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shazzeaslightnovels · 3 months

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Stellar Step 1

Author: Shogo Hayashi

Illustrator: Ancotaku

Label: MF Bunko J

Release Date: 25 January 2023

My Score: 4/5

The story takes place on an earth devastated by a meteorite crash event. After the event, new nations were formed and they went to war over their territories. Instead of fighting with soldiers and armies, however, the wars are fought with idol battles. The story follows Rain, a top class idol who has never lost. But then she meets Hana, a girl who wants to become an idol that everyone loves, and loses to her in a rehearsal match. Rain finds herself wanting to meet Hana again and a special bond forms between the two of them.

This ended up being a very nice surprise. The story felt generic at first with it hitting predictable plot beats and taking itself a bit too seriously, despite the silly premise. I also found it hard to get invested in the plot at first as it was unclear why these nations were at war in the first place. But there were so many twists that I did not see coming that caught me off guard to the end of the volume. Reading this after the first volume of Shibou Yuugi de Meshi wo Kuu, I was happy to see Rain forming relationships with others and growing as a character. It made her a lot easier to get invested in, even as her character arc felt predictable. Her relationships with the others were sweet and I like that her forming a connection with Hana leads to her forming deeper relationships with other characters. And some of my complaints about the beginning were addressed in the narrative later on in a way that made the issue feel intentional. As an example, it's unclear why the nations are at war and what they get from the War Stage where the idols compete, because Rain doesn't know and she doesn't care. She only cares about winning. So it makes sense why the reader wouldn't understand the stakes of the War Stage because the narrative is told through Rain's eyes. I ended up really enjoying this volume and I want to read more and find out what happens next.

Given that I got this at the same time as Shibou Yuugi de Meshi wo Kuu, for the same reason (they both ranked highly in KonoRano 2024), and the two have protagonists that start off in a similar state, I find myself wanting to compare the two. When I compare them, Stellar Step comes out on top. Shibou Yuugi was slightly more entertaining, but I didn't become invested in the story or the characters, the way that I did with Stellar Step. I do think that Shibou Yuugi has more long-lasting appeal though. I can see Shibou Yuugi going on for a long while yet, while Stellar Step doesn't feel like it has enough plot to go on for longer than 2 or 3 more volumes without becoming stale. There is one big difference between the series though: despite feeling like it might be heading towards being tragedy porn in the beginning, Stellar Step is ultimately about tearing down oppressive systems and keeping hope. Whereas Shibou Yuugi, based on the first volume, has no interest in tearing down the oppressive system at the core of it's premise. At the end of the day, I prefer stories about changing unfair things rather than accepting them, which is why I ultimately prefer Stellar Step.

There are a couple of other things I want to quickly address. The series does have a slight yuri element, but I would be shocked if it ended up having an explicit romance between Rain and Hana. The two don't come off as romantic and it doesn't feel like it's heading in that direction. Also, boy idols and adult idols are not mentioned as being a thing in this universe. All the idols we see are young girls. This is pretty typical of idol series, but it makes me want to see an idol series that focuses on both boy and girl idols at the same time (bonus points for non-binary idols as well).

#Stellar Step #Shogo Hayashi #Ancotaku #MF Bunko j #January 2024 #2023 releases #4 stars

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qqueenofhades · 3 years

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did you watch lucifer season six and what are your thoughts pls and ty

Ahaha. Yes. Yes I did watch it. Then I cried for a literal hour and attempted to compose myself, only to start crying again when I lay down and kept on thinking about it. Then I had more feelings. Then I slept like the dead due to emotional trauma. Then I reblogged gifsets and had More feelings. Then @buffaluff and @flynnanimal watched it and also required emotional support due to drowning in their own tears. So, uh... we're all fine here now. How are you?

My main takeaway from the final season was the sheer amount of love for the characters, story, and fans that you could feel shining through all the episodes, and which made SUCH a refreshing change. I had feelings in my tags the other day about how a show about the devil was constantly goofy, hopeful, loving, and uplifting, rather than all the grimdark nonsense they could have easily done with it. (As I said, just imagine it as written by the GOT idiots?? NO THANK YOU.) The writing really loved everyone and wanted to give them a proper ending and emotional journey, and it wanted to show the fans that they weren't stupid for having invested six seasons of effort and emotion into this, and just... that is so much rarer than it should be? Compare all the movies and TV shows that treat their fans like the enemy, that want to outsmart them at all costs even if it means changing major plot elements, that ferociously guard spoilers and think that "shock value" means good writing, by throwing hackneyed cliche upon cliche and making everything Depressing, and just... Lucifer had its hiccups and slow points and missteps, of course, but I am SO glad they didn't do that. The entire show consisted of Lucifer slowly but steadily progressing toward being a better man, despite mistakes and setbacks and sometimes a little too much will-they-won't-they. (Season 3 was the only one where I got bored and skipped over the filler episodes with Pierce/Lucifer/Chloe in order to get to the end).

That is an essentially simple premise, but they stuck to it, and they didn't try to create more drama by randomly wrecking what they had already established. I wrote a fic all the way back in mid-season 2 (In Nomine Patris) that ended up predicting quite a few of the future characters who had not yet appeared on the show at that time, including Eve, Michael, and Azrael, and several plot points, including the very major one of Lucifer returning to hell for the sake of his daughter with Chloe. And while this might mean that I am just that good at guessing TV shows (I would like to think this....) it also means that the writers set expectations, followed through on those expectations, and didn't suddenly derail everything or turn it totally on its head just for the sake of cheap shocks. As we can all attest, they certainly caused PLENTY of drama, anguish, pain, and suffering, but they did it in a way that remained faithful to the overall premises of the story and the characters, and wanted to see them become the best versions of themselves. I cried my eyes out at the end and then thought, "hey, I might want to watch the whole series again," which, if you ask me, is the mark of doing your job right. There have been so few TV endings recently where I didn't immediately swear off the whole thing or have to pretend that canon didn't exist, so yeah.

As I said, it was just refreshing to watch something that had that essential deep generosity at its core, where the message is that everyone is worthy of love if they make the hard and painful effort to change and become better, and that even if earthly things feel small next to all this messy celestial drama, they still matter, and that you are loved no matter what. I loved that Amenadiel became God and Lucifer returned to hell as a choice in order to help all the trapped souls be able to work through their guilt and go to heaven. There were obviously certain echoes of The Good Place in that ending; I don't know if it was something they had planned all along or if the success of TGP, another series asking deep questions about life, death, morality, and human nature within the framework of a goofy heaven-and-hell sitcom, influenced it, but either way, it worked so well. Even if it tore my heart out and stomped on it on the ground, it was fitting and oh so lovely to see Lucifer, once the most selfish being in the entire universe, following in Linda's footsteps and becoming selflessly dedicated to helping other people. Just. Chef's kiss.

And of course, Deckerstar. The Hades and Persephone vibes were IMMACULATE this season, and while it did take Lucifer and Chloe the best part of four seasons to get together, they never significantly backslid, never had third-party issues or cheap cheating storylines once they were officially a couple, and Tom Ellis and Lauren German REALLY killed it this season in particular. It was never easy for them and sometimes the drama went on a little too long over the course of said six seasons, but the love story was beautiful and incredibly meaningful and always true to the fact that the actors and characters and writers (not to mention the fans) all loved it so much. They were so much the emotional heart of this, and when they went to hell together in episode 6x03 (where they turned into cartoons because wHAT even IS this show), Joe Henderson said in an interview that this was to give the fans a view into Lucifer and Chloe's future (after) lives post-6x10, and to offer them a basis to write fanfiction. I mean... the showrunner saying to the fans "here, we love you, have something to write fic about!" is likewise pretty shockingly rare. It's again an example of how this show always audaciously poked fun at itself, never took itself TOO seriously, and was always welcoming its fans and the people who loved it to do so, rather than making them feel stupid or taking joy in wrecking beloved characters or plots.

Obviously, I loved Rory, the badass lesbian half-angel goth Deckerstar child straight out of My Immortal (seriously, she was SO edgy, it was amazing), because of the fact that Lucifer's entire arc was always about feeling abandoned by his father and that he was going to have to face it for himself. Dorky Devil Dad Lucifer trying his absolute HARDEST to bond with his daughter was simultaneously hilarious, adorable, and heart-wrenching, and yet again, the Growth. We all remember when he could barely tolerate Trixie touching him, and now we're here. Also, any variation whatsoever of "this is just a brief moment of time that we must be apart, love is eternal and stronger than death and we will never really leave each other" as a line is guaranteed to make me bawl my eyes out. So that was fun.

I got a big kick out of Ghost Dan running around and trying to get everyone to see him, and had feelings about seeing him in heaven with Charlotte and his beloved Pudding Pops at the end. I had feelings about how they handled Ella finding out the truth (or rather demanding to know why nobody had told her) and of course, I obviously loved Maze and Eve and their goth/femme wedding and the fact that they got a good three-season romantic arc (indeed, I wanted more of them). My god, Trixie is SO BIG, she used to be a tiny little nugget. I love that Linda was the moral and emotional rock all along, from the first episode to the very last, and that Amenadiel was Deeply Vindicated when Charlie's wings appeared at his first birthday party. I love how Lucifer in s6 is absolute thousands of light years from Lucifer in s1. And as ever, Chloe was Perfect. I am happy that I spent six seasons with these characters and saw them become better, and that I was never made to feel like an idiot for trusting the writers to end everything in a beautiful and emotional way. Because, well. They did. Sure, maybe I could go back and pick at a plotline here or a detail there, but I don't terribly feel the need to do so? It might not have been perfect, but it was perfect, and I am so grateful that it existed.

#lucifer #lucifer spoilers #deckerstar #anonymous #ask

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shihalyfie · 3 years

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Menoa Bellucci, and her relation to Adventure and 02′s antagonists

I mentioned in an earlier meta that Kizuna has a particularly deep relationship to 02 on a thematic level, with a lot of that being because its primary antagonist, Menoa, has heavy parallels to its two main antagonists (the Digimon Kaiser and Oikawa Yukio). I felt like I should make another post talking about Menoa in particular, and how the themes of both Adventure and 02 relate to her.

Do note that naturally, this will contain heavy spoilers for the movie (although I guess I’ve technically already spoiled it in this post’s premise...).

Before we begin, I’m going to start off with...well, look, I don’t really like starting off with what’s probably going to sound like an indictment, but I’m pretty sure so much of the potential audience for this post is going to be thinking about it that I inevitably need to address it. It’s the part where a lot of people have generally accused Menoa of being a rehash of tri.’s Himekawa Maki. Honestly, I don’t blame anyone for jumping to that connection, because of how similar the surface details are -- she’s a young woman who was a Chosen Child, who lost her partner and did morally questionable things as a result. That, and tri. was only a few years ago, so Himekawa is still recent in memory, and it’s logical to think that maybe the most recent work would be pulling from the second most recent work.

...But that’s also exactly where the similarities stop. Beyond that surface level, there’s not much connection on a thematic level. Mainly: after losing her partner, Himekawa’s main goal was to get said partner back, even if it meant dismantling the same Digital World she’d been originally meant to protect -- she was willing to destroy everything for the sake of that goal (i.e. she was knowingly acting selfishly). Not only that, she’s not even the primary antagonist, because the whole thing ties into her being used as a pawn by Yggdrasil -- so we’re not even sure how much agency she had in this entire arrangement. Meanwhile, Menoa’s motives were definitely very based on her desire to get said partner back, but the whole point was that she thought it was impossible -- she’d certainly tried, but because nothing was bearing fruit, she determined that the only thing she could do would be to prevent everyone else from going through the same thing. So in other words, she was convinced her actions were actually selfless, and her failure in getting her partner back was what motivated her -- all based on her own personal choices and motivations, directed entirely by her. Other than the backstory part being somewhat similar, the way they react to it is completely different.

If Menoa is meant to be relevant to Himekawa, then that can only really be said in the sense that Menoa is a response to and deconstruction of the plot point Himekawa introduced. This is especially because part of Kizuna’s creation involved being a direct response to tri.’s inadequate portrayal of Digimon partnerships, which, unfortunately, Himekawa is...kind of a major symptom of -- we’re never given any serious depiction on what emotional connection Himekawa and her partner had, we’re only supposed to glean this by projecting the old Adventure/02 definition and depiction of partnerships, and everything else we learn about Himekawa’s desperation is after the fact. And...well, I’ll be honest, it’s still kind of hard to even rationalize how Himekawa’s “character arc” makes much sense (especially the part where we’re supposed to figure out how she apparently studied the reboot since university but had no contingency plan for Bakumon not remembering her, to the point where this apparently drove her completely insane...?). So as a result, she’s just killed off unceremoniously, because there’s no real natural conclusion to this arc, nor any underlying logic as to what relationship Himekawa and Bakumon supposedly had.

So it is true that Menoa starts off with a similar base concept, but because Kizuna is dedicated to “defining what it means to have a partner”, it takes a proper step-by-step approach: firstly, what did Morphomon actually mean to Menoa? We’re given tons and tons of depictions of how Morphomon was integrated into her daily life, and was her closest confidant for years. What exactly does it mean to lose a partner? The depictions and descriptions in Kizuna don’t hold back at all; Menoa even says that it feels “like a part of your body has been ripped away”. What is a Digimon partner in the first place, and what does it mean to have one or to not have one? In line with Adventure/02′s portrayal of Digimon partners, a Digimon is portrayed as a part of the inner self whose presence or absence depends on the human’s state of mind, which means that getting a partner back also depends on said human -- and thus, even Menoa is provided an opportunity for salvation at the end, because everyone has the potential to grow again. In that sense, it’s hard to really call Menoa a parallel or a rehash, when, if anything, it’s more like she’s taking that concept and readjusting it to what it should have been more like when under the original Adventure/02 concept of partnerships.

Anyway...

Back to Adventure and 02. On its face, Kizuna does seem to have more pertinence to 02 than it does Adventure when it comes to themes -- after all, Kizuna styles itself as something that’s supposed to be relatable and personal to the modern millennial adult, meaning that it focuses moreso on human drama and introspection more so than it does Digital World and Digimon mechanics. In doing so, it was probably inevitable that it aligns itself more with 02 (which was significantly more about human drama and interpersonal relationships than it was Adventure’s Digital World and Digimon lore) by default.

Still, there is a lot of pertinence in the sense that Adventure was always intended to be “a story of humanity’s evolution” -- recalling that the 02 epilogue was actually the originally intended ending for Adventure, and the result of “everyone in the world having a Digimon partner” being the “evolution” of humanity by having a visible form of their own soul -- and thus, the core of each enemy in Adventure was tied to it in some form. This is made especially clear in the third Adventure novel:

At the beginning of the world, when the Digital world was still in chaos, the Digital world chose the idea of “evolution.” By deciding that this process would involve the Digital world itself “evolving,” it created Homeostasis for that necessity...

...Apocalymon must have sent its thoughts through the “Wall of Fire” into the Digital world. It planted the idea into the Dark Masters’ minds to unconsciously reject “evolution.” The Dark Masters’ plan would permanently destroy the function of the Village of Beginnings. It was possible that, to the very end, they had been unaware of it. In other words, the construction of Spiral Mountain took “evolution” away from the Digital World.

When the kids finally meet Apocalymon in the penultimate episode of Adventure, he has the following complaints:

Apocalymon: We are the Digimon who have disappeared through the evolution process...The resultant build-up of thoughts that have cursed our sad and hateful fates! Sora: You were created from the dark hearts of the Digimon who disappeared? Apocalymon: Dear Chosen Children and your dear Digimon. We have been looking forward to meeting all of you. ... Apocalymon: Listen. While we lay buried under a deep darkness of utter coldness and sorrow, you were on the other side, enjoying yourselves and laughing happily in the warm light. WHY?! ... Apocalymon: What have we done to deserve this?! (tears at self) Why must we weep tears of grief while you enjoy cheerful laughter? Mimi: No, I don't want to see this! Apocalymon: We, too, have tears that flow from our eyes and feelings that flow from our hearts. Just who decided that we were to be deprived of this world and consigned to oblivion?! We wanted to live! We wanted to live and speak of friendship, justice, and love! We wanted to use this body to be helpful to this world! Are you saying that this world has no need for us? That we are meaningless?! ... Apocalymon: Then we shall rule this world! We shall make this place belong to us. All who get in our way will die! (laughs) May the light be forever cursed where it shines!

(Translation by Ryuu-Rogue.)

So, basically, Apocalymon is a “Legion” sort of Digimon, made up of the condensed regrets of Digimon who were unable to evolve, and lived so much in despair that they decided they would drag everyone else down with them, and reform the world into their own. So in other words, his main goal to “inhibit evolution” was in the sense of inhibiting the Digital World’s own evolution and development, while it was growing alongside the human world -- all of this villainous “destroying the world” and “taking over the world” is all tied to a root of “inhibiting evolution”. And this was all intended to be tied into 02 as well, along with even the theoretical third Adventure series that never happened -- an ongoing fight for humanity and the Digital World’s right to continue “evolving” against forces that were trying to block it.

How does this relate to Menoa?

“Evolution” in the context of Adventure and 02 has a lot of meanings, and of course one of the most prominent ones is in terms of the metaphor of “evolution = human growth and potential”. Kizuna brings it to the forefront in terms of explicitly saying that Digimon growth is tied to human potential, but that’s always been there from the beginning -- especially considering how high-level evolution is powered by human virtues, like Crests.

But by trapping everyone in Neverland, Menoa is keeping people from “evolving” -- not just the Digimon from evolving, but humans from gaining any growth or potential, because they’ll be fixated in their childhood memories forever. The namesake of Neverland, the original Peter Pan, was very much about how staying a child forever would involve always being immature -- Peter was not a heroic figure in the end, as he was someone who was ultimately callous and irresponsible, at times even self-serving. No one will grow as people. Everyone will stay locked in the same mentality forever. The Digimon will never evolve. Robbed of Chosen Children to help protect the world, both the human world and Digital World will be left defenseless, and perhaps even be destroyed -- and that would be the end of “evolution” for all.

All because of Menoa’s own grief and projection.

Moving back to 02, this is of course where the parallels start getting really explicit. As I mentioned earlier, Menoa is effectively a combination of 02′s two most prominent antagonists -- the Digimon Kaiser, Ichijouji Ken, who was pressured into being recognized as a “genius” by society and lost a grip on his true self as a result, and Oikawa Yukio, who was cut off from the Digital World in childhood and spent his adulthood trying to grasp at shallow symbols of his past, projecting on others in the process.

Actually, let’s go over these characters in their stages of antagonism!

The Digimon Kaiser:

Was recognized by society as a “genius” and paraded around for those abilities; mentioned to be intelligent enough to skip grades into university (was only prevented from doing so like Menoa did because he lived in Japan, which didn’t have a system for this)

Tried to smash out the aspects of himself that didn’t fit the image he was aiming for, throwing away the “kindness” in his heart under the idea it was “weakness”, trying to become “better than others”

Started pushing away his own Digimon partner in the process, symbolizing a rejection of his own inner self

Ultimately, never got to have a proper childhood of having the freedom to do “meaningless things”, because he and his brother Osamu were “demanded to grow up fast”

Young Menoa:

Was recognized by society as a “genius” to the point she felt isolated from her peers, to the point she decided to skip grades into university because she felt like it would get her recognition and allow her to be productive to society

Stopped engaging in childhood hobbies (e.g. the swing she used to play with Morphomon at) and is implied to have pushed others away in her bid to be independent

Wasn’t even talking to Morphomon much anymore by the time of their separation, because she’d prioritized her studies in order to skip grades

Ultimately turned herself into an “adult” at the age of 14, far too young for anyone to become an adult

The surface details are a little different -- because Ken’s troubles manifested in a way that made him more “consciously reject” Wormmon rather than outright neglect him, and because his reaction to being “demanded to grow up fast” ultimately involved him trying to ditch everything into the Digital World instead of trying to become more mature, he was spared from the fate of having an outright partnership dissolution with Wormmon at the tender age of eleven. (Although he did still have a pretty traumatizing “loss” of Wormmon, so it’s not like he got off scot-free -- especially when getting said partner back involved a necessary epiphany about choosing to face what he did and moving forward with the consequences, something Menoa did not do during the events of the movie.) Either way, though, he managed to snap himself out of it and prevent himself from taking the same path Menoa did -- especially since the two of them are based off the same real-life origin story, the 9-year-old American boy whom Seki Hiromi read about in a newspaper, who skipped grades into Columbia University, causing her to conclude that he’d be unable to make friends his age.

Since Menoa ends up taking a different path and going “all the way”, once Morphomon is taken from her, she veers onto a path very similar to Oikawa’s.

Oikawa Yukio:

Was torn away from contact with the Digital World (and his future partner) by a well-meaning Hida Chikara, worried about him and Hiroki getting into “foolish talk”

Was isolated from the only friend he could relate to (via Hida Hiroki’s death)

Tried to make his own Digimon, implied to at least partially be inspired by trying to fill the void (see 02 episode 47), but only manages to create minions who do his bidding

Kidnapped a bunch of children under the premise that he was just giving them what they wanted; implanted Dark Seeds into them that on the surface gave them what they wanted but actually ate at their feelings

Blamed the fact he was a “tainted adult” for his inability to go to the Digital World without more forcible methods

Menoa:

Lost her partner after discarding her childhood hobbies in order to fit society’s standard of adulthood

Developed an obsession with becoming “independent”; ended up likely having no friends to connect with (states during the climax in Neverland that nobody understands how she feels)

Tried to use “scientific” computer methods to bring back her partner, but only managed to get hordes of soulless husks to do her bidding

Kidnapped a bunch of people (eventually including literal children) under the premise that she would be saving everyone; forced them to experience eternal loops of their childhood memories that prevented them from moving forward

Blamed the fact she’d “made that choice” and become an adult for her loss of her partner

Oikawa didn’t “lose” his partner in the sense of something permanent-sounding like Morphomon, but in terms of thematic parallels, Menoa basically ends up throwing herself into his path after continuing in the direction Ken ultimately chose to tear himself away from.

Ultimately, there are still differences in execution and life circumstances between all three characters -- and that’s how it ought to be, given that it would be inappropriate for Kizuna to be a complete rehash of 02. But considering that 02 was heavily built on the themes of “not drowning in regret and learning to move forward” and “embracing the inner child and not caving to societal expectations”, it makes sense that Kizuna, which is built on “not drowning in nostalgia and learning to face the future” and “not losing touch with childhood memories and experiences nor the childish self to the pressures of becoming an adult”, the parallels between the main antagonists driving the story are going to be very similar.

Although, given the events of Kizuna and how they played out...one wonders if Ken has any idea how lucky he is...

#digimon #digimon adventure #digimon adventure 02 #digimon adventure last evolution kizuna #menoa bellucci #tri negativity

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oscopelabs · 3 years

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It’s Arrested Development: How ‘High Fidelity’ Has Endured Beyond Its Cultural Sell-By Date by Vikram Murthi

It’s easy to forget now that at the beginning of 2020, before the pandemic had taken hold of our consciousness, for a brief moment, High Fidelity was back. Not only did Nick Hornby’s debut novel and Stephen Frears’ film adaptation celebrate major milestones this year — 25th and 20th anniversaries, respectively — but a TV adaptation premiered on Hulu in February. In light of all of these arbitrary signposts, multiple thinkpieces and remembrances litigated Hornby’s original text on familiar, predictable grounds. Is the novel/film’s protagonist Rob actually an asshole? (Sure.) Does Hornby uphold his character’s callous attitudes towards women? (Not really.) Hasn’t the story’s gatekeeping, anti-poptimist approach to artistic taste culturally run its course? (Probably.) Why do we need to revisit this story about this person right now? (Fair question!)

Despite reasonable objections on grounds of relevancy, enough good will for the core narrative—record store owner seeks out a series of exes to determine a pattern of behavior following a devastating breakup—apparently exists to help produce a gender-flipped streaming show featuring updated musical references and starring a decidedly not-middle-aged Zoë Kravitz. I only made it through six of ten episodes in its first (and only) season, but I was surprised by how closely the show hewed to High Fidelity’s film adaptation, to the point of re-staging numerous scenes down to character blocking and swiping large swaths of dialogue wholesale. (Similarly, the film adaptation hewed quite close to the novel, with most of the dialogue ripped straight from Hornby.) Admittedly, the series features a more diverse cast than the film, centering different experiences and broadly acknowledging some criticisms of the source material regarding its ostensibly exclusionary worldview. Nevertheless, it seemed like a self-defeating move for the show to line itself so definitively with a text that many consider hopelessly problematic, especially considering the potential to repurpose its premise as a springboard for more contemporary ideas.

High Fidelity’s endurance as both a piece of IP and a flashpoint for media discourse is mildly baffling for obvious reasons. For one thing, its cultural milieu is actually dated. Even correcting for vinyl’s recent financial resurgence, the idea of snooty record store clerks passing judgment on customer preferences has more or less gone the way of the dodo. With the Internet came the democratization of access, ensuring that the cultivation of personal taste is no longer laborious or expensive, or could even be considered particularly impressive (if it ever could have been). Secondly, as one might imagine, some of Hornby’s insights into heterosexual relationships and the differences between men and women, even presented through the flawed, self-deprecating interiority of High Fidelity’s main character, are indeed reductive. Frears’ film actually strips away the vast majority of Hornby’s weaker commentary, but the novel does include such cringeworthy bits like, “What’s the deal with foreplay?” that are best left alone.

Accounting for all of that, though, it’s remarkable how many misreadings of Hornby’s text have been accepted as conventional wisdom. It’s taken as a given by many that the novel and film earnestly preach the notion that what you like is more important than what you are like when, in fact, the narrative arc is constructed around reaching the opposite conclusion. (The last lines of the novel and film are, literally, “…I start to compile in my head a compilation tape for her, something that's full of stuff she's heard of, and full of stuff she'd play. Tonight, for the first time ever, I can sort of see how it's done.”) That’s relatively minor compared to the constant refrain that Rob’s narcissism goes uncriticized, even though the story’s thematic and emotional potency derives from what the audience perceives that Rob cannot. To put it bluntly, High Fidelity’s central irony revolves around a man who listens to music for a living being unable to hear the women in his life.

While Hornby’s prose immerses the reader in Rob’s interior monologue, providing ample room for the character to spout internal justifications of his behavior, the novel hardly obscures or conceals this conclusion. Moreover, the film makes it unavoidably explicit in numerous scenes. Rob (John Cusack) triumphantly pantomimes Rocky Balboa’s boxing routine soundtracked to Queen’s “We Are The Champions” after his ex-girlfriend Laura (Iben Hjejle) confirms she hasn’t yet slept with her new boyfriend Ray (Tim Robbins), but doesn’t hear the part where she says she prefers to sleep next to him. When Laura informs Rob that she did eventually sleep with Ray, Rob completely falls apart. In an earlier, more pointed scene, Rob goes out with his ex-girlfriend from high school (Joelle Carter) to ask why she chose to have sex with an obnoxious classmate instead of him. She venomously informs him that he actually broke up with her because she was too prudish, an abrupt, cruel bit of business we actually witness at the film’s beginning. It was in her moment of heartbroken vulnerability that she agreed to quickly sleep with someone else (“It wasn’t rape because I technically said, ‘Okay,’ but it wasn’t far off,” she sneers), which ultimately put her off sex until after college. Rob doesn’t hear this explanation or the damning portrait of his teenaged self. Instead, he’s delighted to learn that he wasn’t actually dumped.

These are evidently low character moments, one’s that are comedic in their depiction of blinkeredness but whose emotional takeaways are crystal clear, and one’s that have been written about before. My personal pick from the film, though, comes late when Rob attends Laura’s father’s funeral. He sits in the back and, in typical fashion, turns to the camera to deliver a list of songs to play at his funeral, concluding with his professed wish that “some beautiful, tearful woman would insist on ‘You’re The Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me’ by Gladys Knight.” It’s a really galling, egotistical moment that still makes me wince despite having seen the movie umpteen times. Yet, it’s immediately followed by the casket being lowered to the ground as Laura’s sobs ring out in the church. In a movie defined by John Cusack’s vocal timbre, it’s one of the few times when he completely shuts up. From two-thirds down the center aisle, Frears’ camera pushes into Cusack’s face until tears in his eyes are visible, but what you really see is an appropriately guilt-ridden, ashamed expression.

However, none of this evidence carries any weight if your objection to High Fidelity is that Rob suffers no material consequences for his behavior. While Rob is frequently called out for his actions, he is never actively punished. He doesn’t, say, receive a restraining order for continually calling Laura after they’ve broken up or end up alone mending a permanent broken heart because of his past relationships. By the end, Rob and Laura get back together and Rob even starts an independent record label on the side. It’s a stretch to characterize Hornby’s High Fidelity as a redemption tale, but it is a sideways rehabilitation narrative with a happy ending that arises at least partly out of mutual exhaustion.

Those two elements—Rob’s asshole recovery and the exhausted happy ending—rarely seem to factor into High Fidelity discourse. Granted, there’s credence to the idea that, socially and culturally, people have less patience for the personality types depicted in High Fidelity, and thus are less inclined to extend them forgiveness, let alone anything resembling retribution. I suppose that’s a valid reaction, one against which I have no interest in arguing, but it’s somewhat ironic that High Fidelity has endured for reasons that have nothing to do with its conclusions regarding inflexible personal principles and the folly of escapism. Both the book and film are specifically about someone who slowly comes to terms with accepting reality rather than live in a world mediated by pop cultural fantasies whose unrealistic expectations have only caused personal suffering. It’s not unfair to characterize this as a fairly obvious epiphany, but considering we currently live in a world dominated by virtual echo chambers with an entertainment culture committed to validating arrested adolescence, it retroactively counts as “mature” and holds more weight than it otherwise should.

Near the end of High Fidelity, the book, after Rob and Laura have gotten back together in the aftermath of Laura’s father’s death, Hornby includes a chapter featuring five conversations between the couple unpacking the state of their relationship. During the third conversation, Rob and Laura fight about how she doesn’t care about music as strongly as he does, catalyzed by Rob’s objection to Laura liking both Solomon Burke and Art Garfunkel, which, in his mind, is a contradiction in terms. Laura finally admits that not only does she not really care about the difference between them, but that most people outside of his immediate circle of two don’t care about the difference, and that this mentality is indicative of a larger problem. It’s part of what keeps him stuck in his head and reluctant to commit to anything. “I’m just trying to wake you up,” she says. “I'm just trying to show you that you've lived half your life, but for all you've got to show for it you might as well be nineteen, and I'm not talking about money or property or furniture.”

I fell for High Fidelity (first the movie, then the book) as a younger man for the reasons I assume most sensitive-cum-oblivious, culturally preoccupied straight guys do: it accurately pinpoints a pattern of music consumption and organizationally anal-retentive behavior with which I’m intimately familiar. I spent the vast majority of my early years listening to and cataloguing albums, and when I arrived at college, I quickly fell in with a small group of like-minded music obsessives. We had very serious, very prolonged discussions filled with impossibly strong opinions about our favorite artists and records. Few new releases came and went without them being scrutinized by us, the unappreciated scholars of all that is righteous. List-making wasn’t in vogue, but there wasn’t a song that passed us by that we didn’t judge or size up. I was exposed to more music during this relatively short period of time than I likely will ever absorb again. Some of these times were the most engaging and fun of my life, and I still enjoy discussing and sharing music with close friends, but I’m not such a true believer to fully feel comfortable with this behavior. It’s not entirely healthy on its own and definitely alienating to others, and there comes a point when you hear yourself the way a stranger might, or maybe even catch a glimpse of someone’s eyes when you’re midst rant about some stupid album, and realize, “That’s all there is of me. There isn’t anything else.”

This is what Rob proclaims to Laura in the conversation when she tells him she was more interested in music during their courtship than she is now. It’s a patently self-pitying statement on his part that doesn’t go unchallenged by her in the moment or bear fruit in the rest of the novel. Yet, it’s this type of uncomfortably relatable sentiment that goes under-discussed. If High Fidelity will continue to have a life well after its cultural moment has passed, then it’s worth addressing what it offers on its own terms. Near the end of the book, Laura introduces Rob to another couple with whom he gets along quite well. When the evening comes to an end, she tells him to take a look at their record collection, and it’s predictably filled with artists he doesn’t care for, e.g. Billy Joel, Simply Red, Meat Loaf. “'Everybody's faith needs testing from time to time,” Laura tells him later when they’re alone. Amidst Rob’s self-loathing and sullen pettiness, Hornby argues that one should contribute in some way rather than only consume and that, at some point, it’s time to put away childish ideas in order to get the most out of life. It’s an entirely untrendy argument, one that goes against the nostalgic spirit of superhero films and reboot culture, but it doesn’t lack merit. Accepting that some values aren’t conducive to a full life, especially when it’s shared with someone else, doesn’t have to mean abandoning interests or becoming an entirely different person. It just means that letting go isn’t an admission of defeat.

It’s why I’ve always found the proposal scene in the film to be quite moving, albeit maybe not specifically romantic. It plays out similarly in both the book and the film, but the film has the added benefit of Cusack and Hjejle’s performances to amplify the vulnerability and shared understanding. Laura meets Rob for a drink in the afternoon where he sheepishly asks if she would like to get married. Laura bursts out laughing and says that he isn’t the safest bet considering he was making mixtapes for some reporter a few days prior. When asked what brought this on, Rob notes that he’s sick of thinking about love and settling down and marriage and wants to think about something else. (“I changed my mind. That’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard. I do. I will,” she sarcastically replies.) He goes on to say that he’s tired of fantasizing about other women because the fantasies have nothing to do with them and everything to do with himself and that it doesn’t exist never mind delivering on its promise. “I’m tired of it,” he says, “and I’m tired of everything else for that matter, but I don’t ever seem to get tired of you.”

This sort of anti-Jerry Maguire line would be callous if Laura didn’t basically say the same thing to him when they got back together. (“I’m too tired not to be with you.”) It’s possible to read this as an act of mutual settling, but I always thought Hornby’s point was personal growth and accepting one’s situation were intertwined. The key moment in High Fidelity, the film, comes when Laura finds Rob’s list of top five dream jobs. (In the book, Laura makes Rob compile the list.) At the bottom of the list, after such standard choices like music journalist and record producer, lies architect, a job that Rob isn’t entirely sure about anyway. (“I did put it at number five!” he insists.) Laura asks Rob the obvious question: wouldn’t you rather own your own record store than hypothetically be an architect, a job you’re not particularly enthused with anyway?

It’s Laura who convinces Rob that living the fifth-best version of your life can actually be pretty satisfying and doesn’t have to be treated like a cruel fate worse than death. Similarly, Rob and Laura both make the active decision to try to work things out instead of starting over with someone else. Laura’s apathy may have reunited them, and Rob’s apathy might have kept him from running, but it’s their shared history that keeps them together. More than the music and the romance, High Fidelity follows the necessary decisions and compromises one has to maneuver in order to grow instead of regress. “I've been letting the weather and my stomach muscles and a great chord change in a Pretenders single make up my mind for me, and I want to do it for myself,” Rob says near the end of Hornby’s novel. High Fidelity’s emotional potency lies in taking that sentiment seriously.

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lady-aescwyn · 3 years

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Strange, Tender Things

Steve Harrington x fem!OC One Shot

Author’s note: I was inspired by a prompt I found while perusing the Stanger Things fics tags. This was originally intended to be a StevexReader fic, but I decided to give the protag a name. It’s still pretty self-inserty and I encourage you to overwrite her name in your mind with your own if it pleases you. My writing skills are rather rusty, but please enjoy.

Premise: Steve Harrington and his girlfriend are having a stupid fight, which is brought to an abrupt end. Concern and gentleness ensues.

***

When it was over, neither of them would remember how it started in the first place. It had started out as simple, easy conversation. He hadn’t quite meant the words in the way they’d come out. She’d had more venom in her tone than she’d intended. They were both little more than teenagers. Though they were both whole in body, they were both traumatized by a series of recent events in Hawkins, Indiana.

Now, here they stood.

In Joyce Byers’ small kitchen.

Fighting.

The house was empty, save for the two of them; Joyce at work, the younger kids out under Jonathan and Nancy’s watchful eyes, reunited for the first time in months. But here at the house, Steve Harrington’s hands were planted on the top of the kitchen table, his upper body bent forward as he traded barbs with Dawn. For her part, Dawn was brandishing a dirty glass in one hand as if it were a weapon and giving as good as she got, her lips curled back in an almost feral snarl. Her time as a street kid coming back full force, manifesting as a bitter, angry fight to make her point.

The small, cheap table creaked with the force of Steve’s anger, though his voice was low, “We can’t keep living in what happened back in Hawkins. I’m not saying forget it, but we have to move forward.” His face was stony, eyebrows furrowed.

“It’s not over! It will never be over, Steve!” The empty glass swinging through the air between them like a saber. Dawn’s voice was strained with manic desperation, “Hopper is alive. El saw him! This can’t be over until we bring. Him. Home.” As if to punctuate her point, she brought the glass to a stop with a final thunk on the table.

Unfortunately, that finality was too much for the old cup.

The glass shattered.

There was a beat of silence as they both took a moment to register the cracking sound of glass grinding against itself.

“Fuck!” Dawn swore, fussing over the remains of the glass. She began gathering the bits, heedless of the blood that was beginning to seep from between her fingers.

Steve was around the table like lightning, “Stop. Hey-“

“I broke Joyce’s glass.” Blood sprinkled the tabletop amidst the shards.

“It’s ok. Just stop.” His voice was soft, a far cry from the intensity and clenched teeth of only moments ago.

“I need to clean this u-“

“We will clean it up. After we clean you up.”

Dawn finally deflated, all of her fight burning off like fog on a summer morning.

She let Steve take her arm and guide her to the kitchen sink. The air was still, humming with the sound of the refrigerator nearby and their breathing in unison as their anger ebbed away. The quiet was punctuated only by the clink of bloody glass shards hitting the sink, each accompanied by a sharp intake of breath from Dawn as she winced.

As Steve turned on the water to clean the wound, Dawn stopped him, “Hold on, there’s still a piece in there.”

She bent forward, trying to see in the dim light from the dingy bulb over the sink. Her lip was clenched between her teeth as she dug into the wound with her other hand. Despite the surety of her voice and action, her breath was hitched with pain as she coaxed the glass from her hand. In his concern, Steve hadn’t realized that his hand had found its place on her lower back, steadying her.

Finally, that last piece of glass fell from her fingers and they both released the breath they’d been holding. She gently flexed her hand and then nodded, sure that was the last of it.

He said, “Let me.”

And she did, her stance relaxing as she stood aside to let him wash the blood from her hands.

It was a deep wound, long and jagged across her palm and all the way to the bone at the base of her thumb. If it had been anyone else, it would have necessitated a trip to the ER.

“I have a healing factor, you know.” The words were without bite, her attempt at humor cutting the silence. He knew very well her ability to knit her wounds together and if pushed, to channel that ability to heal others… at an exponentially greater cost to herself.

She had used it to save his life only months ago.

“I know.” His reply was simple, but one corner of his mouth hinted at a smile before his brows furrowed again. “But I- I don’t like to see you hurt.”

The bleeding had stopped.

No longer over the sink, he still held her injured hand cradled in both of his. Dawn didn’t move, searching his face as he watched her flesh knit together. The rumble of the furnace kicking on joined the sound of the refrigerator. His warm thumb travelled down the skin of her wrist until it met the number 9 tattooed there.

Leaning closer to him, her voice shook, “I’m sorry-“

He shook his head.

She continued, “I know it’s not healthy to dwell so much-“

“I’m sorry too. If there’s any chance Hopper’s alive, we have to find him.” There wasn’t much to go on. Just El’s dream of a ‘cold place.’ It could be grief, or El could be tapping in with her powers, none of them were sure. They’d had no more success when they’d tried white noise or another makeshift sensory deprivation tank.

The last bit of tension, melted from Dawn’s body, “It doesn’t do him or us any good to fight. I’m sorry.” She reinforced her apology.

Steve’s eyes hadn’t left her wrist.

Moments passed in silence as motes of dust drifted lazily through the yellowed, old home. Still, his fingers ran tenderly along the sides of her wrist.

The cut was nearly closed now; just a jagged, angry red line. Even the scar would soon fade. This was far from the worst injury she’d ever had and they both knew it. In the buzzing still of the small kitchen, Steve seemed lost in the memory of before.

With the fingers of her injured hand, Dawn brushed his forearm. “Hey. Look at me.”

Steve took a deep breath, but his eyes and hands didn’t leave her arm.

After a moment, he spoke, “You told me once that Hawkins Lab created you.” There was a pause. When she didn’t interrupt, he continued, “You are so much more than that. So much more than them. You took what those assholes did to you and you did amazing things with it. And you’re gonna do even more.”

The conviction in his voice was searing and Dawn wasn’t prepared for him to cut right to the core of her worries.

When his eyes finally met hers, he didn’t expect her to look so stricken. Dawn’s eyes welled with tears as all of the emotion came to a head and spilled over. The uninjured hand went to her mouth, but once the tears had started, they couldn’t really be stifled and she stumbled forward into his arms.

“I’m sorry, I-“ Steve’s voice was mildly panicked; he hadn’t meant to make her cry. As she fell forward, he held her, which was all she really needed.

These weren’t bad tears; they were a too long delayed emotional release and they would pass almost as quickly as they had come. However, in that moment her shoulders shook with intense sobs as she clung to him. And he held her as the waves crashed over them. Damp fingers curled into the back of her shirt as his grip tightened and he buried his nose into the top of her head. Steve’s own vision was blurred with tears. This was the first time they had seen each other since Dawn moved away from Hawkins with El and the Byers’ and they’d almost ruined it with the stupidest fight.

Eventually, the sobs passed and once again the buzz of the kitchen appliances reigned in the soft atmosphere. But the couple didn’t part. They stood like that for a while, locked in each other’s arms, rocking gently side to side. Finding comfort in each other again.

After a while, Dawn’s rough voice came from where her face was buried between his neck and shoulder, “M,sorry.”

“Don’t be.” His voice returned from where he was still buried in her hair.

Dawn took a deep, cleansing breath and finally brought her head up, looking over his shoulder at the glass shards still on the table, “I have to clean up.” But she made no move to leave his arms.

Steve didn’t move either, “I’ll help.”

He was talking about more than the broken glass.

“Thank you.” her ‘I love you’ wasn’t verbalized, but neither did it go unsaid as she began to pull away with a soft squeeze to his arm.

Before they fully parted, he caught her with a gentle hand at the back of the neck and pressed a kiss to her forehead. Their breath mingled for a moment between them as they drew away. It was his own silent, ‘I love you too.’

With that, they stepped apart. Steve turned to the sink and Dawn to the table and together they worked to clean up the mess. Quick work was made of the blood and glass. Words were unneeded as they worked around each other and in unison, the same as they had done before in Hawkins; though this was nothing like those battles with the beasts of the Upside Down. It wasn’t the first time, nor would it be the last time they moved as one.

As the worn dish towel was at last hung back over the handle on the oven door, Steve caught her hand and began to pull her from the room. “I think everyone else has the right idea, let’s get out of here.” His usual, charming smile dawning on his face like the rising sun.

That smile was infectious and Dawn couldn’t stop from meeting it with one of her own, “You know, I could show you our new mall up here.”

The response was swift and over dramatic, “Oh god no! No more malls!”

Laughter followed the two of them through the home like light hitting a suncatcher and scattering flashes of rainbow across the yellowed wallpaper. For now, all was well.

#steve harrington #steve harrington x oc #stranger things fanfic #this was just based off of a quick prompt I found but Dawn is an OC I created a while ago #maybe one day I'll write the full fic #Ash writes

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davidmann95 · 4 years

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Superman’s 10 Best of the ‘10s

Good Miracle Monday, folks! The first third Monday of May of a new decade for that matter, and while that means that today in the DC Universe Superman just revealed his secret identity to the world on the latest anniversary of that time he defeated the devil, in ours it puts a capstone on a solid 10 years of his adventures now in the rear view mirror, ripe for reevaluation. And given there’s a nice solid ‘10′ right there I’ll go ahead with the obvious and list my own top ten for Superman comics of the past decade, with links in the titles to those I’ve spoken on in depth before - maybe you’ll find something you overlooked, or at least be reminded of good times.

A plethora of honorable mentions: I’m disqualifying team-ups or analogue character stories, but no list of the great Superman material of the last decade would be complete without bringing up Cave Carson Has A Cybernetic Eye #7, Avengers 34.1, Irredeemable, Sideways Annual #1, Supreme: Blue Rose, Justice League: Sixth Dimension, usage of him in Wonder Twins, (somewhat in spite of itself) Superior, from all I’ve heard New Super-Man, DCeased #5, and Batman: Super Friends. And while they couldn’t quite squeeze in, all due praise to the largely entertaining Superman: Unchained, the decades’ great Luthor epic in Superman: The Black Ring, a brilliant accompaniment to Scott Snyder’s work with Lex in Lex Luthor: Year of the Villain, the bonkers joy of the Superman/Luthor feature in Walmart’s Crisis On Infinite Earths tie-in comics, Geoff Johns and John Romita’s last-minute win in their Superman run with their final story 24 Hours, Tom Taylor’s quiet criticism of the very premise he was working with on Injustice and bitter reflection on the changing tides for the character in The Man of Yesterday, the decades’ most consistent Superman ongoing in Bryan Miller and company’s Smallville Season 11, and Superman: American Alien, which probably would have made the top ten but has been dropped like a hot potato by one and all for Reasons. In addition are several stories from Adventures of Superman, a book with enough winners to merit a class of its own: Rob Williams and Chris Weston’s thoughtful Savior, Kyle Killen and Pia Guerra’s haunting The Way These Things Begin, Marc Guggenheim and Joe Bennett’s heart-wrenching Tears For Krypton, Christos Gage and Eduardo Francisco’s melancholy Flowers For Bizarro, Josh Elder and Victor Ibanez’s deeply sappy but deeply effective Dear Superman, Ron Marz and Doc Shaner’s crowdpleasing Only Child, and Kelly Sue DeConnick and Valentine DeLandro’s super-sweet Mystery Box.

10. Greg Pak/Aaron Kuder’s Action Comics

Oh, what might’ve been. In spite of an all-timer creative team I can’t justify listing this run any higher given how profoundly and comprehensively compromised it is, from the status quo it was working with to the litany of ill-conceived crossovers to regular filler artists to its ignominious non-ending. But with the most visceral, dynamic, and truly humane take on Clark Kent perhaps of all time that still lives up to all Superman entails, and an indisputably iconic instant-classic moment to its name, I can’t justify excluding it either.

9. Action Comics #1000

Arguably the climax to the decade for the character as his original title became the first superhero comic to reach a 1000th issue. While any anthology of this sort is a crapshoot by nature, everyone involved here seemed to understand the enormity of the occasion and stepped up as best they could; while the lack of a Lois Lane story is indefensible, some are inevitably bland, and one or two are more than a bit bizarre, by and large this was a thoroughly charming tribute to the character and his history with a handful of legitimate all-timer short stories.

8. Faster Than A Bullet

Much as Adventures of Superman was rightfully considered an oasis amidst the New 52′s worst excesses post-Morrison and in part pre-Pak, few stories from it seem well-remembered now, and even at the time this third issue inexplicably seemed to draw little attention. Regardless, Matt Kindt and Stephen Segovia’s depiction of an hour in the life of Superman as he saves four planets first thing in the morning without anyone noticing - while clumsy in its efforts at paralleling the main events with a literal subplot of a conversation between Lois and Lex - is one of the best takes I can recall on the scope on which he operates, and ultimately the purpose of Clark Kent.

7. Man and Superman

Seemingly geared on every front against me, built as it was on several ideas of how to handle Superman’s origin I legitimately hate, and by a writer whose work over the years has rarely been to my liking, Marv Wolfman and Claudio Castellini’s Man and Superman somehow came out of nowhere to be one of my favorite takes on Clark Kent’s early days. With a Metropolis and characters within it that feel not only alive but lived-in, it’s shocking that a story written and drawn over ten years before it was actually published prefigured so many future approaches to its subject, and felt so of-the-moment in its depiction of a 20-something scrambling to figure out how to squeeze into his niche in the world when it actually reached stores.

6. Brian Bendis’s run

Controversial in the extreme, and indeed heir to several of Brian Bendis’s longstanding weaknesses as a writer, his work on The Man of Steel, Superman, and Action Comics has nevertheless been defined at least as much by its ambition and intuitive grasp of its lead, as well as fistfuls of some of the best artistic accompaniment in the industry. At turns bombastic space action, disaster flick, spy-fi, oddball crime serial, and family drama, its assorted diversions and legitimate attempts at shaking up the formula - or driving it into new territory altogether, as in the latest, apparently more longterm-minded unmasking of Clark Kent in Truth - have remained anchored and made palatable by an understanding of Superman’s voice, insecurities, and convictions that go virtually unmatched.

5. Strange Visitor

The boldest, most out-of-left-field Superman comic of the past 10 years, Joe Keatinge took the logline of Adventures of Superman to do whatever creators wanted with the character and, rather than getting back to a classic take absent from the mainline titles at the time as most others did, used the opportunity for a wildly expansive exploration of the hero from his second year in action to his far-distant final adventure. Alongside a murderer’s row of artists, Keatinge pulled off one of the few comics purely about how great Superman is that rather than falling prey to hollow self-indulgence actually managed to capture the wonder of its subject.

4. Superman: Up In The Sky

And here’s the other big “Superman’s just the best” comic the decade had to offer that actually pulled it off. Sadly if reasonably best-known for its one true misfire of a chapter, with the increasing antipathy towards Tom King among fans in general likely not helping, what ended up overlooked is that this is a stone-cold classic on moment of arrival. Andy Kubert turns in work that stands alongside the best of his career, Tom King’s style is honed to its cleanest edge by the 12-pager format and subject matter, and the quest they set their lead out on ends up a perfect vehicle to explore Superman’s drive to save others from a multitude of angles. I don’t know what its reputation will end up being in the long-term - I was struck how prosaic and subdued the back cover description was when I got this in hardcover, without any of the fanfare or critic quotes you’d expect from the writer of Mister Miracle and Vision tackling Superman - but while its one big problem prevents me from ranking it higher, this is going to remain an all-timer for me.

3. Jeff Loveness’s stories Help and Glasses

Cheating shamelessly here, but Jeff Loveness’s Help with David Williams and Glasses with Tom Grummett are absolutely two halves of the same coin, a pair of theses on Superman’s enduring relevance as a figure of hope and the core of Lois and Clark’s relationship that end up covering both sides of Superman the icon and Superman the guy. While basically illustrated essays, any sense of detached lecturing is utterly forbidden by the raw emotion on display here that instantly made them some of the most acclaimed Superman stories of the last several years; they’re basically guaranteed to remain in ‘best-of’ collections from now until the end of time.

2. Superman Smashes The Klan

A bitter race for the top spot, but #2 is no shame here; while not quite my favorite Superman story of the past ten years, it’s probably the most perfectly executed. While I don’t think anyone could have quite expected just *how* relevant this would be at the top of the decade, Gene Yang and Gurihiru put together an adventure in the best tradition of the Fleischer shorts and the occasional bystander-centered episodes of Batman: The Animated Series to explore racism’s both overt and subtle infections of society’s norms and institutions, the immigrant experience, and both of its leads’ senses of alienation and justice. Exciting, stirring, and insightful, it’s debuted to largely universal acknowledgement as being the best Superman story in years, and hopefully it’ll be continued to be marketed as such long-term.

1. Grant Morrison’s Action Comics

When it came time to make the hard choice, it came in no small part down to that I don’t think we would have ever seen a major Golden Age Superman revival project like Smashes The Klan in the first place if not for this. Even hampering by that godawful Jim Lee armor, inconsistent (if still generally very good) art, and a fandom that largely misunderstood it on arrival can’t detract from that this is Grant Morrison’s run on a Superman ongoing, a journey through Superman’s development as a character reframed as a coherent arc that takes him from Metropolis’s most beaten-down neighborhoods to the edge of the fifth dimension and the monstrous outermost limits of ‘Superman’ as a concept. It launched discussions of Superman as a corporate icon and his place relative to authority structures that have never entirely vanished, introduced multiple all-time great new villains, and made ‘t-shirt Superman’ a distinct era and mode of operation for the character that I’m skeptical will ever entirely go away. No other work on the character this decade had the bombast, scope, complexity, or ambition of this run, with few able to match its charm or heart. And once again, it was, cannot stress this enough, Grant Morrison on an ongoing Superman book.

#Superman #Miracle Monday #Opinion

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inspector-montoya-fox · 4 years

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let’s talk about the themes of the Sly games

Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus (2002):

Paris: this might not be the game’s main theme but it’s the theme that is most omnipresent. Paris is the glue that connects everything together. it immediately has such an impact on the player, even though it’s just the tutorial and the gang’s base of operations. Sly being a thief but also living in Paris just sounds so right, like it’s the way it should be. it fits.

The Thievius Raccoonus: this is the main theme and what provides the game with its premise. it’s the book that needs to be glued back together and its importance is highlighted throughout. almost every level has a page included so we’re constantly reminded of its significance. the skills we earn by retrieving the main ancestors’ pages elevate the gameplay and force the player to respect it. other than that it’s a clever way to spotlight the ancestors and establish that Sly does come from a long line of thieves.

Family: this doesn’t need much explaining but i’ll do it anyway. we start off with Sly’s parents getting killed and him landing at an orphanage where he creates a new family for himself with Bentley and Murray. you’ve got 3 different types of family: (A) Connor and Sly’s mom getting murdered and Sly’s aim to avenge them, (B) Bentley and Murray being true brothers when Sly was left with no one (i’m tearing up), and (C) the ancestors, which are explored more in-depth through the theme of The Thievius Raccoonus. Family as a theme explores Sly’s motivations and drive, even though Connor’s role is minor, especially in comparison to his role in Sly 3

Morality: Sly 1 is rudimental in its gameplay. it was a little game with a big promise at the time it was released, hoping to serve Sony and the Playstation 2 with a worthy mascot and an even worthier title. but right off the bat the player is bombarded with a shit-ton of lore about the world Sly lives in and how he operates. we immediately find out he’s an antihero, an honourable thief who has a code of conduct. this comes into stark contrast with the game’s villains who are basically filthy crooks. thief takes down thieves and the theme of Morality is SP’s attempt to make the player distinguish between good criminal and bad criminal. Morality as a theme is spotlighted immensely in Cold Heart of Hate when Sly saves Carmelita because he truly is the good guy, but also when it’s revealed that what’s been keeping Clockwerk alive all these years is the lack of morals and the hatred. the game establishes Morality as the outlining theme of the entire series, placing Sly on a pedestal because he’s honourable. morals trump hatred, so fuck off Clockwerk (even though ‘perfection has no age’ might be one of the coolest lines in the game lol)

Sly 2: Band of Thieves (2004):

Paris: this is the theme from the first game but on steroids. like make it x10. when you take the plot of Sly 2 and boil down to its core, it turns out to be a full-on race against time to save Paris. it provides both a nod to the first game and a sense of closure at the end: the game begins in Paris and ends in Paris. It’s both a setting and a catalyst, and it is absolutely brilliant in the game. you spend most of the game globetrotting, away from home but as soon as you find out ClockLa is on her way to unleash her psychotic brain waves and turn the city evil, you find yourself at the edge of your seat, caring more about Paris than anything else. it’s omnipresent and powerful and i don’t know why but i love it.

Spice: if you wanna be my lover. here’s an amazing replacement for drug trafficking as a plot device in a children’s game: spice. the spice trail is what pushes the narrative forward but also gives the gang something to face before the pieces fall into place and the larger scale of things is revealed. before ClockLa steals the show, spice is the main antagonist in the game. it brings the villains together, leads the gang from one location to another, provides some memorable missions and obstacles (Spice in the Sky and a raged, spice-infused Murray). but it’s not to say that it fades away in the long-run. Spice is actually the subtle thread that connects the episodes together but also is significant to the final master plan of hypnotising Paris.

Deception: obvious one here. Neyla pretending to be an ally is the major example. we’ve got the Contessa pretending to be loyal to Interpol, we’ve got Arpeggio seemingly being the mastermind behind everything (which he kinda was until he wasn’t), we’ve got the whole evil plot reveal on the spice, we’ve got Neyla ripping off Arpeggio on her journey to become the most well-written villain in video-game history. lots going on here. overall great theme. on a wider scale (and i’ve touched on this before in some recent posts) we’ve got SP deceiving the player into thinking the plot is all laid out at Rajan’s ball until it all turns to shit and nothing goes as expected. Appearance V Reality is a sub-theme that pops up when Bentley fights Jean Bison and Bison constantly underestimates Bentley until the turtle fucking blows his lights out. it’s not an instance of Deception per se, but it’s worth mentioning

The Past: Clockwerk’s return makes this a theme instead of a motif. before ‘saving Paris’ becomes the main objective, it’s Sly’s determination to prevent Clockwerk’s revamping that kicks off the game’s events. the events of Sly 1 play a pivotal role here as they lay the groundwork for the plot of Sly 2. it’s not just Sly 2: The Sequel. with its own set of characters and an intricate story it becomes its very own thing. but Clockwerk is the link that connects everything.

Morality: this one sneaks up on you in the game’s second half and just bites you right in the ass when you least expect it. Contessa, who until her boss-fight seems to be just another selfish spider bitch witch, manifests into this advocate for Sly’s inner demons through simple dialogue. fucking brilliant. ‘You’re an ignorant child playing dress-up in his father’s legacy’ (in my opinion, the best line in the entire series) kicks it all off. and then the theme becomes obviously present throughout. it explores the fine line that Sly walks between robin hood and scumbag thief, it shows how the villains are down-right criminals who want to benefit from their crimes, it cracks black and white into a million pieces because in a single game there are like a million layers of good and evil: Barkley at the very top as the authoritarian white, Carmelita as a sympathetic cop who tries to grasp onto her own code of ethics while occasionally running with the thieves, Sly and the gang as antiheroes, the villains as... villains, and Neyla as the embodiment of satan. it’s a scale and the game spotlights this. i had a different bullet point for Justice but i think it falls under Morality. basically, Carmelita’s story arc in Sly 2 deals with blurring her views a bit and re-defining justice

Sly 3: Honour Among Thieves (2005):

Ancestry (Cooper Vault): this is what the game is all about, or at least the premise. after stitching the cottdamn book back together by the end of the first game, Sly 2 doesn’t give any attention to the Thievius Raccoonus. in fact, Sly 2 exists on a completely different plane, using its amazing plot to elevate itself away from the lore of the first game. ancestry is rarely mentioned. flashforward to Sly 3, where SP takes us back to the mythos for a new caper involving a new reveal: the Cooper Vault. what we thought we knew about the ancestors is thrown out the window to pave the way for this mystical place where the Coopers buried their secrets and their loot. i’d like to point out that the theme of Ancestry is great and all but SP does a shitty job in spreading it throughout the game. whilst recruiting the new gang members we often forget why we’re doing so and it’s not until the last episode of the game that we get the fulfilment of the theme’s promise. it’s also worth mentioning that the theme pops up in A Cold Alliance when Tsao is comparing himself to Sly and he speaks of his ancestors but we somehow get the feeling that his ancestors were all colossal jerks like him and had absolutely 0 honour

Family: this is not the same as Ancestry. the new gang members could have very well been distant with each other if not for the adventures that made them bond. Bentley’s fascination with the Guru, Murray being the Guru’s apprentice, Bentley falling for Penelope, Penelope and Panda King helping Murray with the van, Panda King and Sly working alongside each other to kill vampire mantises and the Crusher. these are all moments that helped sell the ‘group of thieves’ aspect of the game. but Family also explores the bond of the original trio and how, even when they face their differences (Bentley and Murray living in the shadow of Sly), they can still make it through, even stronger than before. other references here might include: Panda King and Jing King, Dimitri and the Lousteau diving legacy, Dr. M and McSweeney being Conner’s “sidekicks”

Honour: this replaces the theme of Morality from the previous two games as the situations the characters face allude to honour (doing what’s right for the greater good) rather than morality (black and white, good vs evil). what i mean by that is SP making an effort to distinguish why Sly is a different thief and ultimately an antihero. this was sorta explored in the previous games by having Sly put an end to the villains’ various operations but the overall plot overshadowed those instances. Sly 3 on the other hand fully explores the theme of Honour by including the word in the title and having the gang save the day in every episode. stopping harm to the environment (polluting the Venice canals, destroying the Australian outback), helping Penelope come to terms with her inner demons by encouraging her to drop the facade of the Black Baron, saving Jing King from forced marriage, etc. the theme also ties into the theme of Redemption (below) but what i’d really like to point out is that Carmelita gets in on it as well. i can’t think of a more honourable moment than when she finally, after 3 games, puts the petty cop bullshit aside and comes to Kaine Island with her squad to save Sly from Dr. M. she makes Sly’s battle her own and doesn’t give up, showing up at the very end to save him from Dr. M’s horrific boss-fight (ugh)

Deception: although not as major as in Sly 2, i’ve said this time and time again: Flight of Fancy perfectly encapsulates the theme of Deception. Penelope dressing up as the Black Baron is not the only instance of deception. you’ve got Bentley and Penelope blowing their online avatars out of proportion, you’ve got Dimitri who was initially a villain finally turning sides, you’ve got an episode card full of sunshine and bright blue and gold fonts for a hub that’s all gloomy rainclouds. beyond Flight of Fancy, i can think of a few more instances: some Shakespearian shenanigans when Carmelita disguises herself as Jing King, or when the gang doesn’t reveal their Dead Men Tell No Tales plan to the player and we’re left thinking that Sly is going to get eaten by sharks

Redemption (Choices): speaks for itself, really. this one ties in with Honour and is a sub-theme, maybe a motif. we’ve got Murray’s desire to redeem himself for feeling guilty over Bentley’s accident. we’ve got Dimitri and the Panda King joining the gang after previously being villains in the series, and eventually redeeming themselves through helping with the heist. we’ve got Penelope redeeming herself as the Black Baron by joining the gang. i also named it Choices because these characters chose to redeem themselves. Choices are all over the game, whether its the lack of free will or the sacrifice characters make: Jing King isn’t in a position to choose whether or not she gets married during her capture, Sly sacrifices his cane at the very beginning of the game to save Bentley and then jumps in front of Dr. M’s shot to save Carmelita (!!!)

Closure: or the lack of, smh. SP’s trilogy comes to a close and therefore the theme has to exist even if the game doesn’t provide the player with mass satisfaction. Sly finally gets together with Carmelita, Bentley finally gets over his fear and self-doubt and lives the good life (with Penelope), Murray kicks off his racing career, and we get happy-ever-afters for the rest of the gang as well

#ya boi is FAMISHED #this beats any sly essay i've ever written #i'm exhausted bye #sly cooper #sly MF COOPER BITCHES

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ettadunham · 4 years

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A Buffy rewatch 6x17 Normal Again

aka reality doesn’t matter anyway

Welcome to this dailyish (weekly? bi-weekly?) text post series where I will rewatch an episode of Buffy and go on an impromptu rant about it for an hour. Is it about one hyperspecific thing or twenty observations? 10 or 3k words? You don’t know! I don’t know!!! In this house we don’t know things.

And in today’s episode we visit a classic sci-fi / fantasy television trope with a subtle twist. Did you check your younger sibling’s height recently? Their tallness might be a sign that you live in the Matrix.

If you’re a fan of sci-fi or fantasy television, especially ones that are grounded in our reality, you’ve inevitably encountered the Cuckoo Nest trope. Which is basically the premise of Normal Again.

In these episodes, our chosen hero suddenly finds themselves in a mental institution being told that their adventures were just a product of their delusions. They’re advised to reject their previous reality and accept the “real” world they’re presented with. Something they usually almost do before they’re saved – either by someone else or their own beliefs in themselves and the connections they made.

Here’s what I like about what the show does with this trope: Buffy’s actually saved by these supposedly malevolent visions. She’s saved by the words of her dead mother, who she wants so much to be real; to just curl up in her arms and let her tell her that it’s all going to be okay.

That’s what’s so wonderful to me about the show’s implementation of this trope. While the characters in this alternate setting try to pull Buffy away from her other world, they’re not overtly antagonistic towards her. They’re not the creation of a supervillain actively trying to make Buffy feel less sure of herself. On the contrary – Joyce acts like Joyce would, and in the process of trying to help Buffy to fight these supposed delusions, gives her daughter the strength to go back and face her demons again.

In a sense, similar to I Only Have Eyes for You, this whole episode is constructed to give us and Buffy this one, big cathartic moment at the end. And I’m all for it.

JOYCE: “I know you’re afraid. I know the world feels like a hard place sometimes, but you’ve got people who love you. Your dad and I, we have all the faith in the world in you. We’ll always be with you. You’ve got… a world of strength in your heart. I know you do. You just have to find it again. Believe in yourself.”

I’m not gonna lie, I tear up a bit at this point. There’s something wonderful and honest and heartbreaking about the fact that Joyce inadvertently inspires Buffy to leave the world with her in it behind.

With the final scene cutting back to a comatose Buffy, it feels natural to ask the question whether or not the show’s real in-universe, or is just a product of Buffy’s imagination. Maybe Buffy has been in that mental institution this whole time. Maybe what we saw was just her final flash back before she’s got the antidote. Maybe it’s an alternate universe and they’re both real.

The show decides to leave it open-ended, but what I was struck with this time around on my rewatch, was the realization that it doesn’t really matter either way. Whether or not Buffy chose a fake reality or not is not the point.

What matters is that she decided to get back and fight. Even if it’s painful, she still does it. Every day. Whether or not her friends are real matters less than the fact that she chose to save them over escaping her pain at the end.

In a world full of uncertainties, all that matters is what we do.

This might be the closest Buffy comes to giving up. Not just on her fight, but on who she is at her core. Previously, her friends and loved ones being in distress have always managed to shake her out of any crisis, but here, she almost kills them. The world’s become too hard to live in, and she doesn’t know how to get better.

BUFFY: “I’ve been so detached. […} Every day I try to snap out of it. Figure out why I’m like that.”

There might be some truth to what Spike says to Buffy (although it’s quite self-centered of Spike to believe that he’s the only source of Buffy’s problems…), but telling a depressed person that they’re addicted to misery isn’t usually a super helpful approach. Depression makes you think that you can’t escape it, no matter how much you want to.

So Buffy does the next best thing: she tries to escape reality itself. And with it, herself, and everything that makes her who she is.

Still, once Xander, Willow, Dawn and Tara are in danger, Buffy becomes more and more distressed. And yet, it’s still not enough to snap her out of it. All of her instincts are telling her to save her loved ones, and it’s still isn’t as powerful as her depression dulling those voices, finding self-destructive shortcuts to avoid and make her forget about her misery.

Sometimes, it’s so easy to go down that rabbit hole. To trap ourselves in that space of desolation. But much like Buffy, in these moments, we all have to remember that we’re not alone. Not in our misery and not in this world.

We’ve all got a world of strength in our hearts. We just have to find it again.

#buffy rewatch 2k19 #btvs talk #btvs

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reallygroovyninja · 5 years

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The Sad & Current State of Fear The Walking Dead by Stephen Vivian

Link

When Fear The Walking Dead debuted in 2015 it became the most watched pilot episode in Cable TV history. Today, in it’s current fifth season, it whimpers along with less than a million and a half of live viewers. While the show’s ratings have steadily declined since it’s debut to 10.13 million viewers just over four years ago, it’s current reboot under co-showrunner’s and executive producers Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg is a far cry from a success.

In fact, less than two seasons into their reboot the show has gone from an 83% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes to a 66% amongst critics. And even worse, the audience score has dropped from 72% to an abysmal 36%.

This steep decline in quality has been a concern for die-hard fans who believed the show had finally found its footing in its season three outing. During that season the show stabilized it’s ratings and improved it’s critical consensus and it appeared the show was on track to outpace its parent series in quality. But less than two years later The Walking Dead has seen a resurgence in quality while Fear has dropped to all-time lows.

So what went wrong?

ERICKSON OUT; GIMPLE, CHAMBLISS and GOLDBERG IN

Fear was co-created by Robert Kirkman, who created the original comic series The Walking Dead, and Dave Erickson. Erickson served as showrunner for the first three seasons and it was his vision for the show to set itself apart from its parent series by focusing on a gritty family drama set amidst the growing apocalypse. His focus on the Clark family was taking shape and by season three it was apparent that lead actress Kim Dickens’ character, Madison Clark, was being written to serve not only as the shows main antihero but it’s burgeoning villain. She had done everything in the name of survival and didn’t take bullshit from anyone.

Her defining moment came in the two-part season three opener where she declared that it was their fate to take the ranch from its current leadership and that it would be their right to take it if it secured their survival. And so began Madison’s manipulations, starting with her and her kids ingratiating themselves into the Otto’s lives to prove their worth and keep them apart of the inner workings of the ranch. This mission – and her brutality in carrying it out – were beginning to take its toll on the very people she strived to protect: her children.

Alicia grew wary of Madison’s tactics and started to grow into her own, becoming a leader who undoubtedly would have to one day deal with opposing her mother as Madison reached full blown villain status. And even Nick, who Madison was obsessed with protecting and keeping by her side, began to see his mother’s brutality as alarming when she killed Troy with very little hesitation.

The dynamic between these three and how it would further be explored had taken the show to new heights, but sadly the writing was already on the wall when it was revealed that Dave Erickson would be departing the series as showrunner and was to be replaced by Once Upon a Time alums Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg, both brought in by Scott Gimple who had taken on a larger role in The Walking Dead Universe by overseeing the development of both shows.

GIMPLIFICATION

Fans were wary of Gimple’s new involvement with the series. He had overseen The Walking Dead for five seasons. And while seasons four and five of the main show were critical and ratings successes, the problems with his leadership began to pop up in a very divisive season six. By season seven The Walking Dead had seen a drastic downturn in both critical and ratings success, culminating with Gimple’s departure as showrunner after season eight.

Hallmarks of Gimple’s leadership – splitting up the cast, drawing out story arcs that reduced the pace of the show to a crawl, and having characters act and speak illogically and in repetitive monologues were now on their way to Fear, a show that had earned its success from separating itself from the identity of its parent show through showcasing a grittier, more realistic portrayal of the zombie apocalypse. Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg were just the nails in the coffin as they would take these hallmarks and double down on them with reckless abandon.

DRASTIC CHANGES OF REBOOTING

The reboot swiftly introduced a time jump to bring the show in line with The Walking Dead for the sole purpose of crossing over Morgan Jones, a character whose story arc had been on a rinse-and-repeat cycle on The Walking Dead for far too long. Having him crossover could have been a great way to explore his character and breathe some life back into him, but sadly the showrunners simply doubled down on what was wrong with Morgan’s character in the first place.

Worse of all they decided to stunt all other characters growth and put them on a trajectory to adopt Morgan’s boring character traits, ultimately watering them down to unquestioning, idiotic do-gooders who do not worry about any personal matters but instead the larger group mission of do good at all costs; even if it means killing themselves to save someone who refuses their help and is more-than-likely going to result in getting more people killed.

The problems were readily apparent right from the outset of the first episode – an episode dominated by Morgan and new characters Althea and John Dory. No OG Fear characters were introduced until the very closing minutes of the show. And in the following seven episodes the original cast took even more blows, as both Nick and Madison Clark were killed off the show. The core dynamic of the show and the interesting premise of the original pitch of the series had been decimated in less than 8 episodes.

It was clear that Andrew and Ian had no regard for the cast who had been there since day one and who had given such great performances to carry the show to critical success. And once again they doubled down on new characters that had no depth, dimension or individuality in favour of propping up Morgan Jones as the new lead of the show.

BIGGEST GRIPES WITH SEASON FOUR & FIVE

The new cinematography style was to strip out all colour and use a hideous grey filter. Since the show was split into two timelines – the THEN timeline featuring the OG cast at the Dell Diamond, and the the NOW timeline featuring Morgan Jones meeting up with our remaining survivors – it was assumed the use of grey filter was meant to contrast the generally bright colours of the NOW timeline. Perhaps a thematic device to showcase the differences in the state of mind of Alicia, Nick, Strand and Luciana as they were on a mission of vengeance. But when that story was resolved in the mid-season finale, it was assumed we would return to normal colouring. Sadly, we were not.

Characters acting dumb, delivering nonsensical dialogue and out of character in order to service the plot. This is always one of the worse creative decisions a writing team could make and it was clear it was one the new showrunners were embracing. As I mentioned before, Madison Clark was a growing villain who would stop at nothing to keep herself and her kids safe. Suddenly in season four she was a leader of hope for the show, doling out idiotic, non-sensical lines such as “no one is gone until they’re gone”. Go back to episode 3x08 and listen to Madison tell her kids about how she killed her father to protect her mother against his abuse and how she was going to go talk to another old man, Jeremiah Otto, alluding to her reconciling that she would have to kill him to protect Alicia and Nick and you will see a vast difference in dialogue.

Gimmicks! The plot doesn’t serve to move the characters or the story forward in any meaningful or realistic way. Instead it’s as if the writers came up with these “cool moments” they think will look good on screen, and try to just connect the dots with nonsensical plot points and character direction to make it happen. Let’s not even get too into the airplane that they flew despite none of the people on the plane being a pilot, or the nuclear reactor breakdown that was supposed to present a huge threat but was resolved very anti-climatically.

And the cardinal sin that the new showrunners have committed is sidelining the previously well-developed OG characters in favour of new, poorly developed characters. First of all, if the decision to kill Madison off was to actually serve a true purpose for the story and the characters instead of this superficial “it’s what Madison would want us to do”, then the show should have rightfully been inherited by and led by Alicia. For starters, Alycia Debnam-Carey has a large following as an actress. And, as a character, is the biggest draw for the audience. Not only is she the last Clark standing, but she was on a trajectory to becoming a strong leader in her own right. But instead they felt the show would be better served with Morgan as the lead. It’s a shame because the show had a lot of potential by shifting focus to Alicia, but as it stands now, not even our OG characters or Morgan, the shows misplaced lead character, are strong enough to carry this show.

CAN THE SHOW BE SAVED? CAN IT DO BETTER?

I sure hope so. I haven’t followed steadily since episode 4x09. That episode bored me to tears. And no matter how many times I’ve tried to sit down and watch episodes from the latter part of season four or episodes of season five, I just simply can’t bring myself to do it. There’s just no motivation for me to keep watching. Nothing ever really happens. No one has grown in new and surprising or compelling ways. The show hasn’t had a message or a narrative worth investing in, because let’s be real the simplicity of “we’re here to help” is not a story. It’s a singular ideology adopted by EVERY character, no matter how senseless and idealistic it is.

I think there’s several ways to reinvigorate the show and get it back on track. To start, the show could learn to take risks. The show isn’t willing to take any risks right now and it’s painful. Given the world they live in and the threats they face, we should be seeing characters go down darker paths or even killing again. We don’t even get any real sources of conflict. It’s all contrived conflict to make it seem like there’s a threat to our characters when there is none. At. All.

Why not kill off a character without fanfare and have the real ramifications be the source of conflict. I thought they might have been able to pull this off after Nick’s death, but that fell flat too.

Imagine June dying and John growing darker wanting to avenge her. Imagine Morgan going all “clear” mode again and not coming back from it. He’d be far more interesting as a loose cannon who could no longer lead or support the people he rounded up into his mission. Imagine Madison returning in her true, pre-season four form and struggling to adapt to the groups mission and suddenly start pulling Alicia, Strand and Daniel’s loyalty away from the group. There are just so many, endless ways the show could create conflict without having to outsource it to inadequate villains, such as Martha or Logan.

There are so many themes to explore in a post-apocalyptic show. Season three was dealing with scarcity of resources and how it was causing conflict amongst survivors struggling to find supplies. In season five, it seems that they have unlimited resources with battery power for their walkie talkies, generators, video recording equipment, planes and hot air balloons. Enough already. This isn’t realistic. Logan, the shows current villain, if you can even label him as one, would be far more dangerous if the resources in the area were dwindling, as they would be, and he was pushed to the brink by trying to secure whatever was left for his groups survival. He wouldn’t be politely asking for directions to oil fields. He’d be taking it at gunpoint and killing people to get it.

The possibilities in this genre are unlimited. But one thing is for certain, since the show lost it’s true lead in Madison Clark, the series hasn’t felt right. Kim Dickens was wrongfully dismissed from this show, in my opinion. And until she is brought back I don’t think that the show will ever truly recover.

In short, Bring Back Madison, have her be the bad-ass, manipulative antihero she is meant to be, and have her character be a source of conflict for the group and Alicia. Imagine Alicia’s loyalties being torn between the mother she thought she lost and the group she has now called a family. Madison would be the best kind of bad influence on both Strand and Daniel, who were characters who thrived in the grey areas of morality under Erickson’s leadership, creating a far more dynamic and distinct direction for the series. It would also be a direction worthy of the acting talent that this show has in riches but sadly doesn’t utilize to it’s fullest potential.

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animebw · 5 years

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Parasyte the Maxim: Series Reflection

Longtime readers of mine will know that I often struggle with shows that aim for realism, because the balance of factors necessary to imitate the precise feeling of reality is so delicate that it doesn’t take much out of place to bring the whole illusion crashing down. In more fantastical worlds and less grounded tones, you have a lot more freedom to explore and experiment in ways that don’t feel like a betrayal of the style you’re going for. But with realism, every piece needs to be perfectly in place. It’s a clockwork contraption of a genre that requires pinpoint precision and a willingness to plunge elbows-deep into the grimy, gritty details that make the illusion feel real. Few shows I’ve seen have really been able to pull it off, and Rakugo is the only show that comes to mind that was able to pull it off spectacularly. That’s what makes Parastye the Maxim such a frustrating disappointment; it comes so close to being an actually good example of the form, so close to pulling off a realistic story that doesn’t sacrifice enjoyment for nuance and depth. But once the flaws start popping up, they just keep piling higher and higher until they overwhelm the promise of those first few episodes, never to return to those heights again.

If there’s one thing I can say in Parasyte’s favor, it’s that its flaws never become so overwhelming that they completely ruin the experience. Even at its worst, the action moves along at a good clip, and it’s never at a loss for interesting ideas or cool moments. The action itself is really goddamn fun whenever it heats up, bloody and gross and wet while still being exhilarating to watch unfold. There’s a visceral quality to the bloodletting that makes the gore feel tactile and impactful, like they’re really tearing through layers of blood and bone and flesh on screen. And it’s thematic exploration of man and nature is never anything short of fascinating, crafting a nuanced take on humanity’s place in the ecosystem and how we view ourselves within it. But the longer the show goes on, the more the weakness of its presentation starts weighing everything down, until it collapses in a mushy pile of inadequate pacing and shoddy direction. It’s honestly kind of frustrating how lifelessly a good chunk of Parasyte is presented, how little thought went into the visual aspect of this visual medium. Realism only works if you commit to it as hard, if not harder, as you would do any other style, and Parasyte doesn’t have the commitment necessary to make its drab color palette and muted affectation feel like worthy substitutions for the absurd, gonzo fun we could be having with this premise otherwise. If you’re gonna try and treat a story about alien body invasion seriously, you better make sure you can actually pull that off. Otherwise, you’re better off just going full Devilman Crybaby.

And speaking of Devilman Crybaby, while this is definitely no fault of Parasyte itself, which came out years before Masaaki Yuasa’s own re-imagining of an older manga for modern times with an oddly similar story structure, it’s an unfortunate reality that I could never stop comparing this show to its greatly superior younger brother. Everything that Parasyte does or tries to do, Devilman Crybaby does better, telling the exact same kind of story with twice the ambition and talent (and in less than half the time). The fact of the matter is, Crybaby had the courage to actually adapt its source material, to update things that no longer fit its modern sensibilities while keeping the story’s core intact. It was bold, it was brazen, it pulled no punches, and the result will stick with me for many years to come. In contrast, I don’t get the sense that Parasyte updated its script much at all. The bland love interests with no personal agency, the outdated story beats that don’t slot into a modern context, the awkward moments of unclear logic... they all feel indicative of a script stuck in the past that desperately needed to be yanked into the future with the rest of the production. It’s that cowardice, more than anything, that truly damns Parasyte for me. In a world where Devilman Crybaby managed its adaptation so blisteringly well, there is no reason for anyone to ever return to this limp-wristed half-measure anymore.

There’s something kind of ironic about that realization, now that I think about it. Parasyte the Maxim was trying to update an outdated story for a modern context, to give it fresh life. But despite a valiant effort and a handful of standout moments, it failed so haphazardly that now only four years later, it’s already just as outdated as its source material. This show is a tragedy on multiple levels, an almost-success whose failures have already doomed it to the obscurity it was trying so hard to escape. And I give it a score of:

5/10

Man, this was a rough ride. Oh, well. Thank you all for joining me regardless, and I hope you stick around for the show that will take its place! And as we’re still trucking along my Summer of Suggestions, the next one on the list will be:

Anohana

See you next time.

#anime #the anime binge-watcher #tabw #parasyte the maxim #parasyte #kiseiju sei no kakuritsu #kiseijuu

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wits-writing · 5 years

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Ralph Breaks the Internet (Movie Review)

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Wreck-It Ralph is probably one of my favorite Disney animated movies from the post-Tangled era. The arcade game setting and well-structured character arcs at the core of everything keep it rewatchable years later. Ralph Breaks the Internet, directed by Rich Moore and Phil Johnston, pushes the setting and most of the supporting cast from the first movie aside as Ralph (John C. Reilly) and Vanellope (Sarah Silverman) go into the internet in order to find the key to saving Vanellope’s game, Sugar Rush, from being permanently shut down by performing internet odd jobs to earn money. The setup gives itself a wide scope to make room for gags and sequences relating to as many aspects of internet culture as would be appropriate to include in a Disney movie. That focus on internet jokes ends up coming at the cost of narrative solidity in a few key places through the movie.

[Full Review Under the Cut]

A problem with the structure of Ralph Breaks the Internet comes from how loose it plays the story. I’ve seen various people online complain about how much of Wreck-It Ralph took place in Sugar Rush when the premise seemed to promise more jumping from game to game. While that disappointment is understandable, that decision kept the story focused on the parallel arcs of Ralph and Vanellope as outcasts looking to earn some respect and friendship ultimately finding it in each other. Elements in this movie that could’ve been stronger with a more focused central narrative tend to get lost in the shuffle for lengthy stretches.

Themes set up early in the movie concern the main characters’ conflicting desires, Ralph not wanting to lose the stability he’s found since the last movie and Vanellope growing bored with doing the same thing every day. When the characters go to the internet once that stability is threatened, Vanellope finds an escape from boredom in an open-world always-online racing game called Slaughter Race, styled after battle racers like the Twisted Metal series. Since she’s a natural racer no matter what game she’s in, her skills earn the respect of an in-game character named Shank (Gal Gadot). She has more opportunity to leave her game behind for this new dark and exciting game than Ralph did, since Sugar Rush’s character roster is randomized anyway. Her arc in the movie builds to how she’s goes about making this decision. Vanellope being enamored with Slaughter Race provides some of the movie’s better moments, including an extended bit that builds off the Disney Princess cameos featured heavily in this movie’s marketing.

Ralph Breaks the Internet unfortunately shows more lack of focus concerning the titular character. It makes sense that Ralph’s happy with his sense of stability at the start, since his arc by the end of the first movie was as wrapped up as possible. He’d made peace with his nature as the bad guy of his game, earned the respect of Felix and found a meaningful connection with Vanellope. It was a touching arc and Ralph uttering the “Bad Guy Affirmation” in the climax still brings a tear to my eye on repeat viewings. That’s exactly what makes his use here both appropriate and occasionally frustrating to watch play out. The montage of Ralph rushing to make as many viral videos as possible in a short span of time to save Sugar Rush is amusing as a quick way for the movie to get all the major references to viral video trends out of its system in one go. The frustrating side of Ralph’s arc in this movie comes from what ends up feeling like a contrived source of conflict from him attempting to ruin Slaughter Race for Vanellope so she’ll go back to the arcade with him, rather than risk losing his sense of stability. This conflict serves to drive the characters towards an end-of-second-act falling out so they can be separated when the climax of the movie starts.

There’s plenty of creative design in the movie to realize its version of an environment embodying the internet, even if how utterly awash it is in plugs for real life products and sites can grate occasionally. Little avatars representing the real people browsing the web make for good, simple background character models. Slaughter Race’s entire aesthetic being a cross between the games it homages and the sunset drenched landscape of modern action movies makes for a lot of fun, especially when played against the calm-collected way the in-game characters act when player characters aren’t around. Then there’s the overall design and demeanor of the character Yesss (Taraji P. Henson), the online embodiment of a video site’s recommendation algorithm. She never appears the same way twice between scenes in tandem with how she needs to keep track of what’s trending.

While Ralph Breaks the Internet has a slightly better understanding of the way internet culture works than other movies playing on similar material, it ends up feeling like there’s a missing ingredient keeping it from being on the same level as the first movie. Plenty of it is enjoyable but other parts fall flat, as is the nature of any major movie trying to capitalize on the rapidly changing trends of the internet. How this movie ages in the years down the line will be interesting to observe. For now, it’s a serviceable sequel and a good choice for family viewing Thanksgiving weekend.

#Ralph Breaks the Internet #Wreck It Ralph #Wit's Writing #movie review #animation #Disney #Rich Moore #Phil Johnston #John C Reilly #Sarah Silverman #Vanellope #Gal Gadot #Taraji P Henson

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4colorrebellion · 4 years

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4cr Plays - Wunderling

If you think about it from the right perspective, Mario is a monster. Think of all of the little Goombas that he has killed - Goombas who were just minding their own business and living their lives! Heck, think about how Bowser must feel! He just invited Peach over to his castle - maybe a little forcefully - and now Mario is tearing down his kingdom!

As silly as that seems, the developers of Wunderling have taken that premise and run with it. Their platform puts you in the shoes of a lowly underling, and asks what happens if that underling were made... a little more wonderful. What if the equivalent of a Goomba were given the power to jump?

You play as the Wunderling, a simple game goon. You have your default AI behavior - you walk in a direction until you hit a wall, then turn and walk until you hit the next wall. One day, after the hero has rampaged past, you’ve found yourself elevated beyond your station. You still uncontrollably walk in a direction until you hit a wall. However, you can now jump! With great power comes great responsibility, however, and you’ve also been tasked with tracking down and getting revenge on the hero. Oh, and if that wasn’t stressful enough, you also have been given a powerful addiction to magical seeds - your new powers require a lot of fuel.

That is the basic premise of Wunderling. You progress through a series of short side-scrolling stages. Your goal is to make it to the portal to the next stage. However, getting there is not as simple as moving from left to right. You can’t control your movement. You simply move in a direction until you hit a wall, then your turn. All you can control is when you jump. As a result, each stage becomes a sort of puzzle - you need to find the right times and locations to jump to carve a path to the exit.

You can’t take it as a leisurely pace either, as you need to constantly feed your need for magic power or face death. Each stage is filled with magic seeds that buy you more time. However, each seed can only be activated once - after hitting it, it blooms into a flower and can no longer sustain you. Now, often this isn’t a huge problem. However, each stage also has a hidden treasure - a cosmetic item that you can use to customize your Wunderling.

Wunderling, then, is a bit of a cross between an endless runner game like Bit.Trip Runner, a traditional platformer, and a sort of puzzle game where you try to find the most efficient route through each stage while also trying to find as many treasures as you can. It’s a weird and clever blend of ideas that I have found surprisingly satisfying to work my way through.

A lot of that satisfaction comes down to clever design from the developers at Retroid (who, as it turns out, are in the same town I live in - Gothenburg, Sweden). Wunderling is quite polished. The levels rise elegantly in difficulty, adding new tricks just as you start to let your guard down. New abilities and challenges are brought in at a nice pace, and you never get too overwhelmed. If you make a mistake, it is easy to restart and try again. Even the controls feel snappy and responsive. I was quite impressed with the level of polish.

I haven’t quite enjoyed the presentation as much as the core gameplay. The pixel art is functional, but nothing memorable in the constant stream of pixel-based indie platformers. Also, while I found the premise amusing, the writing itself is a little over-the-top and the jokes are a bit forced. I found myself clicking through the cutscenes in order to get back into the action. Still - there’s nothing particularly offensive or wrong with the presentation. It just didn’t click for me.

Overall, Wunderling is an addictive blend of puzzle, platformer, and runner. It takes an amusing premise - placing you in the shoes of a random grunt - and runs with it, creating an inventive little game. I recommend giving it a shot.

A copy of Wunderling was provided for this review.

Nintendo eShop

Official Webpage

#video game #review #Wunderling #Retroid Interactive #Switch #Nintendo #Nintendo Switch #greg4cr

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aion-rsa · 4 years

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The Umbrella Academy Season 2 Goes Back to the Past

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The world is running out of ‘60s clothing.

The Umbrella Academy costume designer Christopher Haragon shares this news as he walks through a warehouse containing capri pants, floral-print dresses, and a large muscle suit costume with the $29.99 price tag still attached. It turns out that no textile lasts forever.

“I know some people have started tearing up upholstery just to get the designs,” Haragon says.

The 1960s have never really felt that far away for pop culture. Countless movies, TV shows, and comic books have returned to the dramatically fertile ground of the turbulent decade so often that it still feels inexorably tied to the present. But time marches on—buttons fall off of shirts, tie-dye patterns fade, and moths feast on fabric. Soon enough, all the tangible sartorial ties to the ‘60s will be gone. Before they are, however, Netflix’s premier superhero series is set on putting them to good use.

The Umbrella Academy finished its charmingly weird first season with a temporal cliffhanger. As super-powered (adopted) siblings Luther (Tom Hopper), Diego (David Castañeda), Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman), Klaus (Robert Sheehan), Five (Aiden Gallagher), Ben (Justin Min), and Vanya (Ellen Page) Hargreeves prepared to teleport away from the moon-based apocalypse they wrought, it was unclear where… or when their jump would take them. As the costume department at Cinespace Film Studios in Toronto makes clear: the show had a very specific timeframe in mind for the Hargreeves.

“I really loved the time period of the early ’60s,” showrunner Steve Blackman says. “There were incredible things going on in the country. And the assassination of Kennedy is just rife with conspiracy theories. So that’s why I decided to narrow it down to that window.”

Yes, you read that right. The Kennedy assassination, Dealey Plaza, and the grassy knoll are all prominently involved in the second season of a major Netflix superhero property. As Blackman describes, the Hargreeves arrive in Dallas this season in the early ‘60s but each is dumped out of the time stream in a different year. Klaus and Ben arrive as early as February 11, 1960, Five in November of 1963, and the rest fall in-between. That’s how The Umbrella Academy must brave both time and Dallas itself to find one another before a certain motorcade in the winter of 1963 brings on…another apocalypse.

The Umbrella Academy season 2 is loosely based on “Dallas,” the second volume of the original comic book series from Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá. Just like “Dallas,” the second season of the show is funnier, bolder, and stranger than the first. Each member of the titular team, One through Seven, is happy to explain why.

Number One – Luther is No Longer a Spaceboy

As Luther was fond of telling just about anyone willing (or unwilling) to listen in The Umbrella Academy season 1: “Dad sent me to the moon!” In ‘60s Dallas, he finds himself the same distance from the moon but metaphorically lightyears away from where he used to be. The hirsute, superpowered lug gets a job as a driver for a powerful Texan and puts those ape-arms to good use as an underground bare-knuckle brawler. Despite the violence (or perhaps because of it), Number One may never have been happier.

“I think it’s quite interesting because Luther’s on his own path to begin with. I don’t think he’s as bothered about the Academy and having to be a leader anymore. He just has to learn to live in the real world,” Hopper says.

Of course, traveling to the ‘60s means that the dead man who metaphorically haunted Luther and his siblings for all of season 1 is not currently dead.

“He’s still dealing with the daddy issues he had from season 1,” Hopper says. “And bear in mind that his dad is around somewhere in the sixties. So there’s an element of him wanting to connect with his dad to have words with him.”

Given that the death of Reginald Hargreeves was the inciting moment for much of the action in The Umbrella Academy season 1, “Reggie” (Colm Feore) appeared sparingly. In season 2, however, the enigmatic industrialist is in the prime of his life and is 26 years away from learning about the mysterious, simultaneous birth of 43 super-powered children.

Reginald continues to loom large over the Hargreeves kids, and according to Hopper, that dysfunctional family tissue is what makes the show work.

“What I love about The Umbrella Academy, and the reason why I signed on to the project in the first place, is that I read these scripts thinking, ‘I’m not reading a superhero script, I’m reading a family drama.’ That’s at the core of this show. And that’s why I find it so much more interesting than actually than a lot of other superhero TV shows.”

Number Two – Diego and Lila

Of all The Umbrella Academy members, perhaps no one gets a more fantastic ‘60s glow-up than the sullen knife-thrower Diego. While season 1 found Reginald’s Number Two with a crew-cut vibe, Diego of season 2 gets to let his hair down a bit… literally.

“Well, he’s never really felt like he fit in, so it’s not so much out of his comfort zone to be in a different era,” Castañeda says. “In the first one, he’s kind of trying to stay away from the Umbrella Academy. In the second one, he’s almost trying to bring them all together.”

Joining Diego in that mission to reunite his brothers and sisters is one of the season’s several new characters. Ritu Arya portrays Lila, a young woman who Diego meets in a mental hospital and then can never quite seem to shake afterwards. Diego and Lila frequently interact in the way that Diego seems to prefer to interact with everyone: through fighting.

“Oh, man. She’s a badass,” Castañeda says of both Lila and the actress playing her.

Aryu’s character has no analog from the comic series but she quickly proves to be an invaluable part of the show’s universe and potentially an important piece of its lore. If nothing else, she certainly helps contribute to season 2’s increased investment in physicality. This batch of episodes ups the ante in terms of action. Castañeda even took some time in-between seasons to travel to Thailand and pick up a little Muay Thai so that he could be a more active participant in the season’s many fight scenes.

Still, despite the intensified focus on fistfights, Castañeda has an unusual comparison to make for season 2.

“I binged 10 seasons of Friends in five months this year. You can look at each character in Friends and they’re so relatable to the characters in any successful TV show. You can write it, but can you put the pieces together with the right people and actors to come in and bring those relationships? Based on the first season and what we’re doing now in season two, that formula of ‘there’s love underneath all of this chaos’, I think it sells.”

Number Three – Allison and the Civil Rights Struggle

The Umbrella Academy season 1 came with a refreshing commitment to diversity. Though the comic book team is all-white (which is almost a statistical impossibility given the premise that 43 babies were spontaneously and randomly born around the world), the Umbrella children in the show come from many different backgrounds.

The Hargreeves’ racial and cultural identities play a major role in season 2. For one thing, it means that the family’s sole Black member, Allison, now finds herself separated from her siblings in Texas at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. This presents an opportunity for Allison that actress Emmy Raver-Lampman doesn’t take lightly.

“We find Allison in kind of a tricky pickle,” Raver-Lampman says. “She arrives alone and in an era and in a place that’s really dangerous for a woman that looks the way that she does. I think she’s having to quite literally fight for her life in many ways.”

Allison Hargreeves has arguably the most potent power of all her siblings. The things she says tend to come true. By simply opening a sentence with “I heard a rumor,” Allison can manipulate reality to a stunning degree. Her brother Five has described her powers as God-like on more than one occasion. Still, Allison is famously reticent to use the full extent of that power. And the intense social situation she finds herself in may make that reticence a little more frustrating for viewers. Still, Raver-Lampman sees the logic behind Allison’s fear.

“(Her power) has always backfired maybe not immediately, but in the long game. She sees them as more of a curse than a blessing. How she’s using them or if she’s using them or when she wants to use them is a part of her process this season is. Am I going to try to just be Allison or am I going to be this superhero version of Allison?”

Number Four – The Cult of Klaus

There is some absurdist humor inherent to The Umbrella Academy. One of the main characters is essentially a gorilla-person after all. But while the show premiered on the same day as its spiritual cousin Doom Patrol last year, it’s hard to argue that Doom Patrol didn’t defeat it in the “outright madness” column.

That dynamic may change in season 2. As for why, look no further than Klaus’s arc. Yes, as the promotional material has suggested, Klaus is indeed a cult leader in this show’s version of the ‘60s. It’s undoubtedly a joy to see Number Four in flowing robes and Manson-esque hair. For actor Robert Sheehan, however, there’s a logic to Klaus’s journey beyond mere novelty.

“We were like, ‘how do we make him keep changing?’ He’s this kind of amorphous creature,” Sheehan says. “We did talk about the idea of starting a cult because so often you have a suspicion that at the top of a cult is somebody who’s letting on like they have answers, wisdom, knowledge, and they can see beyond the veil, but in fact they’re playing a role just like the worshipers are.”

Klaus is in an unusual position among his family as, apart from Five, he is the only one to have time traveled back to the ‘60s previously. That sort of thing (along with a lifetime of drug abuse) can make a guy pretty confident… confident enough to start a cult.

Number Five

One interesting development of The Umbrella Academy’s trip back through time is that Number Five is now not the only seasoned time traveler in his family. In fact, Five spends the least amount of time in the early ‘60s as any of his siblings, with the timestream booting him out in late 1963. Still, it’s not like he doesn’t have enough experience with the decade already given that season 1 reveals he was the time-travelling assassin originally charged with killing Kennedy, something he opted not to do.

“I don’t really think there’s too much of an adjustment on Five’s part in terms of being in the sixties,” Aiden Gallagher says. “Everyone’s been here for a long time, so they’ve had time to evolve, but for Five, it’s just been like a few weeks. He’s still in the schoolboy shorts.”

Even in those schoolboy threads, however, Five remains a threat to any of his family’s potential enemies. The Umbrella Academy comes up against Commission interference this season, this time led by a crew of silent pale-haired killers known as The Swedes. As such, Gallagher once again gets to paint Five’s cherubic visage with blood from time to time.

“There are a lot more fight scenes this season… a lot cooler fight scenes. I think the best summary for what season two is and how that affects all the actors is that it’s the same show, but a lot bigger.”

Number Six – Ben, The Deathly Time-Traveler

The Umbrella Academy is the kind of show that leads to some truly unique questions. A necessary question for season 2 is “wait… can ghosts travel through time?” It’s a tricky metaphysical concept that even Ben actor Justin Min can’t quite wrap his head around.

“Very good question. I’m confused most of the time I’m here,” Min says.

Rest assured, Ben makes the trip back to 1960 with Klaus and the pair get to continue their living and the dead buddy comedy routine.

Ben was undoubtedly a breakout character from The Umbrella Academy season 1, which was unexpected given that his character doesn’t appear in the flesh (or the ectoplasm) in the original comic series. Blackman and the writers decided to put Klaus’s ability to commune with the dead to good narrative use and include the Hargreeves’s fallen brother as a more consistent character.

Though Ben remains in his black “ghost hoodie” and doesn’t get to partake in the same colorful ‘60s stylings as his siblings, he nevertheless gets an expanded role this season. And for that, Min credits The Umbrella Academy fandom.

“My role last season was quite secondary and to see the fans rally behind the character was more than I could have ever hoped and imagined. I think it’s one of the main reasons why I was able to be propelled into this season with a little more agency because I think they felt like that’s what the fans wanted.”

As a gift to those same fans, Min also offers up one hell of an endorsement of this season’s finale.

“I screamed for a very long time after I read the final scene. It was nothing like I ever expected or imagined. And I say that in the best possible way. It tops what happened at the end of season one, because I don’t think anyone will expect what happens at the end of the season.”

Number Seven – Vanya Finds Herself

Speaking of endings: What’s in store for The Umbrella Academy’s resident world-ender this year?

Vanya (with an unhelpful assist from Luther) was the source of the apocalypse in season 1, so thankfully the only way to go from there is up. Vanya loses her memories on arrival in Dallas (it’s not as lame as it sounds) and is taken in by Sissy (Marin Ireland) and her son Harlan.

“I think she finds a nice sense of peace and solace,” Page says of her character “Because we ended a season where so much came to the surface for her, Vanya is definitely much more comfortable in her skin. She’s more confident. It’s freed her in so many ways.”

Page occupies an interesting position on The Umbrella Academy. Though Number Seven in Reginald Hargreeves’s heart, the well-known actress is number one on the callsheet. And in the second season of this endearingly goofy comic book adaptation, she seems more assured within the world, successfully lobbying the costume department for Vanya to dress “more masc,” and staying positive during a particularly tough scene. “You’ve been tortured before clearly,” someone on set notes as they adjust the restraints on a chair holding Vanya down. Page is also more comfortable shouldering the responsibilities of the show’s most explosive character.

“The power is fun and exciting, especially in terms of how it manifests and some stunts and stuff this year. Playing someone whose power is connected to their emotions, and what happens if we aren’t being mindful of them, I think that’s what’s so exciting. Also: being able to fuck people up. That’s fun.”

“Fun” is the operative world for The Umbrella Academy season 2. The hard work of world and character-building is mostly out of the way. And while the Hargreeves family and the actors who play them find themselves in a new environment, at least they have each other this time… eventually.

Per Umbrella Academy lore, on October 1, 1989, 43 women around the world suddenly gave birth to extraordinary individuals. Reginald Hargreeves found seven of them and through sheer force of his odious will made them into a team. On October 1, 2019, The Umbrella Academy team took a moment after a hard day’s work of filming to commemorate their “birthday” with a cake.

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on the nineteenth hour of the first day of october, 2019, we all wished the hargreeves siblings a very super birthday 🖤☂️🔪🐙

A post shared by The Umbrella Academy (@umbrellaacad) on Oct 1, 2019 at 4:00pm PDT

Of course, being a member of The Umbrella Academy comes with its own occupational hazards. As Emmy Raver-Lampman explains, sometimes even a special occasion is preceded by an explosive incident involving fruit all over your priceless ‘60s clothes.

“We all got covered in pineapple and then it was our birthday.”

The post The Umbrella Academy Season 2 Goes Back to the Past appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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entergamingxp · 4 years

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DualShockers’ Favorite Games of 2019 — Chris’ Top 10

December 28, 2019 10:00 AM EST

This Top 10 list of 2019 games from curmudgeon contributor Chris Compendio is full of oddities, with both indie titles and blockbuster hits.

As 2019 comes to a close, DualShockers and our staff are reflecting on this year’s batch of games and what were their personal highlights within the last year. Unlike the official Game of the Year 2019 awards for DualShockers, there are little-to-no-rules on our individual Top 10 posts. For instance, any game — not just 2019 releases — can be considered.

There is a particular attitude that comes with end-of-the-year discourse. Much like how there is an “Oscar movie,” we have “GOTY games,” triple-A titles so hotly anticipated that many in the gaming community are sure that it will already be their favorite. Look no further than any social media feed, where people are already arguing about what will be Game of the Year 2020. But when I look at my favorite games of 2019, I am surprised by how many of them are sleeper hits, quality titles that snuck up on me.

I still believe that there is value to having group and outlet-wide Game of the Year lists, and it is fascinating to see where everyone ends up. Still, I’d much prefer to sift through personal end-of-the-year lists, as they are a better indicator of the personal gaming journeys that individuals went through during the year. There you’ll find obscure little nuggets, or perhaps contrarian and eye-opening angles to games that you may have missed out on or didn’t give a chance.

With my personal top 10 list for 2019, I find that the uniting factor between most of these games is that they are weird. They are incongruous, non-traditional, unusual, and so on. And most of them are games I hadn’t even heard of a year ago, making the value they provided all the more surprising.

First off, some Honorable Mentions that didn’t quite make the cut, including Untitled Goose Game, Gears 5, Tetris 99, Baba Is You, The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, CROSSNIQ+, Pokemon Sword & Pokemon Shield, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, and Mini Motorways, all of which could have formed their own top 10 list. Then there’s the stuff that I didn’t finish or get to, but will absolutely do so starting in January, including Luigi’s Mansion 3, Kind Words, Arcade Spirits, Knife Sisters, Wolfenstein: Youngblood, Outer Wilds, The Walking Dead: The Final Season, Life is Strange 2, Disco Elysium, and Neo Cab.

Man, I wish we had room for more than ten entries.

10. Ring Fit Adventure

I have fond memories of playing Wii Fit back in the day; while it obviously wasn’t a proper substitute for more intense workouts, it was a nice way for Nintendo to encourage health and regular exercise into one’s daily routine. That’s why I was so surprised by how freaking hard Ring Fit Adventure went. For the first time playing an “exergame,” I was left sore and sweaty, so much so that I had to lower the intensity at times.

What Ring Fit Adventure succeeds in doing is actually turning exercise into a video game. It took Nintendo maybe like, over a decade to get there, but it’s great to see nonetheless. All Ring Fit Adventure comes down to is a turn-based RPG where the moves and attacks and defense are achieved through exercise. The Ring-Con is durable and versatile, and as the game encourages, I find myself turning it on by itself and doing some mindless exercise while doing other activities or watching television. It is obviously far from the most impressive video game of the year, but Ring Fit Adventure is the one that I came back to the most often in 2019.

And fun fact: the model in that lifestyle photo that serves as this list’s featured images is my friend from college. You’re damn right that I had to use it for this.

Check out DualShockers‘ review for Ring Fit Adventure.

9. Kingdom Hearts III

The Kingdom Hearts series is like a specter that will never stop following me. I don’t even have to go over how much these games mean to me and how wild the pre-release period has been since Kingdom Hearts III was announced what must have been a century ago at this point. And I’m not even going to bother to talk about how stuffed and contrived the lore is—at this point, Kingdom Hearts practically speaks for itself. Even if you aren’t into the franchise, hearing all of the fervor around it should at least give you a feeling of what it’s about.

And once Kingdom Hearts III finally released a lot of people, ranging from newcomers to devoted fans, were quick to scrutinize and tear it apart, and a lot of the criticisms were fairly justified. Perhaps I was in my own world, but none of that stopped me from enjoying the hell out of III. It may have just been the novelty of playing a brand-new, high-definition Kingdom Hearts game, or all of the obvious fan service and emotional scenes of closure, but whatever it was, the feeling of playing Kingdom Hearts III could not be recreated by anything else I played in 2019.

Check out DualShockers‘ review for Kingdom Hearts III.

8. What The Golf?

Most of the games on this list were surprises to me, but What The Golf? was a strange game that contained a number of different surprises within it. The facade of this being any sort of ordinary golf video game quickly wears off, as you find yourself hitting more than just golf balls into the hole: maybe it’s a golf club, the golfer themselves, or even another damn hole that you have to get into the hole. And that’s just the beginning—you’ll be going through city streets, parodies of other video games, and space, with some gravity-defying shots.

What The Golf? is an excellent example of how to create comedy that is unique to the medium of video games. It isn’t writing or cutscenes, but rather the actions that the player does themselves that creates hilarity. Each level plays with your expectations in a different way, and there is enough variety to prevent the game from just turning into the same punchline replayed multiple times. Other than that, the game has excellent sound design, and there’s a neat feature that lets you showcase a short, curated level selection to friends. What The Golf? is perfect for short bursts of play, and at some point in the near future, I’ll probably find myself going through each hole yet again.

Check out DualShockers‘ PAX East preview for What The Golf?

7. Ape Out

With such a bold art style and a distinct percussion-based soundtrack, Ape Out is impossible to ignore. The core gameplay is quite easy to wrap your head around, but I appreciate all of the strategic considerations that go into playing the game. As a massive ape trying to make your great escape, your main tools are a basic attack and a grab; enemies die easily, but so do you, with only three hits. The decision I always faced was between brute-forcing myself through gunmen or taking a slow and deliberate pace using an enemy as a human shield. Better yet, breeze through the randomly-generated maze and avoid conflict altogether.

The trial-and-error nature of Ape Out might naturally draw comparisons to Hotline Miami or Celeste, and as magnificent as those games are, putting this game only in those terms would do it a disservice. There was something so intriguing about the total lack of context given regarding this ape, but as you continue your rampage and leave a trail of death and destruction behind, aided by some brash and flashy visuals, what has led to these events is irrelevant—the scene and tone and the feelings that they invoke are already enough.

Check out DualShockers‘ review for Ape Out.

6. Wilmot’s Warehouse

This is a last-minute entry in my 2019 list, but Wilmot’s Warehouse instantly won me over by getting all of the gears in my head to click into place. It is a game all about organization, but the hook of this game is that players can organize everything in any way they want to. As such, the game essentially becomes a Rorschach test for whoever tries to play it—what does the way you organize your warehouse tell about how you live your life? Perhaps by color, by category, or some other wild methodology of your own invention?

Wilmot’s Warehouse is almost like a single-player Overcooked, but with a lot more versatility and room to work with. It has a charming minimalist art style, with some lovely motivational posters to come with it. It is challenging, less so because of everything the game throws at you and more so because your own methods and styles will begin to crack and fall apart. It also makes you wonder about the infrastructures we have in real-life, and why giant corporations at Amazon can’t seem to come up with proper organizational strategies that don’t exploit and abuse their warehouse workers. I guess it’s just a fantasy at this point!

5. Death Stranding

Honestly, I’m surprised that I bought Death Stranding in the first place. I was anything but a Hideo Kojima stan, and much of the previews and the pre-release discussions over the game were quick to turn me off for a variety of reasons. Once Kojima and company began to actually show gameplay, however, something resonated with me. Yes, you can derogatorily call this game a “walking simulator,” but I am all about games where traversal itself is a puzzle. There’s that whole cliched pitch of “You see that mountain? You can go there!” but what if that phrase was just the premise of an entire video game?

There’s more to it, of course, but the story is absolute crap with a total lack of subtlety, nuance, and sensitivity. Even as I rolled my eyes at pretty much every single cutscene in the game, I spent endless nights on Death Stranding, optimizing the amount of weight I was carrying and carefully planning out routes, not to mention becoming obsessive over building projects. And once the chiral network aspect of the game comes into play, it becomes more of a unique massively-multiplayer co-operative game of sorts, with other players’ buildings and structures coming as assistance in the most harrowing of scenarios. Awful story but addicting gameplay was enough to put Death Stranding smack dab in the middle of my favorite games from 2019.

Check out DualShockers’ review for Death Stranding.

4. Apex Legends

If we’re going to talk about surprises, then I am required by law to write about Apex Legends, because just the existence of that game alone was a surprise. Announced right before its release, Apex Legends appears to be the end-all-be-all battle royale only by looking at its feature set, but it absolutely earns the title once you pick up the game and play it—I don’t think anyone can possibly deny that games from Respawn Entertainment feel good. It’s fast, responsive, but most importantly, it’s just fun.

I’m not an expert on multiplayer balance, but I’ve personally found every character in Apex Legends to be viable. The game’s design is full of so many smart decisions, from the concept of the Jumpmaster, to how inventory is handled, the diverse hero abilities, the respawning, and especially, especially the Ping system. This game has so many quality-of-life features that I never even knew I needed, and they make any session, whether it’s with a close group of friends or with complete strangers without microphones, feel like a breeze. After playing Apex, why even bother with any other battle royale shooter in 2019?

Check out DualShockers‘ review for Apex Legends.

3. Control

Man, this game is cool. I can’t think of any other video game in 2019 where I would actually read through all of the pick-ups and collectibles and logs, but Control had me going through every piece of lore the game threw at me like a drug. This game, more than almost any other game, inspired curiosity in me. It is esoteric without being pretentious, it is bizarre without being off-putting, and there is rarely any sort of disconnect between the narrative and the actual gameplay.

It may take a bit of time to get into the combat flow of Control, but the trials and tribulations leading up to that are worth it. Eventually, you’ll have a number of psychic powers and weapon forms to utilize as tools of destruction, and as you get used to the enemies and their behavior, each encounter will feel like a fast-paced game of chess. The latest from Remedy Entertainment was enough evidence that I needed to get into their previous stuff, so I spent some time with Alan Wake and Quantum Break as well. No one quite does such an excellent blend of surrealism, world-building, and combat like that studio.

Check out DualShockers’ review for Control.

2. Katana Zero

I’ve been becoming more and more tolerant of difficult fast-paced trial-and-error games (see: Hotline Miami, Super Meat Boy), but Katana Zero may perhaps be the first one of these games that I barreled through with few breaks in between. The premise of this side-scrolling action game with its drug-induced time-manipulation and the fast and twitchy gameplay demanded my attention and time, and boy did I give this game just that. There were too many deaths to count on the way to the end, but all was worth it.

Katana Zero is infused with a neon art style and rousing electronic music, which further enhanced the compelling gameplay. It all comes down to planning, looking at the scenario at hand and taking into account reaction times and all of the environmental pieces around you to brutally dispatch your enemies while also avoiding their own attacks. And your katana-wielding character is thinking about all of this too, as your failed attempts are actually (at least, the way I interpreted it) the scenarios in his head that just didn’t work out. It is perhaps the smartest game I’ve played in 2019 in merging story and gameplay together, and out of all of the titles on this list, this is the one that I want a narrative sequel to the most.

Check out DualShockers‘ review for Katana Zero.

1. Sayonara Wild Hearts

After writing a review of over 1,500 words for Sayonara Wild Hearts, I’m not even sure what else I can say about it. But in the context of my personal life, I should say that it came at exactly the right time in my life. Underneath all of the colors and the fanciful style is a story about overcoming depression and getting outside of your comfort zone to lead a truly happy life. All of the other games on the list I probably could have played at any point in my life and enjoyed it all the same, but Sayonara Wild Hearts feels like the definitive 2019 game for how my year went.

Even months after the game came out, I still came back to Sayonara, one reason being to finally achieve some of those Gold Ranks, but mostly just to try to live the euphoria of the emotional experiences that this game provided me; somehow, the entire “Begin Again” sequence is still enough to get me near tears, producing the same powerful reaction each time ever since I first played a demo of this at PAX East. I still listen to the soundtrack on a regular basis, letting myself get lost in the soundscapes—eventually, I would actually seek out the lyrics to these songs, and I would find the written words to be just as touching.

I was used to my safety and peace I mistook all this tedium with being at ease But then you came around, said “it’s time to let go” And you took me to a place I don’t know

Check out DualShockers‘ review for Sayonara Wild Hearts, from yours truly.

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Check out the rest of the DualShockers staff Top 10 lists and our official Game of the Year Awards:

December 23: DualShockers Game of the Year Awards 2019 December 25: Lou Contaldi, Editor-in-Chief // Logan Moore, Managing Editor December 26: Tomas Franzese, News Editor // Ryan Meitzler, Features Editor December 27: Mike Long, Community Manager // Scott White, Staff Writer December 28: Chris Compendio, Contributor // Mario Rivera, Video Manager // Kris Cornelisse, Staff Writer December 29: Scott Meaney, Community Director // Allisa James, Senior Staff Writer // Ben Bayliss, Senior Staff Writer December 30: Cameron Hawkins, Staff Writer // David Gill, Senior Staff Writer // Portia Lightfoot, Contributor December 31: Iyane Agossah, Senior Staff Writer // Michael Ruiz, Senior Staff Writer // Rachael Fiddis, Contributor January 1: Ricky Frech, Senior Staff Writer // Tanner Pierce, Staff Writer

December 28, 2019 10:00 AM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2019/12/dualshockers-favorite-games-of-2019-chris-top-10/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=dualshockers-favorite-games-of-2019-chris-top-10

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theconservativebrief · 6 years

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Maniac, a new, darkly comic Netflix miniseries starring Emma Stone and Jonah Hill, is the rare project that I like both more and less the longer I think about it.

By the time it reaches the midpoint of its 10 episodes, the series is one of the more confident and assured examples of what I call “Big Moment TV,” where every episode involves some jaw-dropping visual or conceit that’s meant to send you to Twitter to buzz, “Did you see that?!”

And as directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga, the genius (and newly minted James Bond director) behind everything from the wonderful 2011 Jane Eyre to the visuals of the first season of True Detective, those moments really land. I wanted to go to Twitter to talk about them, except that would have been a violation of my screener agreement with Netflix.

And yet there’s something so calculated about Maniac. There’s rarely the thrill of the unexpected, which is tough to explain in a series that longs, deeply, to provide the thrill of the unexpected. Every time the story would shift, or enter another genre entirely, or let the actors play other characters than the ones they came in as, I would nod and say, “Sure. Makes sense!” Which is not what I think anybody involved was going for.

Some of that stems from performance (Hill is a fine dramatic actor but maybe not the guy you want sublimating all of his live-wire energy to play a depressive), and some of it stems from the storytelling, which is a wackadoodle pastiche of “mind-fuck cinema,” in which the movies ask you to question reality and wonder what’s going on and so on.

But not only have you seen the basic dramatic beats of Maniac over and over again, but Maniac takes great pains to explain to you, at every turn, what’s going on, how the characters feel and think about it, and what those crazy, trippy visuals could mean. It’s a mind-fuck movie so unconfident in its ability to fuck with you that it follows up every big reveal or jaw-dropping mindscape with a moment that seems to ask, “Did you see what I did there?”

This probably already sounds like a bunch of ideas thrown together in haste, which don’t really cohere. It is, and it isn’t, and to explain why, I’m going to have to spoil the show almost in its entirety, so follow me after the massive spoiler warning to talk about why it��s easy to remain interested in Maniac but hard to become truly invested in it.

The rise of Big Moment TV has been driven by two factors. The first is that TV storytelling has grown more complex in terms of serialization, but the second is that lots of people still kind of half pay attention to what they’re watching, because they’re doing chores or playing a game on their phone or whatever. So if you watch an episode of Game of Thrones and there’s a big, bloody death or something, that jars you out of whatever other thing you’re doing and forces you to pay attention.

But, increasingly, these sorts of shows feel driven less by the whims of their characters than by the whims of their creators. Game of Thrones went from a show that made you feel the weight of every death to a show that wantonly killed characters without much regard to emotional resonance or storytelling sense. And that’s, ultimately, part of the fun of that show, but it took it from a must-watch to a fun show that often struggles to reach its potential.

But Big Moment TV has increasingly evolved to a point where it’s less about a big death or a big plot twist and more about anything unusual that will get you talking on Twitter, as I explored in this article about The Magicians and Legion. And those two shows form useful comparison points for Maniac, with its occasionally fascinating, occasionally awkward attempts to fuse Big Moment TV, over-explanatory mind-fuck pastiche, and what amounts to falling asleep in front of Netflix. (It was an early adopter of Big Moment TV, lest we forget House of Cards’ entire storytelling ethos.) All while the algorithm randomly shuffles through things it thinks you might like.

(And really do turn away at this point if you want to remain unspoiled about this series, because knowing the premise of this show could potentially ruin it.)

The story focuses on Annie (Stone) and Owen (Hill), two 20-somethings struggling with barely repressed trauma and other mental conditions in a near-future New York where everything, including friendship, has become a part of the gig economy. You can even sell your likeness for various ads and stock photos, as Annie has done, which means that when Owen bumps into her at a purported pharma trial for a new drug, he both feels he already knows her and fears he’s hallucinating her. (He was diagnosed with schizophrenia, see.)

In one episode, Owen and Annie become stuck in some sort of espionage thriller. Netflix

Anyway, the drug trial turns out to be a complicated procedure designed to put people through a sort of psychological boot camp, where in stage one they relive their greatest trauma (the loss of her sister for Annie; a suicide attempt — that might not have even happened — for Owen), attempt to better understand the roots of their psychological issues in stage two, and then confront those issues and their trauma in stage three, in hopes of healing and moving on.

The trial is overseen by a group of people cosplaying as the characters erasing Jim Carrey’s memories in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, including Justin Theroux, the dryly funny Sonoya Mizuno, and (I swear I am not kidding about this) Sally Field playing a depressed computer.

The bulk of the series involves what happens when a mechanical malfunction results in the fusing of Owen and Annie’s subconsciouses, which results in them essentially entering an anthology series. Across five of the season’s 10 episodes, they play different characters, in different genres, following what amounts to Fukunaga’s syllabus for a “history of American indie film” class. There are suburban capers, and an extended (kinda awful) journey through a gangster/crime movie tale, and a story where Owen becomes a hawk. (That last one’s a lot of fun!)

This is, I think, a pretty compelling way to explore two characters who seem paper-thin at first. By having Annie and Owen journey through both of their subconsciouses at once, the show could theoretically fill in details about these people’s core beings while still allowing for plenty of action and adventure. Seeing Annie as a Long Island housewife trying to steal a lemur, or as a con artist interrupting a seance, or as a half-elven ranger in a generic fantasy kingdom gives us different sides of the actual Annie’s persona and lets Stone have a lot of fun.

But I could never escape the feeling that the show’s weirdness was less an organic investigation of two people in crisis and more a mechanism designed to keep me watching. The journeys that Annie and Owen take through their brains feel assembled more from other movies and TV shows than from genuine psychological exploration.

On a show limited only by the human imagination (at least in theory), these adventures stay frustratingly earthbound. They’re “imaginative,” in the manner of a college student who’s carefully cultivated her persona out of bits and pieces of other personas she’s seen elsewhere, rather than authentic.

The strange facility where Owen and Annie bond is a weird setting unto itself. Netflix

It feels a little churlish to complain about this, because watching Maniac is a lot of fun. I sat down intending to watch a couple of episodes one day and ended up watching seven, because I really did want to see what would happen next. The writing staff — led by Patrick Somerville of The Leftovers fame — has given real thought to the story of all 10 episodes as well as the story of each episode, which leads to fun journeys through the various genre pastiches the writers come up with. (I loved the Long Island-set crime caper, which felt straight out of a Coen brothers movie.)

But I could never get past the stage where I was enjoying the show’s considerably gorgeous surfaces to access some deeper level. And then after watching the finale, I read a quote from Fukunaga in a recent GQ profile of him, and something clicked. He said:

Because Netflix is a data company, they know exactly how their viewers watch things. So they can look at something you’re writing and say, We know based on our data that if you do this, we will lose this many viewers. So it’s a different kind of note-giving. It’s not like, Let’s discuss this and maybe I’m gonna win. The algorithm’s argument is gonna win at the end of the day. So the question is do we want to make a creative decision at the risk of losing people. …

There was one episode we wrote that was just layer upon layer peeled back, and then reversed again. Which was a lot of fun to write and think of executing, but, like, halfway through the season, we’re just losing a bunch of people on that kind of binging momentum. That’s probably not a good move, you know? So it’s a decision that was made 100 percent based on audience participation.

Now, listen, the notes-giving process in Hollywood is important. I’m not somebody who rails against notes, or thinks they ruin the creative process or tear down impeccable works of art. But something about letting a computer give those notes speaks to why Maniac, ultimately, felt less human than human to me, why it always seemed like it was assembled more than it was a deeply felt passion project for anyone. And, indeed, the series is based on a Norwegian show of the same name, and the various genre pastiches look a lot like other Netflix shows if you squint, and every single actor feels specifically chosen to appeal to a very specific demographic.

This would almost feel like Netflix snarkily commenting on itself if the show didn’t take itself so seriously. The fact that it turns into a genuinely sincere story of how Owen and Annie come together to better each other’s lives in the last few episodes is either the bold swing that saves the enterprise or a case of too little, too late. I’m more in the former camp than the latter, but it’s not hard for me to imagine talking myself out of that stance.

And yet there’s something kind of beautiful about a series that applies the dull plotting of most other TV shows — all life-and-death stakes and, “We’ve gotta get to the [plot device] before they do!” numbness — to two emotionally damaged people trying to heal. There’s a bravado here that I can’t write off, even if I never felt like the show went deep enough to turn either Owen or Annie into anything more than ciphers, despite all of the self-analyzing monologues both deliver in an attempt to sell their complexities.

Whatever complaints I have about the show, then, might be a part of its commentary on a world where our mental horizons are so often occupied by stories we’ve heard elsewhere. If you and I somehow had our subconsciousnesses fused, and then went through a series of adventures in dreamspace together, wouldn’t it be more likely that those adventures would be drawn from the movies and TV shows we had watched than something wildly original?

Maniac isn’t weird enough to really achieve what it wants to, but it does say something — however accidentally — about how reality is already weird enough. Maybe that’s why we’re so content to live inside the dreams of others.

Maniac is streaming on Netflix.

Original Source -> Netflix’s Maniac, with Jonah Hill and Emma Stone, is either too weird or not weird enough

via The Conservative Brief

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