#perhaps we need a visual shorthand | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

asmrelaxs-blog · 7 months

Text

What does "discourse free" indicate? What is your opinion on [discourse] What is a "prompting inquiry?"

Discussion free means I WILL NOT be associated with any type of kind of discussion based on politics or ideas, whether that is reblogging articles involved with politics or answering asks connecting to them. A "provoking inquiry" is something that would certainly lead me to opening up a discussion worrying politics or ideas. If you have actually sent in an ask that I have actually not addressed, as well as it was something along these lines, that is why I overlooked it. If for some reason you truly require to ask me an inquiry like this, ask it off anon so I can answer it privately Asmr Nazerke. I never recognized how screwed up Tumblr was when I initiated my open plan. I do not have time to experience my fans and also obstruct every person I do not concur with, and despite how I specify my beliefs, someone will certainly be mad. It is best to maintain myself totally eliminated from it in order to preserve a cool blog. This blog site is literally just for relaxation. That being said, in one of the most vague terms I can perhaps muster, I will block blogs made for inciting violence against others. This shouldn't be a shock. It's common modesty. TLDR: This blog is except talking about viewpoints, starting battles, or spreading out hate of any kind of kind. I desire this blog site to stay a discourse complimentary location for relaxation. This is made to be a refuge for everyone. As well as in order to preserve that security, I will certainly obstruct anybody trying to incite physical violence (if I catch them. I can not see whatever). Everybody rates right here no matter age, race, gender, sexual orientation, or faiths, however reveal hate as well as violence will certainly not be tolerated!

Less major, extra basic inquiries:

Is this a stim blog?

My initial intent for this blog site is to be based upon ASMR, however I reblog as well as comply with numerous stim blog sites, as preferred stim audios and also ASMR triggers have a tendency to overlap with one another, and also because there are not many active or quality ASMR blogs on Tumblr. I am completely fine with those who stim utilizing this blog site to do so as well as it is urged! Because I am new to the concept of stimming, I do not desire to insert myself in the community with limited expertise.

Do you make moodboards or stimboards?

No, I am sorry yet I do not. Not just do I have no suggestion how to make those, but I feel like they make blogs looked jumbled. There are many various other blogs around that would be happy to take your request, though!

How usually do you publish/ how active are you?

My line up is presently set to once a day.

Do you use trigger warnings?

Yes, I have a list of the various trigger as well as web content cautions here. Thanks to the brand-new tumblr filtering system, we can all stay clear of points we do not wish to see, also on mobile!

Are you open up for requests?

I'll have the whether I remain in the summary and generally the ask box will certainly be identified with a yes or no.

Why do your old messages have the headphone () or swirl () emoji on them?

I made use of to make use of these emojis as a fast shorthand as to exactly how each article should be appreciated. The earphone emoji implies the post needs to be paid attention to, and the swirl means it must only be seen.

Why you don't utilize you the emojis anymore?

I just thought it looked irritating eventually. If you reblog my old messages you can delete the emoji enhancements SO LONG as the subtitle does not additionally debt a resource. ASMR BASICS:

What is ASMR?

ASMR represents Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, which is a feeling of leisure or calm, that can be produced by certain audios, visuals, or experiences. An everyday instance can be obtaining your hair brushed, that makes you feel tranquil and sluggish, or listening to ocean waves as well as sensation unwinded by it. Some individuals can additionally really feel tingles along with the experiences of calm, but not every person who enjoy ASMR have felt it before, so it is not required.

What are "Triggers?" I believed those were bad things?

In ASMR, the word "activates" is used in a positive feeling and also describes the certain sounds or sensations that cause a person to loosen up and/or obtain tingles. Popular sets off consist of crunchy noises, light clicky or crinkly audios, soft talked/ murmuring noises, white sound audios (such as ear cleansing or mics being lightly combed), and also eating sounds. ~ ABOUT ME: ~.

Who are you?

You can call me Bex if you want. I am 23 years of ages and also pass she/her pronouns. , if you are a small and my age makes you uneasy do not hesitate to inform me as well as I will certainly unfollow you and/or you can block me. .

What is your major blog?

If you are interested in following me there, my major blog site is bextheboo. I upload memes and shitposts primarily. Sometimes the humor obtains grown-up, so if you're younger then you have been alerted. I additionally have a food blog site if you're like me as well as enjoy food photos, it's called hungry-tummy if you're interested!

Why do you make use of ASMR?

I use ASMR to soothe my anxiousness. It places me into a sleepy and very calm mind state where I feel risk-free and loosened up. Often I utilize it to help me drop off to sleep, although I frequently wind up getting tangled up in my headphones or having strange desires from subconsciously listening to all of it evening long.

Have you ever before obtained "Tingles"?

Yes I have! My really first tingles were from the sound of two screw brushes (mascara brushes) having their bristles scrubed together from a video clip that has actually since been deleted, unfortunately. I feel tingles on the back of my head, in an area to the left somehow. If you've never ever obtained tingles, then do not worry, everyone is various! Some individuals evidently just do not feel them which's totally all right, they do not happen really usually for me, but that doesn't make paying attention to ASMR any type of less delightful. The objective of paying attention to it is to loosen up and be calm. Yet do not hesitate of branching off and also attempting brand-new kinds of ASMR to locate your triggers! I didn't assume I would certainly appreciate consuming noises or inaudible murmurs, however I really do! That being stated, in the most vague terms I can potentially summon, I will certainly block blogs made for inciting physical violence versus others. I desire this blog site to remain a discourse cost-free place for relaxation. My original intent for this blog is to be based on ASMR, yet I reblog and also comply with numerous stim blog sites, as prominent stim sounds and also ASMR activates tend to overlap with one another, as well as since there are not lots of energetic or high quality ASMR blogs on Tumblr. I am entirely great with those who stim using this blog to do so and also it is urged! Not only do I have no concept exactly how to make those, but I really feel like they make blog sites looked jumbled.

1 note · View note

shadowspellchecker · 1 year

Text

Distances in Enola Holmes: Basilwether Hall and Station: Part 2 - Topography Comparison

[[Previous]]　☼　[[Menu]]　☼　[[Next]]

This is part of a series of posts on identifying hypothetical real-world locations for unidentified places in Enola Holmes (2020). Since the discussion if posted as a whole, might quickly exceed Tumblr's ten-image limit, I added this separately.

2.2 TOPOGRAPHY COMPARISON

Fig Uplands and rivers within our area of interest

2.2.1 Hills

Hills are a recurring feature in the first half of the movie. The hills we see are always in groups, often with more visible behind them, so inselbergs are unlikely.

2.2.1.1 Basilwether Station

Fig . Basilwether Station exterior, looking away.

Basilwether station appears to be surrounded by hills, at the very least on the right. However, it might also be surrounded, if that line under the clock (below) is hillside and not trees.

Fig . Basilwether Station interior, looking out. Possible hills in center.

In either case, a quick investigation of the film location demonstrates that the hills had to have been deliberately added in. There are buildings all around, and the view would be obscured by modern development. Why they chose this particular background is not known, but it could be that the artists wanted to make the image consistent with the rest of the route.

2.2.1.2 Bridge #1

The first bridge the railway crosses and the farm near it appear fairly untouched by the CGI artists.

2.2.1.3 The Railway Sequences

And, perhaps most strikingly, the areas we witness during the train sequences following the bridge next to the farm are decidedly hilly— and CGI. The CGI considerably decreases the deciding power of the natural topography of the filming site.

2.2.1.4 Estimating extents

At 54m00s, Enola recounts rescuing a sheep from a cliff's edge as a girl, and then her mother patching her up at Ferndell. It is possible that Ferndell is near cliffs. If so, then by calculating possible distances from Ferndell, one might also be able to work out the distance to even more cliffs or rugged terrain. So, I attempted to find a rough estimate for the distance between Basilwether Station and Ferndell, and found the distance to be at most twenty miles. However, while we know Basilwether station is in a hilly area, and that Ferndell is situated in a hilly area, they don't need to be in the same hilly area. Since that describes just about every major set of hills in our area of interest, we'll move on for the moment.

Looking out for:

Hills around station

20 miles or less from more hills

What we can say with some certainty is that the railroad route was consistently hilly. As such, we can estimate that the hilly landscape must be at least four miles across in one direction, given the amount of screentime is shown and our estimated travel speed.

Looking out for:

Hills around station

20 miles or less from more hills

Hills near Basilwether should extend in one direction no less than four miles

2.2.1.5 Conclusions

Given the visuals, even if the area around Basilwether Hall is flat, it needs to be within fairly close proximity to a hilly region where the station and the following train sequences can take place. This is a breakthrough, because at the very least it can rule out Huntingdonshire, which had the third lowest highest point of the 1964 Ceremonial counties. I also took the opportunity to eliminate 1964 Cambridgeshire, Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, the Soke of Peterborough, the Isle of Ely, and Parts of Holland. (As a mental shorthand, this is a contiguous area largely northeast of London.) The City of London, of course, was not even a consideration.

Within my maximum estimates (see above or here), this leaves us with the Chiltern Hills, the South Downs, the Kent Downs, the Surrey Hills, and the North Wessex Downs. Slightly further afield, we also have Cranbourne Chase and the Cotswolds.

Looking out for:

Hills around station

#ShadowSpellchecker #enola holmes #distances in enola holmes (2020)

1 note · View note

studythenight-away · 4 years

Text

Hello! As finals season (aka 5-research-papers-due-in-a-week season) dawns on many of you, I thought I would share the process I used to write papers in college. This made writing long research papers much less daunting (but can also work on shorter papers). I really hope this helps some of you who feel stuck. Especially during these ridiculous times, when you're stuck at home and might have other uncontrollable factors affecting your mental health, a clear framework of what to do could be helpful. Good luck, my friends! You got this.

About me

I graduated college in 2018 with degrees in Political Science + International Studies and will be starting law school this fall. I wrote nearly 20 15 to 25-page papers, never earning below an A. I loved researching about my topics but hated writing. It's tedious, takes so much time, and everything I write sounds bad at first. Plus, I was a terrible procrastinator so most of these essays were written in under a week. Talk about stress.

Over time I found a process that worked for me, one that made churning out a paper seem straightforward, like going through a factory line rather than this terrifying concept of writing 10,000 words. It kept me sane without decreasing the quality of my work (or more importantly, how much I learned!)

I'm thinking about making a short video to show this in action… let me know if that could be helpful!

Step 1: Research

How you organize your research is a key step in keeping you sane. Usually I'll have a pile of 20 books in my dorm along with dozens of JSTOR tabs open on my laptop, and that can get overwhelming very fast. Right now just focus on collecting ideas, not developing an argument or even an outline! As with most research papers, you could be starting with little to no background information on the topic, so it is still too early to be thinking about an argument.

Put all your research in one document

Open up a new doc: this will be the heart of everything. For a 15-page paper I usually end up with around 14-18 pages of typed research, 10 pt font, single spaced, tiny margins. This seems like a lot, but essentially all I do is type up anything I read that seems relevant to my topic, so luckily this step does not require that much brain power. Just type type type!

Use the table of contents

Find the chapter(s) that are actually relevant instead of skimming through the whole book. Time is of the essence here!

Use Zotero, cite right away

You can also use easybib or whatever you're used to, but keep track of your sources. I like Zotero because I can keep a log of all of my sources and copy the footnote or bibliography version whenever needed. Before you even begin reading, cite the source and copy it into your research doc. This will save you so much time later when you have to put in your citations in the actual paper.

Here is an example of what my research doc looks like:

Full citation is my heading for each source just so it’s crystal clear

I ignore all typos (I don’t think there are any in this part though, go me!) because my head is buried in the book just trying to get all the info down

I always start with the page number so I know what to cite when I go back

Create a shorthand

While typing up research, you might think of something that the author didn't talk about that you'll want to write in your paper. Or perhaps a few sentences already start to form. Put them all in one place, with your research, so you know what source you'll have to cite to then lead into your idea. I type "!@#" before anything that is strictly my own idea so I'm never confused. It's fast and stands out.

This is an example: the two bullet points above are evidence from my source, which made me think of this argument I could make, which I noted with “!@#”

Step 2: Read Your Research

Now that you have all your information, go back and read through it all. Every time you read about a new theme/person/event, write it down somewhere. You may come up with a list of 20+ different ideas in your research. No matter how small, as long as there is something about it, write it down. Each of these mini themes is going to end up being a paragraph in your paper or combined with another mini theme.

Once you’ve made your list, look for larger overarching themes. In the paper I’ve shown you, I had mini categories like “political party x” “religion” “labor groups” “little organization” and “hierarchy.” When I looked back I though, hey these are all groups and how groups are working together, so they each became their own mini paragraph under the subsection of “Alliances.”

As with most research paper structures, I try to find three general themes/subsections (like an extended version of that 5-paragraph essay we wrote in middle school). It makes the paper less messy and also makes sure I’m not covering things that are beyond a reasonable scope.

During this step, you are also searching for your thesis. It won’t be your final version. As you fill in your outline in the next step you may make slight changes. But this is definitely when you start thinking about it.

Step 3: Outline

We’re ready to outline! Once I’ve collected all my different themes and organized all my subsections and paragraphs, it’s time to fill in that outline. I start a new doc just for the outline and take advantage of google doc’s headings function to make a clear document outline.

Here comes the fun part, I read through my research one more time, this time copy and pasting all my research into each section of the outline. The document outline in google docs makes this easy because I can just click on each subheading to get me there (super helpful when you’re dealing with 15+ pages of research).

Here is what it looks like:

Let’s say I need to add something to my outline about labor groups. Boom, labor groups. Also, the typos are really abound here haha

Step 4: Write the Paper

Okay, I get it, easier said than done. BUT! You already have everything set up. Your outline is essentially just a list of your paragraphs and all you have to do is paraphrase, cite, and create a topic sentence. And that’s how you should think about this: you’re essentially transforming bullet points into sentences and adding footnotes.

In high school my English teacher introduced us to Sh*tty First Drafts for creative writing, but honestly the same applies to research papers. Sometimes I’ll even have phrases like “wait no that’s not what I meant but basically...” and when I go back to edit, I realize that what came after “but basically...” is fine! And I keep it. So just start typing.

How do you cite while you write? Because we’re trying to get a constant stream of writing going, inserting proper footnotes after each sentence you type is too bothersome. I usually split screen with my outline and my paper so I just copy and paste a few words from my bullet point into my footnote, like so:

(This is from a different paper about cluster munitions.)

Step 5: Edit the Paper

I work best when I print out my first draft and make all edits in red pen. I feel more productive and can visually see where I want to move sentences and what I need to change. The more red there is the better I can feel the paper getting. (Whether or not that’s true doesn’t matter. We’re trying to stay motivated here!) When it’s all digital I don’t really see the progress. Plus, once I finish all the red, I get another moment of passive brain work, where all I’m doing is transferring edits rather than thinking. And at this point in the process, that kind of relief is much welcomed.

The good thing about this process is there’s not usually a need to cut entire paragraphs or pages because the paper you end up with is just a formalized version of your outline. Because you started with such a detailed outline, the cutting and editing now is just to refine your word choices and get rid of the “but basically”s. You’re almost there!

Step 6: Replace your citations

Now it’s time to go back and replace your footnotes with actual citations. Zotero makes this easy because in Word you can just insert and add the page number, and it’ll automatically do “Ibid.” for you when needed. Ctrl+f in the original research doc to quickly find the source.

Step 7: One More Read-Through and Submit!

Congratulations!! You’ve got a fully-researched and well-backed paper! Of course, even though the process is straightforward, it’s still a lot of work. In ideal situations I would start researching two weeks before the deadline, but if need be, I believe I’ve done this all in three miserable panic-filled days as well.

Please message me if you have any questions at all! I really hope some of you find this helpful! Good luck!

#studyblr #college #university #writing #essay #study tips #studytna #original #research #research paper #study #student #school #you can do it!

4K notes · View notes

cosmicjoke · 3 years

Text

Okay, onto chapter 7 of “No Regrets”, and there’s really no need for me to say that this is by far the most heartbreaking chapter. I think, perhaps, the most tragic part of it all is that Levi made the choice that he did because he was actually trying to protect everyone. Now I’m going to break his choice down and get into the details of that, so let’s just dive right in.

First off, I want to talk a little about, once more, the pivotal contrasts between the way Levi’s choice is presented here in the manga, and how it was presented in the visual novel, and why, like everything the manga’s done so far, it’s an immeasurable improvement in the manga.

Basically, the way Levi’s choice in the visual novel plays out doesn’t in any way relate to his later philosophy which serves as the driving force behind Levi’s character in the main SnK series, while the way his choice plays out in the manga relates to it completely.

In the visual novel, it isn’t even really a choice at all. There isn’t any consideration or struggle for Levi to choose one way or the other. Levi acts purely on impulse, and as I stated in my analysis for chapter 6, he reacts to the sudden storm by wanting to use it as cover so he can go and kill Erwin. That’s it. That’s his sole motivation for leaving his friends behind. He puts no thought into it, he doesn’t consider the ramifications, he doesn’t seemingly care about anything at all except killing Erwin, and to hell with the consequences. Again, this is so wildly out of character for Levi, that I could hardly believe it while I was reading it. To make matters worse, when Furlan tries arguing with him and tries to convince him to stay, the writing directly contradicts its earlier statement that Levi didn’t consider Furlan and Isabel to be his subordinates by having him snap back at Furlan that he’s (meaning Levi) the one who decides, almost rubbing his higher rank in their social interactions in Furlan’s face, before just riding off without another thought. It’s just awful characterization. And, as I said, completely severs any relation of Levi’s actions here to the philosophy he later develops and adheres to so strongly in the main series, indeed, the philosophy that he lives by and which governs his actions, the philosophy that serves as his character motif. It turns it into a decision made purely through emotion, a purely selfish and thoughtless act taken, and indeed, the only lesson Levi would be able to take from that sort of impulsive decision making would be that he should put more thought into his actions in the future, because if he does that, then this sort of thing won’t happen again.

But that’s not the lesson Levi learns, and that’s not the foundation of his philosophy.

Levi’s entire philosophy revolves around him understanding and accepting that he can never know the outcome of any given choice he makes until after the fact, no matter how much effort and thought he puts into trying to make the right one, and finding a kind of freedom in relinquishing that control. It is absolutely vital, then, in order for Levi’s choice in “No Regrets” to mean anything, and for it to in any way relate to the philosophy which governs him later, for it to have been a well thought out and deeply considered choice, and that’s exactly what it’s presented as in the manga.

Now I want to break his choice down here panel by panel to get into why.

First of all, the first key difference between the manga and visual novel, is here in the manga, Furlan is the one who first points out that the situation for them is bad, because in this weather, it’s likely Erwin will get eaten by a Titan, and if that happens, they won’t be able to get the papers they’ve been after this whole time. Levi isn’t shown even THINKING about any of that up to this point. He’s only shown concern for Furlan and Isabel, wanting to make sure they stay together, and sticking himself by their sides. Furlan goes on to say here that in order to take the papers, they’re going to have to head to the center of the formation. Furlan’s the one who brings the entire subject of Erwin and the documents up here, not Levi, and this is a huge and important difference.

They hear Flagon fire the sound grenade, and realize he and Sairam aren’t far off. Furlan says they might be able to join them somehow, but then he hesitates, and says “but… Levi.”

Furlan is looking to Levi here and asking him to make a decision for their group. Do they go off together and try to get to Erwin before he gets eaten by a Titan and they lose their final opportunity to get the documents they need, or do they go and join Flagon. Furlan puts the responsibility onto Levi’s shoulders here.

Now here’s where things get really complex, and we see how truly nuanced, considered, and thought out Levi’s choice really was, and ultimately, then, why it turning out to be the wrong choice is so deeply tragic.

Furlan and Isabel both are looking at Levi, waiting for him to choose, and we get to see Levi’s internal thoughts.

The first thing he thinks in this situation is to weigh the worth of the lives of his squad and his friends against his own, and this is so exactly like Levi, and once more shows infinitely better characterization of him than what was done in the visual novel. Levi thinks here “If the three of us go, the team we leave behind will be shorthanded.” This is literally Levi showing private concern for the lives of Flagon and Sairam, knowing that if he takes Isabel and Furlan with him, those two’s chances of survival out in this weather diminish drastically. He then thinks “If I go alone, there’s no guarantee I’ll be able to find them again.” He’s considering his own chances of survival here, if he strikes out on his own. He knows that if he does, his own chances of getting killed increase. So here we see Levi struggling with whether to prioritize the lives of his squad, or himself. Ultimately, he decides to prioritize the lives of his squad. And I’ll get more into that in a moment.

But Levi continues to struggle. He tells himself “Which is it? Pick one.”, as the storm worsens around him. He’s agonizing over it. And then he closes his eyes, and he thinks of Isabel, remembers her saluting Flagon from the night before, and the understanding for the SC’s cause that she expressed, and how he himself understood it, and her sympathy, even her empathy with how they felt, saying she didn’t want to get in their way, meaning she didn’t want to compromise their mission. Levi himself has been developing an attachment to these soldiers, and an admiration and understanding of their dedication, seeing how like his own desire to fight for and protect the lives of others it is. To leave Flagon and Sairam to their fate and unprotected, then, would be both a betrayal to Isabel’s feelings and wishes, and his own. Levi doesn’t want to be the cause of Flagon’s and Saiyam’s deaths by taking Isabel and Furlan with him and leaving them by themselves. Also, in remembering the way Isabel saluted Flagon and her enthusiasm for the SC’s dedication, Levi must also have realized, if he took Isabel with him to steal from and kill Erwin, it would destroy any future chance she might have of ever joining the SC again, if that was something she wanted. To take her with him would implicate her in his crimes and rob her of that possible future.

Levi then thinks of Furlan and Isabel in the Underground, looking at him, and Furlan explaining to him his plans, his hopes and dreams of using this new found opportunity to make it to the world above and make for themselves better lives. He’s remembering Furlan, and Furlan’s reliance on him to make that dream come true. Remember how Furlan told Levi “With you here, we’ll really be able to raise hell.”. His plan always hinged on having Levi’s strength and ability in order to succeed. Levi knows, then, if he chooses to not go after Erwin then and there, and get the documents from him, Furlan’s dreams will be dashed, and Levi will have failed to help make them come true. And Levi has gone along with Furlan’s plans up to this point, against his own, better judgment, specifically because he wanted to help realize Furlan’s dream, to make it a reality. To abandon it now, after all of that, must have seemed unacceptable to Levi.

And then Levi remembers Erwin, standing over him in the Underground, superior and smug, callous and uncaring for how he’s disrupted and threatened the lives of Levi and his friends. He remembers his anger at Erwin, his feeling of humiliation and rage.

And it’s this memory, finally, after all the others, after considering the lives of Flagon and Sairam, after considering Isabel’s wishes, and Furlan’s dream, that tips the scale for Levi in deciding that he has to go alone after Erwin. It’s the weight of all those factors, the fear of letting Flagon and Sairam die, the fear of letting Furlan and Isabel down, on top of Levi’s own pain and anger, that decides it for him. If he doesn’t go after Erwin alone, if he takes Furlan and Isabel with him, Flagon and Sairam will probably die, and both Furlan and Isabel will be implicated in the crime of theft and murder. If he stays with Isabel and Furlan to join up with Flagon and Sairam, then Furlan’s and Isabel’s dreams likely go out the window.

This is no snap decision on Levi’s part. It’s a deeply considered, thought out and in many ways selfless choice he makes. And, again, that’s really what makes it so horribly tragic. Levi was really TRYING to do the right thing here, was genuinely acting in a way he thought was for the best, for all parties involved. He gave just as much, really MORE consideration to Furlan and Isabel and Flagon and Sairam than he did to himself. It was the combined weight of the interests of all the other people involved that pushes Levi towards the choice he makes, and his desire for vengeance on Erwin is just the final straw which tips the scale in that direction, not the one and only deciding factor. It is, from all angles of consideration, the best choice to make.

So Levi tells them he’s going alone, and tells Furlan and Isabel to join up with Flagon. He says he’ll get the documents, that’s the FIRST thing he’s going to do. Not kill Erwin. It’s the documents Levi is prioritizing here. And since he’s going after Erwin to get the documents anyway, he’ll also, he says, be the one to kill him. In Levi’s view, he’s being presented with a chance here to succeed in all their goals. In Levi’s view, this must be a win/win situation if he can find Erwin and do what needs to be done.

Furlan starts to protest, before Isabel cuts him off and says she’s going with Levi too, and Levi asks her, if she comes with him, who does she think is more likely to die, just him, or Flagon and Sairam. He’s reminding her here of her desire to not get in the way of the SC soldiers, of her sympathy and empathy towards them, and is imploring her to realize that going with him will leave Flagon and Sairam vulnerable. He’s telling Isabel that he can take care of himself, more than those two can. He says, specifically, If the four of you stay together, it’ll raise their chances of survival.”. He knows it’s dangerous to strike out on his own in this kind of weather, but he knows it increases his squad’s chances of survival if he does. Levi makes the decision here to place the lives of Flagon and Sairam over his own, and to support Isabel’s own feelings in the process.

And then Furlan begins to protest again, telling Levi to keep his cool and think, trying to explain that if he just waits a little while, the fog might clear up. He’s clearly afraid that if Levi goes out there on his own, he’ll get killed.

Levi asks Furlan then if he’s saying the Titans will wait until then, reminding Furlan that each moment they fail to act and go after Erwin, is another moment in which Erwin could get eaten, and risks Furlan’s dream being destroyed.

Furlan continues to protest, trying to impress on Levi how dangerous it is, to act alone, and Levi shouts back that he heard Furlan already, before insisting that he can do this by himself. And then he screams at Furlan “Trust me!!”. He’s putting the same request on Furlan that Furlan before put on Levi, asking for his trust, asking for his belief. Furlan may be ready to give up on his dream for the sake of Levi’s safety, but Levi isn’t ready to give up on Furlan’s dream for the same.

They glare at each other, and then Furlan asks “Is that an order, Levi?”, and Levi’s reaction to that question speaks volumes.

He looks shocked at it, his expression one of clear surprise and confusion.

He then asks “An order…?” like he doesn’t understand why Furlan would even ask something like that, before saying “Why does it have to come to that? I’m just… The two of you…”

This is in such sharp contrast to the way they had Levi acting in the visual novel and is, once more, infinitely superior.

It shows so plainly that Levi doesn’t want to be considered Furlan’s and Isabel’s leader, he doesn’t want to be treated as their leader. He only wants to be their friend, and for them to see him as their friend, and as someone they can depend and rely upon to always care about them and their dreams, as someone who will always fight for them and their dreams. He says “The two of you…” before trailing off, like he doesn’t know how to express any of that. But that’s what Levi is trying to say, he just doesn’t know how, as usual. He’s bad at expressing himself. He’s trying to tell Furlan that he’s going after Erwin because he’s trying to still make their dreams come true, he’s trying to support them and protect them and ensure that this entire situation they’ve gotten themselves into isn’t in vain. Levi’s expression as he looks back at Furlan here is heartbreakingly earnest. He looks open and vulnerable, as if imploring Furlan to understand.

And Furlan looks back, and finally realizes what Levi is trying to tell him. And when he realizes it, he smiles, and laughs. Because he realizes Levi is doing this for him, and for Isabel, and for Flagon and Sairam, even. He realizes Levi truly means well here, and has made the choice he has after deep thought and consideration. That this isn’t an impulsive or hotheaded choice, that he IS thinking clearly. Levi is confused by his reaction, and Furlan keeps laughing along with Isabel, before telling Levi “Fine. I’ll trust you.”, giving Levi the same regard Levi before showed him before, in agreeing to follow Furlan’s plan. Furlan chooses to trust in Levi’s decision making, chooses to trust in Levi’s own plan now. And then he tells Levi not to die, and Isabel tells him to make sure he comes back. They’re scared for him, but they’re choosing to trust him.

We get a significant panel then, as Furlan and Isabel fall back from him, and Levi looks back at them, as if still uncertain in his choice, despite all the thought he put into it. He’s still filled with self-doubt, even as Furlan had just moments before expressed belief in him. Like he thinks there’s something he must be missing, even though he’s sure he thought out every possible scenario and reason for choosing as he did.

What’s important too, in understanding Levi’s choice, is that it never once occurs to him that Furlan and Isabel could die. He thinks Flagon and Sairam potentially will, if they all leave them behind, and he thinks he himself might, if he strikes out on his own. But he never thinks it a possibility that Furlan and Isabel could. He chooses then, in that moment, to also trust in the strength of his friends. He shows absolute belief in Furlan’s and Isabel’s strength, to the point that he believes Flagon and Sairam need them, more than he does. It isn’t even a thought Levi can entertain, that him choosing to leave will put Isabel and Furlan’s lives in danger. With all the consideration he does, all the thought he puts into making the right choice, it simply isn’t conceivable to him, that his friends could die. If he had thought that a possibility, if such a scenario had occurred to him, he never would have left. He genuinely believed, if all four of them stuck together, they would be alright, even if he himself wasn’t.

A few others points of note in this chapter.

When Isabel and Furlan meet up with Flagon and Sairam again, and Sairam asks if Levi is dead, Isabel reacts violently, screaming “Of course he isn’t!! Levi will come back. Bet on it!”. This emphasizes, in a truly heartbreaking way, Isabel’s own faith in Levi, and her need to believe he’ll be alright. She insists that Levi will come back, and this builds off of Isabel’s continued refrain throughout the story of how Levi is “the strongest”, both below and above. Levi is Isabel’s hero, and she clings to his perceived strength in this moment, needing to believe in it to comfort herself over his safety.

This runs parallel then to Levi coming upon the butchered squad from the first rank, and his horrified realization that there are at least four Titans that did this, and that they’re heading back the way Levi came from, meaning right for Isabel and Furlan and Flagon and Sairam. He immediately turns around and tries in a frantic dash to make it back in time, thinking desperately to himself that there’s too many Titans, and they’ll be overwhelmed. And then he comes upon the sight of Sairam being eaten, and he cries out for Furlan and Isabel.

Truly the most heartbreaking part about this entire scene is how Levi tries so desperately to make it to his friends in time, but how he just simply isn’t near enough too, and can only watch, then, as they die. For Levi, who’s entire identity revolves around wanting to help others, to protect others, his own helplessness in this situation must be truly horrific for him. And especially, his own helplessness in watching the two people that mean the most in the world to him get eaten alive.

Another truly heartbreaking moment here is how Isabel decides, in Levi’s absence, that she’s going to take on his role as protector, and save everyone. How Isabel’s admiration and hero worship of Levi is, indirectly, what gets her killed here. She wants to be just like him, and in trying to be like him, she ends up dying. All of this happens in front of Levi. He has to watch Isabel die while trying to do the thing he’s made himself responsible for, which is protecting the lives of others. And the way she starts to call out for him, right before the Titan’s jaws close around her, is truly gut wrenching. Levi’s expression here is one of such utter horror and shock too, before it turns to sudden, murderous rage, and he tries once more to close the distance and make it in time, only to have to watch both Flagon, and then Furlan both get eaten too.

Levi thinks to himself, as Furlan’s being lifted to the Titan’s mouth “I’m going to end up letting everyone die.” Before screaming out Furlan’s name. Levi is already blaming himself, already feeling the abject weight of his failure. This is the moment when he realizes his choice was the wrong one.

Furlan, in one of the saddest moments of all, finally sees Levi and, as if to say ‘it’s okay. This isn’t your fault’, waves to him in acknowledgment.

Maybe most cruel of all is how Levi, even in the face of his overwhelming fear and horror and self-hatred, clings desperately to hope, still trying with everything he has to make it in time to save at least one of his friends. He thinks to himself “Come on, make it in time!!”, and only to make it more tragic still, he almost DOES make it in time, just barely a moment too late as he slices off the hand of the Titan that had been holding Furlan. Levi misses saving Furlan’s life by mere moments. It’s truly the definition of tragic, and beyond traumatizing.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for chapter 7. I’m off to read chapter 8 next, and that’ll be a wrap!

#attack on titan #shingeki no kyojin #No Regrets #Levi Ackerman #Furlan Church #isabel magnolia #Erwin Smith #snk analysis

17 notes · View notes

esonetwork · 3 years

Text

WHY THE SUN NEEDS TO SET ON THE GALACTIC EMPIRE

New Post has been published on https://esonetwork.com/why-the-sun-needs-to-set-on-the-galactic-empire/

WHY THE SUN NEEDS TO SET ON THE GALACTIC EMPIRE

Two of the most recent science fiction films and television series are adaptations of two of the most beloved and seminal works of Science Fiction literature. Dune, by Frank Herbert is about to be released in theatres all over the world, and Foundation by Isaac Asimov is currently streaming as a television series from Apple TV.

Both of these films are visually stunning and are made with cutting edge technology to tell the amazing stories of life for humanity among the stars and in the far flung future.

Why, then, are both of these works saddled with the most outdated and untenable form of government?

According to Miriam-Webster, an Empire is:

a major political unit having a territory of great extent or a number of territories or peoples under a single sovereign authority especially : one having an emperor as chief of state. (2): the territory of such a political unit. b: something resembling a political empire especially : an extensive territory or enterprise under single domination or control 2: imperial sovereignty, rule, or dominion

Now, this is not new for science fiction, particularly the brand of Sci-Fi that gets trotted out onto the silver screen. The original Star Wars dealt with a galactic empire that was in the midst of tightening its grip on the far flung space kingdoms of a galaxy far, far away.

Indeed, even literary science fiction is lousy with galactic empires. Bran Aldiss edited a collection of stories dealing with the concepts of Galactic Empires and it came out in two volumes.

So my question is simple: Why?

Why, in a future of faster-than-light travel, high level mathematics, incredible supercomputers, ‘droids, blasters, hovercars, thopters, personal force shields, and cloning, would you retain a political system as archaic as an empire?

Why do you need Emperors, or Princesses, or Counts, Dukes, or Barons when the guys who repair and/or invent all of the technology should be A#1 top of the heap?

Under our current capitalist system, the free market is the emperor. The only thing we have to debate is whether it should be regulated or, as the Randian Libertarians would prefer, completely unfettered by government oversight. The closest thing we have to kings or queens are the oligarchs (and those are merely side effects of corruption and nepotism the way that cockroaches are side effects of poor living conditions). The only royals in our modern world are merely vestiges of a by-gone age, allowed to persist in acknowledgement of the romance of the age of empire.

And that, maybe, is the point. Romance. Not as in Harlequin, but in the traditional sense of the word. The romance of the bygone era.

But that’s a frivolous thing to include in a science fiction novel, isn’t it?

Well, Asimov, with his Foundation Trilogy was, admittedly, retelling the Fall of the Roman Empire with a science fictional bent, so we can, perhaps, forgive the inclusion of the Galactic Empire. That was his whole thesis, that the Dark Ages need not be so dark. Having a Galactic Empire is essential to that thesis.

But what about Dune? Why the Empire? Why the Dukes and Barons and Princesses? Frank Herbert’s novel was inspired by the political situation in the Middle East with OPEC. Certainly the ruling class of the Arab world held on to power in a petty way, while being manipulated by the United States, a situation Herbert mirrors with the Spicing Guild and the CHOAM company.

His story, the story he wanted to tell, had to have those petty feifdoms squabbling for power and the Fremen and their Kwisatch Haderach eventually overthrowing the empire. Baroque was the way to go when constructing the world of Arrakis.

But why does it persist? The galaxy is indescribably vast. Even given the existence of faster-than-light travel, either through “Folding Space” or massive singularity drives or whatever, the logistics of administrating an empire over such vast gulfs of space is completely unworkable. Even just contemplating a supply chain for an imperial invasion force is unrealistic.

So why do we do it? Why do we posit the existence of Galactic royalty?

Aside from the romance, it’s experience. The sun set on the British Empire long ago but we still lionize the royal family. Former subject countries still celebrate their independence from the yoke of the empire, yet at the same time they fetishize the monarchy that once held them in thrall. Even the United States still defers to royalty despite the fact that they won their freedom from it through violent revolution.

We know Empire. Our history reeks of it either in opposition or support. The most recent and best example of a world conquering organization is the British Empire, whose ships and soldiers kept a network of trade afloat for centuries.

The audience, it seems, is able to relate to that older, venerated institution better than today’s world of high finance, political compromise, and supply chain logistics.

I guess it’s shorthand, but dammit if it doesn’t saddle a lot of science fiction with anachronism and unreality.

#Brian Aldiss #Dune #ESO Network #Foundation #Galactic Empires #Star Wars

7 notes · View notes

straykidsupdate · 3 years

Text

The Best K-Pop Moments of 2020 (SKZ Cut)

The impact of Korean pop music (most commonly shorthanded as K-pop) on global music trends over the past few years is undeniable. Take BTS, for example. Since their debut in 2013, the Korean septet has become the biggest band in the world, influencing the next generation of music-makers already.

In the midst of a global pandemic, Korean labels and artists have led the charge in creating lively, groundbreaking, immersive virtual experiences for fans. The end-of-year numbers only prove out that immense impact. According to Spotify, K-pop listening has increased by more than 2000% in the last six years, and listeners have added K-pop songs to more than 120 million Spotify playlists. (Notably, BTS's disco-pop single “Dynamite” sparked a 300% increase in people listening to the group for the first time on the streaming platform.) Per a 2020 Duolingo report, Korean is the second fastest-growing language in the world, something the company attributes at least in part to the impact of Korean entertainment, from K-dramas to Parasite and, of course, K-pop acts. On Twitter, BTS were the most tweeted about musicians in the United States for the fourth year in a row — with ATEEZ, NCT, and EXO joining them in the top 10.

Despite its ever-growing popularity, K-pop is a complex, loaded term that can be used to otherize as much as it can be used to celebrate. Western artists, especially white ones, get to just be regular pop music, undefined by country signifiers. Fundamentally, using the “K-pop” nomenclature is an act of separation, even when it straightforwardly refers to Korean idol music.

Fans also struggle with this. Can K-pop be considered a “genre” in the traditional sense? Is it a way of pinning household name artists in? Or is it a way of bolstering a rising tide? The “genre” question is perhaps the easiest to just come right out and deny. As any K-pop listener knows, the songs and groups vary immensely, each bringing their own flavor musically and aesthetically, each with their own influences (much like literally any other music in the world). As singer-songwriter Tayla Parx told Teen Vogue recently, K-pop has pioneered a genreless sound, or rather an all-encompassing sound. These days, to say something sounds like K-pop is about as helpful as saying a tree looks like a tree. Answers to the other questions might not be as crystal clear, but they are worth examining anyway, especially for fans processing the increasing power of Korean music through non-Korean lenses.

One thing is clear: The music coming out of Korea is more diverse and wide-reaching than ever, and the fans who love it are social media savvy, creative, and ever more powerful. To celebrate that, Teen Vogue asked 49 journalists and writers who covered K-pop this year to recap their favorite moments from the year – ranging from historic firsts and sartorial highlights to new music and just plain delightful memes. Below, check out their selection of the best K-pop moments of 2020.

Read Full Article Here: Teen Vogue

The "Psycho" Stage That Shook Stan Twitter to Its Core There's something truly electrifying about a collaboration stage. When artists from different groups unite for a singular performance, they produce some of K-pop's most thrilling moments. That was especially true when AB6IX's Daehwi, Stray Kids' Hyunjin, ASTRO's Sanha, and Golden Child's Bomin beguiled viewers with a stunning cover of Red Velvet's "Psycho" during a KBS Music Bank special in June. This wasn't the first time the '00 liners and best friends had performed together — last year, they took on GOT7's vibrant bop "Just Right" — but "Psycho" struck a chord with K-pop stans and locals alike, going viral across social media and racking up more than 17 million views to date. But there's more to its popularity than pretty boys serving looks, harmonies, and body rolls. The concept of boy groups covering girl group songs isn't a novel idea, but what's most striking here is its sophisticated execution. From Daehwi's opening falsetto and Hyunjin captivating expressions (the blond dancer's individual fancam has 4.5 million views) to Sanha's smooth vocals and Bomin's steady charisma, they honored the sanctity of the original without sacrificing its drama and panache. And that's exactly why we can't stop replaying it.

youtube

Stray Kids’ Delicious “God’s Menu” Choreography It takes a special kind of band to make a burned-out viral meme from 2017 part of the year’s most iconic choreography, but that’s what Stray Kids did with their song “God’s Menu.” Salt Bae’s iconic seasoning style joins other cooking-themed dance moves like sauteing, stirring pots, and chopping vegetables to create a routine that's equal parts absurd and mind-bendingly skillful. The choreography, combined with the in your face visuals of the MV and sound of the song, perfectly encapsulates the escapist joy that makes K-pop so compelling.

youtube

The Adventurous Road to Kingdom In April, amid the bleakness of the beginning of the pandemic, this competition show was a bright spot. Seven underrated K-pop boy groups — Golden Child, Oneus, ONF, Pentagon, The Boyz, TOO, and VeriVery — faced off against each other in live performance battles. Concepts ranged from cursed monarchs and dolls come to life to elegant classical music and K-pop mashups, but the death-defying stunts and stunning visual storytelling of The Boyz swept the competition. As winners of Road to Kingdom, they’ll compete against ATEEZ, Stray Kids, and a handful of other established groups on follow-up show Kingdom, which is sure to bring some much-needed levity to early 2021.

Stray Kids’s Bang Chan Acknowledging Fan Art Though most of 2020 kept K-pop idols and their audiences apart physically, things were better than ever in digital spaces. One example was in November, when Stray Kids leader Bang Chan discussed on a livestream how much he had enjoyed and appreciated fan cartoonist @.anelderlymeme, for their video rendition of a funny moment from one of his prior streams. Though maybe not the biggest moment of the year on the historic scale of things, the small virtual dialogue between K-pop artist and fan artist exemplified the sides of humanity that make the K-pop fandom experience so unique. In a year where there was little else to rely on, small moments where stars and stans “saw” and appreciated one another was a refuge for many.

#stray kids #201218 #era: IN生 #t: article #teen vogue

49 notes · View notes

msfbgraves · 3 years

Text

I see you, villain? The problem of Percival Graves

Thinking about the othering of villains, of course I thought of Percival Graves (because when do I not think of Percival Graves, aight) - and the problems he creates if you present him as a villain. Because in the world Rowling created he cannot have that function. In fact, Percival Graves a living, breathing indictment of JKR’s morals.

More under the cut because this is going to be long!

Simply put, a villain has to embody everything the narrative, and the audience, instinctively and collectively knows is wrong. In-story, a few characters can understandably choose their path, but for the most part - no. What they do is antithetical to the morality of the audience. Yetr what Graves does, for most of the movie, is not clearly villainous. In fact, hardly anything he does is.

Hang on, though! He wanted to kill Tina and Newt without so much as a trial! And we know she is good, right? She works at MACUSA, she tries to protect the wizarding world, she likes our hero, her sister is a sweetheart...

Graves also works at MACUSA. Queenie works at MACUSA. So that cannot readily code them as evil. Graves also works to protect the wizarding world. He’s shown to be a kind man to Tina, at least - he is not an all out bully. He is also more openmindend than the leader of the supposed good guys, Seraphina Picquery.

Then, maybe, the point is that MACUSA is not good, and aligning yourself with them is an evil thing to do. Fair enough, but if that is the case - what does that make Tina and Queenie at the end of the film?

Getting back to the fact he wanted to kill Tina and Newt...

Yes, he wanted to execute Tina and Newt. And as such, was exercising powers that the institution they both represent, sanctions. Again, the institution our heroes support, and if not do not actively oppose, condones this. In that light, is Graves the only villain? Or is he supported by a greater evil our heroes also align themselves with? To the audience the execution order is a great big no-no, but in-story, Graves is completely within his moral rights to do what he does.

But Graves is manipulating Credence.

Yes. Graves is manipulating Credence. And in doing so, is doing more for him than anyone has ever done for him before, including Tina. There’s little Modesty, but even she turns away from him in the end, and, being ten, there’s not much she can do for him up until that point. Tina went after his Ma once, and that changed exactly nothing as he was made to forget the whole incident. (The script implies that he hasn’t but that wasn’t made clear other than in one look, so it’s hard to take that as fact.)The rest of the wizarding world has left him to rot for his whole life. Graves wants something from him, yes - but he also promises him something in return and does him smaller favours: he listens to him, more than once (”You’re upset. It’s your mother again. What did she say? Tell me.”) he heals his wounds, he puts a meal in him (in the Lego movie at least) and he gives him physical affection. Conditional love is an abuse tactic, but in context, this can hardly be seen as a villanous action, not when our ‘good guys’ are worse than useless.

Graves wasn’t going to make good on his promises to Credence, though. He dropped Credence like a hot potato when he didn’t need him anymore.

Yes. Graves’ in-story, truly immoral flaw is that he is racist towards Squibs. But you know, so is almost the entire wizarding world. They also condone the subjugation of non-human magical creatures, as Newt is all too aware. Graves is certainly no hero, but this alone also can’t make him a villain in the context of the world he is in, because then everybody is.

He hit and verbally abused Credence.

He did (poor boy). It wasn’t a random moment - more of a ‘Snap out of it, we have no time for this’ we’ve seen people do in movies before, but that was inexcusable. That’s his society’s racism in full view.

He went after Newt.

Of course he did. Newt was a fugitive trying to tamper with a dangerous beast - it really was kind of his job.

He went after Tina.

Again, fugitive trying to tamper with a dangerous beast. Kind of his job.

He tried to manipulate Credence again

He tried to save his life. In order to use him later, perhaps, but he might have absolutely made good on his promise to get Credence a place in the wizarding world now he knew he was a wizard (and his racism thereby no longer a factor). (”You are a miracle. Come with me. Think of what we could achieve together.”)

The Graves we’re presented with is a manipulative, dangerous man, complicit in an evil system - but so are they all. In this system, human life, wizard or no, is extremely cheap. Yes, Graves can execute on a whim, but so can, and does, Picquery. She too takes life for some perceived greater good, just as we already know Grindelwald does.

The one who calls this all out? The one who refuses to be complicit? Is Graves!

If the wizarding status quo is as rotten as it is, being opposed to it cannot make a character villainous. And yes, when Graves is revealed to be Grindelwald - and as a visual shorthand is immediately othered more (he is made uglier and is spouting nonsense) this point still stands. Yes, he’s killed people to further his objectives. Well, so has MACUSA! They’ve killed Credence! They would have killed Newt and Tina. And is there any justice for the non-magical people that get killed due to MACUSA’s negligence? (Chastity Barebone? Shaw - he may be an asshole, but what of his Dad? All those other people Credence’s unchecked magic has injured or killed?)

JKR desperately wanted to write a good-vs-evil dichotomy, but what she has actually written is a chaos-vs-order dichotomy. True, a lot of what codes our heroes as good is their rejection of of the established, inhumane order, but so does Graves. Yes, he is ultimately a worse person than our heroes because he is a racist and abuser where Tina, Queenie and Newt are not. but that is not what the movie is about. Our heroes are not trying to fight for magical and non-magical integration - that is supposedly what Grindelwald (and so too, Graves) is doing. They are trying to restore order. That’s what the whole conflict is about. Order vs chaos. In the beginning, Newt’s creatures cause chaos that needs to be stopped. Credence causes chaos that needs to be stopped. Well, they succeed - in the end, Newt’s creatures are caught, the non magical people neutralised, Credence is killed, and Graves - who has declared his opposition to order openly - is defeated.

That is also what technically makes Graves the villain of this story - he is very much trying to further chaos by using an Obscurial. But when order is inhumane, trying to disrupt it cannot be seen as evil.

That’s why Grindelwald, as a villain, really doesn’t work. The audience isn’t convinced the current order should survive. After all, what good does it do? Why perpetuate an institutional evil?

In the second film, they have to ramp up the otherness of Grindelwald - he is uglier and very much more chaotic and he kills more people than the established order does - at least, so we’re told. He goes on causing massive chaos, and this actually, is coded as one of the Crimes of Grindelwald - but the audience doesn’t buy it. Going back to the first film, what we’re presented with as the villain is a handsome, extremely competent, eloquent, manipulative and abusive (granted), but at times merely friendly influential man who is the sole source of comfort for a suffering teen, whose life he tries to save. (For his own ends, ok, but Credence himself is also not entirely pure - he does cause multiple deaths.) Graves then goes on to rebel, magnificently, against a morally corrupt world order, because he could not save Credence’s life.

I kind of stan that last bit, too.

Now, I’m not surprised that JKR’s subconscious believes that order should be protected against chaos - she is a middle aged white billonaire trans exclusionary radical feminist. But the rest of the world really isn’t that on board with her “The world is fucked but let’s keep it that way” worldview. The end of the first film still kind of works because both Newt and Tina are rebels at heart who are falling in love and Queenie is also saying “Kindly fuck off” to the established order. But it is a bittersweet ending, because a young troubled man could not be saved and a handsome, badass rebel turned into a bleached pineapple.

Or did he? Where is he?

Where is Percival Graves...?

#percival graves #fantastic beasts and where to find them #fbawtft #crimes of grindelwald #gellert grindelwald #meta #credence barebone #newt scamander #tina goldstein #queenie goldstein

11 notes · View notes

distinguishedcolordelusion · 3 years

Text

A Study In Stargate

*This one is a bit of a doozy so bare with me a bit.

All notations and theories presented are just theories(not necessarily facts) regarding what is known and what can be inferred from cannon and ambiguously cannon(the novels and RPGs) sources.

For the purposes of this study if an ambiguously cannon source directly contradicts cannon it is disregarded as being relevant to the main universe and should be regarded as occurring within an alternate reality.

~On with the study~

[What is a Stargate]

The Stargates are constructed of a tempered naquadah composite that is virtually indestructible through practical means.(impractical means would include destructive power such as destroying a planet or dropping the gate itself into a star) Though this is only in the case of second and third generation designed gates as the proto-gates constructed and dropped by gate-seeder ships are seemingly a great deal more fragile and less powerful.

[The Begining]

The Stargates and their network were designed by The Ancients(Altara/Altarans) and originally conceptualized by the Altaran Amelius – the night before they left their original home galaxy(The galaxy occupied by the Ori).

Note: Given the presence of a Stargate on Celestius it seems that either there were plans for the creation left behind when the Altarans left or perhaps more likely the Ori reverse engineered them for themselves after finding one during their hunt for the Altarans.

Though it would seem that the first actual gate(Permanent non proto-gate) built may have been the gate on the world Dakara as the location of the first Altara settlement in the Milky Way/Avalon Galaxy.

Note: This would make the Dakaran gate the oldest gate in the Milky Way having predated even Earth’s 50 million year old Antarctic gate

After the settlement of Dakara and the expansion into the Milky Way/Avalon, the Altara built a series of ships to explore new galaxies and lay the framework for more gates as they went. One of such ships was Destiny, the survey ship that follows in a 2000 year wake of the seeder ships.

Note: there were at least three seeding type ships ahead of Destiny. Potentially one to catalog planets and resources(Such as naquadah and other proto-gate building materials), one to lay the glyph point network, and one to seed the gates. Leaving Destiny to be the one to autonomously initiate the gate networks.

Note 2: It would have been during that same time period that the facility known to the Tau'ri as 'Icurus Base' would have been built to facilitate the necessary eventual contact with Destiny.

Note 3: It would be 10 million years between the launch of Destiny and the founding of the Alliance of the Four Great Races(est. 40 mil prior to start of series), implying that perhaps Destiny and her sister ships were instramental in the first contact between the Altarans and the other three races.

[How does it work?]

Within the Stargate network a Stargate uses six unique glyphs to find an address in the local galaxy network(with an additional glyph to dial another galaxy) and a final glyph as a Point of Origin. Each glyph represents a physical point in space within the local galaxy. The Point of Origin Glyph would hold the saved location data (the six glyph points that make up its own unique location) of the planet being dialed from.

Note: Given that planets and planetoids that are likely to have Stargates on or around them move a great deal(tending to be in habitable zones of their stars with much more rapid orbital period), the orientation of indicated by a gate address is likely referring to the surrounding solar system rather than an individual planet.

The implications of this would mean that multiple planets in a solar system would share the same gate address even if there were gates on multiple planets of the same solar system.

This being said a newly added gate can not dial out until it has connected with the already established DHD(which has a limited range – seemingly high orbit at most) or receives an incoming wormhole.

Meaning that in practice every world in that theoretical system would have to be a complete pair(Gate and DHD) on its own or an orbital path that brings them within range of the counterpart mechanism. Though they could create a very interesting Antarctica type scenario of being close but so much farther than they think.

On the gates themselves there are either 39(Milky Way/Avalon gates) or 36(Pegasus and Proto-gate networks) glyphs. From this we can surmise that after subtracting the unique Point of Origin Glyph from the count a gate network needs to have at least 35 points to properly work.

Note: Though Pegasus gates only have 35 spacial points and a Point of Origin Glyph, Proto-gates seem to have 36 spacial glyphs being able to use any glyph as a substitute Point of Origin(kinda like pressing 'ENTER' rather than the typical journey path.)

With all Proto-gates behaving in the same way and being known predisesors to the second and third generation gates the implication is that perhaps all systems have a minimum of 36 spacial glyphs and for whatever reason the Pegasus system only uses 35 of them.

If a gate network only needs those 36 points to function that implies something special about the fact that the milky way gates have 38.

It uses these glyphs to connect with another gate found at that point in space and establishes a captive stable wormhole between them. Each gate in the pair takes on a specific role: the dialing gate converts the traveler into its most basic components (sub-atomic particles) and transmits it, while the receiving gate reassembles the transmitted matter back into its original form.

[Gate Sounds]

Each glyph on the gate has a corresponding sound attached to it so that a gate address may be spoken aloud.

Note: Though the glyphs can be used as a mathematical conversion and numbering system for the gate network itself, the sounds associated with the glyphs are not actually numbers but rather a mnemonic device.(Think variables. Like pi = π =3.1459..., the sound has a value attached to it but the sound itself is not a number)

While the Milky Way/Avalon gates have a mnemonic device attached to them most spoken addresses are unwieldy and unpronounceable. Shorthand for the naming of planets based on their gate address seems to be reading whatever the glyphs are on the center ring of a DHD counter clockwise from 6:00 position

Original Shorthands would have been (Dakara) Ravacla Fin De'shi- Declara, (Earth) Vabo'Othe Ze'ka-Theva

Note: Theva (Latin pronounces 'Th' as a sharp T and hard H separately rather than 'th'. Making it sound like T-hev-Ah.)would have morphed into Terra which would morph into Taura in Goa'uld thus creating the word Tau'ri- from Taura, which would change in definition over time to simply refer to all humans and colloquially defining how goa'uld view humans i.e. beasts of burden/vessels.

Note 2: Obviously this naming technique is not always accurate due to planets being renamed whether by their inhabitants, by their conquerors, or words simply morphing over time. Not surprising since many of those names would be some 50 million years old and for the better part of three million years would only have been passed along verbally if passed down at all.

It would also theoretically allow for more than one planet to have the same shorthand

It is unknown if Pegasus gates ever had a similar mnemonic device attached to their glyphs or not. The only ones who would likely still know would be the wraith who as a primarily telepathic/nonverbal species would have no need for such a thing

Note: Most wraith only communicate with their fellow wraith through telepathy, as such verbal communication may actually be uncomfortable for them being physically unused to the task.

***Headcanon: The reason Todd talks so much is due to his imprisonment and functional solitary confinement with the Genii. Being unable to hear any other wraith he talks out loud to be able to hear something.

[Implications Part 1]

That being said it has been shown that third generation gate technology accessories – such as puddle jumpers – are capable of using second generation gates even though they are not constructed for use in the same local system. The implication here is that the gate system or perhaps the puddle jumper's onboard dialing computer is doing conversion math based on the numerical positioning of they glyphs on the gate itself.

Note: The inner track of Milky Way/Avalon gates spins clockwise and their default position is at rest over the Point of Origin Glyph(mostly because that’s always the last glyph dialed anyway) going by that logic the conversion from milky way to pegasus glyphs would be 1:1 going clockwise around the gate until reaching the end of the corresponding numbered glyphs.

However this means that puddle jumpers would be incredibly limited in their access on the Milky Way/Avalon network however due to the fact that their systems only have glyphs up to 36(including Point of Origin)

***Headcanon: While Atlantis is Earthbound the Tau’ri crews put number stickers on the puddle jumper dialer to remember what symbol goes where. (They’d make Sheppard annoyed and he’d spend a Sunday peeling them off.)

Given that an address has to be dialed in the proper order for it to connect to its assigned planet, each place in a gate address represents an actual spatial orientation.( for example: up, down, left, right, front, back) Using six addresses that share a the same glyph with each address using it in a different place we could find the physical location in space of that glyph and determine the orientation pattern of a gate address allowing the the ability to know where all the glyph points are in space.

Note: I feel like there would be an actual buoy(a buoy may be the most accurate term here as traditionally buoys are used for navigation as a location marker whether visual or digital relay), satellite, or star located at each of the glyph points allowing for the DHD to track the points and compensate for stellar drift. Something physically present though perhaps out of phase

Note 2: With the nature of the gate network’s automatic updates it feels like there should be a sort of equivalent to a hard drive somewhere in the galaxy that records the buoys location and that is what the DHDs(and potentially Destiny) calculate from rather than compensating for nearly forty unique points in space drifting for thousands of years every time it dials.

Buoys would ping to the network harddrive. And the network harddrive would ping to an active DHD.

Given that the Point of Origin Glyph is actually a shorthand of the dialing gate's own spacial address this means that a gate can't dial out unless it 'knows' where it is, thus an incoming wormhole to establish its connection with its DHD(hence teaching its DHD where it is relative to the glyph-points) or a pre-established gate system is needed.

Note:This would give reason to why the gate aboard Apophis's ship could not be used to escape even after they dropped out of hyperspace even though there was a DHD present

With this in mind and conceiving of the fact that the gate system is capable of dialing every gate simultaneously. It is implied that there was a single point that dialed all other gates to 'set' their Point of Origin Glyphs.

The problem with this situation is that for a single point to commit a mass dial the system would have to already have a known location point. At the beginning of the gate system the only established location points would be the glyph-points themselves. As all the glyph-points are counted as stationary values being calculated none of them could have been the origin of the first dialing. This means that the first system dial would have had to have been done by a known value that was not part of the calculating values.

In a proto-gate network all glyphs on the gate are used as locational markers with Destiny acting as a real time drift calculator and DHD. The implication of this means that all 36 symbols on the gate have a corresponding physically located glyph-points.

The only glyph on a Stargate that is not part of spacial calculations in second and third generation gates is the Point of Origin glyph.

The implications of this are that the Point of Origin glyph-point has both a physical location within the local gate network and a means in which to dial out – making it the location that would have been responsible for the original mass dial that established the gate network in the first place. Once the mass dial was done the DHDs would save their own locations to the Point of Origin glyph and the glyph-point's actual location would be lost.

For the Point of Origin glyph-point to be the origin of the first system dialing it would have to have a archive of all the other glyph-points and the original gate addresses placed.

Note: This is what makes the most sense as Destiny has the ability to recall addresses to worlds in a galaxy that is new to it(as its journey is one that moves ever forward rather than crossing paths it has already been to). Meaning that its getting its information from somewhere.

And with its sister-ships being two thousand years of travel time ahead of it they are doubtfully within reach for quick information access.

It would have to act as a sort of mainframe for maintaining the entire local galaxy's gate network. This location would have to hold all the data of the gate network including a full and complete atlas of gate-baring worlds within the local system and a sort of hard drive that would maintain precise spacial coordinates of every glyph-point, which it would relay to the DHDs as periodic network updates.

*from here one the Point of Origin glyph-point will be referred to as the Archive Point

(A/N:...this sounds a little too eerie ...did Ba'al find the gate network harddrive?)

Note: The idea of Ba’al having found such a system or device as the core of the Milky Way gate network isnt too terribly far fetched as Dakara was held deep within his own territory for much of his reign.

[Implications Part 2]

Mathematically calculations start with 0 instead of 1(this was made a big deal in series by Carter). Zero is the starting point and the collective idea of 'where you are now/begin' thus in and of itself it is its own set of coordinates. It would be no different within the complex calculations of the Stargate system. For all intents and purposes 'AT' – the Point of Origin glyph and the first glyph on the gate – would represent Glyph Zero in the gate's calculations between worlds and galaxies.

On most worlds the DHD is missing a glyph(not the Point of Origin). This missing glyph is not always the same one, indicating that certain points can not be safely called upon from certain areas of the galaxy.

Note: This means that Earth's use of a dialing computer over a DHD is yet again capable of circumventing safety protocols built into the gate network by its creators (~Sigh~ Damn Tau’ri).

If one knew the physical locations of the missing glyph-points they could map out the space between the worlds with missing glyphs and their corresponding glyph-points. With enough of these missing glyph worlds mapped there would be an intersection that would indicate where something was being avoided.

The gate network is millions of years old and seems to disregard most spacial anomalies that may occur within a travel path. This leaves the question of what would be enough of a hazard that the gate system would not allow a traveler to pass through?

It has been shown that large scale disturbances such as black holes and other cosmic events can affect gate travel meaning while it isn't a visible stream going from one place to another it is a physical presence capable of being interacted with to some extent(similar to being out of phase was portrayed).

It has been implied that Ring technology and Stargate technology function on similar principals with magnitude and distance being the defining differences between them. With this in mind that would lend the idea that there is an object between the missing glyph worlds and the worlds with addresses baring those glyphs that would either prevent travel or cause damage if traveled through.

Operating under the idea that Stargates and Rings function similarly then theoretically an un-designated Stargate (one without a DHD to give it an address) could 'catch' an incoming wormhole if it was positioned exactly between those points.

With that in mind it is possible that the disconnected space could be the location of the Archive Point. A Stargate that has no address within the system. As the Archive Point would be subject to automatic mass dialings to update and maintain the entire gate network trying to gate elsewhere from there would have the possibility of ending very badly(solid matter being transported through multiple wormholes doesn’t sound good) Thus having the possibility of even crossing over it by accident would be problematic.

(A/N) Now I need me a SG1 grade goof up scenario where the team accidentally finds the most important piece of the entire gate system by sheer dumb luck and the broken safety protocols of using an Earth made supercomputer in place of a DHD.

[Going Further than Before]

Within the gate network the commonly used seven glyph address reaches planets within the same galaxy.

With the addition of an eighth glyph the gate becomes capable of reaching worlds in other galaxies. Though achieving an eight glyph lock requires a specialized control crystal within the outbound gate's DHD (or just using the SGC's dialing computer). The seventh non-origin glyph in an eight symbol address is not a locational marker as with a standard address but rather a network extension.

The glyph in question would be defined by numerical value assigned to local networks seeded by Destiny and its sister ships as they were reached over the course of their journey. This would explain why a jury-rigged power generator was enough to reach Othala in the Ida Galaxy(Seventh glyph is #9) while a ZPM was required to reach Lantea in the Pegasus Galaxy(seventh glyph #20).

Note: Something odd to note on this matter is that the Milky Way/Avalon galaxy has a seventh glyph of 3. Implying that it was not in fact the first galaxy the Altara tried to settle and plant gates in.

With the Milky Way gates having 39 glyphs and Pegasus and Proto-Gate networks having 36 glyphs the network would have a design flaw of only being able to go as far as 39 galaxies out from the Milkey way and even fewer from Pegasus and the Proto networks. This would indicate why they instituted the 9 symbol address lock to gate to Destiny directly. Past a certain point it would have been impossible for them to reach the ship otherwise. And yet the logs aboard Destiny indicate that that Destiny and the gate-seeder ships have seeded more than sixty galaxies with Stargates.

Under very specific conditions(thus far only shown to exist on two known planets) a nine symbol address can be entered and this causes a complex series of equations to be pinged within the Stargate network to pinpoint the gate aboard Destiny.

As it is known that the Altara always played the long game with everything they did it wouldn't make sense for them to even passively go through the effort of seeding so many galaxies without having the ability to reach them. Something that, even with the ability to dial Destiny, would eventually be lost to them without alternative methods.

This implies that the network itself has the means to connect to those additional galaxies. With the maximum possible number of galaxies to be contacted it would have intended to use the 38th galaxy as a buffer point to reach any further galaxies.

This would also explain why the Milky Way/Avalon gates are different than Pegasus/Destiny gates as the Milky Way/Avalon gate system is both a local and intergalactic network hub. The 38th galaxy would be a second gate network hub.

Note: Given that the Milky Way/Avalon network seems to be both a hub network and not the first in its sequence it is unknown if the other two local networks prior to it would have been attempted to be hub networks as well or are simpler local networks like those of Pegasus

Potentially, given that they would predate Destiny's launch, they would be second generation styled gates like those in the Milky Way/Avalon Galaxy(Dakara being the oldest known gate in existence is still of the far sturdier second generation style gate design) but only having the 36 glyphs of a Pegasus and Proto-gate system.(making them reachable within the system but not really part of the fully fleshed plan to the grand scope of the gate network as a whole)

Likely the gate networks of those galaxies themselves would have been much smaller especially if the reason for them being left behind was the Altarans trying to put more distance between them and the Ori. There might have only been a handful of gates in the networks at all, only connecting to Altaran occupied worlds or worlds with resources vital to them.

Note 2: With the possibility of either a reverse engineered stand-alone network or a stolen concept network existing in the Ori home galaxy and without the set up of Destiny and her sister-ships or even the gate network as a whole the Ori galaxy should have been cut off. For it to be used to connect to the main established network of Stargates would require negative calculations within the gate system itself.

Following this logic any further galaxies in the second network hub would use glyph 1 for the 38th galaxy while the 38th galaxy would use a double Point of Origin address(where both the 7th and 8th glyphs are the Point of Origin – The mathematical Glyph 0 – to reach the hub galaxy previous to it.

This would create a bridge along hub networks with each one down the line dialing a double Point of Origin address to reach the one prior to it while the one prior would simply dial its 38th galaxy glyph. Hub network points would fall in galaxies 3(Milky Way/Avalon because...reasons?), 38, 76, 114, and so on. This bridge type system would allow them to circumvent the ever increasing power requirements of further travel as well as ultimately removing a projected limit to the number of gate systems.

***Headcannon: What happens to reach Destiny so many galaxies away is the Archive Point(the hard drive of the gate network) initiates a gate buffer bridge(like the Carter-McKay Gate Bridge only much much bigger) to conserve as much energy as it can to send travelers directly to Destiny.

However each link in the bridge is an intergalactic dial along hub galaxies and requires a guaranteed massive amount of power to begin with, thus reaching Destiny requires exorbitant amounts of energy.

Icarus-Class planets have unique high energy naquadria cores allowing for large amounts of power on demand(making the entire planet's core functionally one big naquadah generator). For that reason they are the only worlds that receive gates with DHDs capable of running the nine chevron program code regardless of the presence of all nine chevrons on all gates. And thus the only gates that would be used in the Destiny Bridge buffer dial would be on Icarus-Class planets.

This also entails that one of Destiny's sister-ships must scan the entirety of a hub galaxy to find an Icarus-Class planet to settle a prime gate on to continue on its chain. Unfortunately this means that if a Hub-galaxy loses its Icarus-Class planet then any connection to Destiny will be lost with it.

#Stargate #Sg1 #stargate atlantis #stargate sg1 #stargate sga #stargate sgu #fan theory #headcanon

13 notes · View notes

miraculousfanworks · 4 years

Text

How To Analyze a Character

Have you ever been reading a fic and found the character is not recognizable that causes you to say “I don’t know who that is in that Marinette suit but that’s not Marinette.”

Or when you’re writing there’s that one character you need and you just can’t get inside their head to save your life.

This essay is going to delve into how to analyze characters and how they work in stories. It will help you both articulate why you do or don’t like a particular character or their interpretation, and help you in your own writing of that character.

Characters, as well as other elements of a narrative, can be broken down into collections of recognizable elements often called “tropes.” (For the comprehensive taxonomy see tvtropes.org.) These commonly recurring literary and rhetorical devices, motifs or clichés can be combined in unique ways. They exist as recognizable and namable concepts because the same patterns are used over and over again in the creation of stories. We can use named tropes to describe what we are seeing in one story and relate it to other instances of the same phenomenon.

The advantage of recognizing the tropes that describe a character means that we can import into our understanding of them all of the other instances of that trope we have come across, and then compare and contrast these characters.

For example, both Chloé and Adrien exhibit the “Well Done, Daughter/Son!” Girl/Guy trope, desperately seeking the approval of a distant and withholding parent. (Faramir in the Lord of The Rings and Shinji Ikari in Neon Genesis Evangelion are also prime examples.) Knowing that they are both participants in this kind of relationship we can see how it plays out differently.

Gabriel seems like a deliberate ass, but occasionally manifests approval as when he played the duet with Adrien before sending him off to the Kitty Section concert in Capitan Hardrock. Audrey is entirely un-reflexive in her horribleness, dismissive rather than demanding and only ever recognizes Chloé’s worst feature as admirable. Kagami is also a “well done daughter!” girl and it informs how she relates to Adrein, Chloé, Marinette and Ladybug, providing both for character connection and thematic contrast.

On the production side, tropes can be used deliberately to construct a character to achieve a particular purpose. Adrien was created using the standard tropes of the fairy tale princesses beauty, musical talent, kindness to all creatures (even Chloe), kept looked up by an unloving parental figure. By creating a stereotypical Disney princess but swapping the gender it causes us to think harder about the assumptions we make about Princesses.

Symbols work the same way. We use symbolic images and language in media because it allows us to reference all the other ways and places that symbol is used. It becomes a shorthand for much bigger units of meaning. Pure originality would be completely unintelligible.

For example, Marinette displays two flower motifs on a regular basis. One is the cherry blossom spray across her shirt. Commonly this is associated with both love and passion, as well as purity and transitory beauty. In China, the last three are more closely associated with the Plum blossoms that decorate her purse, chair, and diary. Along with the additional significance of perseverance and hope, we can see that her dreams for the future, however heard she works for them, may not turn out as she plans.

The cherry blossom, in China, is a symbol of passion, strength, and feminine power and sexuality. As Marinette has this symbol peeking out from behind her jaket on the left side of her shirt, it represents how her civilian persona hasn’t fully come into the power she displays as Ladybug. Adrien’s kwami was chosen to be a Black Cat specifically to call up all our associations with them and bad luck as a counterpoint to Ladybug and her Lucky Charm.

Pikachu, I Choose You!: Artistic Decisions

You would think this wouldn’t need to be said but remember, remember, remember: these fictional characters are not real people. Why does that matter? Because everything you see on the screen or on the page is the result of a choice made by the writer or artist.

Images and dialogue may be selected deliberately, thoughtfully, thematically, instinctually, carelessly, haphazardly, or stupidly, but they are there because the authors and illustrators and creators selected them to be there.

Remember that the characters only exist to serve the story and everything about them ideally should serve to move the story toward its conclusion.

This is especially pertinent in an animated–and especially a computer animated–show because everything has to be made specifically for the show and they are expensive to make(MLB costs ~$460,000 an episode). That’s why you get only one outfit for most of the characters, except when absolutely necessary.

Saving their production budget for other things is why Theo Barbot has all of the odd jobs in Paris, there seems to be only one cop, Sabrina’s dad, and Alec and Nadja are the only people on TV. If you take a look in Bubbler, the first episode aired in the US, you can see that the school, the bakery, the hotel, and the Agreste Manor are all within one block of each other.

CallMeDale posted this to the Miraculous Fanworks Discord. Source unknown. Image originally from Bubbler.

What this production cost means for analyzing a character (or anything else) is that everything we see in a visual medium is important. Everything about a character has been picked for some reason. How they look, how they move–even how they stand says something about who they are as a person, who they are in their relationships, and who they are as an element of the story.

I did a fairly comprehensive essay on Chloé as a character so I want to walk through some of the things I looked at in order to write it.

Character at First Sight:

First impressions are vital. Because Marinette is picked to be our eyes as the OP starts (“In the daytime I’m Marinette,”) we know she is supposed to be our heroine and point of view. Everything that happens after that is to be judged in relation to her. The first time we see Chloé in the show is a whole 5 seconds into the opening, when she and Sabrina walk past a face-planted Marinette. Immediately afterwards, Chloé runs back in to glomp Adrien and push Marinette out of the way.

From these few brief seconds we know that she is both rich and domineering, Sabrina is walking just behind her with a huge designer purse and bookbag, obviously in a subservient role. Chloé laughs at Marinette, which establishes her as an antagonist to the Heroine. Chloé pushing Marinette out of fram when she comes back shows that she exists in part to block our Heroine from Adrien, our Hero, whose expression shows he really doesn’t appreciate the attention.

Not even three seconds of screen time and we already know who Chloé is in relation to three people: Marinette, Adrien, and Sabrina.

How much time a character gets in the beginning of a story also sets up how much brainspace we allocate them and our expectation of their importance. This is one reason I prefer Bubbler as the “first episode’’ (US viewing order) over Stormy Weather (South Korean/International Viewing order). Stormy Weather spends the first few minutes on Aurore, Mirielle, and Alex before getting to Mari, Tikki, Manon, Alya, and Adrien. Bubbler in the same first minute sets up Marinette, her parents, Adrien, Alya, Chloé, and Nino and all their relationships.

By choosing your descriptions carefully you can get the reader to think of other things without directly mentioning them. Ladybug’s costume, mode of travel and name all callback to Spiderman (she even does the upside down hang in Dark Cupid), and even though the iconic phrase “with great power comes great responsibility,” is never stated its influence is felt in the persistent characterization of Ladybug as ‘all business’ in fic, even though she is more playful in canon. Master Fu is modeled after classic inscrutable mentor Mr. Miyagi from the original Karate Kid movies, it gives him an air of perhaps more wisdom and knowledge than he actually possesses.

Come on Let’s Vogue: How the Look of a Character Informs Us

Now let’s look at what we get from the elements selected for Chloe’s character design. Slender, pale, almost-white blonde hair, sunglasses on the top of her head, lots of blue eyeshadow, yellow jacket over a black and white striped shirt, white capris and black and white flats. All of this says she is the top of the social heap at her school. Combined with her glomping and trying to kiss Adrien and we can guess she is–or at least wants to be seen as–romantically “experienced”. Yellow is a happy color, it’s what makes a printed picture look bright. Often, though not always, it is associated with success and general goodness (i.e. a heart of gold) so she is initially portrayed as a person who doesn’t have any cares. White jeans and shoes point to both her status as someone who doesn’t have to work and a certain level of naivete.

But she also has this very gothy studded belt around her hips. It is very obviously not holding up her pants. This hints at the darker emotions and experiences at her core. The black and white stripes of her undershirt hint at the way she is held prisoner by her past.

Because we have been set up to see Chloé as the spoiled,rich bitch with everything she could want, when the facade cracks and we see just how awful her mother is it hits all the harder for us. Chloé’s invulnerable image is destroyed.

“What’s in a Name?”: Tagging as Character creation

Names are also a good starting place for getting into a character.

Bourgeois comes layered with the connotations of wealth, but not too much, and shallow conformity. Chloé is derived from the Greek Khlóe, or ‘young green shoot’ (of a plant), which can also be interpreted as meaning 'blooming.’ Khlóe is an epithet, or nickname, for Demeter in her aspect of the Lady of Summer. We know the writers know and are thinking of these meanings because of these lines in Sandboy.

Nightmare Adrien: Marinette, for your birthday, I’m going to buy you flowers—

…

Nightmare Adrien: —hortensias, roses and Chloés. (Marinette shrieks)

Not only does her name sound like that of a Homecoming Queen/Cheerleader/trust fund baby, but it also indicates she is immature but with potential to become something more.

Queen Bee is also laden with meaning as it is a term used to describe girls in their teens who are at the top of their social pecking order (see Queen Bees & WannaBes). It perfectly describes bothe how Chloé acts but also how she perceives herself.

The Things You Do to Me: Character Action

Characters in a story are what they do and more importantly why they do what they do. If Marinette becomes Ladybug for the first time because someone needs saving (first Ivan, then Alya), and Adrien becomes Chat Noir in order to escape the gilded cage that is his house, Chloé dons the Bee miraculous in a desperate (and unsuccessful) bid to catch her mother’s attention.

Attention seeking is part of every subsequent time that her hero persona appears in the story. Consider the implications of the fact that the signal on her roof is a Bee signal, not a Ladybug signal. The gestursal tic she has of always examining her nails, often with the other arm folded over her chest, is a visual shorthand for both her self-absorption and that her unpleasant personality is a defence mechanism.

Dialogue clues are also important, especially things that come up more than once. Chloé’s persistent lack of remembrance of the Concierge’s name (Jean-whatever) shows her to be dismissive of the people she believes to be “beneath her” which becomes horribly ironic when we find out her mother doesn’t seem to remember her name. That Marinette is always Dunain-Cheng, emphasizing her parents status as tradesman and that Marinette is not pure French operates as a persistent put down.

Chloé is a Hero with an F in Good, primed by the writers for the Face–Heel Turn which happens in Miracle Queen. They telegraph this event by the choice to echo her “once a monster always a monster,” line from Stoneheart, in the S3 midseason Stormy Weather 2. There she mocks Aurore with “once a villain always a villain.” Highly ironic given the number of times Chloé has been akumatized and prompted it in others. Her bad heroing serves to show that actions and motives are not always aligned and to highlight the selflessness of the other heroes.

A great example of showing character through dialogue is Nino’s conversation with Gabriel in Bubbler. Nino was given a very distinctive, persistent, and casual speech pattern (“dude” in English), It’s so distinctive that Alya immediately recognizes that he is Carapace. The fact that he makes an effort to suppress it when he is trying to persuade Gabriel to let Adrien have a birthday party shows how much he cares about giving Adrien this gift. It’s part of what establishes him in our minds as such a great friend for Adrien (King of Bros!). Giving characters individualized vocabularies and speech patterns is one of the best ways to help distinguish them in both your, and the reader’s mind.

All Together Now!

As you read and experience more stories, you will recognize more and more common elements across the characters, places, events and ideas that make up the stories you read. As you recognize these building blocks, and how they can be combined and manipulated, they will help you understand better why certain characters do what they do in the story. You can then deliberately select them as you create your own stories to highlight desired themes, set up conflicts or call cultural resonances to your readers’ minds. Remember what you write is a conversation between you, your reader, and the world around you. The more of the world you can bring into your writing the deeper it will impact your readers.

#tag: guide #tag: submit #submission

22 notes · View notes

mittensmorgul · 4 years

Note

Hi, I was rewatching the spooky Bobby and Rufus episode from season 11, and I remember at the time people were convinced that this was the first appearance of The Empty, because at the time it had only been mentioned by Billie as a threat to Sam. I was wondering if that’s still the case, if that soul eaters Nest was in the empty? Because it would sort of make sense?

Hi there! and yeah, they did show us the Soul Eater’s nest during the season the concept of the Empty was first really introduced (in 11.02, by Billie threatening Sam with that fate, written by Andrew Dabb). At the time, we had no idea what the Empty would be like, and assumed it was exactly as Billie described it-- as complete annihilation.

I... personally didn’t think of the Soul Eater’s nest as a small version of the Empty, but perhaps a parallel or metaphorical comparison, at best. I was personally still convinced that the Empty would actually be more like what Amara described happened to the souls she “consumed” that would become “boundless within her” in a state of bliss. Combined with Billie’s threat to Sam that she would scatter his molecules so that he could never be brought back.

I was hoping for a version of the Empty that would be the “nothingness” version of Chuck’s heaven and hell-- basically the afterlife corresponding to the universal force of darkness the way Chuck’s creation corresponds to the universal force of light. I was hoping it would be a state of dissolution, rather than a place where consciousness could exist.

I think the closest a Soul Eater’s nest came to being what I had thought of as The Empty at that time was what happened to the souls trapped there when the Soul Eater had finished consuming them. Yes, its nest existed “outside of space and time,” and I do associate those characteristics with the Empty. But at the time the episode aired, before we understood the reality of the Empty, I thought of the Soul Eater Nest as more... “the Empty’s waiting room” than “the Empty itself.” If that makes sense?

Granted, when they finally did choose to show us the Empty on screen in s13, it ended up being quite different than we were expecting, and I have since wondered if they didn’t afterthought the original concept of the Empty into something more on par with the Soul Eater’s nest when they needed to stage scenes there. I mean, like I’ve argued over how Heaven has been presented in canon being the result of “they need to film in three dimensional space and therefore had to use visual shorthand to cover the described reality of Heaven, which is why we ended up with sterile white hallways instead of a maze of Dean’s perception of “open roads” for the Axis Mundi, and why all the “Surly Bobbies” appeared in that white hallway rather than how the Axis Mundi may have appeared to each of them that may have been entirely perceptually different.” They needed to film ~something~ that may have been implied to be... non-Euclidean space... but had to settle on thematic visual shorthand due to the limits of the human condition... if that makes sense >.>

So, yeah, I think if anything, the Empty fell into that category, and even the eventual presentation of it ended up quite different to the Soul Eater nest, which was also outside of time and space, but also necessarily tethered to a fixed location on Earth (the house where it collected its victims).

Lol, I love thinking about this sort of stuff :’D

#heaven hell purgatory and the empty #spn cosmology #spn 11.16 #spn 11.02 #heck all the s11 amara episodes but probably mostly #spn 11.05 #spn 11.06 #spn 11.09 #spn 11.21 #spn 13.04 #turdle

8 notes · View notes

twentiethcenturymoviesandtv · 3 years

Text

Frankenstein: Facets of Film

Once a movie settles on its script, characters, and the behind-the-scenes crew, there’s still plenty of steps left before a project is turned into a film.

As it turns out, there’s a lot of things to do in order to make a movie. There’s cameras, music, sets, special effects, costumes, and a whole lot of other stuff, done by a whole lot of people, that has to go into piecing together the parts of a coherent narrative in a way that makes sense to an audience. Not only is this important in the screenplay and direction, it’s also the job of everyone on set from the hair and makeup department to the grip and electric department.

See, not only does a film have to make sense, it usually has to look good, too.

These elements, cinematography, costuming, special effects, etc., are the elements that can catch the attention of an audience, taking a ‘good’ film, and turning it into a ‘great’ film, thanks to the powers of movie magic.

At first, this doesn’t seem to add up to a whole lot. I mean, like I’ve been saying, movies are centered on plots and characters, and the visuals are only an added bonus.

That’s true, but here’s the thing about movies.

Movies are, basically, a story in visual form. You can have a good story and characters in a book, but you have to make up what you’re seeing in your own mind. In a film, you have to watch what someone else made up. This can be either an advantage or a disadvantage, and the difference is made entirely thanks to the individuals on the production team. These ‘trimmings’, the elements that turn a story into a film, are incredibly important, not just to the filmmakers and the process itself, but to an audience.

Even casual movie-goers can interpret what the framing of some scenes is trying to tell them, even if they don’t know that it was the cinematography that told them that. Most audience members subconsciously internalize things like thematic costume changes, or a musical cue, without necessarily figuring out what exactly was getting that point across. The point is, these ‘facets of film’ are not only for filmmakers or movie critics: The storytelling shorthand is a tool that gives the audience all of the information they need to have, without spelling it all out in dialogue.

In other words, it’s very useful.

A truly great director knows to use these aspects of ‘storytelling shorthand’ well, not simply competently. Too often, directors can decide to focus the production crew, and the movie itself, in the wrong place: the trimmings instead of the tree. It’s a common problem, one that becomes more and more obvious as the range and scope for the abilities of special effects grows. Soon enough, they’ve put the plot and characters on the backburner in order to focus on the appearance of a film, and the finished project is more concerned with being a visual masterpiece than a good, compelling story.

There’s nothing wrong with being visually appetizing, but there is something important here: a balance.

In the best examples of film, visual storytelling accentuates its story, rather than overshadows it. These facets of film are used to get the film across in the most effective way possible, focusing on what is important: the story and characters.

Such is the case with James Whale’s 1931 film, Frankenstein.

Today, we’re going to be taking a look at the storytelling devices, the facts of film used by a movie crew, to answer this question:

How does Frankenstein use its movie-making tools in order to get across the story it wants to? And does it do it well, or just competently?

Let’s take a look, starting with something that may seem kind of obvious: the camerawork. (Spoilers below!)

The camerawork in a film can sometimes be the dealbreaker, or the dealmaker, depending on how it’s used. When the cinematography is done well, it’s breathtaking, when done competently, it is adequate, but when it’s done badly, you really notice. There’s a whole lot more to camerawork than just pointing it at the action. There’s a lot to consider, like setting, lighting, character placement, colors, mood of a scene, and even mood of a character. And trust me when I say that that’s not all they have to be thinking about.

The cinematography, along with the editing of shots, is purposefully trying to get a reaction out of the audience. A good director knows how to use the camera and his crew to emphasize certain details, moods, or even subtle clues or indications of the story itself in just what the audience is looking at. The camera is not just ‘pointed at the action’, it’s used to help tell the story, while leaving a visual mark on it.

Frankenstein demonstrates this masterfully.

There are plenty of examples of striking visuals in this film, scenes like the initial pan in the graveyard, taking in the tombstones, the funeral party, and finally Henry Frankenstein and Fritz. Or the fantastic ‘raising of the monster’ scene, combining the sparking of electricity and the intense visual atmosphere to build a tension of terror, or the utterly gripping shot of Henry watching his creation’s hand move. While all of these scenes are great, unfortunately, I can’t go shot-for-shot through Frankenstein to show you all of them. (Though stay tuned for scene spotlight, a feature that’s going to do just that) What I can do is point out a few special examples.

The first one I want to bring to your attention is a weird example. It’s the scene where Elizabeth and Victor are talking about how worried they are for Henry. This doesn’t sound like it should be all that interesting, after all, we want to get to the monster, but James Whale knew where to point a camera.

Most scenes open with an establishing shot, a wide shot that lets the audience get a look at where we are so they can orient themselves and the characters in the context of the area. This scene doesn’t do that.

It opens on a series of close-ups: The framed photo of Henry, Elizabeth’s face, the door opening and Victor walking in, and only then do you get a wide shot, taking full advantage of the grand set. Until then, the audience is subconsciously working to figure out where they are, and trying to orient themselves during it. It’s a fascinating technique, one that isn’t very common, even in this movie. It’s the only time he does it.

On the other hand, something that Whale does all the time is hold the camera at a distance from the action.

See, Frankenstein was based on a book, sure, but a book that had been adapted to the stage long before movie screens. As such, early adaptations of Frankenstein tended to be, at least a little, based on the stage play. Such was the case for this film.

As such, the movie is shot, in many instances, like a stage play.

There isn’t a whole lot of camera movement in Frankenstein. The camera is usually set kind of far back from the action, letting the audience see the players move around the set, kind of like they would in a play. The camera doesn’t move with them, just sits back and lets the audience see what’s going on. Watch the “It’s Alive!” shot, or the scene where the creature stalks Elizabeth.

Now, that isn’t to say that the camera doesn’t move at all. There’s plenty of slow pans (the shot where the monster is raised through the roof) and close-ups (the first good look at the monster). But for the most part, the audience is shown what’s going on from a slight distance, from Fritz in the classroom to Frankenstein confronting his monster.

It’s an interesting way to view the action, and at first, it can perhaps seem like a bad idea on paper. After all, you want the audience in close, being there with it. But in practice, in the film itself, it works very well. The slowness of the movement, (aided with the total lack of soundtrack) adds to tension. Being able to see the whole thing builds suspense for characters as you see what they don’t.

That being said, there are plenty of interesting shots, especially within Frankenstein’s lab, that allow you to explore the space in interesting ways, making full use of the weird angles and shadows to maximize ‘scare factor’. Even the close up of the monster’s hand moving with Frankenstein reacting to it in the same shot is a masterful example of the camera in close, emphasizing the tension of the scene. Other shots, like seeing Fritz’s hanged body in the background or that iconic first shot of the monster on its feet are all master-classes in and of themselves in using a camera to convey a feeling, as well as the story, to an audience.

But there’s more to a film’s atmosphere than camerawork. There’s the soundtrack, as well.

Or, in this case, the lack thereof.

We’re used to most movies having a soundtrack, favorites coming from geniuses like John Williams, Danny Elfman, or James Horner, but Frankenstein has no music in it at all once the opening credits stop.

Music seems like a natural part of filmmaking, from the heroic opening of Superman to the shrieking strings of Psycho, even to the haunting score of The Thing. Music sets the mood, helping the audience feel what’s going on in the story. Especially in horror, where the idea is to unsettle the audience, the soundtrack seems essential, building up tension and scare-factor in a scene.

It seems odd that Frankenstein should be so totally silent.

However, it kind of works.

The silence of Frankenstein as a film works very much to the film’s advantage. You are forced to pay attention to characters and what they’re saying, true, but that’s not really a problem often faced with soundtracks. No, the benefits of the lack of music in this case are twofold, and they’re a little unusual:

1. Eerie silence works very well for this.

2. Without music cueing the audience in, it’s up to the individual viewer to determine what they think of characters.

The first point is the easiest to discuss, so let’s start there.

The only thing scarier than the creepy theme to Halloween is no theme whatsoever.

The absolute quiet in Frankenstein renders the tension harder to bear than if there had been music to cue the audience in. Hearing nothing but the thunder during the scene of the monster’s creation renders it a more vivid experience, putting the audience in the scene without background music to remind them that they’re in a movie. Even the scenes where the monster kills are more uncomfortable without music to warn us.

So yes, it’s scarier, in a way. It also forces the audience to pay more attention.

Music tells us a lot about a character or a film. It tells us that Luke Skywalker wants more, and that Darth Vader is scary. It tells us that Rocky is better for his training. It tells us that the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park are awesome.

In Frankenstein, it tells us nothing, because it’s not there at all.

The lack of musical cues for the audience forces them to pay attention and think about what is happening. Are we supposed to be scared? Sympathetic? Both? Neither? It’s hard to tell what music would play over the monster after he accidentally drowns Maria, or after Henry survives the climax at the windmill. In that, it’s up to the audience to interpret whether these things are meant to be seen as good or bad In that, somehow, a lack thereof still allows a soundtrack to do what it does best: accentuate the audience’s experience.

This ambiguity, also present in how the film is shot, allows this film to stand so firmly so many years later: it never gives you a thorough answer over what to think about what’s going on. For all its differences with the book, it does have one thing in common with it: it extends questions for you to answer, without providing much of its own. It’s on you to decide what to think.

Even though there wasn’t any music, there was a whole lot of something else: sets.

The setwork in Frankenstein is massive, hugely expansive atmospheres and locations for the audience to marvel at, and more importantly, be unsettled by. Shades of this scope appear later in things like Edward Scissorhands (albeit with a classic Tim Burton twist) and other horror-inspired films and shows, from the thunder-and-lightning surrounded tower to the interior of the lab.

James Whale shot sets in a grand way, letting the audience experience the grandiose scale of each individual location. From the huge Frankenstein mansion to the interior of the mad-scientist lab, to the cemetery, even to the burning windmill, each setting feels larger-than-life, giving the gothic set-design an even better chance to shine. The Frankenstein manor feels appropriately impressive, bright and safe, with shots that emphasize the scope of the luxury and the various rooms inside. The mill feels dangerous, dark and cramped, with too many obstacles.

But of course, the set that everyone remembers is the Frankenstein lab, and with good reason.

The tower, the stone walls, the electric gadgets and gizmos all going off together, the operating table, beakers galore, levers, control panels, and an open ceiling to raise the monster, now this is a mad-scientist laboratory.

Originally created in 1927 silent film Metropolis but codified forever in Frankenstein, James Whale knew how to shoot this set. Loosely based originally on the labs of Nikola Tesla, the lab of Dr. Frankenstein is so iconic that it’s been recreated (or re-used) in everything from straight horror films or loving spoofs like Young Frankenstein. Whale allows this place to feel unsettling, scary, helped enormously by Colin Clive’s crazed and uncomfortable performance as Henry Frankenstein. The lab, much like most of the sets in the film, is full of dark shadows, of stark contrasts, feeling intentionally scary.

Every set in this film is shot with plenty of shadow and darkness, allowing the audience to really feel uneasy. But the sets aren’t the only thing that are adding to the scare-factor. Also helping out drastically in these scenes is the special-effects department.

Long before the invention of CGI, monsters had to be created in the makeup chair. The original looks what’s considered the ‘classic’ monsters were created through layers of makeup and prosthetics, from Dracula’s fangs to the Wolfman’s animal face. The Frankenstein monster was no different.

The appearance of the monster could possibly be considered as the greatest special effect this film has to offer. The heavy lids, hollow features, electrodes and flat-topped head are all iconic visuals that continue into modern pop culture, and with good reason.

The effect of the original Frankenstein makeup was stunning, and instantly memorable. For a film made in 1931, the makeup on the original monster looks incredible, standing the test of time almost ninety years later. It remains a convincing effect, giving the creature a distinct, undead look that is incredibly striking.

But the visual look of the monster wouldn’t mean much of anything if it was just a makeup job. There has to be something there behind the makeup that makes it really work: the performance of the actor underneath.

Thankfully, Boris Karloff was more than up to the task.

See, no matter how good the cinematography, sets, or makeup, Frankenstein would be nothing if not for the final, essential ingredient: the performances.

And it is here that the movie goes from good to great.

As I’ve mentioned before, Frankenstein has no ‘small’ performances. Everyone in this film brings huge energy to each role, and no one more so than the monster himself, Boris Karloff.

Karloff manages an incredible range of expression through the heavy monster makeup, bringing out the monster’s innocent initial nature perfectly. He is able to portray the gambit of emotions, from fear to rage, to curiosity, to joy. It is Karloff’s performance that turns the monster into a creature that the audience sympathizes with, to the point that even when he is acting ‘monstrous’, it’s hard to forget his childlike happiness at playing with Maria. Karloff’s abilities as an actor force the audience to contend with the monster’s humanity, and his expression through the ‘dead’ makeup and heavy eyelids is as incredible as it is compelling. For one specific example, the scene where the creature is first exposed to light is a classic scene, that remains moving and powerful no matter how many times you see the film. Karloff’s performance is that of a confused creature, just learning about the world and finding it a harsh and dark place.

Colin Clive as Henry Frankenstein brings manic energy to his character in the first half, and regretful sobriety in the second. He is the perfect quintessential mad scientist, howling about his accomplishments and seeing nothing wrong with stealing bodies to stitch together to create life, until he realizes his mistake. Frankenstein’s transformation and breakdown is rendered believable and interesting through Clive’s incredible performance as the regretful scientist, determined to right his wrong after the monster runs loose. His switch from the emotionally-distant scientist to a man concerned with his friends and family is dramatic but understandable, and the audience buys his uncertainty just as much as they buy his mad ambition.

Mae Clarke’s showing as Elizabeth, despite not getting much in screen time or dialogue, manages to portray a woman trying to remain strong despite her fiance’s increasingly weird behavior and the undead-goings-on surrounding her wedding. She’s worried, but she’s also in love, and doesn’t want to leave Henry, despite the things he’s done.

Dwight Frye as Fritz is the quintessential Igor, the hunchback assistant that we now associate so strongly with the story. He’s a nasty being, mean-spirited and is ultimately the person most likely responsible for the creature’s bad streak of luck. A bully without scruples, Fritz helps Frankenstein assemble his equipment and parts, and eventually dies at the hands of the monster, managing to remain entirely unsympathetic the entire time, which seemed to be rather the point.

Edward Van Sloan’s portrayal is that of a perfectly ‘reasonable’ scientist, an old man accustomed to the ways of science. His concern is completely understandable, and he comes across exactly as he should: the opposite of Victor, entirely on the side of caution. Unfortunately, his caution also leads to the decision of killing the monster, but Van Sloan portrays this not so much as lack of humanity, but lack of empathy and understanding that he is also dealing with ‘humanity’. He is not a villain, but he isn’t really considering the whole picture here.

It is in these elements that Frankenstein truly becomes ‘immortal’

A film can have a great script, fantastic characters, and even great sets, cinematography and makeup, but it is in these incredible, vivid, vibrant performances that the film goes from good to great. Without the sympathetic monster, the manic mad scientist, or even the crooked (in more ways than one) lab assistant, Frankenstein as a film would be just another one of the many incarnations of the story. It is thanks to all of these facets of film that Frankenstein excels, going beyond simple ‘monster movie’ to horror classic.

Everything in this film is perfectly crafted for the specific needs of the screenplay. Every inch is designed to bring this spooky story to life, without forgoing depth of either the shadows or the characters. From the sets and the camerawork to the work of the actors themselves, everything in Frankenstein fits together perfectly, a horror classic, but also simply a film classic, a landmark that definitely deserves its place in Hollywood History as one of the greatest films of all time.

James Whale and his crew certainly knew what they were doing. Every facet of film, from the camerawork to the performances, demonstrating every mood and feeling without having to explain it. The sets and characters feel perfectly realized, gothic, creepy, and compelling, setting the mood for the thrills and chills story.

Full of scares and screams, Frankenstein’s facets of film come together to convey a great tone, characters, and story, and in the end, that’s exactly what they’re supposed to do.

Thanks so much for reading, and I hope to see you in the next article.

#Film #Movies #Frankenstein #Frankenstein 1931 #1931 #30s #Horror #Drama #Sci-Fi #Science Fiction #PG #Boris Karloff #Colin Clive #Mae Clarke #Dwight Frye #Edward Van Sloan #James Whale

5 notes · View notes