#but i mean. obviously there are egregious things like ''this is literally intended to be hateful towards a minority/plant such beliefs''

[ineffable-gallimaufry]

sorry for seeing one negative thing about a thing i like an then being annoyed about it for the rest of my life it's just like that sometimes

#and usually it's like. one thing. #and i see that one person doesn't like the thing i like and i am internally dying #like #if i could erase every memory of every post that was like ''actually here's how this kid show sucks and a few minor design elements make it #irredeemable despite the fact that quite a lot of it had good morals and decent storytelling'' #like. usually they are not wrong about the flaws #but girl. just because the characters don't have that much variety doesn't actually mean that the show is like. the worst thing ever #it just means that the show has major/minor flaws and then you can choose to look past those. or you can not #but i mean. obviously there are egregious things like ''this is literally intended to be hateful towards a minority/plant such beliefs'' #but when it's unintentional things/small details especially ones that are a product of its time #like maybe don't simplify it down to ''show horrible and irredeemable because they made a few jokes i didn't like'' #(especially when like. the jokes are like. the kind of jokes in every single cartoon of that decade) #maybe just move on and don't do that i guess #idk i am vauging because i see things that are like ''sorry x is horrible and you can't like it. and also a few fans of this bothered me #so i'll just say something rude and overgeneralizing like 'oh man it's funny how every single fan of x media is like this and they all suck #''' #sorry for complaining but rrrgh #brain is filled with angry little worms that want to kill #vent maybe

[utilitycaster]

Hi I’m a new critter and I love your account and both your meta and your takes on “drama” I genuinely want to know (if you don’t mind saying of course) what you consider to be the most egregious, bad faith cr take that you’ve ever seen. I just like reading your criticism because it’s both incredibly articulate and smart but also very satisfying

Hi anon,

Thank you! I do have to say this is a difficult question with a boring answer but I'll give you a tangential one as well to make up for it.

Obviously, the misogyny and death threats in C1 are the worst! Anything that rises to the combination of structural oppression and literal death threats is going to be the worst, even before you factor in how utterly tiny the stakes were here (and, frankly, you shouldn't factor that in; doesn't matter what the cause is, big or small! Do not send death threats!)

The reason I tend not to talk about that is because there's very little to say. It's misogynistic death threats. That's awful, inexcusable, and dangerous in any context. But if someone doesn't understand how terrible this is, I don't think I can say anything to add to that.

Anyway because that was true, but obvious and not terribly revealing, I have been thinking a lot about mean-spiritedness in the fandom and I'll talk about that here. It's something I try to be cognizant of, because here's the thing: I talk a lot of shit. I'm aware I talk a lot of shit. There's many reasons why I talk a lot of shit. But I do try very hard not to be mean-spirited. I think there is a very clear distinction between criticism, even harsh criticism, of things you don't like, whether it's in execution, concept, or they just aren't to your taste; and mean-spiritedness, which is much more based in a desire to do harm to others.

I think again the example I've mentioned recently of people harassing Liam until he took a song off a Caleb character playlist is the pinnacle. This doesn't have any real goal re: criticism - it doesn't address an issue with the character nor the narrative and the only personal preference it reveals is "I, a random fan, don't like that this song was used in this context" which is not really relevant and you can skip it. Harassment is never justified, and even behavior that skirted harassment really served only to be a dick to Liam. It didn't have a single result other than "Liam takes the song off and feels kind of bad for a while," which I suspect was in fact the goal for most people, and that's pretty abhorrent.

Harsh criticism is not necessarily constructive, but it is with the intent to reveal - either a personal preference, or what you believe to be a flaw (structural, thematic, etc) within the story. It might not have a goal - personal preference really is just "I don't like this guy" and that's fine. Mean-spiritedness, however, exists just to spew bile and do harm.

So the following (most of which are paraphrased, but all are things I've personally seen on Tumblr alone, and nearly all are from the last year or so) aren't per se the most egregious or bad-faith takes, but they are absolutely mean-spirited. They have all destroyed my estimation of the people saying them for the most part beyond repair, and in many cases, if they have not hurt my estimation of the ship or character they were intending to support, they have certainly increased my estimation of the things they were intending to oppose. (And it goes without saying: any harassment - any - is automatically mean-spirited).

"I hope Fjord and Jester have divorced [author's note: they were not married] and I hope it hurt."

"I hope Caleb and that floaty fuck have broken up by the solstice."

"I hate Ashton, and Campaign 3 wouldn't be any different if they weren't there."

"My wishlist for this episode is that Chetney hits on Fearne and Ashton cockblocks him"

"I hope Fearne makes that robot eat his stupid coin"

"I'm not surprised that Yasha missed, because Yasha is bad at everything."

"Funny how Vex goes against her husband but does everything that Keyleth says" [Author's note: later proved to be hilariously untrue]

"No one cares about Travis's characters."

"Oh, Liam meant that Essek's own guilt would still exist by 'It won't help the inside?' I thought he was just being a fucking twat."

I think some people go into fandom not because they want to talk about characters, but because they see it as an opportunity to hit someone. I think some people believe they are entitled to a "win" (not normal to want nor possible to achieve and often less about the story and more about the fandom agreeing with them) and will engage in any tactic no matter how underhanded if they don't think they're getting it. That's what mean-spiritedness is in the end. It's not a single opinion, and often it goes under the radar compared to more stupid but less clearly unpleasant takes - a lot of the above didn't result in a ton of discourse because most people see these and rightfully go "oh that person is a tar pit" and block them - but it's certainly, outside of bigotry (which is also frequently also mean-spirited) - the most bad-faith approach to fandom on the whole.

#answered #Anonymous #cr discourse #cr tag

[animalinvestigator]

Hi anonymous, i’m answering this question in a weird way because I don’t want people to be searching a name and finding me talking about media, it’s a rule i typically stick to. for context this ask is about the allusions to a real world abuse case in pscop. Im putting it under the cut because it’s heavy & i dont know what to tag it so be careful reading it if the stiuation is upsetting to you too ok fellow users on tumblr

obviously it’s something i’ve always been horrified by -- not necessarily surprised by, roping real-world tragedies into unfiction and args has kind of chronically been an issue (And it still happens to this day), but it’s still EXTREMELY upsetting to me and has been since i was a kid coming across it for the first time, and the instace in petscop is particularly egregious. the only reason i have ever been comfortable continuing to engage with it in spite of the allusions is because they were completely dropped ~1/3 of the way through the series and an apology was issued (albeit a pretty wimpy one) , but it definitely upsets me like, a lot, and the negative impacts associated w/ those first few episodes are not lost on me. Even though there was an attempt at a reversal, in a lot of ways, the damage was already done, and you can still see it continuing to be done in some places online. i think anyone who’s having anything but an incredibly negative response to it has their head in a hole about it and is being very irresponsible. it’s genuinely baffling to me that it was ever considered an okay thing to do. the only thing worse than it being included in the first place was the way “theory” youtubers & the general public reacted to it, it was an unbelievably horrible situation that never should have happened & i do hold a lot of disdain towards the guy who made petscop because of it still. even after seeing this person taking action to undo some of the harm, its hard to feel anything but “mostly negative” about someone who makes a decision like that, even if his art is really influential to me.

ultimately if someone can’t reconcile with that, i think that’s more than reasonable , & i think people should be mad about it, & anyone trying to apologize for it is being negligent. if you’re conflcited about it, i think you should be. i’m conflicted too. ive spent a lot of time thinking about it. its a given that if you’re going to choose to engage with it, you have a responsibility to be mindful of this, even though it doesn’t have much bearing on the literal story. “being critical of your interests” as it were. which is why you will see me not using specific words that appear in the early series. and i encourage everyone else to consider doing the same. the harm can’t be undone and the art can’t be removed from the world now that it’s in it, so i’ve always considered the best course of action to be trying to remove the association between the art and those early allusions as much as possible, so that someday the real person’s life won’t ever be associated with the webseries again. which means removing words from your vocabulary. does that make any sense?

anyway it’s upsetting to me, and hard for me to talk about, but important for me to talk about , i’ve talked about it in the past but i honestly ought to talk about it more because thats my responsibility as someone who’s introduced a lot of people to the artwork (Although i don’t necessarily intend to). hope that was coherent and makes sense. if you’d like to talk to me more about it please do feel free to send further asks. hope you have a good day too

#Sorry it took me forever to answer its something i feel strongly about and i'm like really out of it today so i spent a long time putting #the words in the right order.

[starship-imzadi]

S6 E4 Relics

After a VERY long hiatus I'm back! I'd like to finish what I started but we'll see what happens. It's been a while so I'm not entrenched in Trek like I was before so I might not have all the same nuanced observations on continuity and over arching developments. But let's do this!

-

Love a good ship shake!

This is a very serious start to an episode.

I did a quick inter web search for funzies and learned that though Dyson first formalized the idea of the sphere in 1960, the concept is attributed to futuristic sci-fi author Olaf Stapledon in 1937.

This could be so dangerous. They should be asking why someone would have been intentionally locked it there....good thing it's only Scotty!

53%. Oof. I'm not sure what that would turn into...

Also, I realized Scotty makes a comment about being rescued by Kirk but Kirk dies in the Nexus (which would have happened already for him but obviously hasn't happened for the TNG crew yet. Considering Riker's beard it's not the most egregious continuity issue with the films)

Geordi keeps touching Scotty's injured arm.

It's really unnecessary for Scotty to remark on Crusher being more beautiful than Bones. (And by that I mean unprofessional and probably a bit sexist, even if it's well intended. For this context it shouldn't matter the gender of his doctor.)

Poor Scotty is going to feel so outdated. I get the sense this would be like handing an iPad to someone who know DOS.

That chair in his quarters looks decidedly uncomfortable.

I've just realized the warp core reminds me of an office water cooler.

Geordi really should be kinder to Scotty. Technology is what it is because of Scotty. But it's also odd that Scotty is just helping himself to random buttons. Scotty and Kirk defhad a different relationship than Geordi and Picard. And honestly I prefer the latter.

Data to the rescue. This is the first time I've been really struck with the sense that Data is neurodivergent. I'm not even sure I can pin point why (as I am, to the best of my knowledge, "neurotypical). Somewhere between his literalism, his accumulation of facts, and his attentiveness to very small details that other people miss. He of course is literally nuero divergent in that his neurological structure diverges from the structure that humans' have.

That knee high railing in the OG enterprise looks like an amazing tripping hazard.

In some ways this conversation between Scotty and Picard comparing the enterprises feels like a comparison between the making of the different series. The original series seemed more tremultuous behind the scenes, and perhaps now more romanticized. The next generation had a higher budget and a firmer footing in production with fewer stories of high drama (such as that between Nimiy and Shatner).

Bold of Scotty to drink straight from the bottle. Though he certainly seems to hold his liquor well.

As an adult it seems so odd that an entire society would forgo alcohol. And not even with religious conviction. Brewing alcohol and drinking can have such cultural depth and richness, it's quite extreme to opt to lose that just to not get drunk. What about other fermentation with positive effects but also a small amount of alchol like a kombucha? I would think as an advanced society they would instead drink and then have an antidote to administer for sobriety whenever they like.

I feel like the opening monolog should be changed to "....to explore stange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to f*ck around and find out, to boldly go where no one has gone before " because in all honesty they push a lot of buttons with no idea what going to happen and it's amazing they survive.

Hard self depreciation from Scotty there.

"Auxiliary" is a hard word to say.

Wait, Worf says sheilds are at 23%. And then the next time he says they're downs another 15%...."another" suggests two 15%'s but that math doesn't work. Unless it's just down 15% more...

I'm glad Scotty being unconventional, true to character, is utilized. Because though Geordi is innovative, he's very by the book.

If the enterprise has enough power to set a course for the portal then why are they still so close to the sun?

It's crazy Picard called those shots by feel and they just barely made it through.

I'm glad Geordi and Scotty got to bond a bit.

Wait, did Troi just shows up for the end of this episode? She didn't even see Scotty before.

[thelightofthingshopedfor]

so yeah I’m generally feeling like the only way from keeping myself from getting pointlessly upset about What If is to...assume the premise was kind of misrepresented. they’re leaning hard on the whole idea of “what if one choice by one person was different, look at all these other things that totally would happen then” even though that’s really not what we’re seeing in most of the episodes. (well, clearly, or we wouldn’t have “what if...zombies??” to begin with, so obviously in most cases they’re focusing on alternate scenarios instead of alternate choices and just...describing it badly.) instead I think we really have to assume that sure, we’re seeing possibilities for various main-timeline characters, but a lot of their decisions depend on them already being somewhat different people from their main-timeline counterparts. (putting the rest being a cut because ooooops I went on way longer than I meant to)

heist!Thanos is probably the most egregious example, because he’s only at all believable if you assume he was just...never as bad of a dude, maybe never got that much further than talking about his stupid plan and actually did care about the ridiculous resource argument (as opposed to main-timeline Thanos, who I firmly believe is just as death-obsessed as 616 Thanos and came up with the resource thing as an excuse to himself), and certainly didn’t literally torture Nebula or surely our amazing hero would not be pushing so hard for their reconciliation, right?? (I actually did like the Collector being a bigger villain, though--until now we’ve mostly had alternate takes on him and the Grandmaster that reveal them to be...more or less powerless on their own, which is boring as hell.)

similarly, I pretty much have to assume everybody in the Party Thor timeline is just...a lot more chill, considering Laufey is apparently a good dude but probably the writers didn’t intend to imply some kinda terrible things about the main timeline (I mean. aside from the way that they seem to have fundamentally misunderstood the first Thor movie but okay, okay, I’m letting it go), and relations between Asgard and Jotunheim obviously became extremely friendly after the war given the way Thor and Loki behave toward each other. plus, like, both realms’ crown princes (both apparently only children, without backup heirs?) are carefree party boys, which certainly seems to imply some things about the kinds of responsibilities--or lack thereof--that they currently have and are expected to take up in the nearish future.

anyway, I’m sure it surprises no one to know that I pretty much only care about Loki, and also that my feelings on his appearances have been...uh, mixed. I mean Jotun Loki is a giant precious blueberry and I love him very much even if I’d like to see him being a teensy bit more serious occasionally (I have some very faint hope that he’ll show up again in episode 9, given that Mega-Ultron came to his timeline and it would make sense for Party Thor to call in the Ice Bros for help, although if Marvel does that just so they can kill him...ugh).

conqueror!Loki, on the other hand...I mean, I don’t love it. I would have very much preferred if Loki had actually meant it when he said he wanted to be allies. they could’ve done a very fun, very fanficcy thing with Loki being like “well I guess you’re all okay, you know, for mortals, so if a big threat pops up, buzz me,” and he ends up on the list as an honorary Avenger possibility, and then literally any other villain shows up as the sequel hook. but I can accept a Loki who’s furious and grief-stricken over Thor’s death, to the point that he decides--with the apparent approval of the rest of Asgard--that peacefully taking over Midgard is a decent compromise for revenge instead of just destroying it. and even though the writers probably didn’t intend anything very Loki-friendly in general, it’s even possible to speculate that he’s motivated in part by a misguided sense of responsibility (or just entitlement, but still) toward a realm that Asgard still considers something of a protectorate, and that he figures he can improve things for the silly little Midgardians while making sure the place is better defended from actual outside attack. so if nothing else, I can make enough excuses through headcanons or fix-it fics not to feel like they completely butchered Loki’s character.

...as long as he had nothing to do with causing Thor’s death.

it’s weird to me that I haven’t seen many people talking about this, because it’s something @adreamer67​ pointed out to me right after the episode aired and I was asking for spoilers: the episode really kinda does imply that Hank Pym killed Thor, specifically, at Loki’s request. or, well, somebody’s request, anyway. it’s the bit where Loki-as-Fury and Pym are fighting, Pym kinda gives his villain speech explaining his motives, and Fury-Loki brings up Thor to note that, uh, he just got here and wasn’t even on the Avengers short list! Pym’s like duh, you would have scooped him up if you’d had the chance, which is...obviously true but still a flimsy reason. then a couple lines later, he says, “Thor’s death was a favor.”

okay, a favor to...??? no clue! it’s never brought up again! depending on future What If plans, maybe they’ll return to this storyline in some way (next week when I guess the Watcher gathers up the protagonists from this season to fight Mega-Ultron, or in season 2) or maybe they won’t! who knows!

and like...Loki’s right there, and if the writers just ran with basically a classic 616 version of the character in terms of him being a power-hungry, one-dimensional villain, he’s the obvious culprit. if you have a very shallow understanding of Loki’s character, everything works out great for him: by presumably piggybacking on Pym’s existing revenge plot, he’s bumped off his competition for Asgard’s throne and created a handy excuse to take over Midgard without the rest of Asgard ever suspecting how eeeeeevil he is. in fact, his whole constantly evolving harebrained plan from the Thor movie probably becomes part of a bigger sinister scheme (even though. you know. there is zero evidence of that in the movie), where he intentionally orchestrates Thor’s banishment so he can disguise himself and get some human to bump off his temporarily mortal brother. I can’t really think of any other characters who would’ve even known Thor was there for purposes of pointing Pym in his direction, let alone anyone who would have even a dumb, uncharacteristic motivation.

I mean, yes, I recognize that Loki actually did kill Thor in Thor. but I honestly don’t think that’s relevant, because he was in the middle of an ongoing breakdown due to the revelation of his heritage and on some level he might have feared Thor would kill him for being a Frost Giant if he didn’t kill Thor first. (plus--if he’d really, sincerely wanted to kill Thor, he would have vaporized him with the Odinforce, not backhanded him with it in a way that Thor could have easily walked off at normal strength.) this Loki...could theoretically have similar motivations, except for some damn reason he’s just casually introducing himself as the rightful king of Jotunheim and using the Casket like it’s nbd and not turning blue in the process?? that sure seems to imply that something was hugely different about the Frost Giant reveal--it seems like there are a lot of different possibilities, but the one thing that doesn’t seem possible is for everything from the first Thor movie to have happened in the exact same way. (and also Sif smacks her hand on the Casket while it’s active with no ill effects, and the writers think main-timeline Loki could have used the Casket as a kid without ever suspecting he was Jotun, so like.........ffs where are the people in charge of the MCU’s almighty continuity, like come on.)

on the other hand--

maybe Pym meant...somebody else? for some reason? no idea who, but...somebody. it’s also weird that the exact same writers would write a Loki coldly scheming to kill his brother and use that as an excuse to conquer Midgard and a Loki goofing around like a complete dork while proclaiming eternal brotherhood with Thor despite having always known they’re not related. I mean that’s...just kind of weird, right? and it’s also kind of weird to do that after a gradual redemption arc for Loki in the main movies and then an entire series establishing that he absolutely has the potential to be a hero and driving home in the very first episode that he deeply loves his family and doesn’t hurt people for fun. like...I don’t know why you would do all that work and spend all that money to then go “oh it’s totally cool if this exact same character could also be 100% a villain with no redeeming qualities, what do you mean undermining our own storytelling, don’t be silly.”

it also doesn’t always make sense in the context of the episode, because...Loki is the one who asks Pym about Thor, presumably in Fury’s hearing, and until that point nobody had brought up the fact that Thor was kind of an outlier for a victim. in theory he could be doing it to make sure Pym has no suspicions as to who really aimed him at Thor and therefore can’t expose him to Asgard, but that seems...weird, given that Fury is right there to hear it, and Loki leaves Fury and Pym alive. I mean, yeah, a followup could reveal that Pym ~died mysteriously~ offscreen, but it would’ve been pretty easy to have it actually happen in this episode to give audiences more reason to suspect Loki of masterminding the whole thing. hell, he could’ve “accidentally” killed Pym in the fight and given Fury an excuse that didn’t quite hold water!

so it’s like...on the one hand, I have no idea who else they could’ve meant. but on the other hand, if they really did mean Loki, it is extremely weird that it wasn’t made more obvious. I mean they’ve already more or less got him as the episode’s villain! viewers who see his actions as perfectly in character would also immediately accept that he would kill Thor! it’s not going to be a shocking reveal in a potential followup episode that the villain doing bad things did another bad thing! and if the intention really was to imply that Loki essentially had Thor assassinated, it wasn’t implied heavily enough for most people to notice, given that most recaps understandably seem to focus on Pym being the murderer!

so what the hell, Marvel!!

...anyway as you can see I’ve already spent way, way too much time thinking about this

#what if spoilers #hank pym #loki #nick fury #marvel cinematic universe #thor #thanos #my meta #loki meta #kind of #marvel what if

[misterbitches]

i had the misfortune of finally watching/getting through what happened in whatever episode where he gets raped so im gonna talk about it and tag it cos that's what a bitch fuckin feels like, got it? i do what i want aint no limit bad ass bitch aint never been timid. woopsie realized i got the nicknames confused oh well lmao

it's just logistically and plot wise like there's literal plot holes in this and i'm taking the production and set-up into account along with the actual content and development. im an ARTIST OKAY im jk i mean i am and i am pretentious and terrible but look. i didnt get that degree and im not in a house worth of debt for nothing ok. it's called writing on tumblr about my grievances of shows that dont matter and do not respect me as a fat black american woman either so it is my fault yet here i am.

anyway it was worse than i imagined and their talk after (with chengren) was even worse. that's what i mean about making the lines their own (the actors) bc teng teng sounded like a straight up motherfucking moron and im like

bECAUSE IT'S HIM EVEN THO IM LIKE WHAT THE FUCK DID U JUST SAY U STUPID BITCH? but then it's like awwww and they also care about his wellbeing obviously??? but no? but it's like ok still teng teng said it even if it's stupid because he is a character and charles puts that forth. the people that fail the most to do that are xing si's family but that's not the actors fault because it's the literal material. you're like wait what but you just said...?

so i know they have no script editors i guess i think i find this season ACTUALLY fascinating because of just how egregious it is. i also went back and watched history: obsessed which i thought i liked because of their chemistry even though god the production....but i tried rewatching it and i was like wow this is worse than i remembered and the production issues were even worse because some of the music was SO LOUD AND BAD HOLY FUCK and their whole rship isssssss a sight to behold lmao

so man i guess it really is the power of anson/charles. which is good cos we love to see it...sort of but also a lot.

i honestly....because i've been able to pay attn more to the aftermath of the rape going back and putting it into more context and focusing (just barely lmao) is hm even worse. the inconsistencies are insane. it's not even just about the act but the writers have zero idea where they are going because they have no interest in exploring it. but the way in which it happens is like fascinating. yong jie literally thinks he owns xing si and it doesn't matter if he was kissing him or not or asked for a kiss on the lips (which dude what the fuck? i'll get to that) because he was plied with "extremely strong drinks" and his mom knew about it....which girl congrats you're an accomplice to the rape of your son by your other son?

but first of all...the kissing thing. in what fucking world would he (xing si) want that unless he thought he (yong jie) was someone else. i can't say their attraction is evident because we are being lead by this team to think so; they create this false sense of sensuality already so to me that signifies that they never intended for them to have a bond as brothers. it just feels cheap and fucking lazy (which it is.) even if he did, which doesn't make sense considering the context THEY CONSTRUCTED, it wouldn't matter because he was so fucking drunk which.... at that point nothing is fun, you feel sick, who wants sex like that? does he not have whiskey dick? did they have a condom? was it not painful for him considering? even if this was something to easily get over like was the dick good? it couldn't have been. and then, on top of that, there's the fact that you can change your mind or whatever but also that people do get aroused in these situations bc it is human nature (that's if they can literally get aroused which if the drinks were allegedly sooooo strong that nigga would be out so....again like even practically here it doesnt add up. have these people ever been drunk? if not, write what you know girl. cos sometimes it's like i think some of u r trying to be cool when u dont have 2 b lmao)

so yong jie coming on to him previously may be seen as like push-and-pull but here's the thing. right after it happens (the rape and it's rape so call it that you'll be okay) xing si gets up and goes home and is terrified and upset. he acts like what we have seen or even felt after a violation. he's scared, clutching his bag, it's like...you know...decently coming off as truly distressing (the actor isn't bad at all and i like that he's dark. i just massively hate this for him but hey at least he can show some chops.) like honestly man that fucking sucks and hurts to see. if we've been there we feel it. or part of it is realizing belatedly what happened. a lot of times that drop in your stomach is the worst.

but somehow for some reason, to which i cannot understand, the three of them begin to talk as if xing si pressured him? which maybe i missed something and that is possible—dont feel like going back to look—but that also made no sense. like what kind of false memory is this? why would he think he wasn't willing? and if he thought yong jie wasn't and that he pressured him how does he remember like...anything about the sex?!?!??!? besides waking up and being with him. like i guess he felt yong jie's MASSIVE DONG imprint but ??!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!??!? MAKE IT MAKE SENSE!!!!!

god then the logic of the top/bottom thing is like i said i wasnt going to get into it but it's actually really funny. this whole thing was hilarious. honestly because I DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT THAT MEANS. he could have totally raped him in that way but how did you get to this CONCLUSION FROM THAT??????? BY YOUR LOGIC THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS? IF HE IS THE BOTTOM AND PENETRATION IS THE ONLY FORM OF TRUE CONSUMMATION AND RAPE BECAUSE APPARENTLY, BASED ON ANATOMY, IF YOU HAVE A DICK IN UR BUTT UR A GIRL THEN HOW. DOES. THIS. MAKE. SENSE. AND THEN

AND THEN

AND THEN

AND THEN

this whole stupid conversation happens so we get to the conclusion that xing si violated him ok cool but that means that something is wrong. that is the CONCLUSION WE CAME TO A SECOND AGO?

also the other rapist is a villain and muren isn't in love with him so, once again, you're breaking the rules of your own world about acceptability which is why most of this is absolutely mind bogggglinG that iit's fuckign comical. like i actually when i can stomach it start laughing or my jaw is slack because it's so insulting as a viewer because there is like 0 logical followthrough.

because whatshisface barges in, kisses him in front of his friends without permission, then says whether you were willing or not which is hm. at that point how u gonna change that around but let's not bother with logic here. i am simply here to point out how this makes no sense according to the rules they set up even outside of the basic rule of life which is hm dont rape people maybe.

so now we know xing si was raped, they believe he was raped, he himself believes he was raped, and whatshisface literally says he doesn't care even if he was willing (he wasn't) so he admits to rape. i don't believe in the police and i hate them (BL industry needs the cops but dont get me down that road) but no one...thought to go?

because according to history 4 logic nothing matters so im sure if he went to the police you could handwave the homophobia since there's no actual context for anything besides their whimsy. but they dont want to do that because they aren't interested in an arc of growth; redemption isn't possible unless he is removed from the family but again no work on thinking this through or thinking about the victim's feelings. because gay sex? who fucking knows. supposedly progressive taiwanese writers of gay shit (like how supposedly progressive the world is. as in it is not and this behavior is the norm and bl perpetuates that) can't think of transformative justice?

and then they gave bad advice so we wont acknowledge that because teng teng doing anything wrong/stupid is frequent but hurts me and also that storyline is not real so i pretend they are not there outside of this post

so all of this is just straihgt up clownery now because it's fucking absurd like logically, practically, human-wise. the kissing thing is inconsequential but it was such a lazy cheap way out lmao cos they really wanted it to seem consensual but that's not how it works. on top of that their attraction makes no sense because whatshisface is just there. he is just there. he's nothing and no one so the sentiments are even more empty and on top of that he doesnt listen to a single request fucking obviously because the basis of their relationship is fucking rape so fucking listening and respecting his partner is not on his list of fucking priorities. he's literally so fucking annoying even without being a rapist it's like someone please beat his ass.

and then after all of that you want us to feel bad? with your horrible writing, poorly misplaced music, stupid costumes (those fucking SHOES THEY ARE HIDEOUS, AND MOST OF THIER CLOTHES DO NOT FIT IT'S LIKE WHY), questionable fucking editing. we're supposed to wnat them together? this sounds literally fucking crazy but bear with me lmao even with the rape they could at least have SOMETHING i mean like i cant believe im fucking saaying this. but like in addicted heroin which is fuckin tragic and awful at least there's a MODICUM of interest but honestly that show s a fucknig drag. idk they lookd good together? here we have 0. nothing. and it doesnt motivate. watching obsessed again i can see why i liked it in the beginning bc they have good chemistry but the acting and production adn like everything about it plus the rape-y vibes it's just too much. you need to pick one thing so if you're going to be a shit writer at least supplement it with something. this thing is nothing.

and even more nonsensical and what boggles my mind frankly out of all this is the mother's involvement and the father's final response. there are NO consequences? theyre all happy?

ok so lets go through this:

1. 2 boys grow up 2gether, one of the boys is fucking psycho, the mother knows but does nothing??????????????

2. one of the sons moves out so his father doesn't get a hint that's he's fucking gay. ok fine. he has 2 best friends, a job, an apt. he is fine.

3. aforementioned brother is obsessed with him for SOME REASON besides being crazy?

3.5 no one has done anything during him growing up to help him not be crazy?

4. mom says to husband who is their father also just in case we forget "im afraid he will lose his humanity"

4.5 again, do nothing. 0. just like oh man hes crazy. guess that's just our son ;)

4. who cares. plies him with alcohol purposefully to rape him. not even dubious (even though dubious is fucked and not okay or is just not. fucking real. these shows are contextless when they want to be or even movies or whatever so it's like largely not up to the task to understand complexity in human rships and then oversimplifies it constantly because that's what we do IRL. but people have fucking feelings you know and we realize when things don't feel good or right to us either very quickly after or having to process it. and once you're eyes are opened you may feel as something was fucking ripped away from you. for the modc couple this would be a very logical conclusion for the high schooler the thirty year old dated but again logic or feelings are up to their whimsy. no one cares bc everything can be counted as dubious so honestly it's a fucking stupid fucking topic like again why are we litigating what is and isnt consent when you could just like idk. read cues? consent? wait? not be a freak? like we all know what is proper human shit so even if we are watching this uncritically which u cant bc it's glaring and stupid it's just even more dumb) so it was honestly a rape plot like he literally planned it soooooooooo??!?!

5. aftermath of rape the victim is like literally fucking bereft and confused. and a rape victim. like that's what they are insinuating and what also he is to be clear.

6. boy tells him "idc if i raped u i luv u lmao"

7. mom ENCOURAGED THE BOY to get him drunk because her other son was too nice? she encouraged her adult son to rape her adult step-son (but her real son because she repeatedly says you are my son and the dad does too THEY GREW UP TOGETHER WHEN THE KID WAS IN AN IMPRESSIONABLE STATE) so THIS ALSO MAKES EVEN LESS MOTHERFUCKING SENSE

8. everyone finds out about his rape and he isnt mortified he's just concerned about himself being gay to his dad?????? except it's not really about his gayness bc now it's about his sudden love for his rapist brother? which? hm ok. understandable the dad is like wow i do not think i like this

9. dad knows all of it is fucked up, everyone does, knows the mother fucked up, knows he fucked up. doesnt like it because he is normal. so we know this is terrible? ok great so—

10. father says "i can't accept this...but i'm willing to give you my blessing" ok see here's the thing. when you write you have to think about the things you are putting on the page and what you have written previously. this quite literally made no sense how the fuck are you going to not accept them but give them your blessing? does this crew know what the fuck words are? i'm assuming they went to some sort of school to obtain jobs here bc there cannot be natural talent or experience. maybe most of them are rich. fuck i do not know but this also makes no sense. just the literal logic of it it's like fucking insane the whiplash.

10.5 apparently this father is also shitty. everyone here sucks and they are basically begging me to think xing si is a fucking idiot so i dont even want to look at him if he is an object he doesnt matter so now i want to kick him. thanks a lot you made the victim get absolutely fucking nothing

they KEEP PUSHING the brother thing it is so insane and it's liek GUYS WE GET IT WE UNDERSTAND THEYRE "RELATED" BUT NOT RELATED SO IT'S OK HE WAS "RAPED" BUT NOT RAPED but you're GOING BACK ON YOUR OWN RULES!!!!!!!!!! WE GET THAT THEY ARE BROTHERS!!! WE'RE OVER IT NOW BUT WHAT IS THIS WHEN WE ALREADY ESTABLISHED SOMETHING? I AM CONFUSION? they flip flop between my son, my brother my actual brother, and cannot fucking distinguish between love for your father and love for your romantic partner? so to me what i see is that the father wants to fuck the son. that's the conclusion i am garnering now considering nothing matters and his love for his "brother" is the same as his love for his dad lmao. they couldnt even do that in a way that made sense. like damn anybody can get anything. these ppl who are doing this have to be fucking rich and/or have connections.

also this guy sounds literally like a textbook abuser like he says constantly "im the best choice" is a rapist is awful holds capital (oh hees "saving" smh ur trapping her!!!!! RETIRE!!!!) also wears terrible shoes so i am like ur alllllllllLLLLL FUCKING CRAZY ur all literally crazy and then they are trying to set rules and boundaries in their fucking house like WHY ARE THEY LIVING TOGETHER EVEN? even tho oh my god they know he raped him and for some reason they are both allowing to live in the house but they dont want them to have sex??!?!?!??!??!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!!?!?!?!?!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?! i get that this is their house but this is like at this point these ppl are writing anything and now whatshisface is acting like a 2 yr old again and we are supposed to find this cute? like it makes 0 sense why do u fucking care u literally encouraged ur son to rape him so they cant have consensual sex under your nose now and have to wait four years? this is coming from the son who couldnt wait until someone was sober enough to realize hes fucking psychotic and should be killed also the fact that they act like being 20 means u have no fucking brain like this kid is in med school supposedly how do we know like hes a liar and an idiot so. also wait do they mean undergrad? how are you in med school at 20? is he a genius? girl i dont care lmao i guess i missed that but it's not like it matters so whatever

even if we ignore the stupidity of the literal acts, the grossness of the content, the absolute inability to write coherently or even remotely in a way where we would even want to see them together which is like....u set it up at the beginning so he punches "the love his life's best friend" also holy fuck im sorry remember when he punches muren because xing si got too drunk. so i'm guessing whatshisface is that good of a bartender that he makes super strong drinks and gets xing si drunk but his alcohol is magical therefore it doesn't make him sick. his alcohol is the type that gets you drunk but somehow doesnt get to your liver even though that's how we get drunk but dont ask guys he's only in med school and a bartender so i think he knows best (seriously have the main writers had a day of fun in their lives? have they ever been drunk? are they toddlers? drunk babies could probably do better tho.) i get that he was also jealous but if this kid is SOOOOOO genius (he understands social cues lmao he has the cpacity to project onto his victim so im like miss me with the not understanding shit. go to a fucking therapist like seriously did no one care abt this kid? his mother thinks he's like almost a goddamn murderer. how is she not dead? how are they all not dead? how do any of them know how to drive with this type of brain?) then he would understand that they are very clearly friends since he watched them part in a very platonic way and since he apparently knows what love is cos he thinks....he can....make someone fall in love with him bc he loves them? again, i wouldnt know hes 20 and taiwanese and im 29 and black from AMERICA so im WESTERN* so you know. different life experiences i guess XD

even if we do mental gymnastics to get it to a place where they "had sex" and he didnt rape him there's 0 ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO ties to the literal story they wrote and the rules they set up. i'm going ot assume they dont know wtf theyre doing and i know for a fact we all care more about their dumb show than they do but it's actually startling how piss poor this is it's like idek what to compare it to. the continuity is awful awful awful they needed a script supervisor majorly and they are making bank and are going to make fucking bank fof this shit. and itll just continue like that until IRL material changes and that's facilitated by these very same groups they choose to profit off of and exploit by propelling it into the mainstream and litigating homosexuality through capitalism. and i'm being specific with homosexuality. i dont want a GL market like at all and i know why we wouldnt have it either and that has everything to do with the nature of BL, capitalism, coercion, and the fanbase being young girls and women. i don't think in this day and age we can safely say all the fans are straight; i'm sure a majority but many women or people on the gender spectrum and sexuality spectrum also consume it. frankly, it's possible the women who write it could be or something too. i dont rly believe any1 is str8 lmao but im just saying it's not out of the realm of possibility. but it isnt about that at all. that's why we wont see "good" female characters (like well written) often that's why we won't see trans women or kathoeys or fat people or black asians in it. a lot of it is is a choice we participate in whatever. but holy fuck dude u could at least respect the audience's fucking intelligence. i'm talking about everything i think that is encapsulated in the project but it's even more jarring and worse because it's so insanely inconsistent and poorly done. like how we jump from one conclusion to another is wild to me. even their first "night together" and he wakes up im like girl....u no ur ass felt it. this nigga broke into his house and was like "im gonna have u" like it's getting weird

just make xing si suffer offscreen not us the stupidity is staggering, mind blowing, hilarious.

how wong kar wai, a straight man from HK (or at least married to a woman), or barry jenkins, a striahgt black man, write/do stories well about people they wouldnt knw about their experiences directly is....well thinking like using their brains and like knowing all types of people? the man who co-wrote moonlight is a hOMOSEXUAL, leslie cheung was fucking gay or queer (and he committed suicide and that's important also RIP homie) both are hailed as queer cinema like WKW wanted to do something else and invested time into it, changed the way he played around with structure, moved away from his crime oriented stuff. he THOUGHT about it and this film is about their reality. it's a harsh film, idk how i feel about it (but my fav movies of his are the crime ones or the messy ones where it's clear he didnt write a script lmao fallen angels is one of my fav movies its' abt assassins kinda) but i know it means something. and he didnt like what HK had previously wasnt enough. it is not the only cinema that should be shown since it's such a stark reality and depressing but it is a real depiction so we can have all sorts of stuff. no this isnt WKW level or moonlight level but i know for a fact these people think they are doing something because artists always do i say this as one and someone who is equally as useless. you're making a statement.

i also hate the westerner component of peoples analyses. first of all dont do cultural relativism. we can critique and respect. but second of all how are we going to keep saying "dont put western ideals on this" when that is what is happening anyway because that's part and parcel for soft power and capitalism. how about taiwan's history with the KMT? what about the regimes young people fought about? aided by US imperialism which permeates through society and affects material conditions, views, democracy, identity and that goes into culture and media. hm? what about that? is that reality too fucking western for people? that we are doing the same thing again now? is that okay to talk about or is that only on your time?

then there's the argument that this is just entertainment. yea no shit but the thing is if we r gonna talk about marginalized groups and watch bc of marginalized groups and then be expected to identify then i dont see why i cant put this in context. even if it wasnt fucking serious we'd still judge it. but it's so pompous and again like i wouldnt say EYE think it's art but it is "art" in the literal sense and no self respecting artist would ever go "man this means nothing." of course im not sure if they do respect themselves so hey but u cant just go oh man it's entertainment when it literally rests on the fact that HOMOS are MARGINALIZED. it literally rests on the fact that WOMEN ARE OBJECTS. you either want progress or you dont. i dont understand being so demanding but not beign specific in the demands and not trying to use your brain. if you dont want to use your brain don't. but if you are looking , engaging, and keep making these arguments or telling ppl it doesnt matter whilst complaining about how much others care is hypocritical at best, willfully obtuse at worst. both bad. :)

(also all this + another thing; it is insulting to have this like wedding happen based off of this stupid relationship when people fought so hard and had to push it. now they can use the material conditions to their advantage but it's so ridiculous. also because there is difficulty still in getting married in taiwan i'm honestly like....the boldness of the writers...)

#history 4 #history 4: close to you #*dont call me western ever #a thot

[radramblog]

Star Wars Battlefront II (the good one)

My nonfunctional internet is preventing me not only from finishing off my essay, not only from watching the lecture that I would have shown up for were it not for mediary COVID restrictions, but it’s also stopping me from writing anything here that would require any sort of research or confirming details. That leaves me with less options that I would have thought.

Browsing through my Steam collection for ideas on what to talk about, and something jumped out at me pretty quickly.

Star Wars Battlefront II (the 2005 game, not Star Wars Battlefront 2, the sequel to the EA remake much maligned for malicious microtransactions) is a first/third person shooter that, while showing its age, remains one of the best games the franchise has ever put out. This is, of course, an opinion coming from someone who has yet to play Knights of the Old Republic, but it feels like Star Wars as a franchise has more misses than hits. So what makes this one land?

While I’m woefully unfamiliar with the early 00s shooters that Battlefront II was competing with (aside from Counter-Strike Source, but I’d argue that’s a different target market), I am extremely familiar with this one. I think part of why Battlefront II is so fondly remembered is on account of it being almost a gateway game for people getting into shooters in general- I for one played it extensively on my mate’s PS2 in primary school, and later on someone else’s PSP, and I doubt I would later have clicked so strongly with Halo if I hadn’t.

But what Battlefront II has more than anything else I feel is ambition. After the conclusion of the prequel trilogy, Star Wars’s universe was big, and the developers seemed interested in representing about as much of what we see of it’s style of warfare as they possibly could. As a result, the maps are a glorious smattering of worlds and terrains, loving and detailed recreations of places from the various films as well as a few that are probably new (I might just not remember them), each drizzled with vehicles and turrets and resources. Each of the game’s four factions share the basic units with very few differences (except for the Super Battle Droid), making them easy to understand and grasp for newer/younger players, with the complexity of each’s unique units paying off those willing to grapple with their weakness and play to their strengths. Some are definitely better than others, but that isn’t especially obvious at first. The basic classes reflect tropes seen in other games and while again some falter it’s not by enough that picking them in the wrong situation is a guaranteed blunder.

There are, of course, the heroes, major characters from the series granted to a player who’s doing pretty well, and I feel like this is another pretty well handled mechanic, even if a little awkward. There are enough of them, and they’re distributed enough between maps and factions, that they don’t tend to feel stale, and it’s pretty obvious that while they can absolutely ruin a team it’s also pretty easy to mishandle them. Unfortunately, heroes are related to one of my biggest complaints about the game, but we’ll get to that later.

One of the biggest selling points in my eyes are the dogfight levels. Now, I’ve never played X-Wing or the like, in fact my experiences with dogfighting games is extremely limited. But this part of the game fucks so hard. The design ideas begun with the class selection continue with the (admittedly small) range of starfighters you can pilot, with specialised interceptors, bombers, and landing craft to go alongside the effective all-rounders. The mode offers a variety of playstyles, between hunting down opponent’s fighters to bombing their flagships to boarding said flagships and destroying their systems from the inside. There is also the option of manually controlling the turrets, as well as acting as a gunner for someone else’s bomber/lander, but these positions are unfortunately underpowered and underexplored- they’re also, ultimately, less fun. But the dogfighting just feels right. I can’t really explain it, but moving in that 3-dimensional space feels not only satisfying but accurate to the source material in a way I don’t think any future Star Wars game has yet replicated.

I suppose the various game modes are worth discussing. Skirmishing on whatever map you want is the standard, at least in multiplayer, but there are a few unique offerings you won’t see in other modes- Hunt, where it’s a faction versus some of the series’s wildlife in a mode that always feels imbalanced towards one side or the other. There’s obviously Assault- the standard name for the space dogfights but on one ground map (Mos Eisley) it is of course the ever-popular heroes free-for-all, a chaotic mess but one where you can test out each one and figure out what their abilities actually do. But in the broader strokes, you’ve got the story, and the Galactic Conquest, as the two main other modes.

(oof, they really didnt build this with this resolution in mind huh)

That’s right, this game has a story, and it’s…okay? Ultimately it’s just a series of missions with the 501st, as they fight in the clone wars, turn on the Jedi, and ultimately become the Empire’s tool of oppression, separated by exposition. You get to run through some scenes from the movies, including the boarding at the start of the first movie and the Battle of Hoth, though some of the missions feel harder than intended- no matter how good the player is, the AI is not going to fare well in the tougher missions and you have a solid chance of ending up on your own.

Galactic Conquest is the game’s more unique selling point, being something like a basic version of Risk but with the dice-rolling battles replaced with Star Wars Battlefront II. You earn credits over time and through victory that you can spend unlocking types of units, getting new fleets to improve how many fronts you can wage war on, and unlock powerups for use in the actual battles. It’s largely fine, feeling like a bit more controlled and strategic version of just playing randoms in Instant Action, but it suffers the most from the biggest problem this game has.

The game’s truest flaw is its AI. They are dumb as a sack of potatoes, and the main thing holding the game back from perfection. And it was the early 00s so imperfect AI was to be expected, but it’s a bit more than imperfect here, I guess. Robits standing still while shooting you (or just at all, while you’re sniping them), extremely questionable vehicle and turret usage, and literally crashing starships into you, your flagship, or their own flagship. Bumping their difficulty up doesn’t really help, either. Even more egregious is the AI’s usage of heroes- or rather, that they don’t. If you’re playing single player, the game will always give earned heroes to you rather than your robot teammates, will not let one of them take if it if you decline to use the character, and you will never see one on the opposite side. This would imply that there wasn’t code for the Ais to use them, except there clearly is because Assault Mos Eisley exists- and they’re arguably much better there than in any other mode! It’s a real shame, because the low quality of the AI combined with the nature of the games means that victory is extremely polarised based on the player’s skill- if you bad all the way up to pretty decent at the game, your input basically doesn’t affect the outcome, whether you win or lose. If you’re good at the game, you will never lose at singleplayer, possible exception again being Assault Mos Eisley. It’s a little absurd, honestly. Also, I’m not even sure they go for the flag in CTF in space.

I am, however, willing to look past these flaws. The game is far from perfect, but it’s just incredibly fun. It’s a type of gameplay that they’ve tried to replicate, but never quite recaptured- and I think part of the reason for that is because the awkwardness is part of the charm. It’s nostalgic- both for those who played it when they were younger and just those in my generation who grew up on the Prequels. It’s also way more expensive on steam (bruh 14.5 AUD for real?) than I expected, but it goes on hard sales pretty often (I think I paid like a buck fifty for it), so it’ll be within budget at some point. I don’t know if I can recommend it for those who aren’t nostalgic, though, solely on account of those awkward features you likely wouldn’t be able to ignore like I do. And that’s a shame, because it’s not like they’ve made a better version of this game.

Fuck EA, basically.

#ramble #video games #star wars battlefront 2 #(the good one)

[not-poignant]

Hello, I love your writing and I love how you manage to write complex characters and antagonists I can totally sympathize with (Augus, my precious), so I was wondering if you have any advice on that? Also, how do you decide on a love interest for your MC? Sorry if this is too broad of a question, but your writing advice is always super helpful.

Hiya

I‘m glad you’re enjoying the writing! Honestly I don’t know if I’m going to do a good job of explaining these things, but I hope whatever I say helps!

Writing a sympathetic antagonist

Firstly, most importantly, they have to be sympathetic! I know I know, that sounds stupid, and obvious, but it’s true. Don’t expect every reader to still like your antagonist, they won’t. Not everyone likes villain, antagonist or even antihero fiction.

Re: garnering sympathy:

Show the character as genuinely vulnerable. (Consider Augus being hurt by Gwyn in the dungeon, even if most of it slid off of him, that gag certainly didn’t). (Consider that even though Eran is Mosk’s captor and actually not a very nice person, we understand his motivations for being mean - he has lost his entire family, and he believes Mosk is the reason. He’s shown experiencing constant culture shock, totally alone, and he doesn’t understand the new world he finds himself in). (Consider that Efnisien is living an extremely bleak life, post violent injury, and that he is shown to be vulnerable to his own patterns of thinking).

Show the shift in their attitude that makes them more relatable, or that gives the readers hope that they’re not about to revert back to who they used to be. (Augus clearly being far more even-minded and less destructive for the sake of it). (Eran constantly questioning how Mosk could be capable of his evil, and double-checking on himself, and it obviously being insecurity when he decides that Mosk is evil after all). (Efnisien is forcing himself to attend very personally challenging therapy sessions, and we can see that not only has he not hurt anyone in 3 years, we can see evidence of a life lived that tries to avoid opportunities to hurt people ever again).

Make them human, create common ground. Show them eating food, getting dressed, responding to a major (or minor) injury. Show them loving another character even if they only ever love one other character (Augus saying ‘careful’ to Ash in Shadows and Light was actually the moment that some readers fell in love with him or became intensely curious about him - and so while most readers came around to him in Game Theory, just having Augus genuinely love and feel protective towards his brother was enough to create sympathy and empathy). (Consider Efnisien and his love for Gwyn). (Consider Eran’s love for his family). Make it so that people literally can go ‘oh, I eat food that way’ or ‘oh, I’ve tried to hide an injury before’ or ‘that’s how I get dressed’ or ‘I hate summer too.’ Give them details that can stack up over time and create common ground.

In the case of characters who have done absolutely egregious things, whump the everloving fuck out of them. Like, this was legit a thing I did in Game Theory *deliberately* in order to create increased sympathy for Augus. Even people who have the most intense revenge fantasies re: a character burn out on them after a while. A person who is like ‘yeah I can’t wait to see them tortured and suffering and going through awful pain’ will, very often, get that and realise they didn’t want that much of it. And they will turn to sympathy instead. It’s worked an absolute fucking treat with Augus and Efnisien in particular.

Have someone who is worse opposite your antagonist. (Augus had the Nightingale. Eran has Olphix and Davix and, well, Mosk’s entire family. Efnisien has Crielle and Lludd). Give your villain a villain.

*

That’s it. You don’t have to make them ‘good.’ You don’t have to rationalise what they did. You don’t have to make excuses for what they’ve done or what they’ll do in the future. Your readers can make up their own minds on that, and they will, with or without your guidance. Augus can still be a waterhorse that eats people and sometimes uses compulsions because he’s impatient. Gwyn can still just straight up murder people without giving them much (or any) warning first.

When you don’t encourage sympathy based on a ‘good/bad’ binary, you can still have your antagonists and villains kind of stay where they are. They might do heroic things, they might do villainous things, the point of empathy is that they’re often doing and thinking relatable things, even if the subsequent actions aren’t themselves relatable.

I don’t do these things for villains that I don’t want to be sympathetic. But I must admit, I am enjoying showing different facets of Davix in The Ice Plague, even though I don’t really intend for him to be a transformed villain or anything.

Deciding on a love interest

This one is harder. Mostly because in some ways, it’s ‘simpler’ on the surface. All you’re doing is looking for a character who has qualities that strengthen your other character, and balance out the imbalances in your primary character and vice versa. They will need to have some things in common too. They also need to get along, and have a reason to get along (especially if it’s rivals to lovers).

Like, it’s hard to describe how I do this because I don’t spend a lot of time on this part. I tend to just...idk, ‘know’ what another character needs and build off that. And that’s fucking useless to break down for other people. BUT, it does mean I can at least use my doofuses as examples:

Augus and Gwyn: They are both people who favour diplomacy over war, but can be extraordinarily bloodthirsty when a situation calls for it, and they’re both actually pretty snarky and bitchy people (things in common). Augus is proud of his sexuality and does not see the point in not fully embracing who you are as a monster, Gwyn rejects his monstrous self and is not proud of his sexuality or his role as a sub (Augus strengthens Gwyn in this, and complements what Gwyn lacks). Gwyn is extremely bold and secure in his ability to manage a Kingdom and also protect his loved ones, he is very able to step forwards into his future decisively, fully confident in his ability to do what is best for the people around him and the nation (Gwyn strengthens Augus in this, and complements Augus’ insecurities in this area).

You can find lots of other examples of complementary traits in Augus and Gwyn in particular (Augus had a happier family, Gwyn didn’t. Gwyn has military and physical training, Augus mostly hasn’t. Augus understands fashion and courtiers, Gwyn doesn’t. Gwyn understands tracking and large-scale military operations, Augus doesn’t. Augus understands finer interpersonal relationships, Gwyn doesn’t. Gwyn understands politicking that’s specifically malicious or manipulative (like the Raven Prince, Augus doesn’t).

Mosk and Eran: They are both people who are extremely determined and share a common goal (Mosk took a little while to get online with that goal, but okay). They are both actually very earnest at their hearts and want people to be happy with them, and they both need guidance from people in positions of authority. They’re both hot-headed (in different ways, but they both absolutely fly off the handle all the fucking time). Ultimately, they want to feel warm and supported (things in common).

Mosk is extremely aesthetic and cares for beautiful things and scenery, at all times, he tends to tune into an environment based on its beauty, Eran on the other hand tends to be a bit stuck in the past, and isn’t always quick to see the beauty in the present. (Mosk enriches Eran’s life in the present, but helping him to focus on what might be beautiful in the present). Eran likes to feel as though he’s helping people and he needs to feel needed, Mosk needs someone to take care of him (Eran enriching Mosk).

Tbh you could come up with a lot of examples. Places where they ‘complement’ each other are also places of potential conflict. Eran being hopeful and optimistic is definitely a point of contention between Mosk and Eran when it clashes against Mosk’s pessimism, even though it’s good for Mosk to be around more hopeful attitudes, and it’s good for Eran to be more realistic sometimes.

ANYWAY. Basically, yeah, I... this second part I’m a lot worse at, sorry. The process of coming up with love interests is very organic, and I don’t actually like, sit down and plan these things. Which means I don’t have a formula to share. (I am very much just making shit up as I go).

Idk if any of that is helpful, but I hope it is. <333

Please don’t listen to my writing advice lol.

#asks and answers #dodgy advice #pia on writing #pia on characterisation #fae tales #i feel like i've answered a lot of comments and asks in the past #about how characters have opposing views #or skills #that actually marry up really well together #in fanfiction #Jack and Pitch were probably the most obvious ones for this #i can't believe how long this post is #you know other authors could say this in like 10 lines? #amazing #wanderinggods

[scribblesandsnark]

“Days Gone Bye” (TWD 1.1)

There’s so much about “Days Gone Bye” that is well done – not least because it operates primarily on silence and visuals rather than the preachy dialogue that takes over down the road. (Yes, season 2, I’m looking at you.) That said, not gonna lie, it took me bloody ages to figure out where the opening scene falls in Rick’s post-hospital, pre-Atlanta adventures. (And when I say ages, what I really mean is it took me about six or eight times watching the episode. Ye gods.)

I feel like Rick might have lucked out in the apocalypse. He’s a cop, so there’s obviously a uniform to wear as he waltzes off into the unknown. What would you opt to put on if you were in his shoes and didn’t have a uniform to default to? (Personally, I’ve realised I have a serious lack of practical apocalypse shoes on hand. Although I’m inclined to think that my high heels would come in handy for breaking dead limbs and stomping in undead brains, so there’s that to consider.)

Burnt out and/or flipped cars are popular for set design in post-apo/dystopian TV and films, as are buildings with blasted out/shattered windows, but until fairly recently I’d always viewed them as sort of abstract decorations without really registering how they might get that way. Indeed, in earlier drafts I spent some time snarking about how the zompocalypse must infect people’s driving abilities (a terrifying thought considering the actual driving ability of your average non-zompocalypse-affected person) and, to quote myself,

Given the amount of fire damaged/cars upturned/miscellaneous damage inflicted on cars, you’d think that fcking flamethrowers and grenades and rocket launchers were being wielded by random Georgian citizens as they frolicked through the streets escaping the dead.

But this year [2020], between the port explosion in Beiruit, which flipped cars with the force of the blast and turned high rises into ghouls with hundreds of gaping mouths, and the fires in California, leaving burnt-out hulks in their wake, it’s really come home to me how easy and careless that kind of destruction can be – and how swiftly it can come to be seen as a norm. No flamethrowers or grenades necessary.

Even the empty streets and the silence we’re greeted with in this opening scene, as Rick drives down a barren street and walks through an abandoned campsite, now has more resonance since the 2020 lockdowns brought that apocalyptic empty street into reality. I don’t think I’d ever really thought to walk down the middle of a street before, because, you know, traffic – and yet for a time, when there were no cars on the road and people were hidden away in their homes, that became a new normal. There was a freedom in knowing you could walk in the middle of the road with almost no risk, because all normal rules had been suspended indefinitely. Why stick to the sidewalk when you know a car’s unlikely to drive through?

I guess apocalyptic fiction only ever seems apocalyptic and unimaginable until the real world catches up.

There are a lot of things I could say about this opening scene, aside from the great visceral pleasure of getting absorbed by the camera work, feeling one with Rick as we witness the destruction, the abandonment, the death… There’s a stillness that I wish we saw more of in the later episodes. The introduction of the little walker girl sets up Rick’s hope and his despair in a wonderful way. Having the first appearance and first death of a walker be a little girl in her jammies really shows us just how much the world has been turned on its head – Rick’s a police officer, whose job is to help people (ideally, at any rate), and the realisation that in this new world the only way to help is to kill those he used to protect sets up a(n albeit inconsistent) through-line for the rest of the series.

So yeah, I could wax lyrical about the excellent beginning of “Days Gone Bye” – but because I’m a snarky arsehole, I’m going to talk about the dead. And I’m going to do so with the caveat that while I’ve read some of the behind-the-scenes commentary etc., I am not actually a Walking Deadhead, and consequently do not have at my fingertips the reasons why certain production decisions were made.

There’s an oddity in the first…two seasons? when it comes to cars and the dead, in that there are a startling number of people who seem to have just…died, while in the driver’s seat of their cars. We see two clear examples in the opening scene, as Rick passes between two cars, facing opposite directions, each with their own definitely dead driver slumped at the wheel. This appears, rather more egregiously, in the traffic snarl at the start of season 2, but for the moment we’ll stick with season 1. The camera’s shown us an abandoned camp, any number of cars that seem to have become part of stationary living. Yet we’ve got two dead people behind the wheel, in cars facing opposite directions. Now, I’m not disputing that people could die at the wheel. As the show later goes on to show us, you can get chomped, die, and resurrect within minutes. The problem is in the fact that a proportionally ridiculous number of people seem to die at the wheel. I suppose the logical conclusion is that said individuals stupidly had their windows down and their arms out, got chomped, and sent away the rest of the car’s occupants or anyone else in the vicinity, and then opted to just hang out in the car until death – at which point zombrain kicks in and any attempt to use a door handle is moot. (See, e.g., the number of zoms hanging out in closed cars.) Combine that with people more likely than this show’s putative heroes to shoot someone who’s been infected in the head before they turn and simply move on… Eh. I suppose it’s plausible. It’s just not very realistic. (Not least because oh my god, there are undead people, roll up your fucking window you fucking idiot. I know it’s hot in Georgia but roll those windows up, babe. You might sweat, but at least a stealth zom won’t use your hand for a snack. Gah.)

…not going to comment on the inconsistent zombehaviour in which a smolzom stops to pick up her teddy (see, later, other zoms climbing ladders, scaling fences, and using rocks to bash through windows – and in one instance, tugging her zip hoodie back up over her arm). Instead, my issue is with smolzom’s slippers. How has she not lost those by now??

(Total aside, but I’ve been bingeing L&O:SVU lately, and boy howdy do a lot of TWD people pop up like daisies there. Daryl, Shane, Noah, Dale, Beth, Lori, Amy, Tyreese, Lizzie, Liza (tbf from FTWD)…)

The fries that Rick and Shane are eating just look sad and wimpy and not worthy of eating. Do better, cops. (Do better, fries.) Really, it’s almost a surprise they’re not nomming doughnuts and coffee. There’s no doubt that the two are meant to be close, though; you have to be close to dab your fry in your partner’s ketchup (oh no, Lori).

Jon Bernthal is a good actor. I just wish they hadn’t given him a character who was so all over the place. (I’ll delve more into this in later episodes.) The first scene he appears in, after the opening credits, clearly sets him up as a chauvinistic dick, in contrast to pauvre Rick, whose relationship with his wife is suffering – and, critically, this is not because of Rick, but because of Lori. Her first introduction as a character is as a woman at odds with her husband – and the fact that her husband is in law enforcement really should not be glossed over here, not given America’s contentious relationship with LEOs. (We’ll get back to Rick and Shane eventually.) It’s no secret that spouses of people in law enforcement, or in the military, often struggle because their partners are always absent. I’m not trying to apply blame, here; law enforcement and military positions require a lot, and there is absolutely a high degree of trauma that can result due to the kind of work in which they engage. That said, the way Lori is set up as the antagonist from the get-go is just…distasteful. Rick is presented as reasonable, as wanting to try to make things right, as trying to do what Lori wants and yet always being the bad guy. The sad thing is that Lori is no one’s favourite character, and yet the character never had a chance. She was fucked over long before she actually turned up on screen, ensuring that our perspective of her is negative from the start.  In a show that takes years to establish strong women, Lori stands out as a particularly egregious example of a woman, wife, and mother who realistically could have been a positive representation of a woman that instead was turned into a caricature everyone loves to hate. (We’ll get to Andrea eventually, I promise.)

I think perhaps, most egregiously, the fact that Rick says something like “It’s like she’s pissed at me and I don’t know why” sets up Lori as being irrational and Rick as being patient and anxious to fix things without knowing why. Lori is fucked in terms of character development from before she ever  appears on screen and never has the opportunity to claw back some of that lost ground. Rick literally labels her as cruel – and cruel in front of their son, to boot. Who doesn’t view a person cruel to their child as a villain? Gah. Lori was absolutely fucked by merit of being Rick’s wife.  And it’s really a shame, because every so often Sarah Wayne Callies absolutely kills it (no pun intended, but leading up to Lori’s death is perhaps the character’s best scene).

Of course, too, the whole convo between Shane and Rick sets up Shane as a “fuck me, women, man” – and yeah, absolutely, this attitude ends up extrapolated to his behaviour towards people in general. Yes, it bonds our two good ol’ boy policemen as lads who love each other and try to jive each other into better moods but are sensitive enough to listen to actual emotional shit… But ultimately it establishes Shane as a dick and Rick as a victim. Shane’s absolute disdain for women’s emotion/women talking about their emotions is in some ways bizarre when you look at his future relationship with Lori – and yet at the same time, that disdain echoes through all of anything he does with Lori, with Carl, and with Rick in future.

Okay, so, let’s move on to the fuckfest in which Rick gets shot. (Twice, Lord help me. These fuckers are alarmingly inept.)

Pro: they fling out the spikey “stop the bad guy” chains.

Con: …well, at least one dude doesn’t know about the safety, so that’s … not ideal. (His death: not surprising.)

Pro: Rick can apparently drive backwards with skill. I can’t even back around a corner.

Con: Leon is a fucking moron.

Pro: Rick and Shane disposed of their hats??

Con: what happens to the Black cop? Why is he the only one we don’t know the fate of? (See TWD’s treatment of Black actors in general…)

Pro: the car does not flip in their general direction.

Con: pretty much everything else in this scene.

I dunno about the average viewer, but I feel like the two apparently competent cops – Shane and Rick – should each be assigned to one of the shitty cops, rather than riding together, because really, do you want cops rolling in to save you when they clearly don’t know the first thing about gun operation? (Yes, as any number of viewers have pointed out, there’s no safety on the gun that Leon is holding, but the fundamental point is to articulate how much of a fuck-up he is as a cop. If you’re out in the field and don’t know how your piece works, should you even be out there? Don’t they give cops gun training? You’d hope so…yikes. Although I guess it does sort of set up the absolute nightmare of season 2’s gun control plot line. (Oh god, season 2. Help.))

Am I the only one amused by the name Leon Basset? He’s a cat and a dog at once!

It takes Rick and Shane and co. an embarrassingly long time to put down the baddies – one of whom manages to hit a cop in a spot not covered by his vest, after having been flipped violently upside down in a car crash. Seriously, the fact these dudes are able to crawl out of the car and start merrily firing away, much less actually hit someone, is fucking insane. Have they trained in post-car crash shooting? I have to conclude they have, because otherwise the fact they have better aim than the multiple cops shooting at them is absurd. (Also hilarious: bad dude #1 crawls out of the completely totalled, upside-down car with, like, a scratch on his cheek. Until bad dude #2 takes a shotgun blast the chest, he appears to have lucked out with almost zero wounds from the crash. Are we sure *they* aren’t actually already dead??) And really, Rick’s an idiot in this scene – his fellow cops are intelligently hanging out by the cop cars, using them for cover, while Rick displays a high degree of absolute idiocy in waltzing straight out into the open; it’s made even worse by the fact that he’s brandishing his cute little Colt Python revolver while at least two of the cops behind him are wielding shotguns.

Bad copping, Rick. Cop better, please.

There are several shots right before Rick gets shot the first time where the camera angle makes it appear that Shane has his shotgun pointed straight at Rick, including the actual frame where he *does* get shot in the vest – when he’s shot in the side closer to Shane than the unnamed assailant. Now, this is probably due to bad blocking, although you’d think Rick would know better than to walk directly between the baddies and his fellow cops when there’s active gunfire, since it makes him a liability (seriously, I doubt the efficacy of the cop training programme in whatever bit of Georgia this is), but with the benefit of hindsight you could also see it as foreshadowing the eventual deterioration of Rick and Shane’s relationship. Think about the scene in “Wildfire,” the penultimate episode of the season, when Shane and Rick are in the woods doing a sweep, and Shane sights down that shotgun at Rick walking through the trees ahead of him for a long moment before Dale turns up. In that later episode (and moving on increasingly through all of Season 2), Shane wants Rick out of the way, but it takes a very long time in terms of screen hours to actually get around to making his final move. Ironically, it’s only ever here in the opening episode, following Shane appearing to be aiming through Rick’s back at the assailants, that Shane ever successfully gets Rick out of the way. Unintentionally, of course, but there is nevertheless an odd parallelism created here due to blocking and weapon of choice.

Dammit, Shane.

You know, on thinking it over, I’m surprised that this police force functions at all. Yes, the dispatcher only noted two individuals in the car, but if I’ve learned anything from watching procedurals it’s that before stopping to chat about anything you clear every possible place an unknown assailant could be hiding. I’d think that would especially be the case for a car chase, because how accurately can you see inside a speeding car? (That’s a legitimate question; I have no idea.) And actually, entirely aside from the possible existence of a third assailant, if you shoot someone with a gun, surely the follow-up after they’ve gone down is to immediately approach, ensure any weapons are out of arms’ reach, ascertain if the individual is dead, and if not, call immediately for medical attention. I know the baddies took several shots to the chest, but come on. They also emerged almost entirely unscathed from a totalled car, so clearly they’re already marked as practically unkillable. And yeah, following procedure wouldn’t have allowed Rick to get dramatically shot for real after the first fake-out, but they could easily have had him get dramatically and unexpectedly shot by the third dude when following procedure and checking to see the other two were dead. Most of the dialogue could have been retained as well. But oh well. I guess the show sets up the failure of authority figures to function effectively from the very start; not following procedure proves to be useful to Rick, considering his future actions as leader of the Merry Undead crew.

Further proof these cops don’t know how to cop: literally no one notices the third dude crawl out of the car, not even to go “hey!” Dude literally has enough time to crawl out on his hands and knees, stand up, point a gun, and actually hit his target before anyone (aka Shane) so much as notices his existence. There are at least three other cop cars in the vicinity – the other car that arrived with Rick and Shane (the “wait what’s a safety” cop and his partner) and the two cars that were chasing the criminals in the first place (four more dudes) – and yet apparently no one noticed a third guy standing up with a gun in his hand. And yeah, I’ll cut some of them a bit of a break on the theory that they probably couldn’t see the guy until he stood up because of the car in the way, but with seven people standing, *someone* should have seen him. Given Shane’s angle when he shoots, the two cops behind him definitely should have noticed something. The fact that someone only shouts to move in after Rick gets shot is just…shoddy copping. Seriously, this is the kind of stupidity that leads you to wish characters would just die. I’m sure someone would miss these people, but the world isn’t likely to notice they’ve gone. (Also, Shane blowing away the third dude on the first shot is pretty much the only time any of these professionals have actually hit their target immediately. Glad to know the safety of the Merry Undead crew is in the hands of people with worse aim than people flung around in a totalled car. Hurray!)

I’ve decided that after Shane goes with Rick to hospital in the ambulance, the rest of the terrible cops get eaten by the reanimated baddie crew. It’s what they deserve, really.

Moving right along…

Rick has a frigging massive hospital room. Either he or Lori is secretly a drug runner, or else the local cops have some pretty sweet health insurance. Lucky for Rick; if he’d been in a shared room or on one of those corridors with multiple beds separated by curtains, he’d have been walker munchies asap. Unforeseen side-effects of the zompocalypse: healthcare edition.

I…am not going to deal with the time issues of Rick being in hospital and then waking up to a hellscape. Suspension of belief, yeah?

I think the weirdest thing in the cut from Shane with the flowers to Rick waking up on the bed is the silence. The background beep of the machines has vanished, telling us the power’s gone off; the off-screen background hospital noise – heard most notably in the undiscernible PA behind Shane talking – has also vanished. Rick’s harsh breathing under Shane’s words also vanishes when the shot does, though I’m not sure if that’s meant to suggest Rick is better, worse, or otherwise. The scene doesn’t show it, but it sounds vaguely like a ventilator is functioning when Shane’s in the room, which would suggest Rick’s still hooked up to breathing support following surgery; if that’s the case, Rick was taken off the ventilator to breathe on his own at some point after that, since he wakes up only with oxygen to his nose. The shift from all that background noise to absolute silence is incredibly effective, because though we can’t register it visually, and may not consciously notice the shift in audible sounds, it nevertheless conveys to the viewer that something has changed before Rick even opens his mouth.

Horrifying thought, though, being stuck in hospital in Georgia without aircon. (I’d melt. Not just in hospital, but in general. Heat and humidity are not my friends.) Frankly, I’m surprised Rick manages to get any words out of his mouth given he’s probably a wee bit on the thirsty side; my mouth goes a bit dry and I might as well be trying to talk through a damn desert for all the words I manage.

It’s kind of amusing that there’s a lingering shot of the clock on the wall. Yeah, it adds to Rick’s confusion and disorientation because dammit, he can’t even tell what time it is – and what is the world without timekeeping?? – but what are the odds it happened to run out of battery in time to inconvenience the last man standing in the zompocalypse? “Oh no! I’ve missed the end of the world! Ah well, better late than never.”

Helpful that Rick woke up during the day – can you imagine how disorienting it would have been to wake up in pitch dark with zero sound? Anyone who lives in a vaguely urban or suburban area is almost entirely unaccustomed to the dominance of both anymore; when I moved back to suburbia after living in a sort of downtown-y bit of an offshoot of the nearest city, I had serious issues for months because at night everything was so quiet and so dark, especially during the period when the house next door was unoccupied. Seriously creepy. (Although I’ve also seen raccoons, deer, and a coyote as well as the ubiquitous squirrels and birds and neighbourhood cats, so that’s exciting. Actually, weirdly, there’s a surprising dearth of animals, to say nothing of pets, floating around in the apocalypse. We see dogs occasionally as time goes on, running about the streets of Atlanta, eating the dead, getting eaten when times are desperate; deer pop up every now and then, and crows alight ominously all over the place, but…where are all the dead goldfish? The cats??)

Does Rick just have a super special water faucet in his private bathroom, or are the utilities still working? (Nice to immediately have a way to quench his thirst. It also apparently gives him super strength, since he doesn’t keel over again despite the probable weeks he’s been flopped out in bed not using his muscles.) Alexandria has running water, but if I recall correctly it was also designed as self-sustaining. Hospitals usually have generators, since if the power cuts for whatever reason (earthquake, hurricane, T-rex attack) you want to make sure a bunch of people don’t cut out as well as a result, but as far as I’m aware that…doesn’t affect the water systems? (I am definitely not a water engineer. Are there water engineers?) And since he later goes down stairs to get out of the hospital, is there really a system still functioning that pumps water up several stories when the electricity appears to be dead? Convenient water is convenient.

Obviously there must be a generator or some kind of power still functioning, since there are some lights on in the hall, complete with requisite horror-themed buzzing and flickering. (Help, I’m having flashbacks of my mother’s kitchen.) Useful, in any case, since otherwise Ricky boy would be tripping over the debris in the hall before he got to the nurse’s station. (I guess we’ll put his continued unclothed state down to disorientation, but if I looked out my door and saw that much of a hallway disaster, I think I’d find some shoes first. Yikes.)

The clock at the nurse’s station has also stopped. These are battery-run, guys, they don’t go off when the power does. Speaking of electronics, though – it’s 2010, right? Why doesn’t the nurse’s station have any computers? I mean, I got my first laptop in 2006 and I think we always had a family computer when I was growing up, so it’s not like this predates the computer era. Actually, that’s a point – in all of the places that the Merry Undead crew break into/crash at, I’m struggling to think of instances of computers, laptops, mobile phones, etc. Rick has an mp3 player at the start of season 4, when he’s in his farming phase, and Olivia in…season 6? still carries her long-dead mobile around, but aside from the CDC and actual hospital-related machinery, there’s a startling lack of technology. I dunno, it just seems odd. Like the lack of feral cats.

I know Rick wants to illuminate the situation (hah), but his first thought is RUMMAGE THROUGH SHIT TO FIND MATCHES. Like, seriously, open a drawer or something, there’s probably a flashlight in there somewhere? I suppose we couldn’t spend too much time on finding lighting resources, though, considering that would delay the DRAMATIC DISCOVERY of Rick’s first dead person.

On which point – what are the walker rules for nomming a corpse, and what are the rules for reanimation? If the only way to actually put down a walker is through the brain, why isn’t our eviscerated lady corpse in the hospital undead? Her head appears entirely intact, although we might be missing a wound on the far side. (Although jeez, given how many facial bites and tears we see throughout this series, including the little girl at the beginning of this episode, how has no one snacked on her delicious face??) A single bite will kill and turn you, and some people do manage to get an initial chomp and then remain unconsumed before turning, like Sophia and the little girl at the start of the episode. But is there a maximum limit of flesh that can be consumed before a person is thoroughly dead and won’t reanimate? A severed head sans body will reanimate, as we see later with Hershel and the Whisperers’ victims, so it seems like percentage of bodily consumption can’t factor in. Certainly bike lady later in this episode is missing her entire lower half without it having affected her walkerdom eternity. Yet we have people like hospital lady corpse and T-Dog in season 3 who get more or less entirely consumed without reanimating. And that’s without even talking about all of the dead who appear to have croaked in their cars without becoming undead despite the lack of a head wound. So where’s the boundary?

At least some of this we can probably attribute to early days inconsistencies, since most shows don’t dive in with all of the rules for new worlds and supernatural creatures laid out and set in stone, but the amount of consumption has always bothered me. From the other side, too, actually, because walkers appear to be wholly driven by a single purpose: consume. So when a walker has a nice juicy item in front of them with plenty of flesh left on it, why would they leave it behind to drift off after something else? Walkers are later shown to be drawn by light, by sound, by smell (operating on the suspension of disbelief that undead would retain any of the senses of sight, hearing, or smell, but never mind), but since the underlying drive remains to consume, why would light, sound, or smell be sufficient to draw them away from a meal directly in front of them? I could see it if, for instance, a corpse were being devoured by a whole bunch of walkers and so those who couldn’t easily get to the body went “welp fuck it, Imma go follow that gunshot I just heard,” or if a body has pretty well been picked to the bones, since then there’s not anything left to consume and the drive would push on to the next. But there are plenty of times over the course of the series when walkers abandon a perfectly delicious human with plenty of meat left on the bones in order to go chase something else. I’m not saying walkers are meant to be intelligent hunters or anything, since as Jenner shows us there’s just some sad little sparkles at the brainstem that are still operating, but if you boil it down to the most basic drive, walkers are driven to consume, and it makes little sense that they’d abandon something consumable in front of them that’s a sure thing to chase something else (I could see maybe abandoning an animal to chase a human, like dropping the pigs’ feet to chase after sirloin). But to leave something not completely eaten… Unless they get full? The human stomach can only contain so much at one time, so maybe there’s a default survival code that overrides the consumption drive to stop a walker eating if continuing to do so would explode the stomach. Although that doesn’t really make much sense, either, since any number of walkers are wandering around with their innards more or less exploded without it being a problem. Hmm. No real answers, there, other than that overriding logic of THE PLOT. I guess the only thing I can say with some confidence is that at least part of the walker digestive system seems to still operate, because when Rick and Daryl gut a walker to make sure it hadn’t eaten Sophia, not only is the woodchuck turned from fur and flesh into nasty black goo, the skull of the woodchuck has also been stripped clean. (Then again, I have difficulty envisioning how a walker manages to swallow an entire woodchuck skull, but that’s neither here nor there. Who’s up for woodchuck chilli??)

Anyway, back to Rick and his terrifying exploration of his new world of doom.

I have to laugh when I look at this disaster of a hospital. Did someone, in the last throes of the world ending, just take medical records and fling them everywhere? When is there ever that much paper floating around loose in a medical facility? Ye gods, Rick could learn confidential patient information! Nooooooo…

Ahem.

Like the episode’s opening scene of Rick working his way through the abandoned streets, silence is used to great effect from the time Rick wakes up through to his encounter with Morgan and Duane. The audience takes in everything along with Rick, unfettered by exposition. The silence, the dark, the emptiness, the dead – it all unfolds through Rick’s shocked and bewildered eyes. I mean, what would you do if you wandered down the hall and suddenly discovered a mostly devoured corpse? (I’d probably hurl. Ew.) Alas that so much of the series later gets bogged down by humans who never shut up. (Yes, Rick, I do mean you.)

Of course, in order to do that, the episode also, to quote CinemaSins, conveniently conveniences a bunch of its walkers. Where are they? Where they can’t hurt Rick before he knows what to do. Which is…kind of ridiculous. Logic be damned! I mean, if there’s one thing this show has been consistent about, it’s the inconsistency of its walkers.

Wait.

Man, I would not want to be walking across that floor barefoot. Ew. And ouch.

I’d be a terrible candidate for the apocalypse. I’m afraid of the dark.

I do like the background details of all the blood spattered on the walls. It’s more quiet filling in the blanks of what happened when Rick was in his coma – all that lovely show, don’t tell that later gets left by the wayside. BUT HE’S WALKING BAREFOOT THROUGH GLASS OH MY GOD PLEASE STOP AND FIND SOME SHOES AAAHHHHHHH.

PUT ON SOME DAMN SHOES.

DON’T DEAD OPEN INSIDE.

The fact that the doors are bound with a chain AND with a slat of wood just makes me laugh. I don’t think that wood’s going to do much if the chain breaks.

That’s a shockingly good manicure for a dead person. She might be stuck in a locked room for eternity but at least her nails look fab.

I know Rick is freaked out by the groaning and dead lady manicure and chained up door and blood all over the place, but charging into a pitch-black stairwell armed only with a fold of matches seems really stupid. This is perhaps the most egregious instance in this episode of convenient walker placement. The fact that Rick not only makes it down the stairs and outside without tripping and smashing his pretty face is one thing, but it’s really stunning that there are no walkers who got trapped between the stairwell doors. I guess maybe that was the military exit route so they cleared as they went (and…took the bodies with them, as well)? Then again, I’d rather rappel out a window using bedsheets than make my way through an endless stairwell of night, so…

I’m going to be *extremely* nitpicky here and wonder why Rick hasn’t noticed the smell. Between lady chewy and the not insubstantial blood puddle he walks by, you’d think there’d be at least a whiff of the smell of decomp, especially if the power and thus the aircon are out and humidity reigns supreme. Blood is a biological hazard, and it…is definitely not odourless, especially after it’s been sitting around for days. Rick does grimace when he first goes into the stairwell, implying he’s caught a whiff of the dead, but he doesn’t encounter anything going down the stairs that seems likely to have caused it (maybe the dead laid out that he encounters outside?). Scent’s an ongoing problem with this show, though; it crops up when it’s a useful narrative point, like smearing yourself with guts to escape detection or realising there’s an ocean of the dead nearby, but otherwise, not so much. Okay, yeah, maybe I can buy that after a while of living in close proximity you’d acclimate – humans are stunningly resilient – but given how quickly humans tend to get tetchy when in forced contact with disgusting smells, are you really telling me that Rick just…doesn’t notice? Or is his own “I’ve been in a coma for an indeterminate period of time” smell so bad that it overpowers the death smell? Yikes.

That said, the moments of tension when Rick’s match goes out and he’s left alone breathing in the dark of the stairwell are lovely. It carries the audience along with Rick’s fear and anxiety and confusion, knowing he knows something is hinky without actually knowing what’s happened and what’s going on, while as a viewer conversant with the horror genre you keep expecting something to happen, to lurch up out of the dark. That nothing does actually is a delightful defiance of expectations. And after a silence and darkness punctuated only by the dim, narrow light of a match and Rick’s harsh breathing, the overwhelming brightness of the outdoors combined with the sawing of the cicadas almost begs you to retreat back into the contained, comparative safety of the stairs rather than venturing out into the huge unknown of the world outside the hospital and its endless supply of the dead.

Shame that the hospital’s flickeringly dodgy power doesn’t include the EXIT sign. Aren’t those supposed to work even if nothing else does? Maybe it was crashed with whatever took out the clocks. (Hah.)

Every barefoot step Rick continues to take hurts. Like, there’s all kinds of shit on the ground, and I’m not just talking bits of wire and other stabby pieces of metal. There’s blood and guts – do you really want to be squishing that between your toes?? Also, I’ve let it go this far, but Rick is wearing his hospital gown backwards, and if he’s been in a coma he…really shouldn’t be wearing boxers (and should have been hooked up to a catheter, but I think watching Rick rip that out instead of pulling the IV from his hand might have been a bit too traumatising for the average viewer). So out here in the open air, with all the wrapped rows of the dead, we get our first obvious sign of decomp in the number of flies buzzing around, and some of the limbs look like they might be mottling from decomp (kind of hard to tell, though). I know I said I wasn’t going to get into the time problems, but I promise I’ll try to keep it to this paragraph. The fact that the hospital and town are both almost entirely deserted, as we’ll go on to see, certainly suggests a decent amount of time has passed, since it takes time for that many people to up and leave somewhere. (I’m really surprised that in this show they only ever seem to encounter major traffic pile-ups on freeways or similar; if the people in my town were trying to skedaddle, we’d all get stuck on the road outside my neighbourhood. Hell, until they put in roundabouts it backed up horrendously just for getting to the schools in the morning! You’re telling me everyone was able to get out of their neighbourhoods to get to the freeway in the first place? Bullshit.) The state of the dead half-lady Rick runs into outside also seems to support that, since she’s pretty decomposed (though weirdly looks more mummified than not, which is odd considering Georgia’s on the humid rather than the dry end of the heat spectrum). On the other hand, though, the state of decomp of the lady in the hospital hallway and the corpses outside the hospital point to not much time having passed; they’re still juicy, if you like. As the following episodes will go on to show via characters’ minimal clothing and copious amounts of sweat, Georgia is hot and humid, and I hate to tell you this, guys, but if you keel over in a climate like that, you decompose quickly. You bloat up and your skin slides right off, and it’s all extremely disgusting. But here there’s a stunning amount of intact left on these corpses considering, again, it’s Georgia. (Disclaimer: I am not a medical doctor, so my observations might not be medically valid. Then again, the very idea that dead people are wandering around eating people is … also not medically valid.) In any case, Rick should be walking through a soupy mess of liquefying human tissue seeping through the sheets wrapped around the dead (yum. One more reason to acquire footwear, mate). The bodies piled in the truck should be sliding over each other as decomposing human makes the sheets slippery. I suppose that’s a major flaw in zombie construction in this particular zompocalypse; it forgot to take account of actual decomposition in the specified climate. (The smell also ought to be enough to pretty well bowl Rick over, but again, everyone apparently has the opposite of super smell in this series, so we’ll let it slide). Of course, if corpses actually decayed like normal, they’d be rid of most of the zombies in no time.

There’s a weirdly small amount of damage that’s been done to this hospital, from what little we’re shown. The hospital scene in “TS-19” suggests that bombing of the hospital, or nearby, has commenced, but all we see is a relatively small chunk of building missing, rather oddly in the middle of a wall, a downed ambulance sign, and then a bit more horizontal damage behind the military encampment when Rick gets up the hill. You’d think they’d have kept bombing, not least to eradicate the piles of corpses, but unfortunately we never really get to see much of the early days and the military reaction; we get snippets about bombing Atlanta and see Shane and Lori watch as Atlanta’s struck, and when Daryl and Carol stalk Grady Memorial there’s at least one shot of the city where it’s clearly suffered aerial bombardment. But there’s really not a lot of engagement with the drastic measures taken to try to control the situation, just the idea that those existed. Fear the Walking Dead, from my understanding, doesn’t really do much to deal with this either, despite ostensibly aiming to initially tackle the very period of time that The Walking Dead skipped over. So that’s a shame.

The military encampment is odd. Surely you’d only bail on things like helicopters and Humvees if you absolutely had to, since otherwise they seem to me like the first thing you’d hop into as an escape route (and certainly in season 3, the Governor indicates that military playthings are highly prized). Sure, maybe your random joe couldn’t commandeer a helo, but surely joe schmo could yoink a Humvee. I mean, if I were fleeing a hospital and there were a whole military encampment hanging out in the back yard that no one was minding, I’d be inclined to hijack something and zoom away. Operation Save the Toes! If a herd had passed through, surely we’d see more damage to what remains (for instance, would that nice tent still be standing?). Points, though, for framing of Rick against the broken military might that both visually and metaphorically shows us how small he is. Okay, so I have to ask: how far away from hospital did Rick and his family live? Because he appears to walk for quite a while – with a bullet wound that’s still healing! – and their house looks like it’s firmly in a nice suburban neighbourhood. So did he walk several miles to dead half-lady and steal her bike, or did he literally just walk down the street? Maybe the unhappiness in the soles of his feet is just being overwhelmed by, well, everything. All I can say is that I ran away from home barefoot around age 8 or 9 and ended up with such bruised and blistered feet – after maybe twenty minutes of walking total – that I couldn’t go to school for several days because I couldn’t walk. And I wasn’t even recovering from a gunshot wound!

(Also, can we talk about that hospital wristlet. That sucker should have waaay more info on it. Really, if nothing else I think we can conclude that the hospital Rick was admitted to post-shooting spent all their money on giant rooms and then forgot about actually hospitalling. Do we blame that on Georgia, America, or bad TV writing?)

CORAAAL!!

Further proof of the rapid adaptation of the human species: Rick spots the bike and goes AH YES MINE, sort of clocking the half of a lady ten feet away without really being fussed; maybe an hour (?) into his re-entry into this waking nightmare of a world, he’s already become so numbed to dead bodies hanging about that it barely registers until she moves. And, mind you, while he’s seen plenty of dead people, and seen undead fingers poking through the crack between doors, this is the first undead person he’s actually seen. His reaction to just…flee is very much in line with his general “holy fuck okay moving on” attitude that we’ve seen thus far; each thing is weirder and worse than the last, layering up the horror as a surreal reality that’s made even more bizarre by the utter lack of any living people to ground him. While his collapse and “is this real?” moment at the Grimes household is, I think, a bit misplaced, it’s also really understandable because everything he’s seen is so far out of the normal realm of expectation that the only logical reaction is to question reality. He’s almost certainly both dehydrated and undernourished, on top of which he’s been utilising muscles that haven’t been used in some time; probably the most unrealistic aspect of his first hours after waking up is that he actually manages to get out of hospital and home so easily, rather than keeling over somewhere in the street and becoming Walker O’s (part of a balanced breakfast!). Although I feel like I would have hit the “wake up” whacking yourself in the head point long before getting home and realising my family wasn’t there. I think I’d be more likely to believe I’d walk through the door and my family would be out than to believe that all of the dead or the moving dead were real. Obviously the latter for Rick makes the fact his family isn’t home that much more surreal and distressing, because thus far he appears to have awoken to a world where there are no living people aside from himself, thus leading to the conclusion that if there are only the dead and himself, Lori and Carl must be dead – but I think I’d crack before getting to that point. (Though I sometimes wake up in the morning and literally can’t tell reality from what happened in my dreams, so who am I to judge?)

Weirdly as well, there’s very little in the Grimes household that tells me anything about any of the family. I know Lori and Carly frolicked off with Shane super fast when everything went to hell and took pictures and photo albums, but this house (as excellent as it is) looks very much like a set. There’s nothing really personal. It’s weird. Who are the Grimes, even? It reminds me of my ex-boyfriend’s flat. No pictures, no posters, no books (!!), nothing on the walls, no trinkets or files or any personal touches at all (please don’t be a serial killer eek). No wonder Carl settles into the apocalypse quickly and Lori has no personality other than being a disaster. They had practically no pre-pocalypse life other than “I’m Rick’s child” and “I’m Rick’s bitchy wife.”

As Rick walks back out of his empty house, you can see that the letterbox appears to be full of envelopes. Do you suppose Lori wrote a bunch of letters to people on the off-chance they’d get picked up after she and Carl left town with Shane, or do you think the post carried on even after everything else collapsed? (Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds… Nor zombies either, apparently. Now I really want a series of shorts following a postman as she strives to deliver every letter she can (well, not the bills, obvs) even as the world continues to collapse around her head.)

Okay, so if you get home and discover your family is not there, and everything is topsy turvy and haywire and omg what the hell is even happening – who just goes and plonks outside to think? Surely you’d think “hmm, okay, maybe I should check the neighbours”?

Are overhead fans on the porch a southern thing? I can’t imagine having one here in the Pacific Northwest.

Can we talk again about how absurdly lucky Rick is when it comes to the existence of walkers in this town? The only ones in the hospital are literally chained behind doors with an explicit warning to piss off. The only one he encounters on his journey from hospital to home has no legs, and thus poses minimal threat to a man able to walk (or cycle, as the case may be). The first mobile walker he sees is in the distance and hasn’t noticed him yet, and before he has a chance to shout out and put himself in danger, Morgan and Duane ex machina themselves into position to not only take out the walker but also provide medical support. (I guess Rick’s just been running on…adrenaline? And yes, I know Rick also takes a shovel to the face – we’ll ignore the fact that there’s no apparent lasting damage from a shovel to the face, good grief – but that’s a far cry from the fate of having his flesh ripped from his bones before he even knew what walkers were. Boy, would that suck.) A whole bevy of walkers turn up that evening, ostensibly because Morgan had fired a gun, but then they all vanish by morning aside from a single walker still skulking around for the convenience of whacking practice. (I wonder what would have happened if the single walker still hanging around had been Morgan’s wife. Somehow I doubt he’d have been as willing for Rick to practise his new world survival skills on her.) Quite aside from his dubious hospital survival, Rick Grimes should be dead. I really wish this could be attributed to his cop training (but we know that shit is dubious as fuck), but unfortunately he’s just a dude wandering aimlessly who gets super lucky. Sigh.

(I can’t be the only one who looks at the walker Rick sees and thinks he must be either a mortician or a goth kid. That much black? When it’s apparently warm enough in Georgia that Rick is totally fine in your not-standard-issue hospital gown and boxers? Also, thanks camera for keeping the walker blurred out so we can’t tell he’s dead (did you save on makeup?), but in retrospect it kind of makes you wonder if Rick has eye problems. Now there’s a real problem in the apocalypse.)

Two things about Duane’s first appearance. First, he was inches away from Rick; how did he get enough room to swing a shovel? Second, wtf is Duane doing shrieking for his dad? He’s been living in this world for at least a month and his mum’s a zom: he has to know that walkers are drawn to noise, yet he’s yelping out like a wounded dog here. Apocalypse better, kiddo.

Rather hilariously, it’s when Rick sees Morgan casually shoot the walker through the head that he starts to panic. OMG HE KILLED A DUDE. I feel like with everything Rick’s seen so far he ought not to jump so quickly to the assumption that Morgan killed another living dude. Then again, he did just get whacked in the face with a shovel and should probably have a concussion, so…

Convenient that Rick passes out when Morgan threatens to kill him if he doesn’t answer, since given his current state I’m not sure he could have done coherently. Note to self: when faced with difficult or awkward questions, keel over. It’ll give you time to think.

The first conversation Rick and Morgan have when Rick first wakes up tied to the bed raises far too many questions related to how long Rick’s been in hospital and how bad his wound is. I…am not going to spend much time on this, because it’s a never-ending chase with no real answers. This is the scene that rips us out of the glorious silent exploration of Rick’s new apocalyptic world and thrusts us into exposition, which at least in this case has a reason given Rick’s total ignorance of the current state of the world – but it’s still exposition.

Anyway, briefly – didn’t Rick get hit from behind, under the armpit? Shouldn’t Morgan have had to change two dressings? But there’s only one, and moreover, Rick’s original bandaging didn’t come close to covering where the original gunshot entry wound was. Magical moving bullets! Mystery wounds! Exposition! Hurray!

Ugh, reasons never to work on The Walking Dead: you have to film in Georgia, and it’s hot and disgusting and everyone sweats, even at night. Blech. Thanks but no.

Morgan’s stupid use of the gun to kill the walker provides helpful exposition, but his reason for why he did it – “it all happened so fast, I didn’t think” – doesn’t make much sense. It was one walker, with no others anywhere in the apparent vicinity, and while his son had potentially whacked down another walker, there wasn’t exactly an urgent need to use the gun. And while I’m not sure that Rick would be able to articulate the idea that what Morgan killed was something other than a living human being, the fact that he’s so insistent that it must have been a man speaks to his desperation to cling to anything resembling normalcy, while unfortunately ignoring his experience since waking up in the hospital. What do you do when you don’t have the vocabulary to articulate what you’ve seen?

As an aside, Rick chained up to the headboard wearing his boxers and hospital gown kiiinda looks like he’s ready for someone’s doctor dom fantasy playtime fetish. Good thing Morgan’s not into that, right?

There’s something deliciously hilarious about Morgan warning/threatening Rick with his tiny little knife when the backdrop is such delightfully mundane floral pillowcases. Laura Ashley does not approve!!!

Why couldn’t Morgan have found Rick a snuggie? Or, I don’t know, slippers? Or socks? Or an actual bathrobe? He’s stuck with blankie chic.

I do love that shot though.

Sidebar, your honour, I have a digression to indulge.

Morgan’s “friend, you need glasses” is kind of hilarious given that now they’re into the apocalypse, sucks to be you if you have non-perfect sight or any medical problems requiring medication or other intervention. There’s a surprising lack of your average American with lots of health problems on TWD, perhaps in part as commentary that many of those individuals would have stood no chance against the relentless people-eating horde. While the introduction of Connie offers a welcome insight into how someone with a disability is able to survive in an apocalyptic situation, the show on the whole oddly glosses over that whole issue. America is not a healthy country (we weren’t pre-Covid and we’re certainly not doing well lately). Nearly half of Americans take prescription drugs, according to a survey from the National Center Health Statistics. Some of these are vital, in that without them the person would die sooner rather than later; others treat conditions that won’t kill you immediately if untreated, but will kill you eventually or will cause significant problems as time goes on; and still others treat conditions that, while usually debilitating, you can usually survive and be at least vaguely functional. Some medications can be substituted by herbal remedies (digitalis, marshmallow root), but many can’t. I have chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia, and deal with chronic pain and migraines; I take daily meds to counter both pain and migraine, as well as an assortment of supplements (and hayfever tablets, oh god) that I *can* function without, but which to do so would seriously suck. Where are these people in the apocalypse? There are so many people with disabilities or on medication who would be able to keep functioning as potentially beneficial partners in the post-apo world. Where are they? And where are the characters grappling with the choice of whether to sacrifice themselves or let their family and friends deal with an ongoing and worsening condition? The only times we really encounter that sort of thing are Milton’s test subject Michael Coleman, who ultimately dies of prostate cancer, the vatos’ little senior citizen safe haven, and Lilly and Tara’s father, all of whom are elderly. We only ever get a little blip of each of those instances, as well, in what appear to be relatively comfortable and secure locations, so we really don’t get a sense of how their frailties or differing abilities play into the survival of those around them. Hershel’s worst health problem was the leg amputated post-walker bite, and that ultimately was irrelevant to how he lived and died. I might be missing someone – I probably am – but it’s an oddity, one that I suppose arises out of both a narrative need – the elderly and disabled and sick are often viewed as less capable and thus less interesting except as an emotional zinger – and a practical in-world need that wants to focus on the strongest and most active rather than devoting time to people who’ve not only had to adapt emotionally but also physically and psychologically. I’ve got a main character in a post-apo situation who’s not only hauling herself through cities and forests with a bad lower back and weak hip and reliance on a cane but who also is unquestionably the leader of her group, because while her disability is not ideal in this post-civilised world, it doesn’t negate her value. The apocalypse doesn’t eradicate every non-fit, medicated adult, and leaving them out or using them as plot conveniences isn’t ideal. To get back to Morgan’s glasses comment – a quick google search suggests that around 61 percent of the population is reported to wear reading or visual aids at least occasionally. This probably isn’t nearly as many once you wipe out the need for reading glasses among the older population (and, you know, people in their 30s like me… *sob*), but nevertheless there’s a significant portion of the population who can’t see very well without glasses (and let me tell you, good luck getting contacts during the apocalypse). My sister is pretty well blind as a bat without glasses and has been since she was in middle school. Imagine how differently things might have played out if Carl’s vision had been super shitty.

Sidebar complete.

I like the all-male hand-holding over the meal prayer. There’s something sweet about it, a clinging to old habits even in chaos.

It’s interesting that Morgan asks Rick if he even knows what’s going on, because by this point it must be at least a month into apocalypse (per Morgan’s line later in the episode that the gas mains have been down a month or so) – what are the odds you’d run into a random person so utterly clueless a whole month in? I guess maybe the hospital gown, boxers, and bare feet clued him in.

I’ve been thinking this all episode: Rick’s beard is beautifully trimmed for a dude who’s been in a coma.

Rick’s response to Morgan’s “yep, the undead, they’ll try to eat you” line is so blasé it’s funny. Like he’s just so overwhelmed by everything of the day that zombie cannibals or whatever are hardly worth getting fussed over. He jumps right from sort of reacting “oh dead people” to going “so they’re out there? Okey-day then”. Meanwhile, Morgan’s cool air comment about drawing zoms never occurs again, and there’s such a time gap between the firing of the gun and the walkers skulking around outside the house that it’s odd they’re still hanging around. Actually, you see this too at the end of season 2, when the herd of walkers wanders out of Atlanta and eventually ends up on Hershel’s farm – they turn when they hear the gunshot, but how good are their powers of perception? Like, they’re attracted to sound – fine, whatever, I can buy that, fine – but a gunshot, for instance, is a single instance of noise that then dies away. If you’re not in the immediate vicinity, as a walker, how do you continue knowing where to go? The show suggests that when zoms are drawn by noise it’s like a magnet, pulling them in unerringly to the source of the sound, but how do they continue to know which is the right direction for ages after the sound has ceased? It’s not like they have a compass or GPS.

Aww, we’re still early enough in the apocalypse that car alarms still work.

Morgan’s wife makes me sad in a lot of ways. Obviously she’s undead and roaming around looking for her next snack and her son and husband love and miss her and find her undead state to be traumatic, but it’s not that specifically so much as the consequences down the line. Morgan and Duane stayed in the same house where Mama Morgan died, meaning they’re regularly within eyeshot, thus inflicting pain and anguish, or suffering the threat thereof, long after her actual death. (Yes, of course, they had a secure and safe base in the house and didn’t want to move, but still.) Morgan couldn’t kill his wife when she dies, the first time around (although that makes me wonder at what point she was booted outside, considering she died in the house; did they chuck her dead body out the front door before she turned, or wait until she was ambulatory and forcibly eject her?). This – I guess you could call it weakness – proves tragic. When Rick gives him a rifle, he sets out deliberately to kill her and still can’t. And then, because Morgan repeatedly failed to put her down, she ultimately causes the death of Duane – and Morgan takes the blame, flipping into a state of madness that operates until he meets the cheesemaker. (I’ll come back to Morgan in later posts. I have *thoughts* about him as both killer and pacifist.)

How do you grieve loss or try to move on if you can’t actually lay the dead to rest? It’s a question that I don’t think gets explored enough in the show, because most of the time everyone is so concerned with pressing on and surviving that grieving is set aside. I’m not going to go into this here, because there’s ample opportunity to do so in later episodes without needing to jump seasons ahead.

Early days: walkers attempting to work doorknobs are a thing, rather than just pawing at the door.

Man, I miss having a bat. I have a wok and a kitchen knife to protect against the undead these days…and assorted high heels, should it come to that. (Oh god the humanity. My shoes would be ruined!!)

There’s something adorable about Rick wearing a damn headshield mask as he waltzes out the door in the morning with his wooden baseball bat and WHITE T-SHIRT to whack the undead dude on the front walk to death. Where did the headshield mask come from? Did the Drakes just happen to have one in the back closet in case of a pandemic? (*sad hollow 2020 laughter*) In any case, it’s a laughable contrast with rest of the show; by the end of the season, no one gives a shit about facial protection or protecting the skin. Potential backsplatter? Eh, give it here, I bathe in zomgoo for the health benefits daily.

Lori appears to keep a glass jar of pinecones on a shelf. She also apparently took framed photos from the wall in addition to the photo albums. At least one photo album makes an appearance in this season, but unless Morgan repurposed the empty frames for defensive purposes, there’s no indication ever of what Lori did with those framed photos. (Sadly, the photo album is lost when they flee Hershel’s farm. One assumes, anyway, since Carl later gets hold of a single photo for Judith because there are no others.)

Atlanta as a safe haven/refugee centre is…well, it’s a plot point to get Rick where he needs to go. Realistically, you don’t want to go into an urban centre when there’s a pandemic. In America, Covid is now hitting rural areas with force, but pretty much all of the early outbreaks and spread were in urban areas. And that’s without the added complication of the dead getting back up again! Cities obviously have more resources, but… I dunno. Although, to be fair, unlike Covid or the flu or the common head cold, zombieism appears only to transmit through bites (since we don’t yet know that everyone is infected!), like rabies, rather than being so contagious that if someone breathes on you, you’re sick. But even then – even accepting that people think that it’s passed solely through bites and not any other way – being bitten doesn’t necessarily mean instant death (Carl is perhaps the most obvious example of this, I think, but Jim and Deanna both also survive for a time after being chomped), so you could conceivably be bitten in a non-obvious area (your side, for instance), waltz into a populated area with only minor symptoms or hop on a plane and then be released into the population of another country, only to then actually die and start to nom people. Eh.

How many sets of keys do the Grimeses have??

I’d suck in the apocalypse because without showers I’d be so sad.

Ah, bonding is always best when undertaken half-naked and wrapped in a pristine white towel.

Duane is adorable. Why couldn’t we get a show following Duane and his sass?

This episode is almost entirely about following Rick in his discovery and acceptance of this new, batshit life, but in some ways I wish we’d got a snippet of flashback with Morgan and Duane and Lady Morgan. It wouldn’t really have fit into the episode, but I can dream.

Rick showers and puts his uniform on rather than civvies. The implication here is that the uniform retains a certain power – protect and serve – so anyone living who sees him would know that here’s a person whose job is to help. Contrasts sharply with the police officer in the second episode of Fear the Walking Dead who’s stockpiling water and clearly has already shifted over to an every-man-for-himself mindset. In light of America’s current epidemic of problematic police officers, it’s interesting to contemplate differences had TWD first aired in 2020. Or had it aired, for instance, in the Pacific Northwest or Northeast, which generally tend to have a more left-skewing and police-condemning attitude.

I mentioned guns briefly earlier, but seasons 1 and 2 have this cute “must respect guns” thread underlying any use of a firearm. Here Duane wants to learn to shoot, but both Morgan and Rick make sure to emphasise that he has to respect the weapon – “Yeah, it’s not a toy, son, when you pull the trigger you gotta mean it.” Season 2 has Shane (and Andrea) flouncing about articulating THOUGHTS about gun ownership and use and training. After that? Welp, fuck it. You get a gun! And you get a gun! And you get a gun! To be clear, I do think if you’re going to handle a gun you should know how to do so properly and safely, but in the context of the Walking Dead it’s an early seasons thing that’s totally dropped by season 3 as the zompocalypse marches on and nobody got time for that shit anymore. (I’ll get around to discussing the shooting practice in season 2 later…)

I don’t know if it’s just the camera angles, but when Rick remarks that a lot of the armoury is gone, it seems like a massive understatement – from what we see, almost all of the guns are gone. Which might be a prop issue (although given the number of guns floating around on this show you wouldn’t think that would be a problem), but does sort of make season 3’s trip to the ol’ hometown with Michonne and Carl kind of funny given that all the guns are gone if there were never really any left to begin with. (And, thinking about it, when Rick is trying to justify going back into Atlanta to get Merle, he comments that he cleaned out the armoury, which makes it even odder that Rick decides to go back for weapons against the Governor et al.

“Conserve your ammo. It goes faster than you think, especially at target practice.” Unless you’re in season 2 on Hershel’s farm, in which case everyone has so much ammo that they’ll never run out.

I know Rick is still in early days of understanding the apocalypse, but it’s still sweet, and ridiculous, that he gives Morgan a radio with the expectation they’d continue chatting and catch up with each other. It also highlights Morgan’s downfall: the unwillingness to get involved in others’ business. He could go with Rick and probably be safer, not least because there’s two grown men to protect one boy, but he instead waits – ostensibly to up his and Duane’s shooting proficiency, but ultimately we see that it’s very much about the unfinished business with his wife.

As an aside, it seems the police station was useful for (1) hot showers and (2) guns and ammo. I’ve never been in a police station, but weirdly I’d have thought they’d have supplies stashed away. Rick and co. didn’t even have a gander at what might be there. But again, early days, I suppose!

RIP Leon Basset.

I love how Morgan hammers the shit out of the wood he’s using to barricade the door. I guess the zoms are conveniently faffing about elsewhere. Especially funny given that he then goes upstairs to snipe walkers, none of whom seem to have noticed the hammering. Are hammers just soundproof??

Christ Morgan’s wife is beautiful.

There’s something…poignant about Rick tracking down the first living dead person he ever knew in order to put her to rest. It’s the same kind of early apocalypse care that we see in “Guts,” when he stops to look through the walker’s wallet so they know the life of the undead man they’ve killed. His sorrow and tendency towards mercy are both here clearly indicated and provide a sharp contrast with the man he becomes. The mercy and drive to do what’s right is what results in him feeling he has to go back to Atlanta to get Merle, what makes him so adamant that they don’t kill the living and should strive to go where there might be a cure, what drives him to hop off the road and go after Sophia and to keep optimistically searching for her. There’s a sweet innocence there that still exists because he came to the zompocalypse after the fact and still retains a strong need to do what’s right that time living in zombieland will beat out of him. The parallelism in this section of the episode, which switches between Rick and Morgan’s actions after leaving the police station, also highlights the difference between having to kill someone you love vs. killing someone you don’t know (or, rather, have no personal attachment to; Rick kills Leon Basset with few qualms, but also frames it as mercy).

Rural Georgia looks hot. And sticky. Thank God my sister didn’t end up moving to the south.

Are the cracks in the windshield and the dirty appearance of the glass supposed to be the result of the apocalypse, or just their police department being a bit short on funds? (Also, it’s Rick’s face in a cracked mirror! Premonitions of mad Rick??) At least Rick’s got his windows rolled up like a sensible person.

Initial observations of Camp Outside Atlanta:

Dale is wearing glasses that I *think* never appear again.

Amy is carrying an armful of kind of hilariously long twigs.

WHY IS AMY WEARING WHITE TROUSERS IN THE APOCALYPSE THIS IS A TERRIBLE DECISION.

Who on earth is on watch on the RV? From a distance it looks, frame-wise, like either Shane or Daryl, but Shane makes his appearance to the side and Daryl is off on a hunt, so who’s this? Actually, in general, it’s kind of amusing that there’s a whole slew of other people in this camp (mostly older/heavier people, based on visibility) that are just sort of vaguely there until the walker attack. It’s actually a shame, really that they didn’t do anything other than plonk some irrelevant extras in the background; it means that when they all die, it means pretty much nothing as a viewer. (I’ll come back to this.)

Shane has great hair. Shame he shaves it off later…

It’s difficult to see when you’ve watched the episode multiple times, but we don’t know what either Lori or Carl look like before they appear in the quarry group receiving Rick’s radio call – we only actually realise who they are when Rick flips down his visor. And, actually, despite what I said above, Lori’s first appearance is not that bad. She observes that there are others – Shane sort of dismisses it with “oh well we knew that.” And then she says that they ought to put up warning signs on Highway 85 to warn people away from the city. Which is smart. Yes, it’s potentially dangerous, but as we’ll go on to learn, they’ve sent people to Atlanta with no previous problem, on top of which the road into town is absolutely empty – Glenn’s exit from Atlanta on the same road Rick rode in on tells us that the road Lori is talking about here is the same road Glenn and Rick have been in and out on. And this is the first time that Shane puts forward an argument that’s just plain wrong. He says they’ve had no time. Okay, fair enough – but they have a group of five literally in Atlanta as they speak. And based on Glenn’s exit path on the way back to the quarry, that group of five followed the same route in. Setting aside the question of why the hell their scavenging team apparently couldn’t stop along the road to place a “Stay Away, Walkers Ahead” sign, Shane’s argument is that they can’t spare the time to place the sign, because it’s “a luxury we can’t afford.” This makes no sense. As we’ll go on to see, this isn’t the first time someone from their group has gone into Atlanta (although it turns out that Glenn, their “go to town” man, has previously only gone himself, without anyone else). Everyone else up by the quarry is basically just fucking around doing nothing. The fact of the matter is that putting up a sign to warn people away from the city isn’t a luxury, but rather a helpful, logical, and overwhelmingly safe thing to do. Shane’s objection comes, in the first instance, from a man reluctant to relinquish control; it’s clear that Shane is viewed as a decision maker with practical knowledge the other survivors lack, and as a result of that knowledge is viewed as a leader. It’s an important if subtle moment in which Shane is established as the leader of the camp, a position that he then unwillingly gets shoved out of when Rick turns up. It is interesting, though, that here Lori is gung-ho about leaving their mountain and going down to put up a sign, while she later adamantly vetoes her husband going back to Atlanta. Shane’s argument is that no one goes anywhere alone, but given later events, it seems that Shane’s objection is not that someone wants to go warn people away from Atlanta, or that they want to risk Atlanta itself, as much as it is his desire to not let Lori be in danger. And Lori’s frustration at Shane’s decree is obvious – and yet she relents and gives in once kisses are to be had. Shane following Lori to verbally whack her for even thinking of putting herself in danger just points up Shane’s chauvinism. NOT LEAST BECAUSE, OH MY GOD, HE CALLS HER GIRL. SHE’S A WOMAN, YOU TWAT. If the argument had been made that Lori shouldn’t go because she has a son, and she shouldn’t risk him being an orphan – that I could understand. But Carl is so side-lined here that he’s really just a reason to make Shane and Lori stop kissing. Sigh.

God I wish Lori would have socked Shane in the eye. He does have nice hair, though.

Also, those are some *really* nice giant tents. Although my best friend’s adventures have made clear to me that I have unrealistically small expectations about tents.

I’m a little concerned about the condition of the windows of Rick’s cop car. They’re…disgusting. The driver’s side front and back windows look equally awful – I guess it’s good the apocalypse happened, because good luck seeing traffic out those windows. His windshield doesn’t look much better. Is over-enthusiastic pollen a thing in Georgia??

So, about the dead couple whose farm Rick encounters/steals a horse from. They’re both dead, woe, sadness, etc. What I’m fascinated about is that dude took the time to shoot his wife, and then decided to write a message IN HER BLOOD on the damn wall. I mean, okay, you wanted absolution for killing your wife and being about to kill yourself. But you kill your wife and then use her blood to write on the wall??

Signs that Rick is still in early days acceptance: he doesn’t enter the house with two clearly dead people (and thus likely no walkers) and then has a sit on a bench, throws up, and then goes in search of alternative transportation.

…that poor horse.

Is horse-taming a southern thing? I feel like I’d be terrified enough of the giant heavy horse to…not approach it.

Iconic shot!

It’s stunning that Rick has encountered zero walkers aside from the little girl. Works with the need for the story to move along, but is silly in terms of later walker distribution (ignoring season 2, which is its own special disaster).

Is everything flat in Georgia? Legitimate question. The extent of my knowledge of Georgia is a flight transfer through Atlanta. (Atlanta airport employees are all super nice, though.)

There’s something about the two zomdudes hanging out on a bus that cracks me up. How do walkers decide to just park it somewhere? “Ah yes, I recognise this bus, I’ve taken it to work every day for ten years. Definitely the best place to spend eternity.” It’s also odd but entertaining that the two dudes on the bus are repeatedly seen once Rick is in the horde and then in the tank. Why these two? Yeah, they’re the first Atlanta walkers he passed by, but they’re not exactly presented as special or important enough to appear repeatedly. Rick pops out of the top of the tank and whacks the one across the face, and the other skulks around the base of the tank and makes eye contact.

One of the weirdest and most uncomfortable moments in this episode, for me, is the two crows nomming the dead military officer. Caw caw! There’s a mild horror at the thought of ever being carrion. Though I guess everyone is just food for something else…

I can forgive Rick for a number of odd decisions based on the fact that he’s really only been awake for, what, two days? Maybe three? He’s still adapting to the new world, learning its rules, etc. But he rides a damn horse into a major city and is just generally not concerned. He comments to the horse when they pass the bus with the two walkers that it’s no big deal, they can outrun them – and yet somehow doesn’t think ahead about the existence of the dead in a major city. I guess it can sort of be attributed to the fact that he’s encountered remarkably few dead, plus in his brain Atlanta and its refugee centres are the answer to everything. He just hasn’t actually thought about it.

And, again, I’m stunned at the amount of abandoned military equipment. I guess the moral of the story is “don’t trust the military, don’t trust the government, they can do fuckall to help you.”

So Rick sees a helicopter. When he meets the others after Glenn rescued him, they ridicule the idea that helicopters still exist. Which brings up two instances. Firstly, beginning of season 3, when Andrea and Michonne witness a helicopter crash with military dudes who’ve got others attached to them. Secondly, the helicopter that rescues Rick and has apparently set up Rick Grimes’s future films. I just wish I knew where this particular helicopter was from and where it was going.

For a cop, even one with minimal experience with the world as it is now, Rick is an idiot. He lunges forward as stupidly as he went forward alone in his confrontation with the idiot car guys. Surely you should be thinking ahead? He’s in relatively unknown territory in a relatively new world. I’m not saying he should have anticipated a horde of dead people, but you’d think he’d exercise as least some caution, especially when his nearby décor indicates that the damn military was swamped with the enemy, such that they fucked off elsewhere. But maybe it’s just me.

Ooh, look, an extra drinking water.

I like that the makeup artists decay the walkers more each season. Season 1, most of them are sort of “hai I’m a regular human, I just have some dramatic injuries and some zombie eyes.” They look like people who are mostly dead but haven’t started to decompose. (I’d never be hired as a walker – the longer the show goes, the more they need skinny people so the makeup and prosthetics aren’t so obvious…and I am not skinny.)

That poor horse…

Yet again, Rick seriously lucks out. We see him multiple times with “omg dead people” face, with walkers just sort of lurking/dancing in place because they can’t lunge in or he’d be dead. And then there’s conveniently a tank above him. I’ve never been able to decide whether Rick going “Lori, Carl, I’m sorry” and then putting his gun to his head is a genuine “Oh no, I’m about to die” or if he’d realised the hatch was above him and so it was a “welp if I die, I love you.”

Men have huge feet. Yeek.

It’s stunning how long Rick’s in the tank with a zombot before said zombot wakes up and attempts a menacing growl. Not least because Rick’s so overwhelmed at having been upwardly mobile that he completely fails to take in his surroundings. (Although, as we’ve seen, Rick has never been great at checking his surroundings. Dude should be walkerbait by now.)

Oh no, a walker. Haaalp.

I do appreciate that Rick suffered auditory pain from firing a gun in an enclosed metal space. I also find it funny that one of the buszoms comes into his eyesight, like for some reason he's important.

“Hey, you. Dumbass.” Glenn is fucking amazing and iconic. I wish he'd been the main of this show. No offense to Andrew Lincoln, of course, but Steven Yeun is great, and Glenn's development from a kid into an adult is just lovely.

Anywho, that marks the end of "Days Gone Bye." Good in so many ways, eh in so many others. What's not to love?

love  em

#scribbles and snark #the walking dead #twd #walking dead #review #s1e1 #days gone bye #rick grimes #glenn rhee #andrew lincoln #steven yeun #zombies #walkers #walkerbait #walker bait #zoms #shane walsh #welcome to the apocalypse #hope you enjoy your stay #unfortunately hospitality has been eaten #so good luck filing any complaints #2020 #apocalypse #apocalyptic #apocalyptic fiction #dystopia #dystopian #post-apocalypse #post-apocalyptic #post-apo

[dotthings]

Well that flayed my emotions as much as I hoped and in some encouraging ways YES PAIN WITH PURPOSE THANK YOU. There’s a lot here, as is usual with Bobo eps and I’m going to have to take this one at a time especially since I really really need to break down what happened with Dean and Cas in this ep, at length. Yep I am going to go on a bit about Dean and Cas. As you do.

I’ve posted quite a bit of meta about how the rift was a combination of things. It’s years of unaddressed issues. Dean’s abandonment issues vs Cas’s tendency to be taken away, or die, or leave. Years of that. Then on top of it, when Cas couldn’t stand with Dean about Jack, and when he kept some crucial information from Dean that he shouldn’t have due to Jack. Let me restate something I’ve said before: Dean wasn’t wrong to express his hurt and anger. He loves Cas, and Cas is imperfect. No Cas isn’t always the screw up and Dean I already knew regretted that and didn’t believe that (see? I told you) nor does Dean ever want Cas dead. But Cas is imperfect and Cas has hurt Dean, as Dean has hurt Cas. Then there’s Cas’s fears about not being needed/wanted, his doubts about his place in this family, and in Dean’s heart vs. the complicated mess that is involved in being adopted into the Winchester clan as deeply as Cas was. So their insecurities have been their own worst enemies for years, and then the Jack and Mary thing happened. And then ON TOP OF ALL THAT, Chuck and Dean’s wondering what’s real what isn’t. I was pretty sure at least some of that might make it overtly into the prayer. But no none of that.

While I think it is definitely good that Dean expressed himself so openly and did it in a prayer he definitely had reasons to believe Cas would hear and it is really really good Cas HEARD HIM OH MY GOD THANK YOU CAS HEARD ALL THAT. It’s also not such good news that what comes out here is that this is all about Dean’s anger issues and he “can’t stop it.” And I’m not deciding here whether this is authorial eye or Dean’s. It certainly makes sense that Dean would pull guilt onto himself (rather than authorial blaming Dean). But Dean pulling all the guilt into himself, crying and apologizing and there being very little in the ep to address the other side of this--the Cas pov, and how Cas has hurt Dean--is just more cyclical unhealthiness.

Maybe this prayer was cathartic. Maybe this will help Dean going forward, letting go of that anger, that guilt. 

So that dynamic therefore is actually really unhealthy. Lashing out at your best friend, who you love, that severely because you just can’t help it when a crisis happens and the pressure is on, even if said best friend hurt you? It’s not a problem that Dean expressed his hurt and anger, it’s that he went too far. And he couldn’t help it. And it wasn’t Chuck existential crisis or even about Mary, it’s just that when under pressure Dean lashes out at those he loves and can’t stop it. While that is a valid issue...that kind of takes the entire burden and puts it onto Dean. Full stop. It’s all Dean’s fault. Dean, how dare you get angry and hurt when you best friend does stuff that actually...hurts you. This is, IMO, canon putting the kind of pressure on Dean that fandom does. Only express positive feelings, Dean, otherwise shut up. Regardless of intent, that’s kind of what this scene validated.

So on top of years of issues Dean and Cas haven’t dealt with, chronic issues, about each other. On top of reasons here Dean might think the bond was manufactured by Chuck, but all right, that last point doesn’t seem to be presenting itself unless I reach pretty down deep into subtext. Maybe we can say it’s fueling Dean’s anxieties and made everything worse, ramped everything up.

But I think given how this unfolded, Dean and Cas having some time apart isn’t a bad idea. That this turned out to actually be “Dean lashes out when he’s panicked and he can’t stop himself” and hurt Cas so much with it is worrying and I get it’s supposed to be worrying. But I’m not exactly vomiting rainbows. I  WANT THEM TO FIX IT.  I’m incredibly uncomfortable with how the story (whether authorial view or not) places it all on Dean. 

This is, frankly, going to feed the Dean hate and I’m just so tired of it, it’s unfair, it’s a twisted stanning view of the character, it lacks empathy, and I’m sorry that this episode did something that validated people who literally needed Dean LITERALLY ON HIS KEES CRYING AND APOLOGIZING before they might believe Dean isn’t an uncaring asshole. Some of us didn’t need that to know, while it is good that Dean said what was deepest in his heart. Yet there’s still going to be stans who keep bashing him and saying he doesn’t care about Cas. I really wish they would just stop and they never will so I will ignore it best I can.

After what I just witnesses in this ep, I am beyond FLOORED if there would be ANYONE LEFT IN THIS FANDOM WHO COULD THINK THAT. I get thinking they need couples therapy or maybe they need space. I’m thinking it. But to actually keep flogging the idea that Dean doesn’t care about Cas, that was already egregious before this ep, now it’s REALLY really egregious to keep flogging that.

So I’m uneasy, for what this means for Dean and Cas--not that they can’t or won’t fix this. OBVIOUSLY THEY WILL FIX THIS. They want to fix this. The arc isn’t over--and for what it means for Dean.

On the one hand, I’m glad to see things dig so deeply into Dean’s issues. Because it’s not Dean hate to say, yeah he’s got some anger issues and needs to examine that. But on the other hand, Dean crying and apologizing on his knees is NOT THE FIX FOR THE RELATIONSHIP. Because there’s unaddressed stuff from Cas’s side. And I’m sure a lot of people are going to breeze right by that. Because in this fandom you have to choose Dean or Cas, and one or the other is being dragged as being an uncaring assholes. 

The good news, this ep was exactly what I thought and hoped it would be for Dean and Cas otherwise, in terms of getting them past that early season freeze. 

Oh that revisiting of Purgatory was effing beautiful, structurally and emotionally. Cas refused to split up this time. Cas waited at the portal. Cas went through the portal with Dean. There is healing in this ep, they went through a similar situation only with a different outcome. Cas isn’t voluntarily staying in Purgatory to wear a hair shirt this time. This time, Cas didn’t run off and leave Dean just to protect Dean, they only got separated after they were overpowered. Cas waited and waited by that portal and Dean looked and looked. That was no really, that was beautiful (whatever issues I have about the prayer itself).

This was the thaw. This was the beginning of the next phase for Dean and Cas, and no it’s not intended as a fix. The door’s been opened, the ice has broken, the walls have crumbled, so that they can fix it and hopefully to an even better, stronger relationship that all they’ve been before, which is really strong already but damn they have so many issues. While Dean and Cas have mostly been a comforting relationship for me on SPN (health for relative values of healthy) and it is mostly a positive relationship...yeah. Issues. 

JFC I just really hope Cas is going to get to voice how he feels about hurting Dean as he has and it does an incredible disservice to the characters and their story to skip over that, not just because I’m defensive of Dean, but for Cas’s sake, for the sake of his character and pov. I feel like Cas’s pov is incomplete. He’s not getting to express himself the way I really really hope he will and I think he needs to. Hell, can I have Cas on his knees in tears pouring his heart out about Dean, it wouldn’t be a prayer or actual tears probably, since he’s an angel, but give me something.

Howe even did things get to the point where it’s Dean carrying most of the Destiel and expressing most of the feelings and bleeding out emotionally again and again in canon and yet so many people act like CAS is the one doing all the pining, as if Dean is the uncaring asshole, while we have such gaps in Cas expressing his pov on Dean. It’s absolutely WILD. It’s beyond wild. 

The other good news is despite my discomfort with the speech, I am reeling a bit at just how expressive it was. I do think as the one who said the harsh things, Dean would be the one who needed to take the first sledgehammer to the ice wall and he did it. It’s not that I agree all the blame is on him. But yes Dean opened the door and that’s a good thing. Dean falling to his knees, weeping because he’s scared he is losing his best friend again. To PURGATORY AGAIN NO LESS *screaming internally* and with all the times since he’s lost Cas. It wasn’t an angry emotional rant. It was a vulnerable, sad, quiet pleading prayer directly to his best friend. I am a bit shook that the Dean and Cas feelings weren’t nested in with some other bigger plot thing eating at Dean, where Cas is one of a list, or it’s something else breaking Dean and losing Cas is just too much on top of that. No, it’s just a guy falling to his knees because he’s scared he’s losing his best friend who he loves in every sense of the word yet again and it’s just them and their feelings.

The last time we saw something this overt from Dean, tear-filled, raw, laying it all out there, Cas was dead and in The Empty and Cas couldn’t hear it.

Ohhh and remember how I pointed out in S14 Cas hearing in Dean’s trauma memories the scream Dean let out when he lost Cas and I wasn’t sure if Cas knew that was for him or not, just that it was traumatic.

BUT THIS TIME CAS HEARD IT. HE HEARD THE PRAYER. HE KNEW DEAN CRIED. HE HEARD ALL OF DEAN’S ANGUISH ABOUT LOSING HIM. (Hopefully Cas will get an actual clue now, I hope).

#Dean Winchester #Castiel #Dean and Cas #Destiel #spn #supernatural #meta #supernatural spoilers #COPING WITH MY FEELINGS BY THROWING WORDS AT IT

[asuka--langley--soryu]

@kuribo4indahouse I’m screenshotting your response bc I lost the ability to reply directly somewhere in tumblrs new updates, and also I want to clarify what I mean by ‘waste’ publicly in case other people have questions. 

I agree with you in some ways regarding the general idea that often a scene is never a real ‘waste’ and that they can contribute something to the plot even if they are comedic in nature, but I do want to specifically address why I think that, actually, there are a lot of wasted scenes in 2.0. Under a cut for length!

I’ve spoken at length about what I find to be disappointing about the characterization of Shikinami and won’t talk too much about that side of things. That is, I’m not going to criticize here the content of the characterization, but rather its effect and, more importantly, its absence. My overarching complaint about what scenes like this do to the narrative, and why I think they’re ‘wasteful’, is that they result in a film which gives the audience absolutely no reason to be invested in Asuka.

I think these scenes are ‘wasteful’ because they add nothing to a character who is already starting the movie at a disadvantage. Asuka is completely absent in the first film, which is obviously meant to represent her later introduction in the series and which is understandable to that point. The intention of 1.0 was clearly to be a pretty clean reprise of the first few episodes of NGE, so Asuka not being there makes sense (although, they do have Kaworu appear, and that appearance is, I think, actually really successfully done and beneficial to his characterization and they 100% could’ve done something similar with Asuka...but I’m trying not to digress lol). The downside of this choice is that, unlike the series, we don’t have 20+ episodes to learn who Asuka is and come to care about her as a character. We have a 2 hour movie. 

When I rewatched 2.0 a few weeks ago, it became clear to me that if I did not already know who Asuka is and if I was not obviously already incredibly invested in her, then I would have no reason to give a shit about what happens to her in this film. She is introduced with one short but vaguely cool fight scene (which i liked!) and then just sort of floats around for the rest of the movie being occasionally snippy. As far as characterization goes, we have the doll scene (ew), the scene with her and Shinji in bed, the elevator, and the ‘deep chat’ she has with Misato over the phone (wherein she seems to come to a realization about the nature of her interactions with others which feels...completely unearned at that point and incredibly sudden and like. why is she saying this to Misato? What bonding moment have they had that would make Asuka, whose primary character trait at this point is ‘mean’, willing to open up this way?). Then Asuka is torn to shreds and we’re all supposed to care because....? Vaguely, yes, we would care because she’s a human being and its sad and awful that Shinji is made to tear apart a human being, but the scene doesn’t have the impact it should because the movie has not presented the audience with a reason to be actually, genuinely invested in Shikinami. If I had not watched NGE before, I would assume that she was always meant to be a kind of throwaway love interest made expressly to be killed at the end of the film. To be honest, the scene would probably have been more effective if they had kept Toji as the pilot (which they almost hint at in a REALLY weird moment of like...fake-out foreshadowing), seeing as the audience has spent more time with him at this point then they have with Asuka. But i’m digressing again!!

In order to make the moment of Asuka getting torn apart in the corrupted eva to be emotionally impactful for the audience, or for us to be invested in her continued story line, there needed to be MUCH more work done within 2.0 to lay the groundwork for her character. Not to say that there is no room for comedy, or that comedic scenes can’t establish characterization, but more often then not the Asuka moments rehash the same shit that we know about her: she’s moody, she likes Shinji, and she doesn’t get along with people. We don’t even really get to know why she wants to pilot! Which is like, I don’t know, incredibly central to her character. The bed scene is more about Shinji than it is about Asuka, so I wouldn’t really count it--though it does, I guess, give the best indication. The elevator moment begins to touch on this, but then again shifts towards the romance subplot. Instead of this scene being about Asuka’s insecurities and trauma, as it is in the series, it is used to reinforce the like...half-assed love-triangle of the movie. It adds nothing to her character, and, once again, provides no impetus for investment from the audience. The elevator scene is not ‘wasted’, but its moments like it that puts more and more stress on every other scene featuring Asuka. 

Because this a movie and not a series, it needs to do a lot of things at once. 2.0 makes things much harder on itself by trying to accomplish the work of almost 20 episodes--it introduces several new characters (including one that is completely new to the visual NGE canon), attempts to introduce the concept of beast mode, further develops and complicates Human Instrumentality, and still needs to further the already established character storylines (of which there are...a lot). When you are trying to do ALL of these things in a single movie (which is then necessitated by the time skip at the start of 3.0--that is, we need to know what all these characters are doing and reach at least partial resolution because we will never be in this moment ever again) it becomes important to use every scene you have available to you wisely. Because Asuka is not the only new character and she is someone important to the series and it’s trying to pull off an emotional twist for her in the third act and it intends for her to continue to be a major character later, the film had a LOT of work to do in terms of establishing characterization for her. There wasn’t really time to spare on silly fan service scenes which gave us no further indication as to who Asuka is and why she’s interesting or important (beyond what we ALREADY knew about her by this point, which is, to reiterate, that she’s a tsundere love interest) but they...did it anyway. For some reason. And it didn’t pay off. It never does, imo. They don’t make up for it with several interesting moments of character interaction later, or with an elucidating conversation about something that isn’t Shinji, or with another moment of her in her eva. They just continue to do silly inane shit and then she gets torn up and now she’s cool eyepatch girl!! How fun!! 

 I really, truly believe that if you have not been exposed to evangelion before the rebuilds then there is literally no reason given to you as to why you should care about Asuka. And this is coming from me! Someone who cares like....the MOST about Asuka. I want to like her in these movies even if I don’t like the movies themselves, but they make it literally impossible because it doesn’t even seem like the film likes her or is even remotely interested in her at all. She never grows beyond a one-dimensional character and so fan service scenes just seem even more egregious because their inclusion means even less work spent on making her a genuine character. 

This is very long and I’m sorry for that!! I also am not like...distinctly disagreeing with you or attacking you or anything and am very sorry if it seems like that. I am. very passionate about Asuka and about what they do to her in the rebuilds, and I also, obviously, don’t know anything about brevity or restraint lol. 

#evangelion #nge #this has been a text post #i really did promise i was gonna complain less about the rebuilds but here i am and here we are #i had to rewatch them recently so like...my passion has been renewed #mine

[kayanne369]

18th of Last Seed

I awoke early this day. Gerder and Ralof were discussing the situation at hand. It took me a few minutes to remember where I was, to be honest. I stayed relatively quiet throughout their conversation. I’m not sure why. I’ve always been more of a listener than a talker. Was always taught the value of listening. They both looked at me when the realised I was awake and smiled warmly. That hearty warm-blooded smile that Nords wear so well. Gerder offered me some breakfast. I still wasn’t very hungry but good manners would not let me refuse. It was not long after that Ralof brought up the topic that was likely on all our minds, but no-one wanted to say. Dragons. We had seen a dragon. We had been attacked by a dragon. We had survived an attack by a dragon. No others made it to the village that day so I can only assume that we were indeed the only survivors. This tiny village. A tiny village made up of farmers and craftsmen. It wouldn’t stand a snowball’s chance in oblivion if a dragon decided to attack.

It was the man that finally called on me. I had by this point learned his name to be Hod. Odd name, but there we go. He asked me for a favour. A simple favour in all honesty. Go to Whiterun. Tell the Jarl about the dragons. Bring back reinforcements. A simple task really. I thought so at the time and I think so now. I don’t really wish to get too involved in whatever this god's forsaken land has gotten itself into. I’ve been hearing murmurings about some kind of civil war all day and quite frankly, I could care less about it. But these people were kind enough to take me in. Feed me and let me sleep. I honestly consider it my duty at this point to repay them in some way and since I have nothing in the way of material goods to give, a small favour seems like nothing. So, I agreed. If what I was told was correct, Whiterun was little more than half a day away. I did however with that Ralof would come with me. To keep me from getting lost if nothing else. Oh, well. All’s well that end’s well in this case.

Before I headed out, I thought it a good idea of collect some supplies, but as my bad luck would have it, I walked right into the middle of a blazing argument between the two proprietors. Something about bandits and a golden claw and the future of the shop depending on it and this Camilla girl insisting that she go an confront them like it wasn’t the stupidest idea ever thought up. Eventually, I agreed to go and retrieve the claw for them. Honestly, I feel taking down a few bandits would do me the world of good at the moment. I was about to leave when the door burst open, practically knocking me on off my feet. A young Nord walked in. Blonde hair tied back. Broad shoulders. A smile that could worm its way into any woman's heart. He didn’t even seem to notice me when he passed and strode confidently up to Camilla, presenting her with a makeshift bouquet of wildflowers. It would be rather charming if the fellow didn’t give off such an arrogant air about him. The two flirted playfully for a while. At the very least Camilla seemed to reciprocate his affections. I left in a quiet hurry just as the shop owner, who I took by his reaction was the young lady’s brother, decided to put a stop to this rather embarrassing display and showed the lad out.

He blew a kiss at the closed door and looked at me rather suspiciously. I snapped a quick “What?” at him and he offered a half-hearted smile.

“I haven’t seen you before” he said.

“No,” I said back, not really intending to talk to him.

“Are you new?” he asked, leaning slightly closer to me.

“I am.” I reached back for my dagger. I’d no intention of using it but I thought perhaps that if he saw it, it would dissuade him from conversing with me further.

“Not often we get a Dunmer around here. Are you a friend of Faendal?”

I looked at him, questioningly. There was an almost hopeful anticipation in his voice. I fought back the urge to tell him that I had no idea who this Faendal character was, and answered with a quiet shake of my head. He seemed almost anxious at this, rubbing his arms and avoiding my eyes.

“Oh, I see. Um…well, in that case, do you think you’d like to meet him?”

I gave him a very odd look and took several steps back. He must have seen the seriousness in my expression for he gave a sigh and slumped over the railing. He offered a passing attempt at an apology and out of brazenness or stupidity, our right confessed that he hoped I’d be a suitable partner for this Bosmer chap that he’d apparently been in something of a love feud with Sven for the fair Camilla’s affections.

“I suppose it doesn’t really matter,” he said to no-one in particular. “They’re just friends after all.”

I couldn’t stop myself from scoffing.

“Of course. And when ever has a close friendship developed into feelings of love.”

Not entirely sure why I said that. Maybe just to get a rise out of him. Maybe I actually felt sorry for the twit. Either way, he gave me a look of utter disdain and then almost immediately relented and agreed. He looked at me rather sheepishly and asked if I could do him a quick favour, after which he reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper and handed it over to me.

“Listen. I know this is none of your concern really, but could you deliver this to Camilla. Tell her it’s from Faendal?”

I shot him another look but took the paper from him anyway. I’d no desire get involved in this foolishness. I had things to do. I didn’t have time to be dealing with some silly love triangle. But on the other hand. I relented that it might be nice to play matchmaker for a time. At least this is what I told myself. In truth, I think I just wanted to read what this young whelp had written. Pure nosiness. I will not try and pretend it was anything but. However, given the nature of the letter he gave me, I’m quite glad I made that decision. The letter I held in my hand was full of toxicities so vile I doubt the young man had any real awareness about its severity. The long and short of it was a statement that the difference in race between the two meant that Faendal and our dear Camilla could never be together. This was bad enough. But it was not what enraged me so. The letter mentioned the Aldmeri Dominion. Made very dangerous accusations. This was a Nord village. It doesn’t take a genius to understand the uneasy relationship these people have with my kind. Somehow, this Faendal had slipped through the cracks of prejudice and set up a life here for himself. If there was even the slightest hint that he was connected with the Thalmor I shudder to think what would happen to him. And this was the letter he wished me to deliver? A letter that could ruin a man’s life. A man I had never met? Over some girl?

What a sickening thing to do. Honestly, the fact that I’m rather sure Sven was nothing but ignorant about how damaging this could be was the only thing preventing me from sticking my dagger through his neck…that and his mother was literally sitting a few feet away from me. I took the letter and decided that I’d probably better tell this Faendal character what was going on. If this idiot was willing to say something like this, then it was likely something Faendal would have to look out for.

I actually found him relatively quickly. I’d passed by him before but we had never talked until now. He was tall for a Bosmer. Dark eyes. Long white hair pulled back in a high ponytail. He looked at me and smiled. Can’t deny there was an earnest charm about him. Perhaps it was just nice to see one of my own, but I wouldn’t fault Camilla for having an interest in him. His demeanour changed however when I showed him the letter. His body visually tensed up and he clutched the letter in his hand. Obviously, I was not overreacting when I considered how damaging this could be to him. He peered over to me and gave me a quick smile, silently thanking me for telling him. We were silent for a moment before he suddenly perked up and pulled me over to a large tree stump. He took out a piece of paper and without uttering a word began scribbling on it with a piece of charcoal. It took me a few seconds to figure out what he was doing but when I did, I couldn’t help but giggle. What he was writing was a letter in return. A taste of the bard’s own medicine. Nothing as potentially life-destroying as the one Sven had made for him, but one that if delivered to a certain young woman, would not hold him in good favour. Still makes me laugh. I almost feel sorry for the boy.

Oh well. To cut a long story short, Sven’s prospects of romancing Camilla are now significantly lower than before. However, both Faendal and I recognised the danger before us. Sven was obviously willing to tell egregious lies in order to get him out of the way. I doubt there is any real malice intended with him. Just stupidity. But stupidity is as dangerous as anything. In any regard, I suggest that Faendal accompany me to retrieve the golden claw that seemed to mean so much to the fair imperial. Perhaps if he returns it to her instead of me, he could gain favour. I can’t believe I’m giving this so much though. I truly did intend not to get involved in this. On the other hand, I also intended that this journal would be a factual account of important matters and we see how well that turned out.

He agreed and we set out towards Whiterun. I wish I can say something more interesting happened on the way, but alas, it was a perfectly calm and uneventful journey. We chatted together, mainly about Camilla. The fool truly does seem to love her. I told him about what happened at Helgan. He seemed dubious, like I had been remembering things wrong or that perhaps I was playing a trick on him. This aside, we travelled silently and by the time we reached the city, it was near midnight. Too late to talk to the Jarl now. He will be asleep. Everyone will be asleep. All we can really do is hope to the eight that Riverwood will be safe from those beats for one more night. We decided to spend the night in an inn. I believe it’s called the Bannered Mare. It’s a hearty place. Rough and warm like a tight embrace. I do love these Nord customs.

Just before we turned int for the night, Faendal took my arm and looked dead into my eyes.

“Did you really see a dragon?”

“I did more than see it.”

He let me go. His eyes were worried, but I could not quite place at what specifically. His home perhaps. His lady love back in Riverwood. The prospect of possibly facing one. I don’t know, for he retired before I could ask. I will in the morning.  

#skyrim #dragonborn #Elder Scrolls #faendal #riverwood #lovely letter #fiction #oc #the journal fic

[mrsspidermanmaryjanewatsonparker]

...

“I was really enraged over “One More Day”. Having been on the Ditko side of the argument for so long, I finally saw that Marvel was totally against letting Peter Parker age and develop new stories. I had planned on protesting the books. But, then they hooked me with the creative teams. Then, they brought back Norman Osborn.”

 Er no they didn’t they brought HARRY Osborn back...pointlessly....

 “Plus, they were trying new stuff and it wasn’t terrible.”

 By new stuff I wonder if they mean ‘Guess who this Goblin themed character is’ and ‘Oh no Spider-Man is framed’ or ‘Yuk yuk Peter just can’t get a date lulz!’

 And by not terrible I wonder if they mean ‘Hey look it’s the Chameleon and his whole history with Peter Parker is being ignored so we can imply he’s raping a woman’ and ‘Here watch this woman take advantage of Peter when he’s drunk before turning on a dime into a racist and sexist sterotype of Latin American woman’ or ‘Let’s ruin the Lizard and Kraven’s Last Hunt for everybody’.

  “What was going on here? Constant creative rotation to keep things fresh and lively?”

 Fresh as in a fresh way to suck shit as inconsistent story and artistic beats pile up to insanity.

  “Villains being reintroduced as the classic threats we know them to be?!?”

 Because we didn’t have that before OMD and needed the marriage gone for that to be the case.

  “Then, we got to see Marcos Martin and Dan Slott on the book. Spider-Man had entered into a new Golden Age. ”

 John Romita Senior’s run was a Golden Age.

 Roger Stern’s run was a Golden Age.

 2004 was a Golden Age.

 Mary Jane dates a loser cleberity because she’s out of character whilst Peter Parker invades people’s privacy which is even MORE out of character and here comes Mysterio alive and well ignoring everything we knew about him for the past 10 years isn’t a Golden Age. Its just hot trash.

  “But, what of Mary Jane? She was Peter’s wife and the mother of their disappeared baby. Would we ever get some sort of closure? Hell no. What was more surprising was how little it mattered.”

  WTF does ‘it didn’t matter’ even mean in this context?

  It mattered to most of the readers hence they kept teasing us with reconciliation to spike sales over and over again before just giving us an AU book...then bringing them back for real!

  “ Does that say a lot for Mary Jane and her defined role in the Spider-Man universe. I venture to say that it did. But, why are now realizing the futile nature of Peter being married and its importance to Mary Jane?”

 Yeah. It’s so futile to have character development for the lead and second biggest character that was the bedrock of 20 years of stories that by and large were better than the objective trash that followed int heir wake and fundamentally damaged both characters going forward.

 “Mary Jane has always never made sense for Peter Parker or Spider-Man. It was wish fulfillment for a guy that went from puny nerd to crushing multiple samples of poon in a three year period.”

  This sexist bullshit again.

  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and even if that wasn’t true Peter is himself attractive and even if he was ‘average looking’ someone as attractive like MJ would marry someone like Peter all the time in the real world.

 It was their personalities and shared histories that made the relationship make sense.

 To dismiss MJ’s backstory and the inter-personal emotions between them that made the relationship happen is ignorant and a clear sign of either not having read or not having paid attention to the material.

 The hard truth is MJ pretty much ALWAYS made sense for Spider-Man. She wasn’t wish fulfilment she was her own well rounded character who organically developed in tandem with Peter, as Nick Spencer himself has corroborated.

  “Gwen was his equal,”

 How?

 Gwen was more financially affluent than Peter, had a higher social standing afforded by her father’s job and their comparative wealth to Peter.

  If we are talking her brains, Gwen wasn’t anywhere close to Peter’s league. Peter was the kid whipping up web-fluid in his bedroom as a teenager. Gwen was...someone who was in his science class. A statement that could apply to Harry.

  “ Betty was the older woman and Mary Jane was the neighbor’s niece thrown upon him. ”

 Betty was younger than him canonically Stan lee said so in a letters page but even if she wasn’t in the context of the times she wouldn’t been a few years removed from high school and Peter would’ve been a senior. Big whoop.

 Betty’s place has little to do with her age but more to do with just being his first romantic experience.

  As for MJ putting aside how she was retconning to not be his neighbour, that assessment for her character applies to the Silver Age and literally no other period of time beyond it. That was NOT her role in the Bronze age in the 1970s, the DeFalco run of the 80s and obviously not the time during the 1990s or 2000s when they were married.

  WTF is with his toxic notion that a character is not allowed to develop FFS!

  MJ hasn’t been the nieghbour’s blind date for him for the majority of her existence.

   “Mary Jane doesn’t even show up until the classic final page of her debut issue. Sure, it’s one of the best entrances in comic history. However, Mary Jane already feels like a put on intruder into a world that she doesn’t understand.”

  Correct and Norman Osborn wasn’t revealed as the Goblin until 4 issues before that, Gwen Stacy didn’t die until 7 years after that and Venom never showed up until 22 years after that.

  I guess all that shit is irrelevant to the character and mythology of Spider-Man and is just totally optional and superfluous.

  I’m sorry I never realized only the first 4 years and few months of Spider-Man mattered.

  I never realized Venom, Hobgoblin, Carnage, KINGPIN and all the OTHER shit from after ASM #41 were ‘intruders’ in Spider-Man’s world.

  Give me a fucking break.

   “She spends the next year dancing through the comic and pushing off the boys. ”

  And again, the early years of a character don’t = the inherent nature of the character that is never allowed to develop beyond that ever. If it did the X-Men would’t ever need Wolverine or Storm and Dick Grayson being Nightwing wouldn’t matter at all.

  “Peter grows closer to Gwen until she eventually dies, then he’s forced back onto Mary Jane. ”

  No, he and MJ over the course of 2 years of masterful stories by Conway gradually grow closer organically.

  Can you spell ‘Gwen Stan’?

  “Mary Jane rejects him, then he starts associating with related ESU students, Marvel Team-Up guest stars and the Black Cat.”

 That’s YEARS later. Gwen dies in 1973. Peter and MJ hook up in 1974. They break up in like 1978!

  “When all of those go into the crapper, Mary Jane shows up and he proposes. ”

 Oh dear god this is a quintessential example of buying into Marvel propaganda.

 That isn’t the sequence of events.

  First of all MJ showd up DURING his relationship with Felicia.

 THEN she revealed she knew he was Spider-Man and became his confidant.

  THEN peter and Felicia broke up.

  THEN he and MJ began growing closer and closer.

  THEN he had one last fling with Felicia following a seeming rejection by MJ.

 THEN he proposed to MJ.

  All that shit played out between approximately 1983-1987. That’s about FOUR YEARS of publication with THREE titles running simultaneously!

 “Parker gets rejected, then MJ accepts due to a pending marriage in the Spider-Man comic strip.”

 Again no. Yeah the wedding we got occurred due to synching with the newspaper strip but the build up to it was in the works for years by DeFalco and Frenz who were in charge of the book and embellished by Peter David and other people on the satellites. It wasn’t intended as actually leading to them crossing the threshold as man and wife but the build up to make that happen and for it to hypothetically happen anyway still existed.

 “That’s right, kids. Peter and Mary Jane only got married because Marvel wanted to tie it into an unrelated storyline in the national newspaper comic strip.”

 Again that’s true but the build up for to nevertheless make sense in story was still there and still paid off 4 years of character development.

  “The key point of Peter and MJ’s relationship was based on editorial interference. ”

  Peter and MJ’s relationship began in 1973 nearly 15 years before they got married and it occurred out of a sincere desire by the writer to tell a story about grief.

 “Tom DeFalco had actually spent a storyline early explaining how MJ figured out Peter’s identity, but kept it to herself. ”

 Er...no he didn’t. He explained she knew his identity but never explained how.

 And...this kind of egregiously undermines the central argument right here.

  “Then, made a very reasonable argument for why she could like Peter as a friend. ”

 And then along with Frenz his collaborator and Peter David spent the next 3 or so years developing their relationship as clearly much more than friendship so why is this fuckwit taking one line from ASM #259 totally out of context and ignoring all the stuff it led to.

 Oh right....in order to support the argument via lying.

  “Cut to two years later....”

 It was more than 2 years.

  “forced attacks and a second rejected marriage”

 Forced attacked? Alastair Smythe made the natural presumption that MJ was affiliated with Spider-Man based upon his encounter with her in ASM Annual #19.

  “then MJ is cool about dealing with Peter.”

 No. MJ has a change of heart after resolving her commitment issues directly connected to her estrangement from her sister and her bad blood with her father which Peter helped her to resolve in the course of the story where she accepts his proposal.

   Learn to read the damn stories!

  “Why was it such a big deal? Why did we loft MJ up to this status that doesn’t seem deserved?”

  Because it was wholly deserved based upon the actual stories that were written and not the propaganda assessment this article is pushing.

 “The marriage issue is so confusing. It happened in the first Amazing Spider-Man issue I ever read and most of the imagery has come to dominate my opinion of Spidey through the years. Whether it’s the marriage nightmare with the villains attacking the guests or the robbery with Electro; these images are what I see in my head when I see Spidey. Everything after that point was an excuse to force MJ into action, whether it was Venom attacking for the first time or the creepy landlord stalking her. ”

 Putting aside how ‘everything’would have to mean literally 100% of each Spider-Man story ever when there were many issues MJ either didn’t appear or had a small role...why would this be a bad thing?

  You have a supporting character...they are important...they are used within the narrative...this is bad because why again?

  The sexism and hypocrisy is strong with this point because half the time MJ gets shit because she didn’t do ENOUGH in the marriage. But when she is involved within the super side of things in some capacity it’s forced and bad.

  How?

  A super villain knows Peter’s identity and invades his home, targeting someone clone to him who he maybe lives with. That’d been happening since the silver age with Aunt May, Betty Brant and Gwen Stacy.

  As for her getting kidnapped by a stalker, this happens in real life especially to women and famous people and famous women. Spider-Man is a reflection of real life so WTF is the problem with this? HOW is this forced.

  “For next decade, everything became about MJ’s pregnancy, habits and constant fears for Peter.”

  Again, ‘everything’ would need to mean 100% of stories.

 MJ was pregnant for under 2 and a half years, not a decade.

 Not every story revolved around her fears for Peter.

 Her smoking habit lasted for less than 2 years too.

 And there was after all a period of time when Peter wasn’t even the main character of the damn series.

 And of course the notion of ‘everything’ or even ‘most things’ REVOLVING around MJ is bullshit because hate to break it to you but MJ was never the main character, Peter was.

 Everything revolved around him and since she was his wife a lot of stuff revolved around her which is called ‘Godd Wrting’.

 Notice how a shitton of screen time and subplots revolve around the wives of the main characters of drug dealer and mafia boss Walter White and Tony Soprano in the 2 most critically acclaimed TV shows of all time, Breaking Bad and the Sopranos.

  USING supporting characters and giving them screen time is IMPORTANT!

  It’s also the reason people hated Aunt May for decades until JMS started doing this in 2001! That’s near damn 40 years of Aunt May being mostly underutilized and useless to the point where people hated her and wanted her to die. THEN a lot of stories or story moments began involving or revolving around her and opinions changed.

  “The comic was quickly becoming a relationship drama, when we weren’t dealing with fake robot parents, clones, the Superhuman Registration Act or Aunt May getting shot. ”

 a)     The dumbass who wrote this referred to events across the decade following the marriage and then included 2 things AFTER that point in time

b)     This is again a lie it wasn’t a relationship drama

c)     God forbid there be relationship drama in a book that heavily involved soap opera elements and also the real life of the hero who could be you, i.e. someone who has to deal with relationship drama a lot because most people in real life do

 “Enough was enough, as the time came to re-evaluate what MJ brought to the team. ”

 A grounding for Peter. Character development for him. Strong female representation. A human hero who didn’t need to fight villains to be heroic. A realistic flawed and complex human character in a series all about that? A confidant for the main character? An exposition device?

  “The answer was that she is a party girl who worked better as an X Factor.”

  Get fucked and read some comics beyond the Silver Age hack.

MJ STOPPED being a party girl or an X-Factor in 1973!

  “The mystery created by Romita and Lee was long dead and that revealed something didn’t work. ”

 It’s so interesting this author will quote one line from ASM #259 and then totally ignore the rest of the entire issues which developed MJ into a supporting character and confidant who mirrored Peter.

 Because she just didn’t work.

  Get fucked.

  “MJ isn’t meant to be understood by Peter, she’s out of his league.”

 There is no such things as leagues. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and any two people with enough time, compassion and empathy can come to understand one another. Peter came to understand MJ via her tragic backstory which echoed his own.

  “Ultimately, what matters is that Mary Jane stays a viable character in the Spider-Man universe”

 Which she was for over 2 decades and even longer before that when she stopped being a party girl.

  “While she is a personality mis-match, she’s a life-long friend that knows a lot about the man behind the mask. ”

  How are their personalities mis-matched.

  “That kind of grounding is absent outside of a direct family tie to Peter. When MJ makes Mephisto end their marriage during “One More Day”, ”

  GET FUCKED!

  Mj doesn’t MAKE Mephisto do shit. This is yet more of the author swallowing and regurgitating Marvel’s sexist lies. Peter put MJ on the spot with an untenable position then she sweetens Mephisto’s deal. Mephisto made the offer though. MJ didn’t make anyone do shit, especially Mephisto. She just complied with his wishes.

  “she whispers something that we don’t find out until “One Moment in Time”. Unfortunately, this twist is negated by the fact that Peter forces MJ to remember their life together as it was, but the duo chooses to split and move on.”

 Fuck this article even fails to accurately represent the events of the bullshit storyt hat supports their claim.

 MJ’s whisper to Mephisto takes places before he changes time and Peter forcing MJ to remember (more like he forces her to not forget) occurres for unrelated reasons after time has been altered. The two things aren’t directly connected.

  Moreover the duo don’t CHOOSE to split, MJ leaves him.

 At least represent the bs you are defending accurately.

  “It’s a tricky setup, but it’s one that has led Spider-Man back to the promise of the early 1980s”

 It’s not tricky it’s hacky.

 It didn’t lead Spider-Man back to the promise of the 1980s because things weren’t written as well.

 Moreover the early 1980s were when O’Neil was writing Spider-Man and the series sucked shit, why would you want to go back to that?

 In fact even if it didn’t suck why would you want to go BACK to something antiquated as being 25-30 years old FFS!

  “There are multiple people in his life demanding certain things, but they all want to push him forward. Even Mary Jane has setup her own business and works as an outside factor in Peter’s life.”

All of which didn’t require ending the marriage or a deal with Satan to facilitate.

 “The book is “The Amazing Spider-Man” for reason and not “Mary Jane Knows Best” for a reason.”

 Get fucked the book was never that during the marriage either.

 “ Supporting characters work when they have a defined role for our central figure.”

You mean like a life partner, best friend, confidant and life line to normalacy.

 “After a quarter century in the main book, MJ lost that focus and the story suffered.”

 After what feels like a quarter century reading this article I feel like my brain has suffered from the lies and misinformation contained within it.

 “While we have turned back the clock on that matter, something harsh remains. Why can’t a woman be on par with Spider-Man?”

She can be but when she is sexist jackasses like this knock her down and just plain lie, misrepresent or twist things to pretend things are untenably bad when they aren’t.

 “ Much has been made out of his MC2 counterpart Spider-Girl. Sure, it’s his daughter as a legacy character keeping the identity alive, but she manages to find time for her retired father in her book. But, her book keeps getting cancelled and the readership of that title is a tenth of what Amazing Spider-Man pulls down. Point rested.”

 Point no rested.

 Spider-Girl suffered in sales because it was a female led book at a time when that wasn’t something the market was kind to. It suffered because it was a mass market book sold on the direct market. It suffered because it underined Marvel’s desired narrative and was spearheaded by a former EIC, people who traditionally generate a lot of bad blood courtesy of consequent editorial regimes who throw them to the wolves. It suffered because they wanted to promote another character with the name. It suffered because it was an out of continuity title.

 It has shit to do with anything related in this dumpster fire of an article.

  In summary:

  This article is hot trash peddling sexist propaganda in line with a false narrative Marvel wants.

 Kill it with fire.

But what can I expect from a writer who doesn’t even know Eddie Brock wasn’t a photojournalist or thinks Ned Leeds was ‘tricked’ into becoming the Hobgoblin.

#Spider-Man #mjwatsonedit #MJ Watson #mary jane watson #Mary Jane Watson Parker #Peter Parker #One More Day #Brand New Day #One Moment in Time

[veliseraptor]

INFINITY WAR REACTION POST 

mega spoilers for infinity war under the cut, obviously

overall thoughts...I think this is the first...Marvel movie that I’ve walked out of and didn’t feel good about. like, I walked out just feeling tired and sort of hollow, which was about how I spent the first half hour of the movie. 

I spoiled myself a couple days ago, but I fully intended to go into this movie trying to enjoy it as much as I could, even knowing what I did, because that’s...usually what I want to do. 

which is not to say that I didn’t like the movie At All. so I guess...breakdown?

the good:

Thor was amazing. Thor’s grief was amazing, his badass entrance in Wakanda was amazing. 

loved Wanda getting to be a badass. Wanda getting to be a badass with Natasha and Okoye, I want more of that team up, I’m down with it

just gonna go ahead and say it: Proxima Midnight was sexy.

my love for Rhodey knows no bounds and Rhodey basically going “screw you” at Ross

Nebula is alive!!

it turns out that putting three sorta obnoxious characters together a) makes me like Tony a lot more and b) is actually pretty entertaining

the usage of the Infinity Stones was actually pretty cool - they used them rather than just having it be a collect-em-all type thing (I mean, it was, but they also did things with them)

if Loki was going to go, I feel much better about him going down a hero than him going down...any other way. him giving up the Tesseract to save Thor was...it’s the kind of thing I’d read in fic, knowing that in another fic he was going to be alive again. (more on that later.)

CAPTAIN MARVEL HEYO.

the bad:

some of the humor - specifically the Guardians’ humor, specifically the Guardians’ humor around Thor - really grated. 

it felt like Gamora got fridged to humanize Thanos and I am very Not About That.

while the ending - with Thanos actually succeeding at his goal - makes for an intense moment, we also know it’s going to be undone, which makes it feel a little bit cheap. 

where the hell was Clint (I mean, he got a mention? but seriously, where, I really hope we get some answers to this in Avengers 4 and all those sly little hints the Russos have been dropping pay off)

where the hell was Valkyrie

I have a lot of feelings about Thor and Steve specifically losing their people just as they were getting them back and god dammit I’m crying about Thor again. And god, poor fucking Wanda. Some of the hurt in this just felt...well, it feels weird for me, an angst writer, to say “egregious” but when you know a lot of it’s going to be undone in a year, somehow or other...yeah, in some ways it does feel like it was just done to hurt. 

and while I know logically that’s not the case, ugh. that doesn’t actually make me feel better.

and the ugly:

and finally there’s...yeah, the big one. Loki. I went seeking out spoilers as soon as I could get them for this movie, because the not knowing was worse, but that also means I’ve spent the last two days vaguely nauseous and honestly feeling a little like I’m grieving for a fictional character. 

I know a lot of people are really angry, but I can honestly say that I’m not mad, just disappointed. I mean, I knew it was coming, but at the same time I was so hoping that it wasn’t going to, because it’s so goddamn predictable, and I’m just...tired, you guys, I’m tired. 

and I’m disappointed in myself for hoping for anything else. like, in a part of my brain it’s “at least they didn’t make him evil again” but the rest of me is just...hurting. in a way that isn’t fun. 

lord knows I’ve read - and written - plenty of character death fics, and I can read those and they hurt but they hurt in a way that I can enjoy. this...didn’t. doesn’t. 

I’m just...yeah. I’m tired. 

and there’s a stupid part of my brain that’s like “well maybe they’ll bring him back, after all they’re going to have to undo at least some of this because they kiiiinda need Spider Man alive but...I have a nasty feeling that if any of these deaths are going to stick, Loki’s going to be one of them. and I don’t want to get my hopes up and wait for a year only to be let down again.

which means that the character I’ve attached to most, ever, is gone for good. 

and yeah, I’m gonna be ignoring canon as hard as I possibly can, I’m going to keep writing - or at least that’s the plan. but the last couple days my desire to work on anything in my WIP queue is...gone. 

it’ll probably come back. odds are this is a function of me just being miserable. but for now, at least, I’m just sad. and so fucking tired.

talking to @ameliarating as the credits were rolling she was like “well, at least Doctor Strange is dead too” and I’ve never laughed hysterically in my life like I did then

hey, at least I have more fuel for my “anti-Redemption Equals Death” article. now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go lie down and (possibly literally) cry myself to sleep.

#infinity war spoilers #avengers: infinite denial #okay now i'm gonna go watch some brooklyn 99

[tudorscharlot]

Bohemian Rhapsody (Bryan Singer/Dexter Fletcher, 2018)

31 Halloweens of October #34

(An important note about the following tirade: I know that this film was written by Anthony McCarten and Peter Morgan and that it was directed by Bryan Singer and Dexter Fletcher. But it is obvious from the course of its labored, years-long development and from the final product itself that this film was made in strict accordance with the views of Brian May and Roger Taylor. And I hold them ultimately responsible for the film that was made.)   This is the most deeply offensive film I've seen in years (probably since I saw Nymphomaniac: Vol. II). The music of Queen is so important to me on an emotional level and on a fundamental, worldview level that it would be fair to describe my devotion to it as religious. And I know I'm not alone on planet earth in feeling that way. Fuck this movie and everyone responsible for it forever. Do not go and see this. Don't give them your money and don't give them any sense of validation that what they've done is acceptable. (After seeing the cringe-inducing trailer, I vowed to never give this film a cent of my money. But then I was unexpectedly given a free ticket to see it. I went to see Suspiria for the second time in 24 hours with my best friend, but the theater it was showing in was having technical problems. The theater manager gave us tickets to a later showing of Suspiria and offered us free passes to anything that was playing right then, as well as free concessions. Even though I was now essentially being paid to see this film, I still only reluctantly accepted the situation.) It feels like a cheap shot to come at this movie over the chronological inaccuracies. The last thing I ever want to be is one of those "ACTUALLY..." guys who misses the poetic forest for the literal trees. I don't think it's critically important in a non-documentary, narrative film to be 100% accurate on dry, historical details, especially when it benefits the narrative structure to make slight revisions and combinations of events. Liberties taken in service of the spirit of the larger truth are fine by me. But the extremity of what they did in this film is egregious, lazy, and ultimately just confusing. So yes, I am going to go there, right now. The vocal version of "Seven Seas of Rhye" was not recorded during the sessions for Queen. "Another One Bites the Dust" was recorded three years after "We Will Rock You". Freddie Mercury did not release his first solo album until four years after Roger Taylor released his first solo album and one year after Roger released his second solo album (which goes some way toward debunking the notion that the band viewed Freddie's solo projects as a betrayal). Freddie did not return from an extended period of isolation in Munich and beg the band to perform at Live Aid. Queen just had completed the massive, nearly year-long world tour for The Works less than two months before their appearance at Live Aid - it had not been years since they played onstage together. The band did not decide to start sharing all writing credits equally until they recorded The Miracle three years and two albums after Live Aid. And, as far as is publicly known, Freddie Mercury did not find out that he was HIV-positive until 1986 or 1987. (And this is all off the top of my head.)

None of this should matter, but it does matter. Because the moment that Brian May and Roger Taylor slapped their names on this thing as executive producers, the nature of the project and its relationship to the Queen oeuvre changed. What is this movie, and who is it for? Queen is one of the biggest bands ever, but I would still argue that a biopic about Freddie Mercury ought to be aimed primarily at people already familiar with him and Queen and the music they made. It should be for the fans, and the filmmakers should assume a certain basic level of familiarity with their story among viewers. And in that case, they should know that having all of these historical inaccuracies is only going to irritate devotees like me who have a deeper-than-Wikipedia knowledge of the subject matter. And, whether or not these inaccuracies irritate me, I'd certainly expect them to irritate the two men who lived these experiences and who exercised serious executive control over this movie from start to finish. Why would Brian and Roger sign off on such an error-riddled version of their own story? I mentioned Wikipedia up there, and I've read at least one review that snarkily described this film as an adaptation of the Wikipedia entry for Queen. I think that even that is giving it too much credit. This film is like an adaptation of a Buzzfeed "25 Things You Might Not Know About Queen" list (with an emphasis on the factual inaccuracies those lists always have). Bohemian Rhapsody is clearly not intended as a thoughtful love-letter to serious fans of Queen. So does that mean it is aimed at the widest common denominator - a promotional item designed and deployed to attract record-buyers (or Spotify-streamers) unfamiliar with the band? And to stoke nostalgia among extant fans who may then be enticed to buy whatever new reconfiguration of Queen's Greatest Hits is being released along with this film? On the one hand, yes, obviously. I'll never fault living artists (or the estates of deceased artists) for working to keep their valuable bodies of work alive in the public consciousness and available to new generations of potential fans. But there are tasteful, thoughtful, discerning ways to do this (see the recent John Lennon Imagine boxed set or Queen's own Made in Heaven album). Careful and caring artists or estates share archival or celebratory releases that add substance. Greedy people who've lost the plot completely offer up crass, sloppy, tasteless cash grabs. And that's what this goddamned movie is. And what virtually everything Brian May and Roger Taylor have done in the name of Queen over the last two decades has been. I say "greedy" and "cash grab," but I don't think this is just about money. It's also more abstract. There's an idea and an image of Queen that is very real for them and for me and for so many people in the world, and it is precious. But Queen is in the past. Queen as we know them and want them ended when Freddie Mercury left us. It's not right and it's not fair, but what was can never be again. No matter how many Queen + whatever asshole tours or holograms or biopics are shoved at us. On the other hand, though, this film is a far more dangerous thing than just a promotional cash grab. It is a piece of propaganda. When Brian May and Roger Taylor made themselves executive producers of this film, it became canon. Which confers on this film and its creators a much higher level of responsibility with regards to the legacy of Queen. And every person who made this film failed to be honest or faithful to Freddie and the idea of Queen. It's shameful. Even if Brian and Roger set out to share an honest but loving account of the story of Freddie and Queen, such an endeavor is impossible in their hands. It is impossible for two members of a four-person group to present their own version of events and group dynamics to the world as though it were an official and objective record of what happened and get it right. Even free of conscious, questionable intentions, they are too close to be objective. But I do not believe they are free of conscious, questionable intentions. This film never disputes Freddie Mercury's genius talents as a performer or songwriter. And it is generous in its portrayal of his kindness, sweetness, and wit. But it also presents him as a pill-popping sexual deviant whose pursuit of a solo career in the 1980s was an ego-driven affront to the unity of Queen, rather than the healthy and fairly standard outlet for expression that any artist a decade in with a massively successful band tends to engage in (see also: Roger Taylor, for fuck's sake). And it also presents him as the only real source of discord in the band. This is all in striking contrast to the presentation of Brian and Roger as blandly stable family men dedicated wholly to the vision of Queen. (There are a couple of winking references to Roger cheating on his wife, but these references lack the weight of similar events in Freddie's story.) An important side-note: It should also be mentioned that John Deacon is presented as basically a non-entity whose only contribution is to frequently make silly faces that are eerily like Andy Samberg mugging (seriously, find a still or clip of this actor in this movie - it's fucked up). In real life, John Deacon more or less permanently parted ways with Brian May and Roger Taylor in the late 1990s. It has been widely assumed (he may even have said so at some point) that this was because he didn't like the way they were handling the legacy of the band. Fast-forward to 2018 and this film's portrayal of John seems to be grinding a major axe of butt-hurt at him. It's so fucking petty. But back to Freddie. What do we know about Freddie Mercury, the private citizen? We know he was extremely private and largely refused to ever discuss his personal life with the press. That doesn't mean that it's strictly off-limits and inappropriate to discuss his private life in a film about him now. There are private things about Freddie (both personal and professional) that the surviving members of Queen definitely knew. Jim Hutton and others have shared personal things about Freddie over the years since his death, as well. I believe it's okay to respectfully reveal private details in the service of telling a great artist's story. The problem here is that Brian and Roger have shot any credibility they had as reliable or unbiased sources. If they can't even get the decade and order in which two of their biggest hits were recorded - if accurately representing something as verifiable and relevant to the development of their work as that isn't important for this film, why should and how can we believe anything this films tells us that can't be verified beyond "the executive producers say it happened"? If major events in their recording and performing career can be juggled around willy-nilly to fit the desired narrative arc, how we can trust that the same wild liberties aren’t being taken with unverifiable closed-door meetings and private arguments? I'm SURE that Freddie Mercury was sometimes flamboyantly egotistical in the studio and backstage. But I'm equally sure that every other member of Queen was just as egotistical, just as often. They never would have accomplished the things they accomplished if there weren't huge amounts of ego and ambition and personal investment between them. But I do not buy that this film accurately represents Freddie's temperament, his ego, or his behavior in many of the specific situations it reenacts. It doesn’t get his style. Watch any video of Freddie performing or being interviewed - this film doesn't get him at all. I'm not queer and I'm not Parsi, but the way this film handles Freddie's relationship with his ethnicity, with his family, and with his sexuality feels pretty boilerplate and cliched. It doesn't strike me that any particularly negative stereotypes are being indulged, but it does feel like a lot of simplistic movie tropes are employed to quickly dispense with these matters. I am glad that so much attention is given to Freddie's relationship with Mary Austin, but it nonetheless feels tonally wrong. I think that their relationship was beautiful and I don't think this movie quite gets it. And sure, what the fuck do I know? Very little. But I know they were lifelong companions in ways that went far beyond sex, and that she was the love of his life. And I know that I can't trust that the two guys who were there are representing it truthfully now. I'd rather take Freddie's word for it. And UGH. What the ever-loving fuck is up with Rami Malek's prosthetic bucked teeth in this movie? Let's get something straight: Freddie Mercury was a physically beautiful man. My god, he was. It is an obnoxious insult to have some guy prancing around like fucking Nosferatu playing at being Freddie Mercury. No serious actor would need fake teeth to play this role, and no serious filmmaker would ever even consider such a thing. All this heavy, meta shit aside, this is also just a bad movie on the most basic level. It is so bloated with unnecessary show-off shots, rock and roll biopic cliches, embarrassing dialogue, and one-dimensional performances that even hearing some of my favorite music ever at high volumes in a movie theater couldn't transport me. Some serious acting talent was assembled here, and some of the cast do an admirable job with what they were given, but this movie has no heart. Bohemian Rhapsody makes Freddie Mercury a caricature. It tries not to, and it really is mostly a very flattering caricature. But it's a reduction that fails terribly in its mission to show us who Freddie Mercury was. Freddie Mercury deserves infinitely better than this film. This film should not have been made. If they had gotten everything perfectly right, it would still be a pointless and distasteful exercise. Go watch any video of Freddie Mercury performing or just talking and the emptiness of this film becomes instantly clear. (Note: I’ve tagged this film with my October horror film viewing because this film is horrible.)

#bohemian rhapsody #bryan singer #dexter fletcher #rami malek #31 halloweens of october

[ayellowbirds]

Keshet Rewatches All of Scooby-Doo, Pt. 23: “A Tiki Scare is No Fair"

("Scooby-Doo, Where Are You", Season 2 Episode 6. Original Airdate: 10/17/1970)

AKA, "Adventures In Culturally Insensitive Tourism"

This is the sole episode of Season 2 of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! that has no musical chase segment, and the episode feels like it really drags in comparison. The content doesn’t help much. Read this recap bearing in mind that i’m an American of mostly Ashkenazic ancestry, and so i was raised with a lot of white privilege. If i make any missteps in criticizing the episode’s handling of Hawaiian culture, let me know.

The scene opens to soothing music with an evening view on an active volcano, the music transitioning into Aloha Oe as the view transitions down to a Hawaiian village where Shaggy, Scooby, and one “John Simms” are enjoying a luau. The scene is presented in the same terms Shaggy and Scooby are experiencing it: tourism aimed at a mostly white audience. Although there’s faux-conversational background noise, none of the locals are heard to speak—not to the gang, not to one another, and barely even when the episode’s villain appears. Only two Hawaiian character gets any lines, and it’s near the very end of the episode.

Shaggy’s first line sums up the attitudes informing this scenario.

After its illegal annexation as a US territory to appease the interests of white settlers, Hawaii had been a US state for barely more than a decade before this episode aired. American tourist culture—that is, white American ideas about what Pacific culture is like, filtered through the experience of tourism and material indulgence. 

Mr. Simms snaps a photo of Shaggy stuffing his face, mentioning that it’ll be great for his newspaper, and Shaggy shares his gratitude for Simms taking the gang on a tour. The episode is kind of vague as to whose dollar funded the trip; if Simms brought the gang, his reasons are never brought up, and it seems more likely they arrived by other means and that the arrangement with Simms is about being shown the sights.

In fact, Shaggy mentions plans for the following day: visiting the “ancient village of a lost tribe”, a plan the rest of the gang came up with that isn’t part of the tour Simms is conducting.

Simms warns Shaggy and Scooby that the village is haunted, and advises them to just stick to the tour and enjoy themselves.

Then the drums start. 

A poorly-animated man slides in from offscreen, stammering, “ghost drums!”

A trio of drums decorated with faces throb and pulse alone on the sand like abandoned personal massage wands, and ominous clouds move in around the volcano. The light over the whole scene turns red, and in an explosion of smoke, a masked figure appears.

I found it odd that, when mentioning this scene later on, Shaggy insists that Simms was present when this “witch doctor” appears, but he’s actually vanished when the villain shows up to declare that everyone present is “on the forbidden ground of Mano Tiki Tia!”

Now, “tiki” is a word indelibly merged with the concept of island culture in the American consciousness, most egregiously in the form of gimmicky lounge/bar drinks served in cups poorly imitating traditional carvings. It’s from a Maori word, meaning “figurine”, and as far as i’m aware, doesn’t actually mean anything in Hawaiian (though they are related languages, so maybe there’s a cognate i’m unfamiliar with). “Mano” could be any of several words depending on how you accent the vowels when writing it in English; it could mean “shark”, a source of water, or “a vast number of things”.

It’s more likely that Joe Ruby and Ken Spears just made it up to sound “Hawaiian”.

The costumed villain (who, unsurprisingly, will turn out to be a white man) vanishes, and the villagers, Shaggy, and Scooby panic. Scooby and Shaggy are separated in the confusion, and Shaggy finds himself alone.

The action cuts to the Pineapple Parlor, where Fred and Daphne dance to a jukebox while Velma kvetches about Shaggy and Scooby’s idea of fun. Remember what I was saying about the indulgent American tourist culture? The episode began with luau number 48.

Shaggy arrives in a panic, knocking down the door and surfing it across the floor to tell the others what happened in sentence fragments that don’t really communicate anything. “Shaggy, get ahold of yourself,” Fred advises.

The gang take the Mystery Machine back to the site of the luau, Shaggy and Velma arguing about “scientific facts” versus the things Shaggy saw with his own gullible eyes. As the gang arrive, Velma catches sight of an old man sitting by a statue. 

The gang get out of the van, and Velma suggests asking him, but to her surprise, he’s vanished before the others could see him. Just as quickly, a “ghost drum” appears, bouncing towards them, and circling the Mystery Machine as they gang try to hide... only to flip over and reveal that Scooby was hiding underneath it.

The gang want to find Mr. Simms, but Shaggy is reluctant, until the incentive of another luau is dangled before him. I really need to affirm that the tourist-centric concept of the luau is inauthentic, and stands as a symbol of the whole repackaging, rebranding, and sale of Hawaiian and broader Polynesian culture to white people. Shaggy’s appetite for luaus goes well beyond his usual gluttony and makes him into a living avatar of American imperialism, here motivated to save lives only by the prospect of more parties.

While searching, the gang find a newspaper with articles by Simms. They can tell this because the page Velma is reading is shown to have the name John Simms written across the entire top of the page, less of a credit and more of a headline or title for the paper itself. It also has the worst typeface choice ever made for a newspaper.

The gang want to investigate further, intending to follow the tracks into the “jungle” (guay de mi, am i glad that word is vanishing from the English lexicon), and Scooby needs convincing to use his nose to follow the scent.

This is probably the single most uncomfortable image of Fred Jones that exists, and i’m including things that can only be described with the words “rule 34″ in that.

Naturally, Shaggy falls for the temptation, and scarfs down the Snack and gets to sniffing on all fours. Scooby follows suit, reluctantly, and we get another glimpse of the old man, watching from the bushes. The gang catch sight of him and flip out, and he laughs to himself as they flee.

Seriously, though, how strong is Velma Dinkley? Get this girl into some weightlifting competitions. This particular formation hooks Shaggy and Scooby upside-down on a tree branch opposite some similarly-posed bats, evidently drawn by someone who couldn’t be zoinksed to look it up and learn that there’s only one species of bat native to Hawaii. The boys flee from the menacing red-eyed, red-eared grey-black bats and—we get another transitional wipe! Are they here to stay? 

When the gang literally run into each other again, they wind up at the feet of a giant statue, which Velma identifies as the figure of Mano Tiki Tia from the newspaper article. They’re in the “haunted” village,  strewn with human skulls and ominously sharp carvings. As the gang look around, the giant statue rotates at its base, and its eyes open to watch them.

Somehow, they don’t notice this.

They do notice the witch doctor, who chases them in the direction of a large building that is evidently still seeing use, complete with a rotating trick wall. Shaggy and Scooby are left on the outside, as a snorting shadow—very clearly a boar—approaches, and Shaggy is forced to heft a “club” in self-defense.

...what? The boar jumps out of the underbrush, followed by two piglets, bowling Shaggy over. Meanwhile, Velma drops through a trap door, and winds up in a cavernous dungeon where she spots Mr. Simm’s horribly tacky hat. She hides, just as the Witch Doctor enters, but her haypile hiding place triggers a sneeze and she has to run. 

The boys recover at the feet of the statue, where Shaggy for some reason has the utter gall to ask if Scooby is really afraid of ghosts. As Scooby gives the obvious, honest answer, a voice booms:

“MANO.... TIKI... TIA!”

Shaggy looks up to see where it came from.

Mano Tiki Tia is the biggest “monster” the gang face by far, and unless i’m misremembering things, will hold onto that status for a good long while.

He’s also really obviously mechanical, and as he gives chase, the camera lets the viewer plainly see the creaking wheels moving his feet over the ground. Hiding from him leads the boys to reunite with Velma, and the trio flee the Witch Doctor into a nearby building where they attempt to barricade the door, forming a chain to pass furniture across the room.

I’m pretty sure this is the first time we see this particular gag in Scooby-Doo, though it’s going to repeat plenty of times in the future.

A brief glimpse of Fred and Daphne’s wanderings reveals another sighting of the old man, and the scene cuts back to the chase.

You know, usually the disguises involve them throwing something else on over their clothes. This is one of the most obvious times that they would have needed to strip and throw on something else, and i really feel like that’s time that would be better spent running.

Even more astonishingly, this disguise works, and the Witch Doctor is totally fooled as “Tarzan” directs him towards “boy, girl, and dog”.

Meanwhile, Fred and Velma find a genuine clue:

A table half-covered with pearls and oyster shells. Another transitional wipe later, we get one of the few exchanges that suggest the gang have a sense of real danger, as Shaggy complains “my feet are killing me,” and Velma responds:

“It’s a good thing we slipped the Witch Doctor, or that wasn’t all that would be getting killed.”

Not that the Witch Doctor ever shows any signs of being armed or in any way capable of hurting the gang, but... wow. 

A moment later, Scooby spots a small wrecked airplane. It looks like it’s overgrown with vines—plastic, Velma notes—and there’s a laughing skeleton at the controls... manipulated by a tripwire Shaggy sets off, linked to a tape recorder hidden under a nearby shrub. 

Emboldened by the realization that it’s a fake, Shaggy uses the skeleton for some prop comedy. “Hey skinny, do you know why the skeleton went to the library? To bone up on a few things!”

Shaggy laughs at his own joke, and then the skeleton, which is no longer connected to the tripwire and tape recorder, starts laughing as well.  I’ll save you some wondering before the end: this sequence gets no explanation whatsoever as part of the villain’s scheme, and is not referenced after it concludes. We never find out how the fake plane crash plays into things, or what caused the skeleton to laugh again. 

The trio book it (that’s another library joke), and run into Fred and Daphne. The transitional wipes see heavier use as the gang continue to investigate, chasing the old man into an underwater cavern that leads back into the haunted village, and another encounter with the Witch Doctor and Mano Tiki Tia.

The Witch Doctor alternates between ominous declarations in a faux-aged falsetto, and guttural, animalistic growling, both provided by the diverse talents of the late John Stephenson, who also lends his voice to Mano Tiki Tia. The only reason i don’t complain about this casting (the many flaws aside, the showrunners had already demonstrated that they understood the idea of casting nonwhite characters with appropriate voice actors, and this was back in the dang seventies)  is that both are eventually revealed to be white dudes.

Trapped between a rock and a nutcase, the gang flee into some nearby huts. The Mano Tiki Tia statue demonstrates some decent dexterity and considerable strength, lifting up the entire small houses from the ground to look for the gang as if it were a shell game. The kids, of course, are not hidden under any of the huts, but are instead clinging desperately to the rafters of one.

The chase sequence is one of the few in which the gang seem to face a real, immediate threat of harm if caught, with Mano Tiki Tia’s fists slamming pitfalls into the ground. The contrast between the desperate nature of the chase and the many gags involving Scooby and Shaggy responding inappropriately actually make the whole scene work better, as the jokes break the tension of the action and the chase makes the jokes seem fresh rather than a constant stream. Even the canned laughter can’t quite spoil it.

Eventually, Shaggy and Scooby work together to improvise a disguise that actually scares off the Witch Doctor, shambling out of the brush as a kind of “leaf monster”. Fred’s inspired to frighten the villain even more, and formulates a trap that involves a “trick amusement park mirror from the Mystery Machine” (the what and why do they have that?) being placed to frighten the Witch Doctor right into a concealed pit.

Once again, Shaggy and Scooby foul things up in a way that catches the villain anyway, winding up on top of Mano Tiki Tia and blinding the statue so that its attempts to snag them capture its master, instead.

The statue crashes, and Fred unmasks the Witch Doctor: 

Mister John Simms?

Somewhat thankfully, the horribly racist caricature villain turns out to be white American in disguise. And the statue of Mano Tiki Tia?

How many parade floats you know that can punch holes in the ground, Velma?

Fred and Velma conclude that Simms set up the whole thing to scare villagers and tourists away so he could poach the lucrative oyster beds for pearls. “Right, Mr. Simms?”

Jinkies, not even a “meddling kids”?

As fir the old man, he appears and reveals himself as...

Um, never mind what i said about appropriate voice casting. Lt. Tomoro is unmistakably Casey Kasem putting on his more authoritative voice, sounding almost exactly like his performance as the heroic but paranoid Cliffjumper in the Transformers cartoons.

Tomoro, like Inspector Lu before him, reveals that he’d been on this case “for a long time”, and that the gang have solved the case for him—so he treats them to their final day of vacation in Hawaii.

The gang enjoy some more dancing, Scooby steals Shaggy’s poi, and the episode ends with the visiting white teenagers and their dog having saved the day by interfering in an ongoing investigation where the locals failed to accomplish anything. 

What a great message. I’d like to say the franchise gets better about this kind of thing, but, well, it’s going to be up and down for a while.

That said, there’s only two more episodes of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! to go... maybe we’ll see if in the New Scooby-Doo Movies?

(like what i’m doing here? It’s not what pays the bills, so i’d really appreciate it if you could send me a bit at my paypal.me or via my ko-fi. Click here to see more entries in this series of posts, or here to go in chronological order)

#scooby doo #KRAOSD