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whyqueerbaitingisbad · 3 years

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movies & shows

cracks knuckles* alright this is going to be more of a rant than an analysis because i’m basing this on both my research, but also how it felt to personally be baited by these shows. there are obviously more pieces of bad (almost every horror movie) and good ones but these are the ones i’ve watched.

please keep in mind that i am but one queer and everyone has different opinions.

Supernatural (CW) 2005

This show is 15 years old and just ended. From season 5 till 15, there has been tension between two of the lead characters. They were constantly shipped together and not only did the entire fandom know about this ship but so did almost all of Tumblr. On top of that, the actors and show runners knew about it as well. Which is why it makes it ridiculous that it was constantly pushed aside while the romantic coding kept happening, even after show runners dismissed it as being intentional. The Destiel (Dean x Cas) case has been going on for years, and as the show came to its end, many fans had hope. But N O P E. Instead, we got a love confession from Cas where Dean looked like he was near constipated and the Cas was killed and sent into a fiery place that was not hell but s u p e r h e l l.

… w hy.

Sherlock (BBC) 2010

Just like Supernatural, this show was renown on Tumblr for not only how good it was, but its hinting at a potential relationship between Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. But again, like Supernatural, the intentional tension between the two characters was denied by producers. This caused an uproar within the fandom, and even left some people believing that, after the last season aired, it had been a joke and the producers were hiding a “secret, unaired season” because they had felt so robbed by this show that had implied something and denied it.

The 100 (CW) 2014

We got lesbians. We got background gays. We were happy. Then, all of a sudden, one of them is killed for no reason. Did it advance the plot? No. Was she fighting and died in battle? lol no. She was doing literally nothing and got shot and died. And then the producers kept bringing her back once a season in the form of a ghost or illusion because why? Because she was a fan favourite queer character. ✨bury your gays and sparingly bring them back for profit anyone?✨

Voltron: Legendary Defender (Netflix) 2016

*deep breathe* This one is a special disaster. Not only was there romantic tension and romantically coded scenes for 7 seasons, but producers, voice actors and artists working on the show repeatedly said “don’t worry klance (Keith x Lance) shippers, you’ll be happy”

. … w h e r e??? You code one of their scenes with a sunset in the background while they talk about love and then one of them goes on a date with someone who has declined his advances for 7 seasons but now in season 8 decides to do a full 180. Not only that, but you announce at a Comic Con (a convention) that a character is gay and has a fiancé, only to kill off the fiancé and never make it explicit in the show except at the last second of the last episode where he marries a no name character.

Personally, i’d like to say a big fuck you to the show that strung me along for 2 years and never stopped saying we’d be happy to then pull the rug out from under us and call us crazy for thinking anything from the past 8 seasons was intentional.

Scooby-Doo (2002)

While not being outwardly queerbaiting, this movie’s filmmaker has just revealed some shocking news, which wasn’t at all shocking to the gays who had watched this movie over the years. In July of 2020, James Gunn, the filmmaker of Scooby-Doo, revealed in a podcast that, initially, Velma was explicitly gay in his script, but then the studio watered it down until it became nothing. This isn’t an example of baiting as much as it is changing a character’s initial design to “better fit an audience”. The worst part of all this is that with Velma’s character having been written with a l i t t l e queer subtext, people had been theorizing about if since the movie came out, but were always yelled at by the internet for “imagining something that isn’t there”. But now, even with it being said that the initial point was for her to be gay, people have no objections to still refusing to accept it. Why?? So we can’t get the subtext gays OR the confirmed gays?? Make it make sense.

Brooklyn 99 (NBC) 2013

To have the queer characters firstly introduced without mentioning their sexualities and have it brought up naturally was so goddamn nice to see, because no one does a big deal about it unless they ask for that. This show is amazing in general but the way they show their queer characters is *chefs kiss*.

She-ra and the Princesses of Power (Netflix) 2018

This. Show. My heart SOARS. It's just a remake of an old show so absolutely nothing was ever expected, but then it was sprinkled in and ENDED WITH A BANG. And it was so beautiful and real to see the struggle of two friends who care for each other and want to be together but have different visions of the world fall in love. And they also had characters with disabilities, a non-binary character and jUST SUCH A GOOD SHOW.

Kipo and The Age of Wonderbeasts (Netflix) 2020

This is a case where you go into it not expecting anything and are BLOWN AWAY by the bare minimum. And not because it’s bad!! It's mind blowing because this is the simple representation we need!! Not something over the top, but an every day relationship. It’s just two boys falling in love and going on dates and being nervous around each other, yet i was so stunned. Because it’s not shown enough. I should not be this excited over something that should be this normal. 10/10 though this show is so good for all kinds of representation.

Steven Universe (Cartoon Network) 2013

This show did so much for queer representation with its general message of loving everyone and loving who you want. Especially since it was aired on Cartoon Network, a channel for kids, it was able to help normalize something so looked down upon in some circles. It made it easy to watch for s o m e people because it's a cartoon but it's so beautiful to see these ladies so in love with each other, both platonically and romantically and we see them have a family dynamic that isn’t a “nuclear family”. Rebecca Sugar (creator) really said “lemme just break all stereotypes real quick”.

Adventure Time (Cartoon Network) 2010

It's the “knowing a fanbase shipped something so hard that the creators made it canon” for me. This relationship had been theorized by fans for years, but it had never been explicit in the show. When the finale episode came out and the two shared a kiss, it was a moment of celebration. The producer of the show said that it had not really been planned but when the episode was being made, the choice of what happened was given to one of the artists (bless your soul Hanna K. Nyströmthe). And as the show releases little bonus episodes, its latest was centered around Marceline and Bubblegum and their relationship. AND WE LOVE TO SEE OUR DOMESTIC LESBIANS BEING HAPPY AND IN LOVE.

Yuri on Ice!!! (anime) 2016

The fact that an A N I M E gave us a love story between two men is mind boggling and it makes me so happy!! Especially because it's a Japanese show and they’re very conservative about these things just makes it more emotional. The creators said they wanted to make the anime take place in a world where gay/straight isn’t a thing, it’s just love (ladies, you’re going to make me cry). So as the weekly episodes came out and fans start speculating, THEY GAVE US THE LAST FEW EPISODES FULL OF ROMANCE AND EMOTIONAL SCENES BETWEEN THE TWO AND THEN THEY GET R I N GS?!???!! You watch for the figure skating, you stay for the figure skaters that are in love.

Shadowhunters (Freeform) 2016

*insert me being frustrated that the actors are straight so we can move on from that disappointment*

This show really said “let’s name a whole episode after this couple because they deserve it”. But seriously, they gave us two characters whose entire plot does not center around their sexualities while still showing us the differences in a relationship between someone experienced and someone new at this. They were both powerful and amazing characters apart from each other, with their own story lines and goals but they loved each other so much omgs. SO MUCH.

It was so great to watch.

Love, Simon (2018)

There’s a lot of disagreement on whether this movie is good representation or not. However, we need to take into consideration that this was Hollywood’s first movie with a main character that was gay, where the story’s focus was on Simon’s love story. The biggest problem, for me at least, was that the actor playing Simon is a straight man and not queer. My problem is not with him, but the fact that there are other actors that are gay and that could have played Simon just as well. (the love interested was however played by a queer actor so ✨progress✨)

All in all, this movie does represent what a lot of queer kids have to go through: being outed at school, how they then come out, the bullying and doubt they go through.

The book is also really good.

Call Me By Your Name (2018)

This movie is so aesthetically pleasing and was able to capture the confusion and heartbreak felt by a boy who’s struggling with his own feelings towards a man. His inner conflict and joy and l o v e he feels but doesn’t know how to deal with is so well communicated through the screen and just breaks your heart because it feels so real.

But again, they could’ve gotten gay actors to play gay characters…

through having this list here, i want to show you that it’s not hard for creators to give good queer representation. the LGBTQ+ community isn’t asking for much, we just want to be well represented on screen as just a regular character, not some token queer kid there for the diversity points. having been exposed to so much queerbaiting and just not seeing any representation on screen, i always get over-excited when i see a queer character, and that’s not how it should be. it should be a normal thing, something you can find in most pieces of media, just like there’s a straight white cisgender person in everything.

and they seriously need to start casting queer actors for queer characters...

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rayofspades · 3 years

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How to Write a Horror Story: The Magnus Archives

This post is kinda weird since most tumblr fandom content is based on the assumption that Everyone Has Seen The Thing, but since this is a transcript of a video essay, it’s more broad.

I might link the video in a reblog since, you know, tumblr doesn’t like links.

Anyways, here’s the post:

Hello Jon, apologies for the decep-

I’ve seen a lot of mystery shows in my day, and some supernatural shows, and the common thread between them is that they kind of...fall apart as they go on.

Obviously, this is a generalization and I haven’t seen every mystery show or every paranormal show, but it’s a pretty common problem.

At this point in pop culture criticism, it’s basically common knowledge that these shows fall apart due to a lack of planning. If a mystery series is making shit up as it goes along while trying to surprise the audience, it’s going to stop making sense at some point. And if an episodic paranormal show is constantly trying to up the stakes, eventually it’s going to become absolutely ridiculous and stretch the audience’s suspension of disbelief past a breaking point.

Other people have already talked about this stuff to death, but today I want to talk about a paranormal mystery show that actually succeeds at what it set out to do.

The Magnus Archives is a podcast written by Jonny Sims and directed by Alexander J. Newall. It ran from 2016 to 2021 and it’s...really really good. It’s an episodic horror story, taking place at the fictional Magnus Institute where the head archivist reads various statements about people’s encounters with supernatural entities. It’s got it all; scary stories, mystery, an overarching plot, office comedy, office romance, office tragedy, a villain that’s making straight men everywhere question their sexuality, and an overall really solid structure.

If you listen to the Q+As put out by the writer and director, you’ll hear them talk about how they planned the series from the beginning, setting up the layout for each season. Some things were definitely changed throughout the actual writing process; that’s just inevitable and necessary when you’re working on a long running show, but in a general sense, they knew where they were going. But, writing a good story doesn’t just involve knowing where you’re going; it’s about executing whatever plan you have effectively. And I think the execution of The Magnus Archives is pretty brilliant, so I want to talk about it.

And for the record, I said “brilliant,” not “perfect.” I do have a lot of criticisms of this show, and I’m definitely going to talk about those too, because honestly? Even the problems with this show are interesting in their own right.

Ok, let’s go.

Oh, spoilers by the way. For the whole plot. Whole thing.

Part 1: Horror and Mystery

Ok, so The Magnus Archives has two separate plots going on: the episodic stories that can be listened to individually, and the underlying meta plot. The former is where most of the mystery storytelling takes place, and it’s a really engaging mystery. It’s starts off slow, and almost undetectable at first. The main character, Jon, also known as The Archivist, is just reading out old scary stories that people have delivered to the Magnus Institute. Stuff like; a college student sees a ghostly inhuman figure asking for a cigarette, a woman’s fiancé dies and she finds herself trapped in an empty graveyard, there’s this goth kid who apparently murdered his mother and then skinned her? But she’s kind of still alive? What the f*ck? Hope we never see that kid again. Also, this “Jurgen Lietner” guy wrote a bunch of cursed books and Jon knows about this? Are more books gonna come up? And then you’re like, wait is the goth kid who killed that burn victim the same goth kid who killed his mom like 8 episodes ago? Holy shit the family of that girl’s dead fiancé FUNDS THE MAGNUS INSTITUTE? Did this famous youtuber meet one of the missing people from episode one? The goth kid is back and he’s looking for Leitner books? The name “Michael” has come up like 6 times? Are they all the same guy? I just—who the f*ck is Jurgen Leitner?

So yeah, as you can see, a lot of these stories connect in cool ways, and I’ve only mentioned like, 0.2 percent of all of those connections. Furthermore, these stories are told out of chronological order, and sometimes the same scenario appears in more than one statement, told from different perspectives. This asymmetrical storytelling and odd doling out of information creates a mystery that’s really interesting. It also makes for a great re-listen, since you can retroactively see what elements were set up before you even realized that they were going to come back.

The audio format contributes to this too; you can’t just see that the table from episode three matches the pattern on the box in episode eight. You have to pick up on clues that were mentioned and pay attention to what people are describing, and it’s highly rewarding when the pieces all start to fit together.

There is a bit of a downside to this though. Technically The Magnus Archives is a horror story first and a mystery second, and these two elements can mesh in weird ways.

The horror is element is really strong. Each story is completely different, sometimes focusing on psychological horror, body horror, or supernatural versions of more primal fears like heights, darkness, enclosed spaces, etc. Basically, if you’re afraid of anything, there will be at least one episode of The Magnus Archives that gets under your skin.

Jonny Sims can really sell his stories through both his writing and acting. He plays Jon, by the way, and plagiarized his own birth certificate for the character name. (For future reference, Jonny is the actor, Jon is the character). Overall, he’s really good at writing prose, and each narrator has a very distinct voice even though the large majority of the stories are being read by one character/actor.

Obviously not every episode is a bull’s eye. Sometimes it’s due to the subjectivity when it comes to what you as an audience member are scared of, and occasionally it’s just weird writing decisions. I’m thinking specifically of episode 21 where the line “the sky ate him” is said, and it is the worst line in the entire show. The whole goddamn show. That’s it. That’s the number one worst line.

But still, overall, the horror storytelling is incredibly solid, and some episodes even gave me brand new fears, like the unholy isolation of being in space, or the concept that someone you love could be replaced by someone completely different without you noticing.

But here’s the thing;

A lot of good horror is based on the absence of explanation. Most of the episodes that gave me the most visceral reactions of genuine terror come from the first two seasons, because that’s when the audience has the least amount of information.

For example, in episode two, a really terrifying coffin is introduced. It’s creepy, it reacts very strangely to water for some reason, and appears to compel people to try opening it. By the end of the episode, the audience never finds out what’s in that coffin and that is a good thing. That is a huge part of what made that episode so unnerving.

And then a few seasons later, we do find out what’s in the coffin, and to be fair the answer is both very creative and very scary, but it also takes a lot of the punch out of episode two.

No matter how f*cked up your thing is, it’s not going to compare to whatever the audience can conjure up in their own mind after such a creepy set up. This problem isn’t just stuck in this one scenario either; there are a lot of early episodes that, while still good, seem a lot less creepy in hindsight after you learn more about the scenario.

I don’t think it’s bad writing, but I do think it’s a double-edged sword. Jonny Sims even mentions this sort of issue in the first Q+A.

But yeah, to sum up; the narration is good, the ideas are creative, and seeing the mystery unfurl itself is deeply compelling. And for the record, the mystery elements aren’t of the Sherlock Holmes variety. It’s less about finding out who did the thing, and more about discovering how all of these individual points are intricately connected, pulling on each other as they move. Woven together like a... oh shit what’s the word? Gah, it’s on the tip of my tongue. Ah, whatever, I’m sure it’s not like a running motif or anything.

Part 2: Stakes

One of the main reasons I stopped watching Supernatural is that it devolves into complete f*cking nonsense. At the end of season five, the boys literally defeat the devil, and then the show...keeps going? Which would be fine. It’s also, largely, an episodic show, so if they have more creative ideas, they could definitely keep going with it. In fact, there are some post season five episodes that I thought were pretty good. But as they kept trying to outdo themselves with Bigger Bads, it got kind of difficult to suspend my disbelief. And the final nail in the coffin for me was the end of season nine, when Crowly basically points out to the audience that the main characters keep dying and coming back to life, so there are no stakes. The most-badest bad guy can always be defeated because some new Thing can just come out of left-field, and dying isn’t even on the table as a threat since people have tons of ways of coming back to life.

The Magnus Archives, while being a show based in the supernatural, notably doesn’t bring anyone back to life, even though some very beloved characters die. I say “notably,” because in the season three Q+A, Jonny even says, “We make a point not to bring people back from the dead in Magnus, I know it sometimes feels like that, but we are very careful to never actually resurrect anyone.”

Upon listening to this I said “oh my god, these guys are the only writers left who at least kind of know what they’re doing.”

Also, as far as plot progression goes, The Magnus Archives is lowkey structurally perfect in the way the threats escalate in the underlying plot; both in terms of destruction and power and in terms of emotional consequences. Season one starts off with one major threat that’s dealt with by the end of the season, season two reveals the main villain, season three lays out the grander forces at play, season four ends the world, and season five is about un-ending the world. The difference between season one and season five is vast, but how we got there makes perfect sense.

As for the emotional stakes, let’s talk about themes and characters.

Part 3: Themes and Characters

At the very end of season two, it’s revealed that the supernatural happenings in the Magnus universe are the result of entities far beyond our understanding. Since their existence is so fundamentally different from what we can comprehend, they interact with the world through cursed items, creatures, and humans who have dedicated themselves to an entity.

A lot of people read this as a metaphor for late-stage capitalism, and I am one of those people. A bunch of faceless entities exploiting humans through means of dehumanization and causing people to suffer because it feeds them seems like an appropriate metaphor.

While we’re on this topic, I do want to talk about Elias, since he’s the main villain of the entire series and also one of my favorite villains of all time. The Magnus Archives is a series that deals with a lot of moral questions and has a lot of characters who do morally questionable things, so one might assume that the villain of said series is, you know, morally ambiguous and sympathetic to some extent despite being “the bad guy.”

Nope! No stops, full bastard. It’s great.

He falls under what I’ve deemed the “unbeatable boss” archetype. He just doesn’t tolerate insubordination or resistance, and that combined with his lack of empathy means that anyone who crosses him is either killed or brought to heel. His power set is cool too. On the surface the ability to see out of any eye and read minds sounds useful, but not deal breaking, but the way he uses that power to manipulate people and anticipate threats...yeah, it makes him kind of impossible to beat.

He’s just...so evil and he loves being evil and every single f*cking thing he does pisses me off and makes me want to kill him. It’s. Great.

Anyways, I think Elias’s role as the central antagonist is what makes the capitalist reading so common. He’s the head of the institute, he’s wealthy, he’s powerful, and he dehumanizes people in ways that are both brutal and chillingly indifferent. He seems like an appropriate stand in through that lens.

I also love how voice actor Ben Meredith plays him like’s he’s trying to seduce the audience.

With all of that said, I wouldn’t call this the critique of capitalism a direct allegory or anything; in much looser terms, this could be a metaphor for any power structure that exploits humans. Organized religion or cults might be even more on the nose, considering there’s a lot of mentions of rituals and worship within the show.

But if we boil it down to its barest aspects and focus on the avatar characters, The Magnus Archives is a series about people becoming monsters. Or, at the very least, becoming worse versions of themselves. That can mean a lot of things to different people in a metaphorical sense; the tense relationship between desperation and morality, the eagerness to please at the cost of one’s own mental health, the psychological traumas that lead people down dark paths, and how personal choices can still be dictated and manipulated by outside influences. It’s kind of heavy stuff, but put into a digestible package through the show’s abstractions.

Well, for the most part.

There’s some debate as to whether or not Daisy’s arc was handled tastefully. While her demise and Basira’s character arc were clearly meant to condemn police brutality and the deeply corrupt system that allows it to foster, it’s still a weird subject to discuss in such a fantastical context, and there is a strange sympathy for the devil angle that can get kind of uncomfortable for some listeners.

Okay, stepping back from that for a bit, let’s talk about Jon and how he fits into this whole “people becoming corrupted” thing.

Jon has one of my favourite brands of character arc, which is one based in deterioration alongside growth. The most obvious way this takes form is his departure from humanity as his relationship with the Eye drives him to psychologically harm others, and he finds himself sympathizing more and more with the people he was afraid of, stating in episode 152 that anyone listening to his recordings might compare him to the other avatars that have had their minds and morals twisted.

Over the course of the series, he is repeatedly traumatized and the show makes a point that he is being both physically and emotionally scarred. These happenings are what drive his motivation for revenge in season five, and he even states that revenge is making him a worse person. As a character he’s constantly berating himself and his own monstrousness, much to Martin’s dismay.

That’s why the finale destroys me in the best way. Upon seeing that Jon has betrayed him and basically given himself over to the Eye, Martin asks “how much of you is even left?” And when Jon tries to reassure him that he’s still himself, Martin’s response is “how would you even know?” This cuts through me every time. Up until this point, Martin had consistently stood up for Jon and Jon’s humanity, even in the face of Tim’s doubt, Basira’s mistrust, Elias being cryptic, and Jon’s own self-hatred. This is the ultimate breaking point, the point where even Martin, the love of Jon’s life, doesn’t really recognize him. It’s brutal. Because at the end of the day, Jon is still himself; he’s a deeply broken person trying to make the right decisions.

We’ll come back to the finale later, but for now I want to talk about the romance.

Jon’s emotional growth throughout the series is largely tied into Martin. Martin’s the first person that Jon really opens up to, and this later grows into trust which then turns into a genuine emotional connection. On the flip side, Martin’s growth in season four is largely tied into Jon. Martin starts season four basically waiting to die, but Jon’s return gives him a reason to keep living, and he’s later able to recognize his own value outside of the pure utility of ‘you need to set yourself on fire to keep everyone else warm.’ Both of them give each other reason to push onward despite everything becoming more and more hopeless.

It’s a good romance. I wish the two had had a few more scenes together before the culmination, but it is built up over the course of four seasons and comes together in an utterly fantastic confession.

And yeah, the scene with Martin and Jon in the Lonely is cheesy as hell, but it is the highest quality of cheese. These are some gourmet nachos.

Umm, also kind of stating the obvious here, but it’s also pretty cool that the main character in this horror story falls in love with another man. You don’t see that a lot, and it’s cool that no one even makes a big deal out of it. It’s just a normal romance, but with two guys. It’s nice.

So, they go to Scottland, they hang out, they’re in love, Jonalias starts the apocalypse through Jon, the world ends, and season five starts!

...Let’s talk about season five!

Part 4: Season 5

At the very start of this post, I said that supernatural mysteries tend to get worse as they go along, and I am deeply sad to report that I don’t think that The Magnus Archives is an exception. It just goes downhill in a very different way than its ilk.

And, so we’re clear, I don’t think season five totally tanks or becomes unlistenable, it’s just, in my opinion, notably worse than the rest of the show.

As discussed earlier, it doesn’t fall apart due to a lack of planning; everything still makes sense, but the presentation has changed drastically. The episodic statements are no longer scary stories, but more like slam poems about the various hellscapes that Jon and Martin are trekking through. Honestly if these were published in a book of slam poetry, I would probably think they slapped pretty hard. I genuinely believe that Jonny Sims is a good writer, but as a podcast a lot of these statements just made me zone out. There’s at least four that I don’t even slightly remember. Myself and many others have noted that they just...aren’t scary, unless there’s a specific episode that really gets under your skin due to a certain fear or phobia.

To quote my friend, “it’s harder to feel a solid impact when the setting is literally divorced from reality. People would either go numb or insane to the point where their fears become unrelatable.”

And, to be honest, I think that this same surreal odyssey set up could have worked with a slight shift in narration. Two stand out episodes for me were “Strung Out” and “Wonderland.” Both of them show the tormented target actively trying to resist and interact with their tormenter, instead of just trying to escape or live through their situation. “Strung Out” is also more of character study; you learn about Francis’s life before the apocalypse through their interaction with the Web hellscape. Meanwhile “Wonderland” is just...f*cked, and you get to see Jon take the perspective of first-person Bad Guy throughout the whole thing, which is its own level of disturbing.

But the majority of episodes feel so abstract that I kind of forget the people trapped in them are supposed to be characters and not just concepts, so it’s harder to feel their dread and pain.

But I’m still here for the metaplot, the drama, and the romance. And when that’s good, it’s great! I think the final handful of episodes are really solid in that regard.

Buuuuuuut...

A decent chunk of season five is dedicated to the “kill bill” plot. Jon discovers he has the power to smite people, and while at first, he’s embarrassed about this, since he actively enjoyed killing Not!Sasha, Martin is super into it! He’s encouraging Jon to murder people.

This is actually the set up for a really good arc. As Jon gets more and more into his own avenging angel persona, Martin could get more and more disturbed by it so by the time they get to London, Martin could be really upset that Jon is so willing to wreak his own divine justice by killing or torturing all of the avatars.

And this does kind of happen. We do reach this end state, and it makes for a good final conflict, but the way we got here was borderline nonsense. Thematic gibberish, if you will.

Throughout the journey, Martin is clearly motived by a sense of justice; these people are bad, and so they should die. Whereas Jon is clearly more motivated by revenge; he only goes after the avatars that hurt him personally. At one point, Jon admits that maybe all of this killing isn’t making anything better, but just making him worse. Martin apologizes for egging him on, Jon absolves him by saying he started it, and then Martin’s like “I’ll keep my apology then.” This is the second worst line in the entire series, right after “the sky ate him.” And it’s close.

But it kind of feels like we’re back at square one. Jon is back to being ashamed of killing and Martin is still keen on his justice stance, but now just less pushy about it. The arc is basically half resolved at this point.

But then it doesn’t matter, because Jon kills Helen anyway. So, Jon’s back on his revenge/justice thing. Then what was the point of his earlier revelation? Why have that if it’s not going to matter and the conflict that was escalating still culminates with Jon leaning into the avenging angel stuff, and Martin being disturbed by it? It just makes both of them look like huge hypocrites! I f*cking hate it when they’re in the tunnels and Martin says “you weren’t meant to enjoy it this much,” regarding Jon’s smiting. Where did this come from?! Why didn’t you say this earlier? Third worst line in the series.

And yeah, I’ll say it; the boys fight too much in this season. I loved their romance up to season five, and their cute moments and more lowkey serious discussions are still good in this season, but God, they fight so much. And I’m not saying couples can’t have fights or tension, that’s just realistic and also stories need conflict to be interesting. Jonny Sims is on the record saying that balancing a healthy romance with the stress of a literal apocalypse was a priority, and I’m sorry, but I don’t think it’s well balanced. I’m just saying that sometimes it feels like they don’t even like each other and it really started to grate on me.

Maybe it would have been better if the beginning of this season was dedicated to charming romance at first, so we as an audience could better appreciate how strong their love is and how it’s truly being tested. But obviously that was never on the table—

ALEX NO.

So, yeah, I have a lot of problems with season. I think it’s the worst one by far, even though there is a lot of it I still enjoy, including the ending.

As I mentioned before, the moment where Martin confronts Jon in the panopticon absolutely kills me, and Jon’s reaction kills me even harder. Throughout the season, Jon had largely been motivated by revenge, martyrdom, and the subconscious call of the Eye, and all three of those factors led him to his position as the pupil. He’s getting revenge against the powers, sacrificing his humanity to get rid of the Fears, and taking his place as wearer of the watcher’s crown. But all of this gets thrown out the window when he realizes that Martin is going to die. And not only is Martin going to die, Martin is going to die specifically because he loves Jon and refuses to leave Jon alone to die horribly. Martin had always been an underlying motivation for Jon, his “reason” as stated in episode 167, but now love as a motivator has come to the forefront, and Jon can no longer go through with his plan because of it. But at this point in the series, they’re both utterly doomed, and Jon concludes that the only possible chance they have of surviving, however unlikely, would be to sever the pupil of the eye, technically killing Jon, but maybe, just maybe, allowing them to escape with the Fears. Whether that’s meant to be literal or more ethereal is left unclear. Hell, maybe Jon’s just making it up completely and creating his own potential happy ending. It’s a pretty potent ending in emotional terms; Jon has to release the Fears and Martin has to kill Jon, and those are the two things they were dead set on not doing.

The Web, arguably the real main antagonist, basically won, and their manipulation of Jon worked. The destruction spread, and there is kind of a bleak underlying tone to that.

But at least this ending has some semblance of hope to it. I’m not saying that releasing the Fears was objectively the correct moral decision; the entire point of the dilemma is that there was no objectively correct moral decision. But, while Jon’s solution does have merit, it was also the most hopeless. I think dramatically, any one of the choices on the table could have worked if the writing was well executed, but thematically this one seemed like the perfect combination of grim and optimistic. Like, all of the evils that plague humanity can’t just be defeated forever and things could get worse, but maybe not. Maybe everything works out...

So yeah, The Magnus Archives...is a podcast. And it’s a really good podcast. Great, even. I can complain about season five all I want, but regardless of how that worked out, you can tell throughout the entire show that the people working on it were trying to tell a genuinely excellent story.

It’s good. Go listen to it. Even though I spoiled the entire thing and if you’re still here, you’ve probably already listened to it. Listen to it again.

#tma #the magnus archives #jonathan sims #martin blackwood

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whataplottwistyouwere · 4 years

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My thoughts about “How I Met Your Mother” finale

The Mother:

Despite her short amount of screen time , I loved mother. When the season started my biggest fear was : not learning much about mother. But I loved her anyways!! Of course I would prefer seeing her more but it didn’t make her less lovable. Right now I’m going to talk about her death (I will talk about her relationship with Ted later on)I understand why they killed her because their goal was to make RobinXTed from the very beginning. But I don’t think Robin and Ted is a healthy relationship ( I will detail it later on ) Because of these reasons I was so sad when she died but I understand why they did that. She had to die in order to make RobinXTed happen. But I think mother is one of the best characters in HIMYM ever and I never thought I could love someone with that amount of screen time

Robin and Barney

Ohhh here we go ... Robin and Barney. So first of all I want to say that ,in my opinion best relationship for Robin was Barney. And as many others my biggest problem in this season was that an amazing relationship like RobinXBarney being rushed. Okay so I want to talk about Barney and Robin’s impact on his life. We all know that Barney never thought about a serious relationship and never loved anyone; until Robin. Was this relationship %100 perfect ? No. But I still loved them anyways. Barney truly loved Robin. And some people say he never loved her as much as Ted but everyone has their different ways of showing love . And watching 9 seasons proved me that ; Barney truly loved Robin more than anything and anyone . But they rushed their realtionship. For example when they first started dating they showed them as fat couple and this was basically saying “ they aren’t good for each other” then they acted like nothing happened (but it’s not only in BarneyXRobin , Ted and Robin continued like nothing happened too) but during the time they dated Barney loved her more. We saw him watching Robin and trying to accept that he loves her . But nothing like that happened in Robin ,which makes me really sad because Barney and Ted was the lover and Robin never loved them that much . Okayy so they broke up , continued like nothing happened , they literally said they had bad impact on each other and Barney continued being a playboy . Then Robin realized she loved her but that wasn’t love : that was jealousy. Cause at the time Barney was with Nora and after Robin ,he finally found another serious relationship . And we see Robin being jealous. Okay then proposal ; it was so rushed -at least for me- Robin was never sure of her emotions and then when I saw Barney on the rooftop I thought he was going to ask her out. But out of no where ; MARRIAGE. I don’t think Robin was ready for it , i don’t think Barney was ready either but Barney truly loved her so that wasn’t a big problem for him. Then their relationship was rushed ; I mean I wished we saw more of their relationship as fiancées. But despite everything being rushed ; I still loved them cause I know how much Barney loves her . Anyways the last season : THE WEDDING. Okay disclaimer #1: I actually loved that the whole entire season was dedicated to a weekend. I loved watching it from different POVs and I think it was a great concept . But during the wedding what Robin did was to doubt doubt doubt and doubt . She never thought when she said “yes” and she never realized how much Barney loved her . So when the time came she was like “ I should’ve marry you Ted” (I’ll come to that in a minute) and then she tried to run away but Tracy stopped her. But some people say “ anyways they got married so it doesn’t matter” . Okay let’s go with that , everything is fine cause they got married. WE WATCHED 9 seasonS TO SEE THEM TOGETHER AND AFTER THE EPISODE THEY GET MARRIED THEY GOT DIVORCED!!!!!!!!!!! Okay so I know time was a problem but rather than making them get divorced AN EPISODE LATER you could’ve made the wedding earlier . To be honest, I don’t know but that’s not Barney deserved . Ohhh and why did they got divorced : BEAUSE OF ROBINS WORK. Look what I’m saying is if Robin TRULY wanted to make this relationship work she could’ve . ( for example : Robin declined a work offer FOR DON FRANK [ his co-host ] ) She did that for Don but couldn’t she do it for Barney???Barney tried so hard for this relationship and I’m so so sorry for him. The only thing I can say is everyone deserved more than wedding episode followed by a divorce episode

Barney

Okay I talked about Barney in the other section but there are some more stuff I want to add. First of all they turned him into a playboy after the moment he divorced with Robin. I’m not against it but he literally turned what he was in season 1 ( I’m not saying he was bad in season 1 but after everything happens ; divorce,marriage... he could’ve looked for something more serious) But in this horrible writing of RobinXBarney the victim is clearly Barney and I’m so sorry for him. He deserved so much better. Barney is an amazing character and he didn’t love someone as much as he loved Robin. So in the end of the season we learn that he has a baby. I really cried at that scene because it was so emotional. Barney never cared about anyone except robin ( and of course his friends) but in this episode he starts to care about someone else more than anyone : his daughter. Of course these scenes were so emotional but as the rest of the season it was incompleted. We should’ve seen the mother because Barney probably will try to work things out with her , for his daughter . So yeah we could’ve seen the mother , but if they showed her , there would’ve been more explanation that should be made and we have no time so I kinda understand that. Long story short : he deserved better, but in the end I’m happy that he is happy with her daughter

TedXRobinXTracy

Okay so this will be 3 parts. I will first talk about RobinXTed then TedXTracy then Ted himself and who is better for him and why

A) ROBINXTED

so I want to say SOMETHINg; when I started HIMYM I knew that robin and ted was going to end up together and for the first couple of seasons it made sense. Even though they broke up and came together ; they were meant to be. Ted never forgot about robin and loved her in a way no one did . So it made sense to me. Until I realized ; “ no this is a toxic relationship “. Okay so let’s look at these ; Robin never loved Ted the way he loved her and she even admitted that. Ted’s love for robin was something else . And the only thing robin did was to make Ted jealous. He brought 278181 boyfriends when ted dated someone. Her main goal was to make him jealous. And when we watched more seasons he never cared about Ted the way he did. He choose other boys over Ted over and over again:Another sign that this relationship was toxic. But ted never un-loved her which effected his relationship with other girls. She left them for Robin while Robin didn’t care that much. And I think it was just so weird that they stayed as friends . I know ted didn’t want to lose her ....but anyways. Okay so let’s come to the wedding. First of all I just want to say that Ted is just a wonderful person. I never appreciated him that much. But he is so self sacrificing. What he did for Barney in the first seasons even though he loved Robin. What he did in order to get them engaged. It’s just so incredible. I always believe that “ If you truly love someone than you let them be happy with someone they love; even though that person isn’t you” ( that’s why i hate snape [HARRY POTTER] but anyways) and ted lived up to that rule. And robin saying ted “ I should’ve been with you” is just so annoying and selfish : you are about to get married and the person who will marry you loves you so much , and now you say this to their best friend. Also you know that Ted loves you and now you are confusing him. Robin loved the attention Ted gave to her; Finding her necklace, stealing the blue French horn, making it rain for her...... But this relationship wasn’t good for ted. And in the end : they ended up together ; and I fully understnad the reasons , but don’t forget that Tracy and Ted were soulmates. Yes , ted always had something for Robin but he still loved Tracy more. So you can ship Robin and Ted but robin wasn’t good for ted , she should’ve been with Barney ( she wasn’t good for Barney either but...) !!! ted x Tracy >>>>

B) TedXTracy

Okay let’s talk about the best relationship in the series ( the best relationship is either them or Lily X Marshall idk) Ted has always been the chaser in the relationship. He cared more , he loved more . But in this relationship he finally wasn’t the chaser. Tracy loved him as much as he liked her. Even though he has feelings for Robin that will never go away. He never thought about Robin romantically when he was with Tracy ( I posted something about that you can Check it out) Also it was destiny. The yellow umbrella and everything. Their relationship proves that they are great for each other , they complete each other and they are soulmates. This is the relationship that made Ted truly happy. They both believed in “ the one” and “soulmates” and they finally found it. I don’t think anyone dislikes them cause there is no reason to. He made ted stay in New York and even Lily said “ this one is different” . Also Tracy was everything ted ever wanted. I understand why people ship him with Robin but If you truly care about ted’s happines you can understand that he was truly happy with Tracy.

C) Ted

So looking back to everything I wrote it’s clear that Ted is best with Tracy. All these seasons he talked about how he wanted someone that will love him, understand his obsessions and Tracy is the one . Everyone should agree on that. I just think it’s so good cause he always thought that “ Robin is the one for me “ but actually he never focused on anyone besides than robin , when he met Tracy he understood that his only chance wasn’t robin. For 9 entire seasons the only relationship that made him genuinely happy was With Tracy. I think he deserves Tracy and Tracy deserves him. Even after the finale TED will never love Robin as much as Tracy. I think at this point we should leave our favorite ships aside and think what makes him happier. And I’m so glad that Ted spent his years with Tracy

Robin

After all I wrote you may think that I hate robin ; but I don’t . I think she DOESNT deserve ted or Barney . But that doesn’t makes her a bad person . I wish she didn’t upset them , but even after all these years I don’t think she will be ready for a relationship or being loved. She loves being loved so much that she thinks she loves them too. I’m so sorry for Barney and ted but I don’t hate her

The group

As you see I didn’t mention lily and Marshall . Because this isn’t my opinions on HIMYM this is my opinion on The finale . The one thing that upset me is that they didn’t stay close or will stay close . Okay listen to me ; I’m sure lily ,Marshall,ted and Tracy stayed close but we can’t say this for Robin and Barney . Robin was traveling so much she didn’t have time for her husband how could she have for her friends . And now Ted Marshall and Lily can stay close friends as usual, but now TED and robin are dating for the 3838282th time and Barney divorced with her ?? I know they are used to these “awkward situations” but all of them have families rn and this is just so uncomfortable. I know Robin and Barney are okay. But you can’t say Barney isnt sad that Robin didn’t make any effort to keep their marriage alive

OVERALL

I wrote A LOT so my overall opinions: Barney and Robin should’ve been the endgame or at least they shouldn’t have divorced right after they got married. Robin didn’t deserve Ted nor Barney but I don’t hate her . Ted was happiest with Tracy .

I WOULD LOVE TO DISCUSS IF YOU WANT TO SAY SOMETHING TOO. I know I wrote a lot so thank you if you read this far.

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thatbitchinsneakers · 4 years

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The Bachelorette Season 16 Episode 3

And here we are again. Still watching this dumb season but what can I say? It’s addicting.

We start off this episode with all the men sitting around talking about how gorgeous their girlfriend looks. Totally normal for 8 guys to be complimenting and talking about how much they like their SHARED girlfriend.

Here comes Yosef talking shit! But its fine cause the producers hired him from the start to be the villain of this season. So awkward that there’s literally nothing exciting about this season that Yosef has to pretend like he’s uncomfortable with guys having to strip and play dodgeball. And get this - he wasn’t even one of them! Also why is this taking like 15 minutes for him to confront her. That just shows how fucking pointless and boring this season is. He called the situation an “atrocity” like oh my god who cares get over it you loser. “You’re not setting the right example for my daughter” wait what?! Did she go on the Bachelorette to set an example?! Last time I checked, a girl dating 30 guys at one time isn’t exactly “setting an example” either?!?! Also, so hard to believe this shit is real cause Yosef just like peaces out and gets into the car like no luggage or anything. So obviously this was planned before this happened. Maybe the interns packed his bags for him. Here comes Dale to the rescue! Even though all the other men literally tried to comfort her but who cares about them when you have a Party City model/ex pro football player like Dale!

Chris Harrison, part time therapist part time Bachelor franchise icon, comes to the rescue and talks it out with Clare. She tells him her ovaries are shaking at the thought of Dale. He just straight up doesn’t care.

Pan over to Clare apologizing to the men with her 39 year old titties out and about and explaining she just can’t go on with the night. Sorry guys but the open bar has been cut short :/ But good news is, you don’t have to talk to Clare again tonight!

Rose ceremony time! Harvard claims he (the interns) had something sweet planned for his time with Clare and honestly I am devastated because we will never know what the interns, sorry I mean Harvard, had planned for Clare. Definitely something under $50 but truly sad I won’t be able to see it.

Dale gets the first rose, obvi. Gawd forbid she pretends like she likes the other guys too for a split second. Sorry to the guys who didnt get a rose tonight - it’s so sad - having to leave the La Quinta AND never having to talk to Clare again for as long as you live? Darn!

Wait, who is this other bitch that is just like casually visiting Clare? And can Clare shut the fuck up about how much she likes Dale? Like we get it. We’ve known from the start that you’ve been obsessed with him. Why that actual mother fuck does Clare have a pair of Clare’s pants? Like is she mentally stable?!?!

So instead of another low budget date, Clare decides to just skip to the drinking. Smart girl. Clare brings Dale to her room (classy) and I already know where this is going, despite the 50 sneak peaks that have already showed them hooking up on a bed together. I mean honestly, I hope they have sex cause Clare’s clock is kinda running out of time. I’m guessing the producers told them to pretend like they’ve been gone for an hour and to start looking for them. Eazy knocks on her La Quinta hotel room door and Dale immediately has to hide his boner and pretend like he didn’t just dry hump the only girl within a 50 mile radius of him.

The other guys pretend to be upset that Clare doesn’t wanna talk to them anymore. Dale interrupts someone else’s time and literally cant form an English sentence as to why he is interrupting. They’re back to making out cause Dale’s testosterone is raging after he got blue balls from the last time Eazy so rudely interrupted their steamy sesh. Then Chasen (what kind of name is that?) comes out and is like “it’s so disrespectful that she has her eyes set on one person” ....as if that’s not the entire premise of the show.....?!

Another one on one date with a guy she simply does not care to talk to! But they get pedicures ($50 per person I’d assume?) which is another - you guessed it - low budget date! And this conversation is absolutely cringe. This entire date is just so awkward and nothing is happening at all whatsoever. Ok lets talk about that kiss situation in the pool - that was so mother fucking awkward I want to turn the TV off right now. He literally tried to kiss her and she just stopped and was like aw nevermind I’m gonna turn this around and pretend like he doesn’t like me. Now Chris Harrison is telling him that Clare isn’t coming to dinner cause shes so dramatic. And now shes making Chris Harrison send him home?! Like why can’t you be the old ass adult that you are and talk about what happened and what you’re feeling like wtf. ABC intern 1 walks into the common room where all the men just haaaaappen to all be and takes Zac’s bags away. Bye Zac!

Time for a roast! Can’t wait to see how this goes. Our first “celebrity” has arrived and I am not surprised to see that I have never heard of her. Once again, low budget. Honestly shocked to see that half of these guys know how to read so that’s a great sign! Everyone shits on Dale, obviously, cause he’s the only one that Clare actually likes. Harvard absolutely ruins Dale and I am HERE for it.

I honestly do feel bad for these other guys. Like all she does is ask them about Dale. Like at least pretend like you want to know more about them? Here comes Clare telling the guys she can’t give anyone a rose. This season is literally pointless. Wait but Clare calling Dale her fiancé already?! Slow down girl you haven’t even seen each other naked!! What if she has inverted nipples and that’s his biggest fear? What if he has a pierced penis? Or a huge and incredibly realistic tattoo on his upper thigh of Jesus Christ? Idk like that’s a dealbreaker for me.

End of episode but I’m pretty shocked that the producers found a way to make 3 full episodes of footage from this disaster. Please, God, just send in Tayshia already.

#bachelorette clarecrawley bachelornation

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mamsellechosette24601 · 6 years

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Detailed description of Brazil's Great Comet of 1812

This is the stage with the denominations I gave to make it easier to follow

VERY LONG POST ahead, about “Natacha, Pierre, e o Grande Cometa de 1812”, the Brazilian version of Dave Malloy’s “Great Comet” which opened last Friday August 24th in São Paulo. In this post I will detail how this version differs from the Broadway one (keeping in mind that all I know from it comes from the YouTube bootleg), make some analyses and from time to time bring up War & Peace, because I can’t help myself. So of course, SPOILERS (for W&P, I won’t go beyond the part where tgc ends).

The Main Differences:

1- In this version, Pierre/Natasha was even more canon than in the book. I will explore the details in chronological order, but keep this in mind;

2- There were, of course, changes to the lyrics, driving it further away from the novel, and also making use of more explicit language;

3- Characters had more defining good/evil characteristics, so I think some of the subtlety was lost, but at the same time it helped to draw out more clearly some of the themes.

Because of my sitting position, I sometimes couldn’t see what was going on in the right, but had a privileged view of the actors walking around the tables to go up the central stage.

Once you arrive, there’s folk Russian music playing, waiters are bringing people food, and for the countdown, you hear ras, ras dva, and finally ras dva tri.

Act 1

Prologue

The Prologue is on YouTube, so I won’t go over it in detail, but a few observations: before the music begins, you see some soldiers fighting. The one in the center is Andrei, who seems to have been wounded – was that a reference to the novel, where Andrei is treating himself from the wound he received in Austerlitz? Also, Nikolai’s name (Natasha’s brother and Sonya’s fiancé) appears in the cast list, so I imagine one of the soldiers must have been him, as he doesn’t appear in any other moment.

When the chords started playing, I looked around and Pierre was standing right next to me. Status: choked by tears of joy.

During the stanza “And this is all in your program…” dancers come singing and playing instruments, walking around the tables, looking people in the eye to make sure they understand.

Pierre

Also on YouTube, so the only note I’ll make is: throughout the song, Helene is there laid back on the stairs next to Dolokhov, flirting openly with him and laughing at Pierre.

Moscow

The Akhrosimov residence is on the left stage, while the Bolkonskys live on the right.

The impression I got of Marya was that this version of her was nicer, less strict than Grace McLean’s. Yes, she worries a lot about the family’s name and cares for decency, but she’s not only old-school, she’s also out of fashion. During Prologue, the word they use for her is “careta”, which has this double meaning, and it shows. Her style is different from everyone else’s, brighter and floral, and during Moscow she shows off some dance moves and you just know that she’s doing it to embarrass Natasha and Sonya. She can be endearing and didn’t seem to hate Sonya that much.

Private and Intimate Life

So, turning entirely to the right stage now, we see Old Bolkonsky sitting on his chair and Mlle Bourienne dancing gaily to his right. He drools, and she cleans it from the floor. Instead of “a young suitor” or “some cheap French thing”, Old B. says he’ll look for a whore. He turns to the audience, asking if there are any whores there, and then turns to Mlle Bourienne. The whole show in general is quite explicit, which I will detail further.

Natasha and the Bolkonskys

Natasha arrives and the awkwardness of the moment is shown by Mary going down the stage and getting lost as she wanders through the right-side tables trying to reach the central stage. Once they meet, they say their famous greetings and Mary just looks back at Old Bolkonsky and shakes her head, like saying “err... this girl is CANCELLED”. They keep silent, just smiling a lot in the fakest way possible, and they walk a bit around the central stage, one getting in the way of the other, before Mary starts “AND FROM THE FIRST GLAAAANCE”. There’s no sitting at the table, as it wouldn’t work, once only the people on the right would be able to see it.

About Mary’s character: she’s self-assumedly plain, but her costume is quite glittery. The Mary we meet here is haughty, I sensed in her more pride than in the book or in Gelsey Bell’s version. The audience stands on Natasha’s side, and her quick escape from the house seems more rightful than childish.

No One Else

Also on YouTube, so everyone can go there and see how beautiful it is, with the blue lighting and Andrei coming to dance with Natasha and lift her up in the air to fly away. An important detail about the translation: instead of “The Mooooooonnn….”, right in the beginning, Natasha sings “The Bluuuueeeee…”. The Moon is still very much present during this song, but this change connects with the deep significance blue lighting has in the play in general, and even more in this version specifically. On Broadway, blue lighting appears during No One Else and by the end of Dust and Ashes. For me it always seemed an indicator of purity, honesty, real love, as it was put in contrast with the dominating red and yellow lights, the two-faced and ill-meaning aristocratic society. Now this view was enhanced, for when Natasha acknowledges the colour, it becomes something else: the sky. Those who have read War & Peace or at least watched BBC’s 2016 miniseries, will remember the deep connection there’s between Andrei and the “lofty, infinite heavens”. Throughout the novel, the sky is a symbol of God, joy, eternal love that knows no bounds, love for the world, for our fellow men, for those who have done us wrong. Natasha lives this sky, lives the blue. She’s already found what Pierre is looking for, and from now on we will watch as she loses touch with it and attempts to regain it.

The Opera

Sonya began singing and detailing everything and I didn’t even remember that it wasn’t in the original language. It was so good. Now, a few book characters appear in the cast list, such as Vera, Berg, Julie, Boris, Anna Mikhailovna, Anna Pavlovna, Prince Vasili, Denisov… I think they were all just named extras in The Opera. No references to them at any other moment.

After Helene talks to Marya and the girls, Marya turns to them and says Helene is a snake, followed by hissing sounds. Beautiful. I think Helene was also wearing a snake-shaped necklace but I’m not 100% sure.

The ballet and the actual opera were everything you could expect.

Something that happens in the translation all throughout the play is that most of the time in Portuguese, you can’t say as much as in English with the same amount of syllables. An example is “tickle”, which in Portuguese is “fazer cócegas”. I’m mentioning it because I was very curious about this translation, and so “I’d tickle you all if I could” became “I’d like to dance with you all”, because a literal translation would never work. For me, it became less dream-like, and so that’s an example of how translation can get in the way.

Anatole’s entrance was not as remarkable, as in the stage there is no door, and so he just walked up the stairs, but he walked up-stage just as he should (no contact with the audience, however). Instead of “good-looking”, Helene calls him “gostoso”, which is a more explicit form of “hot”.

Natasha and Anatole

This one, even the interactions, were very similar to Broadway. But the impression this Anatole gives is quite different from Lucas’. Watching the Broadway version, I can never get very angry at Anatole, simply because Lucas Steele is too charismatic and has this “good guy” aura around him. I would call him ignorant, cocky, selfish, but not evil. One can even believe he’s in love with Natasha (in a shallow way). Now, someone would have to really distort everything to defend Brazil’s Anatole. It’s impossible not to realize that he’s only seeing Natasha as an object, he’s very vulgar in his gestures, and yet you can also understand why she is being fooled, what she sees in him is not what he’s showing the audience. Of course, I can’t speak of it universally, but I watched the play with some family members who didn’t know anything about the story, and they all felt pity for Natasha, none of them accused her of being “dumb”. Maybe it was to their own credit, maybe to the actors’. I personally liked this version of Anatole a lot, as it better suited my Pierre/Natasha/Andrei sensibilities, and was in a way still able to redeem Natasha’s actions – the trap throughout the play was just too well set.

Natasha didn’t sing the part that isn’t in the album (“nothing, it was nothing…”), which made me a bit sad.

The Duel

Let’s talk a bit about Pierre. Most of the time he’s sitting down in the middle circle, he has a drowsy, drunk look, as if almost falling asleep. In “Pierre” and “The Duel”, people don’t call him “old-man”, but refer to him rather as “imbecile” and “buffoon”. It makes him all the more pathetic in the club, dancing and drinking, pretending he belongs in the group, when deep down he very well knows everyone there is just laughing at him. And because at first glance he does look blind to the insults, people just find him more and more pathetic. In a way, this version of Pierre reminded me of Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot, but I will talk more about this in “Pierre and Anatole”. Also: “Oh, dear Andrei’s betrothed?” was ON POINT.

So, more examples of how this production was more explicit. Anatole says “I’ll possess her”, instead of “I’ll make love to her”. For contemporary audiences, the second one is an euphemism for the same action, but in the 19th century it’d be understood as “courting”. There’s an ambiguity in English which is lost in the Portuguese translation, and in this case it further condemns Anatole. The same happens in “Pierre”, for “he’s charming, he has no sex”, would have meant that Pierre had no gender, but in Portuguese they translated it clearly to mean that he no longer practices the action of having sex. I’m detailing this because I find translation fascinating and all in all, I think all these little changes helped set up Natasha and Pierre as a more obvious pairing than they originally are (genderless old-man vs sad buffoon... I mean, there is a different feel to it, isn’t there?).

A bit now about Helene. She wore tights, black boots, a bathing suit and an army’s jacket for all the “party” scenes. She was literally all out there. And while this contributes to making her more “slutty”, her reactions during the actual duel were quite redeeming. Before realizing that he had not been shot, Pierre crumbles into a semi-fetal-position, and so, adding to a very long cry when Dolokhov shoots, Helene also rushes to Pierre to make sure he’s okay. So yes, Helene is full of malice and loves tricking people so she can have things her own way, but she doesn’t want anyone to die. Not for her. When Anatole says that she “brings out the beast in men” and she replies with “what can I say, it’s a gift”, she seemed tired, to me. Like she has to keep this evil reputation and has maintained it for so long that at this point doesn’t even know how to act any other way, but is still capable of some regret. I don’t know, I like to think this about her.

When the duel is over, one of the extras gets out of the stage helping Dolokhov. They came right past me and couldn’t move through, it was too narrow for two guys at once, so the one carrying Dolokhov told me “excuse me, he’s badly wounded”. I moved out the chair, they passed, Dolokhov in pain, and this one interaction that I got made me extremely happy.

Talking to Pierre, Anatole says “be glad, YOU live to love one more time”. I’m telling you this show has a Pierretasha agenda.

Dust and Ashes

The beginning of the song was very good, more than ever I felt Pierre’s tiredness of living in ridicule, but I didn’t think the ending was as impactful as in English. My favorite line, “did I squander my divinity, was happiness within me this whole time?” didn’t make it into it, they translated to something I can’t quite remember. Now, Pierre sang “They say we are asleep until we LOVE”. Yes, this happened so it could fit into the syllables, but I really like this shift from romantic love to a more general love, maybe the same pure love I talked about in “No One Else”. And of course, by the end of the song, lights shifted to blue.

Sunday morning

I don’t have much to say, except that the three remained in the left stage, with Sonya holding two mirrors and Natasha a candle. We don’t see them going to church, it’s just mentioned.

Charming

There was no change of clothes nor Helene giving Natasha her necklace, but Helene’s actress gave a complete show. She was there using the entirety of the of the central stage, lights turned green and were flickering by the end, it was hypnotical and the song people applauded the most. There was this very funny moment when Helene starts raising her skirt and Natasha is blushing and thinking “wait, is she really doing it”, and then just rushes to her and puts her skirt down, embarrassed and smiling.

The Ball

During the ball, Natasha wore a white and red gown, which matched perfectly with Anatole’s suit. You just really want Natasha to escape from Anatole’s clutches (I’m not going solely by my biased views. That’s the impression my aunt who had no idea of the story got. She really hated Anatole and really shipped Pierretasha). Throughout the song, Natasha is saying that she must leave him and other similar things. Then, in the end, after they kiss, Natasha says something in the lines of “I don’t leave him”, and so when they rush to leave the stage there’s this feeling I didn’t get before that maybe something more would happen between them. We know it isn’t the case, but for someone who was seeing it for the first time, it could have been ambiguous. The play had certainly been so far explicit enough for it to be a possibility.

Act 2

Letters

This one was very nice. Pierre was in the central upper stage, Natasha in the left, and Mary in the right. There were extras around them holding paper and a plume, writing the letters as the characters dictated. Pierre says he’s found the number of Beelzebub (which is me second favourite name for Satan after Mephistopheles) and actually says “six-hundred and sixty-six”, which brought some peace to my soul. When the Golden Trio sings together (Natasha, Pierre and Mary are a golden trio, hear me out), they’re not meeting round the circle and looking at each other in the eye, something I always loved about the Broadway version, but each in their own corner, the holophotes shining bright upon them. In a way, it intensified how lonely they were at that moment, while also hinting that they would come to cross paths in their parallel journeys.

While the Golden Trio is singing, Anatole and Dolokhov climb up the stage, and you see Dolokhov composing the loooooove letter. The letter then makes its way to Natasha, going through the hands of the people sitting nearer the upper part of the stages, and only gets to her when it’s time for her to reply. So, during the entire “Natalie, Natalie” thing, Anatole is in the central stage making sexual gestures. You really don’t want Natasha to fall for it. And then she does. Nothing new under the sun. Natasha and Anatole didn’t share the stage, Anatole remained in the central and Natasha in the left, glancing at each other voluptuously across the room. This happened a lot in the play in general, there’s much less people crossing one another when they are not next to each other physically.

Natasha and Sonya

Not much to say, it was heart-breaking and similar to Broadway.

Sonya Alone

It was beautifully sung and there was a sad purple lighting, but I think this song suffered a bit from translation. Instead of “I’ll stand in the dark for you”, Sonya would say “I’ll guide you through the darkness”, which for me is something less Sonya-like. I don’t think she believes she’s capable of guiding anyone, she herself is afraid of the dark, but even so she’ll stay there for her cousin, and for me that’s what makes the song so powerful.

Preparations

The translation was surprisingly good, like in The Opera, it took me a while to remember it wasn’t in English. Dolokhov’s actor did an incredible job overall, and this song had one of the funniest scenes: instead of Natasha appearing to Anatole in a ghostly light and almost making it seem like he might care for her, Anatole sings that part to Dolokhov as if he were Natasha. He hugs him from behind and points out his “traits” suggestively (quel pied, quel regard!) while Dolokhov is just like “hey man, no homo now, I’m mad at you”. It was a great scene.

Balaga

I must say that “Balaga” was the most well translated song, because just like in the original, I couldn’t understand a word of what was being said.

The Abduction

“Adeus meus bons ciganos, a festa agora é outra; adeus Matryosha, deixa eu te beijar; lembra de mim, Steshka, adeus, adeus, adeus; au revoir, meus bons ciganoooos, agora adeus, adeus, adeus”. I might have been the only one singing along to Anatole’s goodbye, but it was lovely. Then, everyone started dancing and they were so energetic and there was this violent orgy and one of the dancers was dressed up as a bear… yeah, we got some chaos. But I was sad that it wasn’t The Chaos we get on Broadway, once the other main characters didn’t join up. Marya was there, dancing by herself and having the time of her life around the left-side tables, while Helene, Anatole and Dolokhov were in the central stage doing what they are best at. Unfortunately though, at no moment did Helene come down to meet up with Marya, something I was actually hoping would happen. Now, I imagine there was someone dancing in the right-side as well, but I couldn’t see who they were. By the show’s logic, it’d have been Mary. If anyone knows, please share this info, I appreciate it, thanks a lot.

In My House

“Não entra no meu LAAARR, VermEeee”. “Verme” means worm. Another word they used at some point referring to Anatole was “crápula”, and I’ll adopt it from now on.

Anatole runs from the left stage, where he had been face to face with Marya, and goes to the central one, where he’s still able to see Natasha, grab her hands and try to pull her, but a servant stops him. Anatole escapes leaving Natasha with the fur-cloak (which was actually just a mantle, because “casaco de pele” is too long).

This song was not as scary as when Grace McLean sings it, but still amazing, and Natasha’s acting was heart-breaking, all of her a wounded bird.

A Call to Pierre

Pierre’s “Whaaaaaaat” was very funny, he had been asleep when the servant called him and was probably facing now a hangover, so it sounded a lot more like someone who had been awoken in the middle of their sleep cycle and is still trying to decide whether they care enough about what is going on in real life, rather than sheer surprise. But then he goes to Marya and by then is fully energized and ready for the job.

The “Natasha, and ANATOOOOLE KURAAAAGIINN” part was more sung than said with anger and disgust.

Instead of “so I’m not the only man chained to a bad woman”, Pierre said “so I’m not the only one suffering in the hands of the Kuragin”, which I thought was a nice change. Pierre loves his Natasha and it’s counter-nature for him to vilify her.

Find Anatole

When Pierre meets Anatole and Helene, he calls them “bad blood”. As you can see from the changes I’ve mentioned so far, the Kuragins were really set up as a team of vulgar evil incest-ish siblings.

Pierre and Anatole

During the discussion, Pierre and Anatole stand on opposite sides of the main circle, just like in the duel. Pierre chocked Anatole Darth-Vader-style, and also holds an imaginary object to “smash his head like this”.

So, in “The Duel” I mentioned that Pierre reminded me of Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot. In a nutshell, The Idiot is someone so good and pure that society can’t help but see him as pathetic and stupid. Before, Pierre was a bad kind of idiot, fooling around with people who despised him, but now he’s a good kind of idiot. When Pierre takes back his words and asks Anatole for forgiveness, the latter feels completely superior, like he’s just made a complete fool of Pierre, but the more arrogance he shows, the lower he gets. Anatole, in his small-mindedness, is incapable of perceiving the magnanimity of Pierre’s actions, and more than ever I felt how out-of-place Pierre was in this society. People will always see him as a buffoon, but at least now he can recognize in himself that it isn’t the case.

“Para PETERSBUUURGO” was great. Anatole’s actor in general did a wonderful job, he could hold very high notes and sometimes really sounded like Lucas musically.

Natasha didn’t appear taking poison, we only hear about it later through Sonya.

Natasha Very Ill

Natasha, indeed, was very ill.

Pierre and Andrei

This was a very emotional song. Maybe it was just me, but you could really see how heartbroken and shattered to pieces Andrei was. We don’t see him taking his father’s chair; instead, when he tells Pierre goodbye, in the upper part of the main circle, Natasha is there in the lower one, glancing at him. Their eyes meet. I died.

Pierre and Natasha

Amazing, brilliant. My heart stopped during Pierre’s speech, it was so special to hear it word by word, in the language I had read the book. They’re standing next to each other and Pierre actually kneels down. He kisses Natasha’s hands, and she softly touches his face. Natasha cries “tears of gratitude, tears of tenderness, tears of LOVE” (romantically, or the “infinite heavens” type of love?). When Natasha leaves the room smiling, Pierre tries to get up, but stumbles and almost falls. He takes a long while trying to put on his cloak, but no one in the audience laughed. We just had silly smiles on our faces. It was magical to be so close to Natasha and Pierre that you could actually see their tears. I feel like my crops have been forever blessed.

The Great Comet of 1812

Oh wow. So, the lightning. The lights don’t go fully out, as on Broadway. Instead, there’s this opaque white light and the comet is reflecting on the light-bulbs of the central “chandelier-complex”, turning everything silver. The sky Pierre describes, is not only starry, but the moon is also there, Natasha’s symbol, shining alongside the comet. And then guess what. The lights turned blue and Natasha was there across the main circle. Pierre and her look at each other and at the “chandeliers”, which are now lighting up yellow, bursting with new life… only, instead of “into a new life”, guess again what was it that Pierre said? “I. Woke. Up”. That was the final line. Pierre woke up to the sky, the sky Natasha used to live so vividly, and is now regaining the capacity to do so. Andrei’s sky, which he now couldn’t be further away from. This show really broke me.

During the applauses, they all sing goodbye my gipsy lovers. I was singing along with them, even though I had no voice left from emotion. I looked around to see the faces and I don’t think anyone had cried, I hadn’t either, but people’s eyes were shining and we all smiled.

10/10, because I will never give anything tgc-related a grade lower than that.

PS: sorry about grammar mistakes, I know my prepositions are a bit messed up.

#natasha pierre and the great comet of 1812 #natasha pierre e o grande cometa de 1812 #war and peace #natasha rostova #pierre bezukhov #andrei bolkonsky #anatole kuragin #helene bezukhova #marya dmitryevna akhrosimova #sonya rostova #fedya dolokhov #mary bolkonskaya #são paulo #brazil #broadway #great comet #tgc

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logh-icebergs · 7 years

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Episode 21: The Battle of Doria Starzone, and...

Spring 797/488. En route toward Heinessen, Yang’s fleet encounters Baghdash, a supposed deserter who is very obviously there to assassinate Yang—not before taking a nap, though, which gives Schenkopp the chance to lock him in deep sleep mode while Yang and co. make pretty quick work of the 11th fleet, which was sent to intercept them. Instead of the dishonor of surrender, the commander of the 11th fleet chooses to fight until all but a handful of his soldiers have been killed, and then commits suicide. Meanwhile on Heinessen, Admiral Greenhill’s whole “if I didn’t lead these young’uns bad things would happen” schtick proves rather pointless when, despite Greenhill urging restraint, the unit sent to break up a peaceful protest ends up inciting a riot that kills 20,000 people, including the organizer, Representative Jessica Edwards.

Julian and Yang

Close your mouth, Julian, a bug will fly in. Or possibly a bird or small spacecraft.

Julian said he would protect Yang back when he was first learning to shoot, and a real opportunity presents itself for the first time when Baghdash shows up on his mission to assassinate Yang. Schenkopp forestalls Baghdash’s plans in pretty undramatic (but hilarious) fashion, adjusting his tank bed to keep him asleep for the whole battle (hey, look at that worldbuilding about tank beds from episode 1 having actual plot payoff!); and when Baghdash wakes up to find the 11th fleet annihilated, he pragmatically offers his loyalty to Yang, who he now believes will be the ultimate victor.

Feel familiar? This is essentially the same scene as when Reinhard gave Ferner to Oberstein, recast with Alliance personnel.

Yang seems to feel he has a good read on Baghdash’s self-preservation instincts and has no qualms trusting him; he even temporarily bequeaths his own gun to Baghdash, since he himself never even carries it.

This is a move Yang has pulled before, acquiring personal loyalty by putting perhaps undue amounts of trust in people—he did this with Schenkopp and the Rosen Ritter when he relied on them to infiltrate Iserlohn.

Baghdash “jokingly” points the gun at Yang before lowering it and saluting, which leads to this masterful piece of cinematography.

My, they grow up so fast...

To appreciate the context of this scene, let’s back up and take a moment to peruse a photo album of the last year and a half of Julian’s life.

From making Yang tea and keeping house for him on Heinessen… (Episode 3, early 796)

...to trotting earnestly around after him in Thernusen… (Episode 10, mid 796)

...to getting to tag along to Iserlohn as an orderly… (Episode 16, late 796)

...to pledging to protect Yang if necessary… (Episode 17, early 797)

...to now. Mid 797, fifteen years old. Threatening to shoot a man for the crime of possibly contemplating killing someone Yang.

It’s impossible to talk about Julian without talking about his role in Yang’s life, because such a huge part of his own conception of his identity has to do with struggling to figure out exactly what that role is. We’ve seen his hero-worship manifest as copying Yang’s style and body language in the past, and he eagerly soaks up Yang’s lectures about battle tactics; but at the same time ever since his very first introduction it’s been clear that Julian’s own goals and skills are distinct from—even opposite—Yang’s: he enjoys cooking and cleaning while Yang is hopelessly lazy; he dreams of becoming a soldier while Yang dreams of escaping the military; he excels at physical combat while Yang apparently can’t hit the broad side of a barn.

These differences are part of why Julian sees himself as serving a purpose—he can do the various physical labor that doesn’t come naturally to Yang—but they’ve also introduced tension into their relationship starting way back in episode 3.

After responding to Julian’s expressed wish to become a soldier by ranting about how much he dislikes both soldiers and the war, Yang tells a rather downcast Julian that they’ll continue the discussion some other time. The only person who’s happy in this shot is Gensui, smiling smugly in the corner. We see you Gensui. Stop laughing at the humans’ drama.

The point of this little Julian Retrospective isn’t to show a transformation from meek housekeeper into badass soldier; on the contrary, Julian’s ambitions to join the military have been a constant of his character from the beginning, and so has his instinct to rush to Yang’s defense physically.

Did you think I could pass up a chance to show my favorite moment from episode 10 again? I told you this gif never gets old. Hang in there Julian, your moment will come!

But while Yang’s overt disapproval of Julian’s chosen path creates some background tension between them, we’ve never actually seen Julian be anything but deferential and eager to please in his direct interactions with Yang.

Until now.

I’m obsessed with Yang’s change of expression here. He goes from an initial (rather impressed) “holy shit Julian means business” reaction to, when Baghdash appeals to him, a more solemn “oh yeah it’s probably my job here to make sure Julian doesn’t actually shoot the guy” face.

Getting over his initial surprise, Yang adopts extremely relaxed body language as if to intentionally counter Julian’s rigid, aggressive pose and diffuse the tension. But Julian is not having it. The key line here is his blunt contradiction of Yang: “Riyuu wa arimasu!”—“There *is* a reason!”—which, while still in polite speech, is delivered with authority and without any markers of humility or deference.

Julian is there to protect Yang from a threat as he perceives it, in his own way, even if that means going against Yang’s own view of the situation and preferred way to handle it. This moment emphasizes that while Julian would—perhaps literally—kill for Yang, he is not trying to fashion himself into a mini-Yang, or even to stuff himself in a box labeled “Yang’s ideal protégé.” His identity is deeply tied to Yang but not erased by him.

Of course, Julian may be the one pointing a gun, but the actual authority in the room still resides with Yang—as becomes clear when Yang finally, laughing, orders Julian to stand down and dismisses Baghdash.

The timing of Yang’s laugh, after several seconds of silently letting Julian stand there looking badass, makes it feel more like a calculated strategy to diffuse the situation than something spontaneous.

The verb form here is actually the causative, “Hito-goroshi wa sasetakunai yo.”—“I don’t want to make you murder anyone.”

Far from acting upset with Julian’s theatrics, Yang seems some combination of proud and just kind of tickled. But despite Yang’s smile and his explanation of why he’s not worried about Baghdash, Julian’s expression remains angry; he may have argued further, but they’re interrupted by news from Heinessen...

Jessica

The rest of this episode is much less fun than watching Julian level guns at people. When 200,000 citizens gather in a stadium for a peaceful rally protesting the National Salvation Military Council’s takeover of their government, the council sees it as a challenge and sends a unit in to break it up and “restore order.” This leads to absolutely chilling scenes where the leader of that unit (whose name I neither know nor care about, fuck this guy) attempts to show that true power comes through violence by making an example of ten random people.

The question of whether there’s something inherently righteous about being willing to die for a cause is one that pervades the whole episode (and more broadly is one of the recurring themes of the show). I’ve talked before about how Yang is differentiated from many of the other Alliance commanders by his hatred of rhetoric about death being noble and honorable—in his tea speech in episode 6, for example, he motivates his soldiers to fight not for the glory of dying for a good cause but so that they can live to drink more good tea. This same contrast is again underlined by the speeches that Admiral Legrange and Yang give to their fleets before the battle in this episode.

Just like the asshole violently intimidating the crowd at the rally, this speech conflates courage with self-sacrifice, to the extent of willingly giving your life.

Also reinforced here is Yang’s belief in personal freedom and self-determination as the most important ideals, over allegiance to any particular nation or government. He’s not fighting against the military coup because the former Alliance government was so great, but because (as he told Schenkopp in episode 19) he sees the oppressive rule by force of the NSMC as worse.

It’s Jessica, the organizer of the rally, who delivers the most eloquent and impassioned critique of this equation of violence and death with righteousness; in response to the attacks against civilians she quickly steps forward to intervene:

This is a beautiful speech, but it has the effect of angering the asshole commander so much that he lashes out violently against her, which ultimately escalates into an all-out riot. It’s brutal and horrible to watch, and in the end over 20,000 people have been killed. Including Jessica.

Obviously Jessica is right on the front lines of her own battle. I love this line, as she steps forward out of the crowd to confront the military force: her “koko ni imasu” echoes the accusations of “doko ni imasu?” (“where are you?”) she leveled at Trunicht in her speech in episode 3. Unlike Trunicht and the other politicians, she is right there.

One thing to note about Jessica’s death is that unlike her fiancé Lapp, she is not fridged—her death is very much about her, her own principles and resistance against the oppression being carried out in her society. And while she has a semi-romantic history with Yang, this riot is not a plot device to somehow change his plans or how he approaches fighting the military council. In fact after we see him first react to the news, he never brings it up again. Jessica’s story is about her fight, not someone else’s.

History

Which brings us back to Yang’s office, where Frederica has just interrupted Julian and Yang’s discussion of (argument about?) Baghdash to tell Yang about the riot and Jessica’s death.

Until this moment, the show’s narrator has confined himself to either telling us facts about dates, locations, number of casualties, etc., or making vague, general claims about the nature of war. What he tells us here is different: “They say Yang Wenli said not a single word.” This is neither a fact of public record nor general academic philosophizing. It’s specific personal information which we can see, since we’re watching the scene unfold behind the narration, that only one person other than Yang himself could know. Hmm.

Stray Tidbits

Schenkopp spilling coffee on his uniform in a (pretty transparent?) attempt to distract Baghdash from inquiring further about Frederica is a cute callback to his first introduction, in which he flings a pot of coffee all over a bunch of random assholes who were yelling at a waitress for defiling their uniforms.

I cannot overstate how hilarious I find Dusty’s signature strategy of fucking with enemy fleets by alternately retreating and advancing. It’s adorable, smart, and strangely erotic all at the same time. Dusty, you are the best, never change.

I love the worldbuilding of all the random battle jargon that flies by in the background of this fight. I'm gonna qualify any directions I give from now on with "relative to the standard galactic plane."

You know you wanted this reaction gif, and we are here to give the people what they want. As long as what they want is cute Julian gifs, at least.

#Legend of Galactic Heroes #Legend of the Galactic Heroes #author: Rebecca #Alliance #battle #Jessica #Julian #Yang #Gensui #badass!Julian #history #death #narrator

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todokori-kun · 7 years

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The fix was quicker than I expected! Dad’s bringing it (the computer) home today :D

someone needs to photoshop smiling cherubs and flowers around them

OH whoops, sorry about the misunderstanding ^^;; Idk what I even want to happen to the Touken baby, I just don’t want it to die in the womb.

Uta/Touka child might also be pretty attractive, now that I think about it ;)

(Uta/Rize or Uta/Itori child would look even better though)

I was in a nice, fluffy mood when I wrote that. Unfortunately, as I’m going to get my computer back and will be able to start working on the Heathers AU again tonight, this will probably be the last you’ll see of Cinnamon Roll Evans for a while :)

YES I read the new Kuro chapter! Honestly I disliked the 2CT for various reasons but now that it’s actually become canon I think I feel a little better about it (also, is it just me or does ‘real’ Ciel look a bit different from 'our’ Ciel on the last page? His face looks too…perfect, if that makes sense). I’m excited to see what this means for Lizzy’s relationship with both Ciels and Undertaker’s connection to the Phantomhives!

Oh, actually I agree with you there? What I meant by 'op’ is more of a really strong character, not an overpowered one ^^;; sorry, I’ll try to explain myself better:

Super strong characters like Levi, Mikasa, the Titan Trio, Kaneki, Eto, Arima, Sebastian…they are all technically 'op’ (especially Sebastian, dude has literally no weaknesses so far). However, they work because they also have traits that interest us beyond just their strength. Kaneki is a lonely child, a selfish person with a fear of being left behind, drifting and unable to find a reason to live. Levi is an orphan who was raised by a serial killer- he clawed his way up to where he is now. Annie is a sixteen-year-old trained into a killing machine from childhood, she went through life believing that the only person she could trust was her father, and she was desperate to return to him.

(It’s also difficult because everyone seems to have a different definition of 'op’; I personally just use it to jokingly refer to powerful characters or when I talk about strong characters whose power levels are inconsistent with canon to the point where it gets ridiculous (example: we know titan shifters take some time to heal, so if a titan shifter came along who could be behaded then have their head instantly stick back onto their neck like some sort of AoT version of Noro, I’d consider them OP).)

I guess what I was trying to say was that it’s fine to have strong characters, just make sure that they have an actual personality (readers need a reason to care about the characters, after all!) and that their powers make sense? ^^;;

(Also, I think I might have sounded a bit passive-aggressive or rude during this convo about op characters, I'm really sorry if I did OTL I didn’t mean to, but when I reread my comments I realized they could come off that way)

I agree with you about the AoT OCs though. Unfortunately there aren’t a lot of good ones…actually, most OCs I see for popular fandoms aren’t very interesting. Other than the powers or character designs the thing that bothers me is the lack of proper personality (why do so many people think 'happy’ is a personality trait???).

And definitely agree 100% on the angsty backstory. Like, that’s just overkill. There’s a difference between tragedy and being edgy. (It also sort of depends on how good the writer is at conveying emotion and handling the angst, but for the most part stuff like that is

That’s a great way to do things! :D I’m really, really disorganized when it comes to making characters…usually a concept pops into my head and I run with it, adding in details along the way. Tatsuo was created when I wanted to make a male TG OC and suddenly this image of a smug-looking guy with a long black ponytail popped into my head, Naomi started from the idea of making a character with the themes of 'self-discovery’ 'identity’ and 'lies’ woven into their arc. Louisa was literally born from an outfit- I randomly thought of an outfit that looked really pretty and traditionally feminine, yet was actually very practical when you looked closer. Then I tried to imagine what kind of person would wear these clothes and that was Louisa…

idk, I’m bad at explaining stuff haha

(also: Tatsuo was also inspired by various vampire characters I saw in anime/manga, books and TV shows. He’d be so offended if he knew LOL in fact, he just might serve me for dinner at the restaurant or something ;-;)

TYSM! I’m really glad you’ve liked all three of my OCs so far, thank you for listening to me ramble about my babies (actually only Naomi is my baby, Tatsuo and I disowned each other and Louisa moved out) <33333

As for Lou, I’ll send you some more info about her after I develop her a bit more if you like? :) For now, a few random things:

-rarely shows emotions like anger or sorrow

-not because she’s bottling them up, but because she’s learned how to handle them in a healthy way

-always smells like mint for some reason

-maybe because she’s addicted to mint tea

-her bodyguard suspects she doesn’t drink water at all and lives on the stuff

-she also likes strong flavors

-has the kind of bright, pretty smile that makes you want to trust her

-so you do

-and you (probably) get killed

-had a girlfriend named Iris once, a nice, sensible girl who managed to keep her from getting too buried in her work and various plans for her family and took care of her in ways that her bodyguard couldn’t (AKA somehow got her to realize that mint tea does not equal a proper meal)

-unfortunately Iris did not know that Lou can be a bit terrible

-she walked in on Lou casually wiping the blood off of her knife with the dead body of a certain businessman on the floor in front of her

-“Oh, Iris. What are you doing here, darling? I thought I asked the servants to keep you upstairs, my private meetings can be a bit messy… Iris? Love, are you quite alright? You look a little pale…”

-Well, that was the end of that relationship

XD the titan designs are one of the best things about AoT, in my opinion. You could make a gallery out of all the pictures of them that that have appeared in the anime and the manga so far lol

Oh, really? Hope you enjoy/ed the list then :D was it ok??? (Part 2 was intended to smash feels)

Sweet! That wasn’t so long ^^

I know you meant Voldy and Draco by the flower statement but...

I’m this close to finding a physical copy of the manga and throwing it in the fire while yelling ‘Lighten the fuck up’.

Gimme the Uta/Itori love child now, pretty please. Damn, that would be one attractive baby.

And now I fear for my life. Great. Well, more for my hear than for my life, but whatever.

Well, I never really had a formed opinion on the 2CT theory, but I did read a few things about it. I didn’t expect it to be true, though. Welp, now we can assume it is true, and I am SHOOK Here’s an accurate description of me during the chapter.

I think that might be since he’s a tiny bit more similar to Vincent, while Our Ciel is more similar to Rachel. I mean, we know that there are physical differences between the two (if we assume that Real Ciel is the one who was previously Lizzy’s fiancé), because Real Ciel is taller than Our Ciel.

Yep, I definitely can’t wait to see where it’ll go from now. I remember seeing a post that said ‘This is the biggest shock to the fandom since we found out Undertaker was fuckable’

Also: Our!Ciel: three years ago I lost my dear twin brother to some cultists and a demon. Real!Ciel: Quit telling everyone I'm dead! Our!Ciel: Sometimes I can still hear his voice...

Oh, I see! I always think of OP as OverPowered, that’s why I got a bit defensive ^^;;;;;

Well, like you said, everyone has their own definition of OP. Sometimes, I’ll even think of OCs who have trait that’s already specific to another character as OP, like Titan-Shifter OCs, or OCs with a plot basically the same to a canon character (not OP but very irritating) And don’t get me started on Demon-Contracted OCs in the Kuro fandom. Those make me want to defenestrate myself.

Yup, I have no problems with strong characters as long as they’re not ridiculously strong and aren’t there purely because of that power, but they also have personality.

Don’t worry, I reread my original statement about OP characters and was like ‘man this sounds so bitchy and high and might hnnnngh’ but couldn’t find a way to rephrase it properly ^^;; So, no worries, I know how you feel ^^

Well, for some reason, it seems that the people who make believable OCs are either lazy or scared to post theirs. Or they simply don’t care. The ones with Mary Sues like to holler at people with ‘LOOK AT MY BAE CHARACTER AREN’T THEY PERFECT???’

There’s this blog I follow (it’s gone inactive, unfortunately) that takes Mary Sues and breaks them down (well, the correct term would be make fun of, but they do offer some advice on how to improve them), and you wouldn’t believe the shit I found there. Here’s the link if you want.

For some reason, people seem to think that the edgier the backstory, the ‘more original’ the character, which (of course) isn’t true, because that means everyone will have a super tragic backstory that no longer makes sense. Another thing I’ve noticed is that they sometimes avoid some pretty important details like ‘Character was born into a healthy, happy family. One thing led to another and the family was killed, while character was molested (a very common backstory theme) and taken in by a cult’ and I’m like ???

My character usually start out like this: *luna is watching a show* OK BUT WHAT IF THERE WAS A CHARACTER WHO-

And so a new character is born.

But your ways of starting a character are also quite interesting ^^ Especially by looking at an outfit! I ALWAYS WANNA LISTEN TO YOU RAMBLE ABOUT CHARACTERS!

Titans make me laugh, honestly. Like, these are supposed to be the main bad creatures? Steampunk zombies (kabaneri) look scarier than that.

It was the hulk smash of feels :-))))

#evans #submission

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classicfilmfreak · 7 years

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New Post has been published on http://www.classicfilmfreak.com/2017/01/26/good-girls-go-to-paris-1939-starring-joan-blondell-and-melvyn-douglas/

Good Girls Go to Paris (1939) starring Joan Blondell and Melvyn Douglas

“I’d be a much happier man if I’d never met you.” — Ronald Brooke

Of the three films they made together, all screwball comedies, Joan Blondell and Melvyn Douglas had their best pairing in Good Girls Go to Paris. The year before, in 1938, they had starred in There’s Always a Woman, a husband and wife comedy-mystery, and later that same year Douglas reprised his role as detective Bill Reardon in There’s That Woman Again, only now his wife was Virginia Bruce. The two films had the same zaniness, but Blondell’s magic and the chemistry with Douglas were missing in the sequel.

In the early part of his career, Douglas appeared in horror films—James Whale’s The Old Dark House(1932) being the best—and detective capers. His only appearance as the Lone Wolf was to launch the series in 1938 with The Lone Wolf Returns—the “return” heralding the first sound Wolf film since the silent days. Most often, however, Douglas settled into romantic leads, often tuxedo-attired, playing opposite such ladies as Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford and Claudette Colbert.

During much of his early Hollywood career, Douglas said he was bored by his “one-dimensional and non-serious roles.” It was only when he began character parts in his sixties, this coinciding with the decade of the 60s, that he found meatier parts worthy of his talents. He received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar portraying the decent father of the amoral Paul Newman in Hud (1963). The next year, in The Americanization of Emily, he was loony Admiral William Jessup, insisting that the first dead man on a D-Day beach must be a U.S. sailor, foreshadowing another loony military Jessup, U.S. Marine colonel Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men (1992).

In 1970, Douglas was nominated Best Actor in I Never Sang for My Father, about an insensitive, then ill, father of Gene Hackman, and in 1979 the actor received his second Best Supporting Actor Oscar as a bed-ridden business man in Being There (1979), influenced by an inept Chauncey Gardner (Peter Sellers) taken for a political pundit.

That Melvyn Douglas might have been bored in his role in Good Girls Go to Paris isn’t apparent. He’s debonair, a smooth operator, his hair and clothes never rumpled, the dinner jacket, drawing room type. His dignity is threatened, sometimes to the point of controlled exasperation, by the antics of a waitress who comes into his life. She never seems able to tell the truth and leads him into all sorts of confusing and compromising situations.

Douglas’ co-star and, really, the only other actor in Good Girls Go to Paris who makes any striking impression, is the animated Blondell, one of the masters of the screwball comedy. If Douglas adds the dignity and a center of gravity, however tenuous—he’s almost stiff by comparison—Blondell sets the tempo and provides, all at the same time, the effervescence, charm and craziness that keeps him, and the plot, wonderfully off balance. This appealing mixture is found in few actresses.

Walter Connolly seems counterproductive to the best interests of the film. Known for over-the-top acting, his delivery is often loud and without nuance. He is best remembered for It Happened One Night(1934) as Claudette Colbert’s father, who is about to give her away at her wedding when she runs off to the man (Clark Gable) she really loves. In Good Girls Go to Paris, Connolly rehearses giving away his granddaughter for a wedding that never happens.

An exchange professor from England, Ronald “Ronnie” Brooke (Douglas), arrives to conduct his first class in Greek mythology. Born in Macon, Georgia, Douglas makes no attempt to sound British, except for the occasional long “a.”

In a hallway on his way to his classroom, Brooke casually mingles with some young men who assume he is a fellow student and expect their professor will be a “grumbling old fluff,” with a “long, white beard.” The students, expecting an easy course, are surprised when Brooke walks in as their professor. He uses the incident in the hall as an example of an Aesop fable—the wolf in sheep’s clothing—and warns that, at end of term, they must pass a rigorous exam.

In the university’s restaurant, Brooke is attended by waitress—not “server”; this is the 1930s—Jenny Swanson (Blondell), who demonstrates how to dunk a tea bag in his cup of hot water. Accustomed to proper English tea etiquette, he responses, “And then you . . . drink it?” In It Happened One Night, Gable had shown wealthy socialite Colbert how to dunk a doughnut.

Later, when Jenny has explained to Brooke how she plans to earn a trip to Paris by blackmailing some handy rich man’s son, he warns her with another Aesop fable. Seems a sick lion asks a fox to come into his cave and hold his paw, but the wise fox notices that the animal tracks leading into the cave never lead out. “Never venture into anything,” Brooke says, “unless you can see your way out.”

Literally moments later, she is almost run over by Ted Dayton’s (Stanley Brown) speeding roadster and is understandably upset until he mentions his rich father. She says she needs a ride and jumps in his car.

In her first effort to get to Paris, she attempts to blackmail Ted’s father (Clarence Kolb), saying she has his son’s letters of proposal in her purse, but when she doesn’t produce them, the father threatens to call the police unless she leaves town.

On the way out of town to her home in Maple Leaf, Missouri, Jenny stops in to see Brooke. She tells him she “forgot about the sick lion and walked right into his den.” She didn’t show the letters, she says, because she remembered his warning, which caused a funny feeling in her stomach. He explains it’s a “flutter,” her conscience talking, and reminds her that “good girls go to Paris, too.” After giving her a book of Aesop fables, he says he will soon finish his lectures and leave for New York to marry Sylvia Brand (Joan Perry), then return to England.

At the train platform—here happenstances really begin!—Jenny accidentally meets Tom Brand (Alan Curtis), Sylvia’s rich playboy brother, on his way to New York for her wedding. Seeing in Tom another way to Paris, Jenny buys a ticket for New York instead of Maple Leaf.

In New York, Tom and Jenny go nightclubbing and meet Sylvia with Dennis Jeffers (Henry Hunter). Eavesdropping, Jenny learns that Sylvia is in love with Dennis, not Brooke, and that Tom has a gambling debt. Also present is Sylvia’s mother Caroline (Isabel Jeans), out with boyfriend Paul (Alexander D’Arcy), a gold-digger himself.

The by now drunk Tom takes Jenny to the family home and she puts him to bed. In slipping out, she meets Caroline slipping in. They awaken the ailing grandfather, Olaf (Connolly). When Olaf loudly inquires about this stranger, Caroline improvises that Jenny is one of Sylvia’s bridesmaids.

Jenny quickly makes herself a part of the family and begins winning over Olaf with a Swedish remedy for his sore throat. One morning when the household assembles for breakfast, Sylvia is flabbergasted to find that Jenny, this stranger, is an “old friend from college,” and Brooke, who has arrived, is surprised to find Jenny is a guest in his fiancée’s home. Both Sylvia and Brooke play along.

The climax, although less civilized and scattered over numerous scenes, is reminiscent of the kitchen scene, the gathering of all the characters in Moonstruck (1987). A Mr. Schultz (George Lloyd) comes to collect Tom’s $5,000 gambling debt, but Jenny promises to pay him the next day, so Olaf won’t learn of it.

Earlier, when Sylvia was in Dennis’ car and his driving had injured a man, she had identified herself as Jenny Swanson to avoid a scandal. Now, when Sylvia asks Jenny to take the blame, Jenny demands $5,000 for her silence—money for Tom’s debt. As for Paul and Caroline’s planned elopement, Jenny exposes Paul as a leech out for her wealth, and Sylvia receives Olaf’s approval to marry Dennis.

After these couples have paired off, Brooke proposes to Jenny: “England, while the climate is not all that it should be, is very well known for honeymoons and has the added advantage of being just across the Channel from Paris.” So, you see, good girls do go to Paris!

The end is much, much more complicated than here described—and much funnier, with Connolly, in his best moment, bewildered by the confusing family revelations. A movie fan has to see the film to perceive all the, let’s say, “subtleties,” if that’s the word, and to appreciate this crazy comedy. Screwball, it certainly is!

Judging by Good Girls Go to Paris, it’s not obvious that the year of its release, 1939, was Hollywood’s greatest year. The number of memorable pictures, including Stagecoach, Dark Victory, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Wuthering Heights, Good Bye, Mr. Chips and, of course, Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, would never be equaled again, or even approached.

Appearing in one of the last years of the long Great Depression that had begun in 1929, Good Girls Go to Paris, is, however, representative of its era, the ’30s, when one point of the screwball comedy, like the concurrent Busby Berkeley musicals, was to lift the spirits of the American people out of their troubles. In that regard, the film succeeds admirably, coincidences, implausibilities, silliness and all, thanks mainly to the sparkling appeal of Joan Blondell and the stabilizing anchor of Melyvn Douglas. Not a masterpiece certainly but a fitting movie for late-night insomnia. If it doesn’t cure the insomnia, the film is still a suitable diversion until the dawn breaks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmNrIPunmP8

#Joan Blondell #Melvyn Douglas

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