specifying the 'reform minded man' in Max's exposition dump is very interesting. Going back and note taking the episodes, I was surprise how constant reform and forgiveness was thematically in all of Thomas' dialogue. I'd always knew there was that element to his character, but there was very much more of an emphasis that I'd previously considered. If the man running the estate isn't Thomas, it's ironic that he is 'cared for' by a man with similar motivations.

The comparative vicinity of the estate to Charlestown is circumspect, even if Thomas is kept there, not as the man who runs it. On the hypothetical he's the reform minded man, there are a lot of interesting what-ifs. Did Lord Hamilton buy the estate, did Peter? Was Thomas kept there for awhile, before he thought of some way to stop others suffering similar fates? Taking money from prominent families would cover the cost of running the estate, and pay for the former convicts to be treated well.

It's also fitting that while Thomas couldn't reform and pardon the pirates of Nassau, he was potentially able to help men from England in similar positions. Potentially, Thomas wasn't able to carry out what he'd originally intended, but he was still able to continue his work in another way. Flint desperately tried to carry out Thomas' dream, but it is now above just saving Nassau and going to war with civilization itself.

As a semi-negative to the point, if Thomas was the 'reform minded man', he would have had the autonomy to have met Anne at Port Royal. Considering Port Royal's proximity, one would assume at one point he would have surely gone to Nassau, unless the wound was too raw. I suppose it depends on what he thought the fates of James and Miranda were? If they were told Thomas was dead, I assume he was spun a similar tale. If Thomas didn't know where they were, he could have gone to Nassau and asked around for James McGraw and Miranda Hamilton, but never realizing who James and Miranda now were. It could be probable, as I think they were only known to Nassau as Captain Flint and Mrs Barlow. Did anyone know of their first names outside of each other? Surely someone? Gates? Eleanor? It also depends on where Miranda chose the name 'Barlow' from. If it was her maiden name, Thomas would recognize it. Of course, Thomas could have known they were there all along and chose not to see them, but I can’t really picture that, either, unless he had a lot of guilt about what had happened.

I also can't picture Thomas holding men against their will, maybe more so the troublesome family members than the former convicts. It wouldn't fit for Thomas, and if he'd spent any time in Bethlem at all, surely couldn't do the same thing to another? Maybe there is consent by those that are brought there? It's funny, there is a lot of various ways it could have all come together, but Thomas being the reform minded man Max spoke of is the most intriguing for me of all.

Mr Ashford, I presume?

Peter(4x09): Abigail, I've made arrangements for you to be shuttled to Savannah today. You'll be taken to Mr Ashford's house.

---

Thomas(2x04): He'll be arriving n less than 2hrs.

James: I'm sorry? Who?

Thomas: The fourth Earl of Ashbourne, Lord Proprietor to the Carolina Colony including the Bahama Islands, and Peer of the Realm - Lord Alfred Hamilton, my father.

Thank you to @flintstruestlove and the ASOIAF forum for floating the idea that Thomas could be Mr Ashford in the first place, and thanks to @flintsredhair for noting that Lord Hamilton was the Earl of Ashbourne, which is a connection to Thomas.

Mr Ashford is certainly an intriguing one, as he was a friend of Peter's that they bothered to give a name, and chose yet another name for a character in Black Sails involving the word 'ash'. He's also someone that Peter found reasonable to send Abigail to in a time of crisis, a Mr Ashford that lives in Savannah....

To be corny and reachy as hell, but ash is also what remains after a fire. To keep the corny/reachy motif running, said fire could have been started by steel ‘n flint. Flint himself being associated with fire is (understandably) a constant motif throughout the series. Even just as of 4x07, Rackham says the Guthries can’t be blamed for wanting Flint dead, as ‘Flint will stop at nothing until the entire West Indies are ablaze.’ It’s probably a lot of reaching, but when it’s all said and done, maybe only ‘ash’ will remain?

...if nothing else, ha, there are quite a few names with ‘ash’ in Black Sails! Like, a lot.

The abrupt disappearance of Abigail Ashe from Black Sails was understandable at the time considering Flint departed Charlestown, but also still feels very jolting considering the amount of time spent to build her as a character. Ultimately, Mr Ashford could in fact be the name of the reform minded man, and not of Thomas. Either way, Thomas and Abigail could potentially be in the vicinity of his each other, and Abigail is in our favorite ominous place ever, Savannah.

To Forgive, But Not To Forget.

I don't want to go into this topic too much, as it's a whole prolonged conversation entirely, but I've seen the odd sentiment that if Flint finds Thomas, Thomas wouldn't want anything to do with him after what Flint has done. That Thomas would want Flint dead. I’ve also seen the odd comment that Thomas would take revenge against Flint himself. Of all of the characters on the show, it has been emphasised over and over again what kind of person Thomas was - hence the whole 'reform minded man' section above. Of course, Thomas wouldn't have stayed completely stagnant as a person during that time, and that the experiences that he went through wouldn’t have affected him - but his capacity for acceptance and forgiveness seems to be a continually emphasised core element to his character. Even with the pirates killing the governor's family, Thomas didn't want the rest of the pirates of Nassau to be tarred with the same brush. (Thomas 2x05: The men responsible for this crime deserve to be punished. But we cannot, we must not allow their actions to condemn the rest.) I always think Thomas is trapped between being a realist and an idealist - he knows the reality of the situation, but wants to push forward anyway in the hope of more. Heartbreakingly, as we saw in 4x08, Flint very, very much carried on his mantle.

Thomas (2x04): If you do not forgive men their sins, than your father will not forgive your sins!

Miranda (2x06): I had a very different life before I came here, a life I shared with my husband. He was a special man, a man of ideas, about the world, about the order of things. Writers, artists, men of science - they'd fill our drawing room night after night to talk and argue. Sometimes just to listen to him. In some ways he was like you, a shepherd to his flock. He would have loved to have met you. Me? You think I can play devil's advocate! Thomas would have played that game with you from dusk until dawn. And everything you hold sacred, he'd leave in tatters. Not from malice or hate, but from love. From a desire to see the yoke of shame lifted from your shoulders.

If there is any character to give Flint some solace or a pardon (ha) at the end of it all, it is more than probable it would be Thomas. Like Miranda and McGraw to Flint, Thomas would have very much changed over the decade, but they were still the same people under it all. From what we've seen and heard of Thomas, and from what has been emphasised over and over again in dialogue, I honestly cannot imagine he'd dismiss Flint so easily as others have considered. It may not be all sunshine and roses, and I would be fascinated to hear Thomas' thoughts on his father and Peter Ashe. Again, Thomas' worst crime was that he wanted to change the status quo and help others, but I imagine he'd also have guilt about being his drive and actions being the catalyst for having Miranda and James sent away.

A touch of Greek Tragedy.

I've seen people mention that Thomas returning would be too much of a happy ending for Flint. Even if Flint is reunited with Thomas, in some aspects it is even more cruel than if Thomas had stayed dead. For one, Flint has to confront the choices he's made in Thomas' absence upon coming face to face with the man himself. Just consider everything Flint and Miranda suffered for and fought for, thinking Thomas was dead. If it is revealed that Thomas is alive, and potentially so close and accessible the whole time? The guilt, the regret, and the frustration would be monstorous. That's not even considering everyone that suffered and was sacrificed as a proxy of Flint's agony and drive for Thomas and Nassau - the crew, Mr Gates, etc. There is an added punch by just going to Charlestown before Miranda's death, they would have sailed passed the general area on the way. Thomas being alive gives us both a satisfying ending for Flint, but also a deeply tragic one, befitting of the Greek tragedy/poem parallels Black Sails makes throughout.

As Max tries to come to grips with in 4x05: It wasn't supposed to end like this. How could we all have sacrificed so much, and none of us has anything to show for it?

Flint and Miranda fought for and sacrificed so much, and Miranda died because of it, with ultimately very little for Flint to show of it. For Flint to have to come to terms with that, whilst dealing with the fact that Thomas was alive all along? It won't be easy. What they fought for wasn’t for nothing, mind you, as it was Flint and Miranda trying desperately to survive, trying to hold onto Thomas' ideals whilst dealing with the anger and grief over what had befallen them all. But, goddam if that isn't going to hurt for Flint regardless.

#black sails #thomas hamilton #flinthamilton #captain flint #james flint #redwhale black sails meta

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theclacks · 7 years

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Buffy - Season Three Thoughts

So… that was a thing.

Where do I start on season 3… Okay, I’m going to recap in chronological order and then do over all thoughts (especially compared to season 2) because if I start with overall thoughts, I’ll be here all night and probably not make much sense.

So yeah. I really like Buffy’s period of mourning. There’s something very cathartic about watching characters mourn. And watching characters get mad at each other. And the first two episodes did that in spades, I love how Willow acted dismissively cheerful and then just LAID into Buffy later. I love how Buffy’s originally close-friends party turned into a random party and the one overheard line along the lines of “do you know who this party’s for? I don’t know, some girl who just got out of rehab” just hit stone cold.

And then Angel showed up.

Now I know Angel was GOING to show up because 1) he was in the credits and 2) he goes on to star in his own spin-off, but I don’t know… I was expecting the whole first half of the season to be a life without Angel/search for Spock Angel kind of thing. And I was really liking the whole mourning/slowly accepting Angel’s death so for him to come back as SOON as Buffy put down her ring I was like “……okay?” but then I also couldn’t complain because ANGEL.

And then it turned out he was feral Angel which was cool but then THAT got resolved in a single episode which was another kind of “…..okay?” then again. ANGEL.

I’m just glad they had Buffy’s super quick temp boyfriend Scott dump her because that would’ve been an even more annoying obviously-one-ship-is-the-preferred-ship love triangle than Twilight.

Oh, speaking of love triangles… quadrangles… things. The Willow/Xander sudden attraction love fest thing. Not a huge fan. But it lasted comparatively shortly and didn’t destroy the Oz/Willow pairing (in fact kind of strengthened it) and it gave way for adorable Cordelia/Wesley flustered shenanigans AND Cordelia subconsciously summoning Anya, so overall I don’t mind where it ended up leading the series in the slightest.

Although I do want to talk about Faith.

I hate Faith.

Maybe she gets better in later seasons (if she’s in later seasons? I assume yes even though I hope no), maybe part of my hate is just missing Kendra and viewing Kendra as the superior alt!slayer. Although Buffy did make many references to Mr Pointy this season, so I guess Kendra still lives on in spirit.

But yeah, the gang had such a chill, well working groove this season that the ONLY way to cause tension was to throw a Faith-shaped socket into the works. Like she was pretty much only there to stir trouble and be a pity fest and I’m sorry Faith fans, but it’s an EXTREMELY big leap to go from bitter “Buffy’s more popular than me” to “I’m going to join forces with the dude who wants to murder the town because he gives me things.” IDK, I think it would’ve actually made more sense for her skip town entirely, forge her own path? But maybe she wasn’t brave enough for that? IDK. Her darkside turn simultaneously didn’t feel as fluid (i.e. didn’t make sense) OR as shocking (i.e. she’d always been the “bad” girl) as the Angel losing his soul thing did.

Although speaking of Angel losing his soul, THAT EPISODE WHERE FAITH TRIES TO CAST IT OUT OF HIM. And at the end she’s like “guess I’m the best actor in the world” and Angel suddenly goes “second best” and it slips into slo-mo, I gasped. I literally gasped. I’d been going “nooo not a repeat” while also going “soulless Angel is extremely entertaining” and then in just 5 seconds everything turned 100% awesome again.

Which, yeah, Angel and Buffy. I think I love Angel and Buffy the most when they’re working together as I team which is why I loved the second half of season 3 more than the first half. They finally got their groove back and he was helping out in fights (even after Buffy said “let’s take a break” and Angel said “let’s break up”) and they just worked. There were a couple earlier episodes, especially the one where Giles drugs Buffy of her powers and regrets it and Buffy’s mom gets kidnapped and Buffy goes off to save her alone that I was like, “ummmmm… bring Angel with you? I know the ‘theme’ of this episode is doing this alone, but in-character Buffy, you should really be caring more about getting your mom out alive than episode themes”.

So yeah. Angel and Buffy watching an erotic indie film together, Angel and Buffy fighting seaside cave demons together, Angel and Buffy acting together to pull one over on faith. That is the best kind of Angel and Buffy and I’m glad the show finally veered back into that direction before he ultimately left the show.

Which leaves the Mayor and the overall plot arc of Season 3.

So I honestly thought the Mayor was going to be a multi-season villain (same with Mr Trick) and was really kind of shocked when he just ate it (along with the library and half of the school building). But more than that, I think I was a little disappointed by the Mayor just because of HOW LONG it took for him and Buffy to face off… which is really my one complaint about season 3, that is, the overall plot arcs weren’t as defined as they were in season 2.

Season 2 had two very clear halves and evolving goals for both sides. The first half had Buffy and Angel’s will they/won’t they on the heroes side and Spike’s wanting to heal Dru on the villain’s side. They both get their wishes near the middle of season and that’s the greatest thing because it ends up being an Into the Woods type thing with their granted wishes causing new problems. Buffy/Angel’s relationship causes Angel to turn evil and Dru’s restoration causes Spike becomes useless in a wheelchair. The goals in the second half suddenly flip on their heads: find a way to either restore Angel’s soul (or kill Angel) on the heroes side and Spike wanting Angel out of the picture and Dru back on the villains side. There was a constant forward momentum, a goal to strive for.

And so wrapping back around to what I THOUGHT season 3 was going to be about, getting Angel back so soon kind of killed that momentum. There wasn’t any greater goal the heroes were really striving for over the course of multiple episodes. Even when Faith turned, the gang didn’t seem to care that much. It was kind of like “good riddance, at least she’s not back-stabbing me anymore” from Buffy’s side. They just sort of went along through their senior high school days with minimum drama.

Which don’t get me wrong. It was nice. It was fun. And I’m probably going to be missing the minimum drama in later seasons. And overall, the quality of the individual episodes was stronger (I’m looking at you Lovers Walk, The Zeppo, Doppelgangland, Enemies, Earshot… heck what am I saying, all the episodes from that until the end). But I really did miss that constantly-striving-for-something feel that Season 2 had.

But then I’ll also give credit where credit is due and just be grateful that I wasn’t emotionally deadened like I was at the end of season 2. If the series had ended at season 2, it would’ve been the most depressingly awesome bittersweet series ending ever. If it’d ended at season 3, it’d be a super entertaining and sweet bookend.

I didn’t even place together the connection until I started writing this review, but I think this season more than anything else was about Buffy’s acceptance, both of her accepting herself and of the Sunnydale community accepting her. This season started off with jocks half-joking/chanting “no more mysterious deaths!” and the guy at Buffy’s welcome home party thinking she was some sort of drug addict. It ended up with Buffy getting crowned (umbrella’d?) as Class Protector and the entire graduating class taking up arms and fighting vampires and a demon alongside her. I mean, regardless of what happens later, those are some firm, shining YES moments.

Final/stray observations

Favorite episode was Lovers Walk by far. I am a Spike fan and not afraid to admit it. Between him falling asleep drunk and his hand catching on fire, drinking cocoa while having a heart to heart with Joyce (and asking for marshmallows), taunting Angel behind Joyce’s back when he can’t come inside Buffy’s house, reminiscing about a park bench where he and Dru killed a homeless man, and cheering up at the end because he’s realized that all he needs to do is become the man he was and torture Dru into loving him again… yeah. That episode was a pure treasure.

I loved the resolution to the Wesley/Cordelia thing. I’ve had those kind of kisses before, the kisses that make you go “oh, umm… awkward, nevermind.” This show, it reads my soul.

While I hated Faith, I loved the addition of Anya to the cast. I knew by her name that she’d become a series regular so when she first introduced herself as “Anyanka” I was like “no….. it can’t be.” And then it was. And she rambled about her past curses to Xander at the prom. And it was awesome.

Also Oz’s thoughts in the mind-reading episode. Grabbing from a transcript because they’re just too good to paraphrase:

Oz (thinking): I am my thoughts. If they exist in her, Buffy contains everything that is me and she becomes me. I cease to exist.

Oz (speaking): Hmm…

I just love Oz so much. He is one of the characters I had no idea existed going into this and I’m scared for what’s going to happen to him because I know Willow eventually gets with someone else, so he’s either going to leave or die. And I’m REALLY hoping he doesn’t die.

Also are we going to eventually get a human!Spike/William flashback episode? Because we’ve gotten two Angel/Liam flashback episodes and one Dru flashblack episode. I DEMAND A SPIKE FLASHBACK EPISODE.

As for thoughts and guesses on what’s going to happen in season four, I have no idea. All the plot threads are resolved (except for, I guess, Faith kinda, who I don’t care about), everyone graduated, and Angel’s off in his own spin off land. I did cheat though and I watched the first three minutes of Angel + opening credits before I started writing this and Angel and Cordelia being spin-off bros? I don’t know how that’s going to happen but sign me the hell up! I’m guessing she just decided to leave Sunnydale since her dad went broke and all and Xander’s not her BF and yeah? There’s really not too much there for her anymore.

Anyways yeah. I’m planning to watch BTVS AND Angel simultaneously now which means these recaps will become a biweekly thing.

Of course both shows are leaving Netflix this week which sucks (pun not intended). Originally I was going to grab the DVDs from the library but apparently the rest of the city had that idea. Buffy season 4 went from having 3 open copies to 10+ holds over the course of the past couple days. I reserved Angel no problem though and I ended up ordering a used copy of BTVS complete series off Amazon because, hey, it was half off, I’m super enjoying the series so far, and some times it’s nice to pay.

#buffy the vampire slayer #buffy meta #btvs meta #meta thoughts #/////#clacks from theclacks

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teenwolfpotential · 7 years

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Fan Service

Again, I don’t inherently have a problem with Stydia, but I see people asking how a slow burn over 5+ seasons can be considered fan service and I just have to shake my head. The fact that Stydia DOES have development over 5+ seasons and yet they STILL are carrying it out so badly on the show is what’s most insulting about it.

Example 1:

Remember I love you. This is pretty alright. I could complain about how we’ve never actually heard Stiles tell Lydia that he loves her before, but since you could imply that he’s said it off screen or that the phrasing is just because he’s about to be taken, it’s alright.

However...

I think I loved him. *shocked, somewhat confused and appalled face* What the heck was up with this line? Why would they have her admit to loving him without any sort of visible realization, with a not so flattering facial expression, in an underwhelming scenario? Why would they even have this if they were planning on the whole realization in 6.9?

Example 2:

When I was remembering him I was also remembering the two of you together. I don’t think anyone had a connection like you guys.

I saw it too.

I will suspend disbelief that Lydia and Stiles who haven’t admitted their feelings to each other and haven’t been in an established relationship with each other have stronger ties than Stiles and Scott who have been best friends through everything even when no one else bothered to give them the time of day.

To be honest, the strongest connection to Stiles being Lydia > Malia > Scott seems really messed up, but it’s still possible to suspend disbelief because “the power of romantic love” and all that.

However...

THEY DIDN’T SHOW ANY MEMORIES THAT SCOTT OR MALIA SAW THAT STILES AND LYDIA HAD A MOMENT IN.

Scott had a few memories that had some tangential Stydia. She was present for the flare memory, but she didn’t interact with Stiles. The fact that Scott kissed Lydia was mentioned during the full moon memory, but Scott wasn’t remembering “the two of you together” like he said. The only time Scott saw Stiles and Lydia together that we were shown in Scott’s memories was a very brief flash among many other flashes. It showed Stiles with Lydia at Deaton’s after she was rescued from Eichen.

The same is even more true for Malia’s memories. Her memories were seeing Stiles for the first time in the hallway at Eichen, punching Stiles at Eichen, talking to him in the bathroom at Eichen, Stiles with her during the full moon at the lake house, and at the vault under the school. None of those even have Lydia present or mentioned, yet she says she “saw it too”.

Why the hell did they put that line in if they were going to disprove it before they even said it? Why couldn’t they just follow up on what they said properly? It’s not like they didn’t have the footage.

Example 3:

Lydia doesn’t use her banshee powers when they’re running from the Ghost Riders? We know she has them and can use them at will, yet she doesn’t even attempt to use them against the Riders. Why not? Stiles could point her in the right direction and she could let it rip. Maybe it wouldn’t work on them, but they could have at least tried.

The only reason I can think for her not to at least try to use them is because that’s not what the people writing the show wanted. They didn’t want Lydia to try to fight. They wanted her to run with Stiles and look devoted and scared to lose him. It was a scene that was created solely to show Lydia’s less established feelings about Stiles and not because it actually made sense in canon.

Example 4:

This is probably just a pet peeve of mine, but the memories they showed of Lydia and Stiles weren’t any of the ones I’m fond of. One of my favorite things about Lydia and Stiles is how supportive they are of each other and how well matched they are when they discuss mysteries.

Every time Stiles is feeling down on his abilities, Lydia shows him that she has faith in him and vice versa. Whenever Stiles wants to talk something through and no one else is taking him seriously, Lydia hears him out. Whenever Lydia is feeling ignored or useless, Stiles reminds her that he sees her and cares about her. Whenever something needs to be solved, Stiles and Lydia are the brains of the operation. They’re the two vulnerable ones that have to fight smart.

I don’t like their relationship because Stiles had a crush on Lydia for years and is now “getting the girl he thought he’d never get”. I don’t like their relationship because Stiles worships Lydia and “she deserves to be worshipped”. I like their relationship because of the mutual respect and support they’ve developed over time.

The memories chosen for 6.9 don’t reflect anything but the superficial stuff. The memory at the dance is the only exception.

The other moments visually shown- the kiss, the moment in Stiles’ room with red thread, Stiles rescuing Lydia from Eichen, and Stiles holding Lydia still as the Doctors passed by- were purely physical. They just show the most dramatic moments where they touch rather than any of the more intellectual or character driven moments that truly form the base of their feelings for each other. Even with the memories that are emotional, only the physical parts are shown.

The message is CHEMISTRY > personality which isn’t what I’m here for. Chemistry + personality is nice, but I’m not going to ship something because of chemistry alone.

Sloppy

Stydia is being handled extremely sloppily. Stydia DO have history on the show which is why it’s even more upsetting that it’s being handled so poorly now that they’re actually becoming established in canon.

The only explanation for why this is happening is that the people on the show don’t really care about Stydia, don’t care about their past and the unique things about their relationship, and are only putting in lines and scenes to attempt to satisfy the fans.

Ok, that’s not entirely true. It could partly be that the writers of the show have no idea how to go about setting up a proper relationship seeing as pretty much every other relationship on the show was far too sudden with little groundwork laid down. However, Stydia was better written in the seasons leading up to this one than it has been this season, so that doesn’t seem right.

Really, all you have to know about this season is that everything is fan service. Everything has been sloppier than usual because the writers have stopped trying to create an interesting and consistent story and instead have been taking everything they think fans like and tossing it all together haphazardly.

None of the characters have felt well fleshed out or consistent with their previous characterization

They keep forgetting characters exist from episode to episode and aren’t showing the logical progression of the actions happening to different characters- Chris Argent, everyone getting disappeared to the other side where they should be meeting up, focusing on the old crew vs the young crew from episode to episode

Some characters have disappeared entirely without acknowledgement- Deaton, Lydia’s mom

The way memories of the erased people have been treated is very inconsistent- some people remember when everyone else forgets, some people are forgotten entirely, the later people seem to be disappeared but not forgotten, some people can form memory surrogates and most others can’t, people were forgotten before disappearing sometimes and not others

They dropped every arc that characters had that didn’t have to do with Stiles except for Theo’s- Corey’s power arc, Corey and Liam’s trust arc, Scott and Liam’s succession arc, Malia’s feral arc

The way they did Stiles’ mom made no sense whatsoever and also was a slap in the face since it yet again painted her in a bad light and Stiles STILL hasn’t gotten a nice interaction with her

They still haven’t explained why the Riders are stuck in Beacon Hills

They still haven’t explained why banshees get left behind

The entire season is an unprecedented mess that can only be explained by poor attempts at fan service, meaning that the Stydia arc is fan service too.

Season Focus

In any case, they know the big draws to the show that are left are 1) Dylan O’Brien/Stiles, and 2) Stydia. What did they do with the 6th season? They created a plot that revolved around Stiles even without him being present for most of it and they finally pulled the trigger on Stydia.

I know people argue that Scott is the main character and, therefore, he’s a big draw. I won’t say what SHOULD happen with Scott being the main character, but I can say what IS happening. Aside from the dropped story line from the first couple episodes of the season about Scott leaving the pack and Beacon Hills to Liam, Scott has no story arc this season that’s not about Stiles.

To be honest, they’ve even eschewed the importance of Scott and Stiles’ relationship in order to focus more on Stydia. Rather than Scott being Stiles’ greatest champion, Scott notices something is off just like Lydia and Malia do and then promptly forgets it. Lydia is the only 1 of the 3 to keep insisting Stiles existed even though all 3 should really be on the same page if it weren’t for the need of the writers to try to create dramatic tension and highlight that Lydia cares most.

Scott is a side player in this season to Stydia and that should make it clear that whether you think he should be a main draw or not, the show isn’t treating him that way.

Drawing Viewers

There were very clear comments from cast and crew in seasons 3 and 4 that Stiles had gotten over his crush on Lydia. They decided to fix that by saying that he got over his crush but then that let him fall in love sincerely, but I highly doubt that was their intention at the time. It’s clear from comments that Lydia and Jackson were supposed to be long term and Stiles was supposed to get over Lydia. Things changed as the casting and viewership situation changed.

The show has been bleeding viewers for seasons now, losing half a million viewers from one season to the next. They know Dylan/Stiles and Stydia are their biggest draws left, so it makes perfect sense for them to use those 2 things to draw in fans to watch the show through the last season.

#teen wolf #stydia #lydia martin #stiles stilinski #fan service #season 6 spoilers #mine

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